The Vampire And The Highland Empath Read Online Free PDF Page B

walked.
    The tunnel widened enough for the three of them to walk apace. Without asking, Edeen and Alex immediately flanked Roque, each slinging one of his arms over their own shoulders.
    Apparently none too soon as he sank against them, his steps more dragging than supporting his own weight.
    Heat poured off him. When the light passed across him from Alex’s gait, Edeen could see fissures of steam lifting off Roque’s wet clothes. The wet ends of his dark hair curled at the nape of his neck.
    Once again, she sifted through her essence, trying to find the missing source of her empathic abilities and get a hint of what Roque truly was, yet there was nothing there. The absence of her gift frightened her. She’d rather have lost the ability to walk.
    “Please tell me that’s not your way out,” Alex said.
    Edeen lifted her head and the world nipped out of her grasp. Alex played the light over the space where their exit hole should be, but ‘twas no longer there.
    The space where the opening should be was obvious, but it had been sealed off by stone and mortar.
    They were trapped.

    Chapter Five

    This wasn’t right. Why would anyone build a wall across the entrance?
    And so quickly.
    Shaw had stashed a bunch of supplies here, in case things went bad with the witch, only two days ago when their small group left on the foray to search out Aldreth’s castle for weaknesses and rescue Toren.
    The supplies that were now gone.
    “I do not understand. How is a wall here?” She demanded as though Roque and Alex had anything to do with it.
    Propping Roque against the earthen tunnel wall, Alex squinted at her. Roque looked done in. His slight glance toward her revealed glassy eyes as Alex helped him slide down the wall to sit.
    Edeen sank down beside them, worry knotting her insides. She had led them here to this trap when Roque desperately needed a Healer Sorceress.
    Could this be Aldreth’s doing? If the witch knew about their clan’s hidden stashes, she would be keen to cut them off from it.
    Yet this had been such a small cache, hardly worth the effort. Also, Edeen felt no trace of magic humming across it, like the magical barrier that surrounded Aldreth’s castle.
    Of course, Edeen could not rely on her senses to ferret out magic at the moment.
    But…her empathic ability aside, her instincts were wailing.
    Everything was too strange, somehow off. The noisy magical boat, the men’s strange manner of dress and speech. Both Englishmen, yet she couldn’t make sense of some of their words.
    Her heart clenched in her chest.
    The last memory before waking in the smugglers cave was of Aldreth hurting Toren while she heedlessly ran to stop the witch. Everything after that was gone.
    Oh, Toren, what have ye done? As a sorcerer, he could send her through a rift in time. But why? If indeed ‘twas what happened. Why would they not have taken her to Reolin Skene and the Shadowrood?
    They would have if they had been able.
    Her heart wrung tighter.
    Sweet peace , what happened to her brothers?
    “We have two choices,” Alex said, opening the bag.
    Roque’s lashes lifted, the only indication he was still with them and listening.
    “Go back the way we came to the sea. Of course, we no longer have a boat and Geschopf is most probably still skulking about.”
    Roque grunted.
    “Or get that bloody bullet out of you right here.”
    Roque lifted his hand weakly. “ That I’m in favor of.”
    Alex smiled.
    The situation couldn’t be much worse. They had enemies behind them, a wall to the front and a man spilling his life’s blood that he could not afford to lose.
    She should not have brought them here. “Forgive me.”
    Roque took her hand within his warm grasp and squeezed. Emotions rolled through her, vague and indescript, yet there like a forgotten dream lying just at the edge of remembering. Her gift. Edeen gasped and her essence wavered. She tried to clasp onto it, yet the feeling floated away as wispy as mist through her