Page 33 of Once Upon A Haunted Castle
Beiste stormed toward the door. He had to leave the castle now or else darkness would fall before he could track her steps.
“Son. Ye must go to her.”
“What do ye think I’m doing?” Beiste snarled at the vision.
“Making a mess,” the ghost said with a shrug and a nonchalant glance around the wrecked chamber.
Beiste’s gut wrenched. He missed his father with a passion and here his mind was playing tricks on him. “Why are ye here? To tell me things I already know? To rub the guilt I feel deeper into my soul?”
“Guilt?”
“Aye.”
“Guilt for what?” His father gave him the same look he often gave him when he wasn’t satisfied with an answer.
“For surviving,” Beiste shouted. “For living when everyone else has died.”
The ghost of his father waved his hand in the air. “Och, but that is the way of things. The lass, she yet lives. For now.”
Beiste narrowed his eyes. If this apparition knew so much, then he was going to demand a few answers. “Why does she care so much about that damned sword?”
“I gave it to the Irish.” His father shrugged as if it were common knowledge. “It belongs to Erik.”
“Erik? Why?”
The ghost looked like he was sighing—if a ghost could breathe. “Erik, is…well, it doesn’t matter. She went to save him.”
“He is here!” Beiste bellowed.
“Hmm. Fate has played ye both a nasty set.”
“What does that have to do with anything? Ye’re wasting my time.” Beiste’s insides clenched. He had another chance to speak to his father and this was how he was using it? Lord, but he needed to tell him how sorry he was for not being there to protect him. “Apologies, Father. I should have been there for ye. Should have saved ye. And now all this. I am frustrated. I am…”
“Scared.”
“Nay!” Bloody hell, warriors didn’t get scared!
“’Tis all right to be scared sometimes, lad. But ye’re a powerful laird. A good leader. A strong fighter. Ye have heart, even if ye’ve tried to keep it buried all these years. Go, save her. Bring back the sword and present it to Erik, just as it was supposed to be.”
None of this made sense. “Tell me the truth or I let them both go off with the Viking.”
The ghost let out a raspy laugh. “Ye’d do no such thing. But I’ll tell ye anyway, even though it is not my place. I have sworn an oath. Telling ye will likely mean I’ll be punished somehow. Erik, he is—”
The room shook a little, the floorboards trembling beneath his boots. And then his father was lifted, writhing, and sucked back through a tunnel not of this world, until there was nothing left of him and the room stopped shaking.
“What the bloody hell?” Beiste ran his hands through his hair, unsure if what he’d just witnessed had been a true phenomenon or if he was breaking down. Going completely mad.
Blast it all. He stormed from the room, back down to the bailey where his men waited. Erik glared at him from the stairs of the keep, staying put as Beiste had ordered him to do.
Beiste leapt onto his horse and, without looking back, ordered his men to gallop through the gates. They were able to easily find Elle’s tracks toward the woods. She’d run with no care for anyone following her, which only increased the sense of dread overcoming him. The lass had to be out of her mind.
Anyone could follow her. Animal, outlaw, Viking…the thought was terrifying.
A short time later, they’d made it to the burn where signs of a struggle marred the dirt. That was where the tracks stopped.
“They’ve crossed the water.” Beiste squinted his eyes, studying the ground across the way. There was no sign of anyone, but that didn’t mean they’d not been there. “We cross.”
They forged into the water, the center growing deeper until the soles of their boots glided over the top. They were lucky that the water had not swelled as much as it normally did with the rainfall they’d had the week before. On the other side, he did, in fact, catch sight of a few tracks, but it appeared that whoever had her—and he was leaning toward Bjork—meant that they were trying to cover their steps.
Well, they could try, but they’d not win.
