CHAPTER 17
Scotland
Wow!”
Slowly, my fingers brushed over Payton’s fully healed wound as we sat next to the trail. His skin was even. Only a milky-white line betrayed where the piece of glass had dug into his wrist. At the most, it now looked like an old, faded scar.
Everything was starting to come together in my mind. I looked into Payton’s eyes. I saw love, hope, and something dark. I stroked the delicate scar again and hesitantly asked, “And what would happen, for example, if one of these cursed men got hurt?”
I was afraid of the answer, and I started to shake, but Payton’s strong hand calmed me.
“Well, the wound would heal within a very short time.”
Payton held my hands tight.
“So,” I asked, “you can’t feel anything?”
My fear of this second answer was even greater: I loved him, and he couldn’t feel anything? Although I had promised to believe whatever he told me, I hoped that couldn’t be true.
“Sam, do you understand what I’ve been telling you? Do you understand that I am one of the cursed?”
“Yes,” I said softly. No wonder he’d been such a mystery to me. “But I can’t quite wrap my head around how that can be—or what it means for me. You’re telling me that you’re actually immortal?”
“I haven’t aged a day in two hundred seventy years.”
“Isn’t that a good thing? Doesn’t everyone want to stay young and live forever?”
Payton grabbed my upper arms.
“You know absolutely nothing! How can you even think that?” He was so mad he was almost shaking me.
“Have you been listening to me at all?” he growled. “What kind of life do you think it is, to live without feeling? When you wake up and know exactly what your day is going to be like. Colorless, cold, no pain, no joy. What it can be like to live far longer than all your family and friends, to stand at their graves and not even be able to shed a single tear of sorrow. Not even be able to mourn when your parents die, or your nieces and nephews. What it’s like to have to hide, because you don’t change, because you’ll always be nineteen.”
He let his arms drop.
“I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking.” I felt bad about what I’d said, and I felt terrible that he was suffering so much. “Please, Payton, sit down with me and explain everything to me. I want to understand. I want to understand you.”
He was obviously tortured by this curse.
“Can you imagine what it is like to be dead? That’s what it is like for me. But yet, I’m alive. I taste nothing. The best food is the same as a handful of dirt for me. None of the world’s alcohol can make me drunk, and not even the most beautiful song can reach my innermost. I would rather be dead than live like this—you can take my word on that. Imagine the most beautiful sunset you have ever seen, the fantastic colors, the warm glow on your skin. The feelings that spread inside you in such a moment. Happiness, contentedness, or admiration. That’s what my life was like. But once I was cursed, that all changed. I can see the colors, but I feel nothing.”
“But that doesn’t make sense. I’ve seen you fighting with your feelings. Now, for example. You’re suffering, you’re tormenting yourself, and you’re relieved to have told me your secret. That’s feeling!”
Payton knelt down in front of me, took my hands, and said, “Yes, that’s exactly it. You are changing everything… I can’t tell you how much you’re turning my life upside down. Since I first saw you, I can’t be without you. And ever since I met you, I am starting to be able to feel again.”
“Why? And why me?”
“I don’t know.”
“What do you feel?”
“Pain!” He laughed.
“Pain? That’s awful!”
“No… I mean… yes. It is awful, but I am so glad to feel anything at all. You’re like a drug to me. I need to have more and more of you.”
“Is that good or bad?”
“When I am really close to you, like now, it feels terrible, as if I were burning. At first, the pain took my breath away, but now I’m getting used to it and can cope with it quite well. When it gets too much, I move away from you, and then it gets better again. Sometimes, it’s as if I were caught between two concrete blocks that are pressing on my lungs, just strongly enough not to squeeze me to death.”
“You call that coping?” Instinctively, I stepped back a few feet, but he pulled me back toward him.
“I have everything more or less under control now. Trust me.”
I nodded. How insane! And the craziest thing about it was that I hadn’t the slightest doubt that Payton was telling me the truth. Scotland did seem magical, and if I were ever to meet a cursed person, Scotland seemed like a logical place. Plus, I had seen his miraculous healing process with my own eyes.
“Payton, I need to ask you something.”
“Yes, what?”
I knew I was about to make a fool of myself, but I really wanted to know. “Two hundred years is a long time. How many women did you have?”
Payton looked at me, somewhat dazed. Then he fell back into the grass and laughed. He pulled me down and brushed a lock of hair off my forehead.
“Silly girl! I’ve been telling you how lonely and empty my life has been up until now. I tell you that I burn when I’m near you, and you ask me something like that… What would I want with a woman? I couldn’t feel anything before!”
I blushed. “I mean… it’s none of my business anyway.”
“If I could, I would shut you up by kissing you, just to make you stop asking such stupid questions!”
I wondered if I’d heard him right. Had he said kiss? Did that mean he would never be able to kiss me?
“What would it feel like for you if we were to kiss?” I asked. “Just in theory?”
Payton grinned cheekily.
“Well, theoretically, I would probably die doing so, because a mere touch of yours feels like a burning-hot poker drilling into my skin. But I will only know for sure when I have tried it.”
“No, no, no,” I said. “That’s out of the question. I am not going to do that to you!” I slid farther away from him.
“Sam, please understand. I am hungering for more. I want more. I just have to know what it’s like to be even closer to you. I would rather die than not know. I can’t breathe when you touch me, but I don’t want to breathe anymore if you can’t touch me. I don’t know what we can do, but I can’t let you go. I actually hope that the pain will last the next thousand years. Then I will at least know that I am still a human. Sam, please, stay with me today. Don’t go away. I want to feel you!”
“Oh, Payton!”
I wanted to throw myself into his arms, to kiss him and stroke him, but I was so scared. Then he took my hand and placed it on his heart. It was pounding against my fingers, and he stiffened, but he held my hand there. He put his own hand shakily around my waist and pulled me even closer.
“Dear God, please give me strength,” he prayed. Our lips touched. He briefly twitched back. Then he didn’t resist.
We were both trembling. His lips were soft and tender. Very slowly, I opened my mouth, and my tongue stroked his lip. He sighed in pain, but then he kissed me back. His hands caressed my neck and my back. He wouldn’t let me go. Our kiss, which at first had been very careful, became more and more passionate.
Then he pushed me away, smiled happily—and stepped back a good ten feet.
“God, Sam, you are killing me!”
I couldn’t say a thing. I could barely hear. My lips felt swollen, and my blood was racing around in my ears.
“How long will you need until we can repeat that?” I asked breathlessly.
“Well, I guess I should be ready in… about a hundred years!”
While we were still laughing at his answer, there was a roll of thunder in the distance. Dark clouds had gathered, and it was obvious we were in for a storm.
“We have to hurry down,” I called through the rising wind. “Or can we find shelter somewhere up here?”
“No, we have to go back. Now!”
I couldn’t imagine that we could make it the whole way before the storm hit.
“Come on!” he said. “When everything gets wet, it’ll be much more difficult.”
We were almost back to our starting place when the first raindrops started to blot the ground. I’d been hiking down so fast I figured I probably wouldn’t be able to walk a single step the next day. My legs were aching already. Payton seemed to be having less trouble. Naturally, I thought. Again and again he kissed my hand, while keeping a close eye on the sky.
We had made it. I could finally see Payton’s SUV, when he suddenly grabbed my arm. He had stopped walking and was staring warily at the almost-empty parking lot. He growled something in Gaelic and then pushed himself in front of me, as if shielding me.
I was seriously freaked out. Over his shoulder, I could see a man, casually walking toward us. He didn’t seem to even notice the pouring rain.
“Payton, what a coincidence. And here I thought you weren’t supposed to leave the castle?”
“Alasdair, my friend, you are mistaken. I’m doing business for Nathaira.”
Alasdair was standing just an arm’s length away. And although Payton was tall, the other man was several inches taller.
“What a surprise,” Alasdair said. “I’m also doing some business for Nathaira.”
Payton stiffened. He reached behind his back and pressed something into my hand. His car keys.
“Still chasing after her?” Payton said. “You still haven’t got the message, after all this time, that Nathaira belongs to someone else.”
Alasdair snorted angrily. “Shut your mouth! Do you think I am her dog? No, you all only see the tip of the iceberg. I, on the other hand, know that under the surface of the water, there’s massive trouble. More iceberg. You never know what kind of trouble is lurking under the surface. Trouble that will be your undoing.”
“Fascinating. Have you become a sailor?”
“Don’t worry, I just want the girl to reveal to me what else is lurking under the surface.”
“What do you mean?”
“She didn’t come out of nowhere, now did she? She has a family—Camerons, to be precise. I want to know who, where, and especially, how many!”
Payton stayed in front of Sam, blocking Alasdair from seeing her.
“Alasdair, I am warning you, leave us in peace!”
“Us? Are you already so beholden to this Cameron bitch?”
“A dhiobhail,” Payton growled, and then he attacked. Both men crashed to the ground, rolling around and throwing punches.
“Run, Sam,” Payton gasped.
I didn’t want to leave him. I didn’t have the slightest idea what they had been fighting about, since they’d been speaking in Gaelic, but the hate-filled look in Alasdair’s eyes said it all.
“Sam, now! Get away!”
Payton was struggling to keep his opponent under control. Unlike the silly boys who fought in the halls of our high school, this was not for show. Both men were hitting each other with all their might, and for Payton, it wasn’t looking good. A strong hit to his temple made him lose his focus, and Alasdair took his opportunity. He ignored the man lying on the ground and pounced at me, as powerfully as a wildcat.
Images flashed before my eyes, pictures from my dream: