Disclaimer: Don't own: a) Sweep, b) the Jane Austen quote at the beginning from Pride and Prejudice, or c) Dido's song "Don't Leave Home", which is used in this chapter. Wow … what do I own? Now I'm depressed. ::insert sighing:: Oh, well. Read and review, or I'll beat you to death with a shovel. … we possess Willow power! Hehehe … oh, just read it.
moon-faery69: I agree that Poppy Montgomery would make a good Sky, but would you really cast Harmony in the role, too? Sky always struck me as the brainy type, which Harmony … well, definitely isn't. But aaaanyway … please don't follow up on the fork threat! I'll never be able to look at a fork the same way again. ;)
borntotry: Thanks for the compliment :D I put a lot of effort into that chapter, so I'm glad to see that you liked it. Have you read the rest of the story or just up to there?
tic tac: Nope, it's not rude to point out the lack of make-out sessions between Morgan and Hunter. I guess that I just don't think that those sorts of things are necessary to make a story really good. Yes, they can help, but … (shrug) whatever. There are other stories to read if you want stuff like that. Plus, in later chapters, Morgan and Hunter aren't on the best of terms with each other, so to have make-out sessions every five minutes doesn't seem especially logical. Oh, and almost forgot. I think the reason that I focus on other relationships besides Morgan and Hunter is because, for one, Cate Tiernan didn't focus on other characters as much. I get that those two are the main characters, but … still, someone has to pick up the slack, y'know? Since no one else in this website seems to focus on anyone but Hunter and Morgan, I figured that the other couples of the series could use a little spotlight time, too.
Title: Windswept
Had I been in love, I could not have been more wretchedly blind. But vanity, not love, has been my folly. Pleased with the preference of one, and offended by the neglect of the other, on the very beginning of our acquaintance, I have courted prepossession and ignorance, and driven reason away, where either were concerned.
Till this moment, I never knew myself.
- Jane Austen
Morgan
My heart pounded painfully in my chest. The temporary relief I had felt seeing Hunter and Robbie all right died away almost instantly at the sight of the Diobhail that had attacked Bree and I thundering down the far end of the hallway towards us.
"Look out!" I screamed as a black bolt of magick shot from the demon's outstretched hand. Were it not for Sky and Hunter pulling them instantly out of the way, Raven and Bree, who had been standing right in its line of fire, would have …
Goddess.
"Run!" Hunter yelled, drawing a rune of blocking in midair in front of us and pushing us down the hallway. "Go! Now!"
I could barely feel my feet pounding down the hallway as the six of us ran for the side stairs that would lead us back to the main level. There was only fear. I knew what pure terror felt like in that moment. As we emerged into the main lobby, I took in again the destruction that had been caused. The glass of the front windows was shattered into infinite pieces in front of the door, and I was grateful that I had my slippers on, unlike the others, when we ran to the front door.
Hunter grabbed the handle and tried to pull it open, but it didn't budge. He twisted the lock, his hands shaking, but in vain.
"Unlock it!" Robbie cried, looking over his shoulder to fearfully watch the hallway we had just run out of.
Like a ghost don't need a key
Your best friend I've come to be
Please don't think of getting up for me
You don't even need to speak
Hunter was still struggling with it. "It's locked from the outside, and there are too many spells to break through." I had felt the magick on the door the moment we had approached it. Layers upon layers of locking and binding spells had been placed on it. Even more, I thought, than had been on Selene Belltower's library. I felt panic clutch my heart; this was the only way we knew to get out of the lodge. The kitchen door was locked, as well, and we never had managed to find the key.
"Where do we go?" Sky demanded. "The kitchen door is locked!"
"Isn't there a way out through the basement?" Hunter asked. "I saw stairs that led up to the backyard."
Instantly, we made a break for the basement. The kitchen was eerily silent until we drew near the door to the basement. A low humming filled my ears, something indiscernible … it sounded like chanting. Hunter pulled open the door to the basement and almost instantly slammed it shut again.
We had all gasped simultaneously. Three more Diobhail had been standing in a circle over the power sink, ironically in the same spot that we had chosen for our healing spell, chanting in a strange tongue that sounded ancient and mysterious. Each held a burning taper in their gnarled hands, focusing with immense concentration on whatever it was they were doing, before Hunter had thrown open the door and distracted them.
Through the closed door, I could hear a roared order. "Get them!"
Hunter quickly drew a locking rune on the doorknob, but I wouldn't have even bothered. "That won't hold them for very long, I'd wager."
"Now where?" Bree cried, tears of fear forming in her eyes.
Robbie snapped his fingers. "The cellar! It has a steel door!"
The good thing about a large hotel like the Candle Lodge was that the storeroom was gigantic. We had been in there only once before, searching for flour to make pancakes one morning. We had had an incredibly difficult time opening the door, which was made of solid steel about four inches thick. Hunter had, luckily, oiled the door so that it was easier to open. We raced for it, hearing the Diobhail pounding up the stairs to the main level from the basement. The combined efforts of Hunter and Robbie pulled the heavy door open with a loud creak, and when we all had raced inside, slammed the door shut with a deafening bang.
No one spoke for a moment.
"Goddess …" I whispered, my breath coming in short, panicked gasps. "Goddess … what do we do, what do we do?"
"I don't know," Hunter muttered, looking just as frightened as I felt.
"There has to be some way out that we haven't found yet," Bree reasoned, her voice shaking.
"Over here!" Raven and Sky were standing in front of a small window that couldn't have been more than two by one feet. "Come on!" Sky picked a large can of stewed tomatoes up from the nearby vegetable products shelf and hurled it at the window. The glass shattered instantly, and with a unanimous sigh of relief, the rest of us ran over. Raven cleared away the glass before standing on top of an empty crate to climb out of the window. She helped Sky up next, and, slowly, painstakingly, one by one, we were out.
When I've been here for just one day
You'll already miss me if I go away
So close the blinds and shut the door
You won't need other friends anymore
"Did they see us?" I breathed, shivering in the cold night air. It was so dark that I could barely see the others in front of me.
"I don't see any of them," Hunter said. The sound of the demons banging down the cellar door was audible suddenly, and Sky looked at the rest of us.
"The car is at the front," she said quickly. "Do you have the keys?"
"Got them," Hunter said, holding a key chain up, from which dangled what I recognized as the keys to the council car. "I grabbed them right before we ran out of the kitchen."
The car was parked at the front of the lodge in a side driveway, and, luckily, we couldn't see any more Diobhail stationed at the front. Sky, Raven, Robbie, and Bree crowded into the back as Hunter and I took the driver's and passenger's seat. Hunter jammed the keys into the ignition and, with a speed that almost frightened me, pressed on the gas pedal and powered the car out of the driveway.
"Are any following us?" Hunter asked, trying to look out the side mirror as we sped down the main street of Portrush.
Sky twisted around in her seat and looked out the back window. "I don't think so."
"Any watch sigils on the car?"
"No."
"Morgan, are you –"
"I'm on it," I said. I had already begun tracing concealing and hiding runes out the window as we reached the town limits and emerged into the rolling countryside to the south of the town. The car lights were the only source of light; the moon was covered with clouds.
"What the hell was …" Raven began, before collapsing against Sky, exhausted. Sky kissed the top of her head comfortingly, but I saw how scared she looked, too.
"They were so …" Bree whispered, but stopped. I didn't blame her; I couldn't exactly think of an adjective that would quite describe them, either.
"Unearthly?" Robbie suggested, his face still pale white.
"They're supposed to be a clan of ethereal spirits," Sky whispered. "How did this happen? They're not supposed to have manifested into a physical form."
"They looked pretty solid to me," Bree grumbled.
"Was there anything in your book that would have explained why they're here?" Hunter asked Sky. I narrowed my eyebrows.
"What book?"
"The book that she found the Diobhail in."
I glanced at Sky in confusion, catching her wide-eyed look too late. "But we got the information from the Akashic Records, not a book."
Hunter slammed his feet on the brakes so hard that all of us flew forward in our seats as the tires skidded to a dead halt on the road.
"You checked the what?" he demanded, twisting around to glare between Sky and I.
Bree slapped him upside the head. "Hunter, you dork, keep driving! They could still be following us!" Hunter muttered something under his breath before stepping on the gas again. When we had gone about a mile and were going so fast that I would have been very frightened if I hadn't known that Hunter was a meticulous and cautious driver, he turned to glare at Sky again.
"You told me that you found out about them from a book! What's this about the Akashic Records?"
"We checked them instead?" Sky said meekly.
"But only really advanced witches can do that," Hunter said, uncomprehending.
"Right," Sky said. "So the logical conclusion is –"
"All right, all right," Hunter groaned quickly. "Moving past petty jealousy, what made you check the Akashic Records?" He paused suddenly. "They're supposed to be really hard to access …"
Sky and I both grimaced at the memory of the disgusting herb tea that we had been forced to ingest to reach the astral planes. "Oh, they are," she said. "But we won't get into that now. Morgan wanted us to."
"What?" Hunter demanded. He looked at me. "Why did you ask her to check the Akashic Records?"
I sighed. "After I saw one digging up my grandmother's grave, I wanted to know what was going on. Understandably."
"Not that Sky is incapable or anything …" he began, "but … why didn't you come to me?"
"Because we're not on the best of terms right now, Hunter dearest," I said coldly. He just looked away with a sigh of frustration. I bit my lip to keep from saying anything else.
"The point is," Sky continued, "that we don't know very much about these things or why they're after us, which, in my mind, is cause for …" Her eyes widened with a sudden realization. "Oh! Alarm! Alexis is still at the hospital!"
"We can't go back now!" Hunter cried.
"You just want to leave her there with these monsters crawling around?" she questioned. She paused. "I did not just say monsters."
"Don't worry yourself for no reason," Hunter said. "They're not after her. They're after us. Chances are, they won't touch anyone in Portrush." He sighed, his eyes still on the road. "And if they do, I'll be taking an extreme guilt trip, so there won't be any need to rub it in."
Sky still looked distressed, and he sighed, his voice softening. "She'll be okay, Sky."
Sky just nodded after a long moment.
Don't leave home
Don't leave home
After a while, Robbie spoke up. "So … where are we going?"
"I don't know," I whispered.
"Wherever we can find a safe place to stop, I suppose," Hunter said quietly.
"Where is safe?" Raven asked timidly.
"… Wherever the Diobhail aren't."We drove for over an hour in silence. I glanced at my watch. It was three-thirty in the morning.
I looked at the backseat at the others, and suddenly my heart ached. Raven and Bree were the most shaken up of the four, still reliving the moment that they had barely avoided the invading demon's magickal attack. Bree was shivering in Robbie's embrace, her face pale and fear still visible in her dark eyes. He looked exhausted, but he still held her tightly. Raven clung to Sky, still trembling visibly. I could feel Sky's tiredness and fear, too, but there was an unwavering tenderness in her eyes as she stroked her lover's hair gently.
I looked at Hunter, just a sideways glance. He was watching me, too, alternating between looking at me and the road. I took a deep breath and continued to trace concealing runes in our path.
I shivered slightly. The empty road seemed to stretch forever.
If you're cold
I'll keep you warm
If you're low
Just hold on
Because I will be your safety
Don't leave home
"How long has it been since we've seen a house?" Bree asked, looking out the window, her eyes glazed over with tiredness.
"About two hours, give or take," Sky sighed. "Hunter, do you have any idea at all where we are?"
Hunter just rubbed his eyes with the back of his hand. He was the only one, being the one at the wheel, out of us that hadn't slept or at least rested since we had left the lodge. "Honestly? No."
I sighed. "Wonderful."
It was now past eight o'clock in the morning. We had been driving for five hours and, according to Hunter, gone about 350 miles. I suppose that's the good thing about empty roads in the middle of the Irish countryside; we hadn't seen a single car since we had left.
"We're going to have to stop soon," Hunter said, glancing at the gas meter. "We're almost out of petrol, and I don't think driving in broad daylight will be such a good idea."
We drove on for about an hour, peering out the windows, looking for some sign of human civilization. We had been in a thick forest for about ten minutes when Hunter sighed again.
"Is anyone else feeling a tad hopeless?"
"Actually, no," Sky said, sounding surprised. "There's a house up there a bit. I can see the driveway from here."
Hunter and I both followed her gaze, and surely enough, a clearing in the trees was visible to the side of the road. A worn and tattered mailbox stood at the end of a small road that curved into the trees and out of sight.
"Someone must live out here, then, right?" Robbie asked. "We could stop and ask if we could borrow some gas."
"Plus some clothing, as well," Sky said.
I realized with a jolt that she was right. All of us were in our pajamas. Not only that, but we had left everything at the lodge. Our food, our luggage, our clothes, for the girls our toiletries … I hadn't brushed my hair in hours. I was sure it was a mess. Great. Great. The situation was improving with every second. It took quite a bit of willpower to keep from yelling some very strong invective out of frustration. I was so tired, even though I had closed my eyes for a little bit, and I was afraid, and I just wanted this trip to be over.
And I arrived when you were weak
I'll make you weaker
Like a child
Now all your love you give to me
Hunter turned down the gravel road that the mailbox had signaled, and for ten minutes, we wound our way through dense forest on a road that was so bumpy that everyone was being jostled up, down, left, and right. For what a trek it was to the house that the mailbox belonged to, I'm sure all of us were pretty disappointed.
The house was massively impressive on its own, I supposed, but there was just something about the way that it was totally and completely dilapidated that … I don't know, just kind of ruined the image for me. I'm sure that at one time it was a gorgeous estate, probably owned by some wealthy Irish businessman or other. It was at least three stories tall and it must have been beautiful once; now, though, the columns at the front were covered in dust and dirt, a dirty reminder of what must have once been sparkling white marble structures. The bricks were dirtied and some had fallen out of their frames on the upper levels and dropped to the sandy driveway at the front. The roof was missing huge clumps of shingles, and all of the windows visible on all three floors were either broken or so grimy that I doubted one could ever see through them again.
"Welcome to paradise, ladies and gentlemen," I whispered under my breath.
"Judging by the complete lack of any other human presence, I'm going to guess that no one lives here," Bree said, stating the obvious.
Hunter sighed, still looking at the mansion with a grim expression on his face. "We don't have much choice. We've only got enough petrol left to go about a mile or two. So … it's this, or a forest road in the middle of nowhere." He looked slightly hopeful. "There might be supplies inside, and then we could keep going."
"Right," Robbie said sarcastically. "Keep going. That's smart. We haven't seen a house in two hours and you want to keep going? I'm thinking that can't be a good decision."
"I have to agree with him," Sky said reluctantly, looking at Hunter worriedly. "The chances of us finding another house in this part of the country … I mean, it's clear that it's not exactly heavily populated."
Hunter sighed deeply before shrugging and turning the key in the ignition again. "Fine. But I'm checking to see if it has a garage or something. I don't want to leave the car out in plain sight … for reasons that should be obvious."
I nodded. "I think that's best."
Bree looked between all of us before smiling slightly. "Okay … so, that's it? We're staying here?" At everyone's eventual nod, she launched into the infamous Bree Warren plan-mode. "Okay. So, Morgan, why don't you, Hunter, and Sky scour the surface of this place with spells and stuff to make it hard to find while the rest of us look for some food and gasoline and stuff?"
Raven groaned. "God, food … I'm starving."
"Yeah, well, pure terror will do that to you," I said with a shrug as the six of us got out of the car. "So let's get to it. Time's not moving any slower."
If you're cold
I'll keep you warm
If you're low
Just hold on
Because I will be your safety
Don't leave home
"So, what have we got here?" Bree asked as she rummaged through a box of canned goods. "I'd take inventory, but I haven't got a pad of paper." She paused. "Ooh, crab-filled ravioli! Can we make that for dinner tonight?"
I grinned. "Sure, Bree."
Hunter, Sky, and I had finished concealing the mansion and the car, which we had hidden underneath some fallen tree limbs from the last summer storm to hit the area. I had then brought forth the idea that Sky should call Shelagh and Beck and, in not so many words, beg them to come rescue us. Unfortunately, none of us had Beck's new phone number since he had moved out of Shelagh's place to teach at Oxford University. Sky had gone in search of a telephone in the house to try to call her mother, but I could tell that Hunter almost felt it wasn't worth it. At the moment, all of us minus Sky were going through innumerable cans of food in the pantry after we had cleaned up an inch-thick layer of dust covering everything in the kitchen and cupboards.
I was the first one to see Sky enter the kitchen. She didn't look too happy.
"Well," she said, "the good news is that I did manage to finally hook up one of the phones to a main connection." She bit her lip.
"And the bad news?" Hunter asked.
"Aunt Shelagh took all of Briongloid Radharc to Pemberley."
Hunter looked shocked. "What?"
Sky looked very agitated. "Yes, as a way to 'relax and heal' after what Cràdh Fisher did to all of them. According to her answering machine, they won't be back for three weeks."
"What's Pemberley?" I asked curiously.
"Our summer home in southern England," Sky said.
"Mansion, more like," Hunter clarified. "It's bigger than this place. We used to go every summer. Since none of us are living at home anymore, I suppose Aunt Shelagh and Uncle Beck are using it more."
"And you can't send her a witch message?" I asked, a sinking feeling beginning to settle in my stomach.
"No, it's too far away," Hunter sighed. He looked at Sky. "Do you know the phone number to Pemberley?"
"No," she admitted. "And I remember that Ma always kept it unlisted."
"Pemberley …" Raven had a thoughtful expression on her face. "Is that named after –"
"Jane Austen?" Sky asked dryly. "Yes. Ma thought the place needed a new name, my sister Aimee had just finished reading Pride and Prejudice …"
"Hunter could play Mr. Darcy in a movie adaptation," Bree grinned.
I shrugged. "I don't know, I thought the guy who did it in that A&E presentation was pretty good."
"Morgan, when did you watch that?" Robbie asked, his eyes wide. "Isn't it, like, six hours long?"
"It was rainy, I was bored, and Mary K wanted to watch it," I said defensively.
It felt good to be talking about semi-normal things with my friends. Things that didn't involve ethereal demons and the fact that we were stranded in the middle of a mansion on the Irish coast with no possible means of escape. I sighed. This situation would take some serious thought.
"I just want out of here," Bree said quietly. "I'd sit through that whole movie ten times if we could just …"
"I know," I sighed. "I know."
If you're cold
I'll keep you warm
If you're low
Just hold on
Because I will be your safety
Don't leave home