LITMIR.BIZ

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across his shoulders, the past returned in an icy storm.

      THEY HAD COME FOR HIM AT DAWN.

      He had expected it, feared it, but never thought it would happen so soon. All through the summer he had hidden the growing changes and the restless sleep. For weeks he had awakened at dawn to find himself muddy and bare, shivering on sand or rugged cliffs, his hands and feet bruised and bleeding. At first he had no memories of what had brought him there.

      He had denied the new things he could do, hidden them even from himself. He was only nine years old, so he’d had no reference for the strangeness and strength.

      Especially not the…hunger.

      As a boy he had seen odd things on his rugged, isolated island in the Hebrides. At night he heard the cry of animals, saw icy footprints caught in winter mud near the beach. He sensed their meaning, yet he did not allow himself to truly know. A child was permitted his innocence, after all.

      But not this child of Clan MacKay.

      Then one moonless night Calan woke in the throes of Change, his muscles screaming, his skin on fire, and denial was no longer possible. He saw exactly what he was becoming. That night his innocence was lost forever.

      He could still remember that first race of energy, the snap of tendons, the inexplicable feel of fur against his shoulders. And over that, a seduction of scents beyond the skill of any human to know.

      He had made a crossing that night, bound by a dark world with new rules and new enemies.

      Now they were coming for him.

      Boots hammered on cold rock. Sharp voices cut through the silence. Though the boy in him wanted to flee, the braver heart bade him stay and face what lay before him. So he stood tall and proud when the door opened and a light fell on his bruised body.

      His uncle first, always scowling, missing nothing as he raised his light higher. The others muttered as the beam touched Calan’s shoulders, gashed and bloody.

      “I’ve come for you, Calan Duthac MacKay of Na h-Eileanan Flannach, son of the Grey Isle. Get yourself dressed and be fast about it. You sail with us tonight.”

      Calan dug in his heels and did not move. “Sail where, Uncle?”

      Mutters raced through the men behind Calan’s uncle. The boy dared to speak? What ill-born creature stood before them?

      His uncle glowered at him. “You question me, when all on this island are sworn to my bidding?”

      As if in response, the wind howled outside Calan’s window and the boy heard the snarl of the sea below the hill. He wanted to protest, but the locked faces of those who should have been friend and family cut off all words. He took his sweater, looked at the spartan little room where he had spent nine years, and followed his uncle outside.

      Down to the beach, the wind in his face, the spray of salt mingling with the tears he fought to contain. The water was gunmetal, all light swallowed in the hours before dawn.

      They pushed him into a boat, and his uncle tossed sand over the bow, murmuring words in the oldest tongue. Only one man protested when his uncle dropped fresh sand on Calan’s shoulders, in a meaning the boy did not understand.

      “This is wrong.” It was Kinnon, the older brother of Calan’s best friend. “He’s just a boy. The ordeal was never meant for one his age, Magnus. He’ll ne’er swim so far. We must wait—”

      “We?” Calan’s uncle cursed the man, slapping him hard. “There is no we. The choice is made, and he will go.”

      There was nothing more to say. All was the True Book and the old laws. Silently the dozen men rowed straight out into the worst of the storm. After that, all Calan remembered was the sea. Almost alive now, rocking and sucking and snarling, pulling at anything on the surface to drag it down beneath its swells. They had taken him out into the worst of it, and all the while his iron-faced uncle told him why, grimly explaining the secrets of the clan and how those secrets were kept hidden at the pain of death.

      Closed against all insiders, closed against all change or questioning, the True Book of the clan was clear: since Calan had begun the process of transformation every clan male experienced, he must now be tested as an adult.

      They threw him overboard into the biggest swell, and the blast of icy water stole his breath. As the cold seeped in, his vision blurred. Saltwater scoured away his tears.

      “You’ll survive,” his uncle had growled from the prow. “If you have the true skill, you’ll survive. Now by all the laws of Clan MacKay, the Old Way of Testing is begun.” Then his uncle turned, washing his hands of the boy who had Turned too young, an anomaly who had to be destroyed before he brought discord to the isolated island.

      Calan had lashed out wildly, fighting the waves, but the big boat dipped and turned, vanishing into the storm the way it had come.

      Leaving him absolutely alone, fighting to survive.

      Somehow he had forced his mind to alertness, and with a brutal logic he realized that only his other, wilder form could save him. He forced the Change, felt the flood of raw strength and the snap of muscles. Driven by a blind urge for survival, he fought on toward the thread of light to the east where the sun had begun to rise.

      His strength had given out just before sunset. The rest Calan knew only from those who had found his body. Exhausted and unconscious, he must have changed back on the brink of death.

      By a miracle, his pale and frozen form had been discovered by a Swedish supply ship headed south for a delivery.

      He had buried his family and his dark past that day. All that remained was the rough urge to survive. No longer a MacKay of the Grey Isle, he had made a new life, never returning to those who had betrayed him so bitterly.

      He cursed them all.

      CALAN’S HANDS LOCKED at his sides. He remembered the suck of icy water. The weight of his shoes pulling him down, down to the hungry death that was already closing in. With the memories came the old fury.

      Only the most wretched of species tossed out their young to die in a rite of passage. Most animals had far too much sense and decency.

      But the past was done.

      Standing in the sunlight of an English morning, the tall Scotsman forced his body to relax, forced the knot of pain at his shoulders to recede. He was angry that the past could still hurt him, despite all these years.

      But he willed the past away as he had done so often since he was a boy of nine. His anger, too, was pushed deep, buried so it could not impede him. He was no longer bound by the rules of the Grey Isle.

      He was free, and his power would always be used in the service of those too weak or too young to protect themselves. This promise he had made to himself.

      And now his oldest friend needed him.

      If the abbey did become a war zone, as Nicholas feared, they would face that danger together and defeat it.

      At the door, Calan turned back, glancing down the hall.

      The curtains moved gently, casting restless shadows. Time seemed to freeze.

      Beware your Changes, Scotsman.

      “MY TERMS WERE MADE quite clear, Brigadier. Your team was to start work here in a week, not before,” Nicholas Draycott snapped. “Why this change of schedule?”

      Brigadier Allan Martingale shrugged muscular shoulders. “The timetable has been pushed up, Lord Draycott. We’ve had some pings on the radar from half a dozen Baltic extremist groups active in our neck of the woods. The Prime Minister wants everything here at the abbey swept clear before the summit, and my people need security images ASAP.”

      “I’ll provide whatever documents you require. But my wife and daughter will be arriving soon.” A lie, Nicholas thought. But with luck it would spur the man’s departure. “I cannot permit any security teams in residence

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