Return of the Highlander (Immortal Warriors) by Sara Mackenzie Page A

Women stared at him admiringly and men lowered their eyes with respect, for he was the Black Maclean. He smiled, feeling his heart swell. This was where he belonged. This was his rightful place. Not in a world where giant machines tried to run over him and people ate their meals from boxes and bags behind walls of glass and women wrote lies about him on machines.
    He noticed then that Bella was up ahead of him, sitting on the stone wall in a sea of purple heather. She had her back to him and her hair hung long and dark to her waist, the ends of it moving gently in the soft breeze. As he drew closer she must have heard him, for she looked over her shoulder at him. Skin like cream, eyes dark and deep and a full, kissable mouth above a stubborn chin.
    Och, Bella.
    “I knew you’d come,” she said, and smiled.
    He circled her until he stood before her, knee-deep in the heather, gazing down as she looked up. “You dinna belong here,” he told her sternly, but his lips were trying to smile back.
    “But I do. I’m researching you,” she said.
    Maclean wasn’t sure what that meant, but he shrugged as if he didn’t care. “Everyone on my land belongs to me. Mabbe that’s what you want—to be mine.”
    “You can’t own people.”
    “I do. They are mine and I am theirs, like a father his children.”
    “A father would care for his children, he wouldn’t let them die.”
    Maclean’s frown grew darker. “I dinna remember—”
    “Try and remember. That’s why you’re here, isn’t it?”
    “I take no instruction from women,” he said coldly.
    She blinked at him, long dark lashes sweeping over her watchful gaze. “Why not?” she demanded. “What makes you better than them?”
    Maclean laughed at her simplicity, but she did not smile in return; she was deadly serious.
    “You have a lot to learn, Bella Ryan.”
    Bella smiled then, but it was a pitying smile, as though he were the one in need of help. “So do you, Maclean.”
    “Maclean?”
    The voice was old. He looked up, dragging his gaze from the fascination of Bella’s face, and suddenly she was gone and he found himself confronted by an ancient hag. White hair straggling about her stooped shoulders, a face so wrinkled and creased it was hardly a face at all, apart from the milky eyes.
    “The Fiosaiche said ye would come,” the creature cackled.
    “What are you?” he whispered, unable to disguise his horror at the sight of her.
    “Och, Morven,” she sighed, “ye see these stones?” She gestured to the Cailleach Stones. “This is a doorway into the between-worlds, and I am its keeper. The door is open and I dinna have the strength to close it. My powers are fading and I can only come to you in dreams, to warn you—”
    “Warn me about what?”
    “Long ago your people passed through this door, into the between-worlds and then on to the world of the dead.”
    “They died together?”
    “Aye, murdered, cut down most foully. They cried to me as they passed because you were not among them. They asked me why you had abandoned them at such a time, but I had no answer.”
    Maclean groaned.
    “But there was one of them who did not weep. Be warned, Maclean. She has tricked me with her sweet face, tricked me into…”
    Her voice was fading.
    “What did you say, hag?” he shouted. “Warn me against what?”
    “…Ishbel…”
    The old woman was gone.
    Ishbel? Maclean felt a slow, heavy dread take hold of him. Ishbel—it seemed she was everywhere.
     
     
    Bella stirred in her sleep. She had been sitting on the old stone wall by the loch, talking to Maclean, when suddenly he was gone and the old woman appeared. It was the hag in her green arisaid. Now the hag leaned over her and peered into her face. She was so old it wasimpossible she was really alive. Her fingers, thin and hooked as claws, closed on Bella’s wrist and held on with surprising strength.
    “Ye must remember what I tell ye, girl.”
    “What do you want?”
    “Listen.”
    Her eyes