Haunting Warrior by Erin Quinn Page A

spirals and symbols in purple and gold. On the chest was the intricately woven triple spiral, the pattern exactly like the pendant Rory’s grandmother had given him. Rory looked down, realizing only then that he still held the pendant. His fingers were tangled in the leather cord, the hard metal and jewels pressed into his damp palm.
    He thought to return it to his pocket, remembering how his dream-woman had pulled it out and pressed it into his hand before he’d suddenly fallen into this crazy quasi dream.
    It was only then that he made another realization.
    He had no pocket. He had no clothes. He was stripped. Stark naked and hovering beside his twin like some wacked cherub in a celestial painting. Rory’s body rocked with the sensation of riding the horse, mimicking the movements of his twin, but there was no animal beneath him.
    He tried to get his mind around what he was feeling, seeing . . . experiencing. It wasn’t Rory astride the great beast, but he shared the sensation of it. The steady roll of its gait, the feel of its barrel chest expanding with each huge breath, the toss of its head. He felt his twin’s admiration for the spirited mount. The sparking satisfaction that he and he alone had broken the stallion into submission. His pleasure mingled with a churning tension and anger that roiled just beneath the surface.
    The dreams of the woman had been strange, erotic, disconcerting. He’d felt a similar sense of participation in them. But this . . . what he felt now . . . this was something altogether different. Rory couldn’t explain how or why, but it was. Definitely it was.
    “Quit your brooding, boy,” a voice commanded.
    Startled, Rory snapped his attention from his twin to the man who’d spoken. Like an optical illusion, his shape and form burst from the smear of colors and became suddenly clear and vivid while his voice roused some slumbering recollection that splintered the surface of his mind but did not emerge enough to grasp.
    The man rode a horse to the twin’s right. Behind the two of them were others who seemed to materialize only as Rory’s gaze passed over them. A long line of others, to be exact. Men, striding in formation, two abreast and no less than fifty deep. A pair in front carried banners with the same tri-spiral image that marked the pendant and the twin’s tunic. The procession twisted and snaked over the hillside, following the two on horseback with the kind of subdued obedience that made Rory think of disciplined Nazis marching in perfect precision. Questioning nothing as they moved as one. Wondering at his own snap judgment, he noted how their eyes tracked the man riding beside Rory’s twin as he swayed in the saddle, waiting for the tiniest shift of movement to guide them.
    No one seemed to notice Rory was there. He was invisible, as he’d been in the dreams. But he wasn’t dreaming now, was he? He’d been wide awake—standing up even—when this . . . this vision or whatever the hell it was had taken him. And where was the woman he’d followed? She’d disappeared again and left him here like a clown with his balls hanging in the wind.
    Frowning, Rory turned his attention back to the man riding beside his twin. His voice had been familiar, but Rory didn’t know why. He’d spoken in a strange archaic language that Rory had never heard before, and yet he understood what was said. He’d never been more grateful for his natural ability to comprehend the meaning of a language before he even grasped the mechanics. It was the only gift of his heritage that he’d never rejected.
    The man’s hair glinted golden and red, salted at the temples with gray, a sign of age that was not mirrored in his youthful face. More gray flecked his neatly trimmed mustache and goatee, but few wrinkles creased the sun-browned skin or fanned from the bright blue eyes. He had an open face. Friendly. And yet there was something hidden in his expression that contradicted that impression in the