Immortal Hope by Claire Ashgrove Page B

delicate digit into the crook of his elbow. But Merrick had never been such, and she seemed uninclined to twist free. In fact, lest his imagination had gotten the better of him, she tightened her grip.
    “How is Declan?” she asked at the juncture of three corridors.
    Merrick bristled. She liked Declan. She had even given the Scot a gift of her smile. He ought to embrace the possibility Declan and she might share eternity together, but for a reason Merrick could not understand, the idea left a bitter taste in his mouth. He fought it down with effort and kept his gaze fastened straight ahead. “He will survive. Uriel will tend his wound.”
    From the corner of his eye, he caught Anne’s apprehensive glance. “Uriel? I don’t think I heard you right.”
    “You did.”
    Her brows puckered as she struggled with something internally. “I thought…” Her frown deepened, and she pursed her lips.
    “You thought what?”
    “Doctrine says Raphael heals, not Uriel.”
    Merrick shook his head. “Through time, much information has been misreported. Raphael holds Mikhail’s position in our European temple.”
    She digested this with a slow nod. Then her confusion fled and her features smoothed. “So tell me, big guy. If there’s an archangel tending Declan, why was there ever any worry? Can’t he just wave his hands or something, and those wounds will go away?”
    Merrick chuckled. “Nay. Uriel will not. He uses only the tools known to mankind to heal.”
    “But why ?”
    He grinned down at her and gave her hand a squeeze. “Because the archangels are peculiar in their ways. Would that I understood them, I suppose I would be one.”
    “Well we know you are no angel.”
    Merrick frowned. Yet as he opened his mouth to return the insult, he caught the gleam of humor behind her gaze and took in the way her eyes crinkled at the corners. Saints’ blood, she was teasing him.
    The playful banter stirred a lightness in his heart that made him feel much like the young knight he had once been when the world lay before him, ready for his conquest. His mouth quirked. “Aye. You are one to speak, demon Anne .”
    Her throaty laugh stirred something else. His pulse quickened. His lungs felt too tight, and against his thigh, his shaft rose in answer. Bollocks! Could he not spend a moment with her without suffering this accursed desire?
    Grinding his teeth together, he banged on Lucan’s door.
    *   *   *
    Anne stifled her laughter as the door cracked open and Lucan stuck his head out. On seeing her, he swung the door wide, grabbed her free hand, and brought the back of it to his lips. “Lady Anne, a pleasure.”
    She blushed until the tips of her ears burned. “Stop that.” She pulled on her hand, but with the friction, her second sight tugged on her mind. Where seconds earlier she’d looked at Lucan’s laughing face, she stared now at a man on his knees. Head bowed, his shoulders shook as he mourned. Before him, three bodies lay on a cold stone floor beneath a hanging banner that bore a yellow and blue coat of arms. The eldest of the dead, a gray-bearded man, lay on his back, his sword clutched uselessly in an outstretched arm. At his left, a young boy not much older than ten or eleven, sprawled facedown in a pool of his own blood. The fingers on his right hand stretched over his head to touch a woman’s bloodied palm. She lay on her side, her other hand tucked against the deep gash in her midsection.
    Lucan rose on shaky legs and drew his sword with a vengeance. Wearing a surcoat of the same blue and yellow, he lifted his chin at the same time he raised his blade. He turned around, the hate and repulsion turning his face into a grotesque mask of rage as he stared at another man who lurked in the doorway to the hall. Blood dripped down the second man’s blade, smeared across his chest. The deep crimson stains turned an identically matched surcoat into a fingerprint to patricide.
    The horrific vision faded, leaving Anne