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Back The Dark Highlander Save as PDF
Chapters (42)
  1. Cover Page
  2. Title Page
  3. Dedication
  4. Epigraph
  5. Praise for Karen Marie Moning’s
  6. First Prologue
  7. Second Prologue
  8. Chapter 1
  9. Chapter 2
  10. Chapter 3
  11. Chapter 4
  12. Chapter 5
  13. Chapter 6
  14. Chapter 7
  15. Chapter 8
  16. Chapter 9
  17. Chapter 10
  18. Chapter 11
  19. Chapter 12
  20. Chapter 13
  21. Chapter 14
  22. Chapter 15
  23. Quotes
  24. Chapter 16
  25. Chapter 17
  26. Chapter 18
  27. Chapter 19
  28. Chapter 20
  29. Chapter 21
  30. Chapter 22
  31. Chapter 23
  32. Chapter 24
  33. Chapter 25
  34. Chapter 26
  35. Quote
  36. Chapter 27
  37. Chapter 28
  38. Sources
  39. Dear Reader
  40. About The Author
  41. Also by Karen Marie Moning
  42. Copyright Page

Then there was feeling in her body again, and she wasn’t thrilled to have it back. Her mouth was dry as a desert, her head felt swollen and oversized, and she was pretty sure she was about to throw up.

Oh, Zanders, she chided herself weakly, I think this was a little more than just another loopy turn.

Chloe stumbled and collapsed to the ice-covered ground.

Quotes

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“Those who do not remember the past are condemned to relive it.”

—THE PROPHETESS EIRU, sixth century B.C.E.

“Those who do not remember the past are condemned to relive it.”

—MIDHE CODEX, seventh century C.E.

“Those who do not remember the past are condemned to relive it.”

—GEORGE SANTAYANA, twentieth century C.E.

Chapter 16

JULY 24, 1522

16

There were voices inside his head. Thirteen distinct ones: twelve men and the jewel-bright tones of a sultry-voiced woman, talking in a language he couldn’t understand.

The voices were but a susurrus, a sibilant murmuring. No more than a stiff wind rustling through oaks, yet like a wind, it blew darkly through him, stripping away his humanity like a fragile autumn leaf no longer firmly anchored to its branch. It was the wind of winter and of death and it accepted no censure and would abide no moral judgment.

There was only hunger. The hunger of thirteen souls confined for four thousand years in a place that was not a place, in a time that was not a time. Locked away for four thousand years. Locked away for one-hundred-and-forty-six million days, for three-and-a-half billion hours—and if that was not eternity, what was?

Imprisoned.

Adrift in nothing.

Alive in that heinous dark oblivion. Eternally aware. Hungry, with no mouth to feed. Lusting, with no body to ease. Itching, with no fingers to scratch.

Hating, hating, hating.

A seething mass of raw power, unsated for millennia.

And as they felt, so Dageus felt, too, lost in darkness.

The storm was nature at her height of savagery. Chloe had never seen such a squall before. Rain mixed with jagged chunks of hail pelted from the sky, bruising her, stinging her skin, even through the thickness of her jacket and sweater.

“Ow!” Chloe cried “Ow!” A large chunk of ice struck her in the temple, another in the small of her back. Cursing, she tucked into a protective ball on the hail-covered ground and wrapped her arms around her head.

The wind soared to a deafening pitch, keening and howling. She screamed into it, calling Dageus’s name, but couldn’t even hear her own voice above the din. The ground trembled and tree limbs crashed to the earth. Lightning flashed and thunder boomed. The shrieking wind whipped her hair into a sodden tangle. She hunched in a ball with no hope but to endure it and pray it didn’t get worse.

Then suddenly—as abruptly as the fierce storm had arisen—it was gone.