Taltos (Lives of the Mayfair Witches 3)

He hurried with his beauty through the darkness, her long light limbs nothing to him as he ran, across the dark stretch of grass, along stone paths, through yet another dark and fragrant garden. Moist and thick as the ancient forests.

"It's you, it's you. Oh, and the scent on the gifts, it drove me mad."

On the top of the wall he placed her, vaulting it and gathering her up again in the dark, empty street. He could scarcely bear this. Catching her hair in a great handful, he tugged her head back, lips moving down her throat.

"Ashlar, not here!" she cried, though she was soft and submissive in his arms. "In the glen, Ashlar, in the glen, in the circle at Donnelaith. It stands still, I know it, I see it."

Yes, yes, he didn't know how, in the long hours of the transatlantic flight, bundled with her in the dark, he would endure. But he mustn't hurt her tender nipples, he mustn't break her fragile glowing skin.

Clasping her hand, he ran, bringing her with great youthful strides alongside him.

Yes, the glen.

"My darling," he whispered. He took one glance back at the house, rising so darkly and solidly there, as if full of secrets, of witches, of magic. Where the Bru watches all. Where the book resides. "My bride," he said, crushing her to his chest. "My baby bride."

Her feet rang out on the stones, and then he swept her up again, running faster than they could run together.

Janet's voice came to him from the cave. Old poetry, mixed with fear and remorse, skulls gleaming in the dark.

And memory is no longer the goad, no longer the thought, no longer the mind making order of all that ponderous weight of our lives, failures, blunders, moments of exquisite loss, humiliation--our long lives. No, memory was something as soft and natural as the dark trees rising over their heads, as the purple sky in its last valiant light, in the woodland purr of the evening all around them.

Inside the car, he took her in his lap, tore open her dress, grabbed her hair, and rubbed it to his lips, his eyes. She hummed, she cried.

"The glen," she whispered, her face reddened, eyes glistening.

"Before

morning comes here, it will be morning there, and we will be in those stones," he said. "We will lie in that grass, and the sun will rise on us, inseparable."

"I knew it, I knew ..." she whispered in his ear. His mouth closed on her nipple, sucking the sweet nectar of flesh alone, moaning as he burrowed against her.

And the dark car sped out of the multishaded gloom, leaving behind the somber corner and its regal house, the great leafy branches holding darkness like ripe fruit beneath the violet sky, the car a projectile destined for the green heart of the world, carrying them inside it, the two, male and female, together.

2:30 a.m. July 10, 1993

A Ballantine Book

Published by The Random House Publishing Group