In Search of Saints Read online

  In Search of Saints

  Harper Fox

  Copyright Harper Fox 2012

  Published by FoxTales at Smashwords

  Acknowledgements

  I would like to thank the following people – my saints, and thank goodness I didn’t have to search far – for their wonderful contributions:

  Jane, for the daily miracle of companionship – and for treating the tick bites and other injuries incurred in the research for this book,

  Josh Lanyon, as ever, for knowing how to make everything right,

  Lou Harper, for the wonderful cover art,

  Julia, for giving up precious holiday time to format and proof for me,

  and Janet, for turning my raw pages into the book now on your screen.

  In Search of Saints

  Revised edition, August 2012

  Copyright © 2012 by Harper Fox

  Cover art by Lou Harper

  All rights reserved and asserted by the author.

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means,

  electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from FoxTales.

  FoxTales

  www.harperfox.net

  [email protected]

  This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  IN SEARCH OF SAINTS

  Harper Fox

  Chapter One

  I was treating my new lover like dirt. I knew it, but I couldn't seem to stop. Rain lashed the windshield, and I knocked Owen’s hand aside as he reached to wipe steam off the glass. “For fuck's sake! That just makes it worse.”

  He sat back obediently. For the hundredth time I wished he'd snarl back at me. What would Lewis have said? Drive blind and crash, then, smartarse. Actually, with Lewis I'd be lucky if I got to drive at all...

  “Are you going to tell me, then?”

  The glass steamed up. I rolled down the window and cold air blasted in, redolent of peat and heather. “Tell you what?”

  “It's been a month since you lost the grant. Why are we out here today?”

  I gunned the Ford's big boy-racer engine. She was twenty years old and a hopeless high-miler, but she had a heart of gold, even if I had to tear it out of her to prove it. “I told you, didn't I?”

  “No. You just blew into my office at eight o'clock this morning and told me we had to get to Dove Island before Lewis Ward. Full excavation kit, or as much as would fit into this banger.”

  He was right. The rest had just been fireworks inside of my own head, static and sparks. The month that had gone by since my beautiful ex had stolen my research on Dove Island and passed it off as his own had done nothing to calm me down. “The licences to dig just came through. I saw it on the website. If Lew's coming out here, he's coming today.”

  A huge silver four-by-four lurched over the next blind summit, dead in my path. Owen grabbed the wheel. He bore it down and we left the road in a thunder of bodywork and jouncing rubber. I stamped on the brakes. After five seconds of butt-clenching terror, the tyres found purchase in the slippery bracken and peat, and we skidded to a halt.

  I snapped off the engine. A quiet descended – the kind you only ever hear in world's-edge places like this one I'd suddenly discovered, the Escort still rocking and creaking on its brink. I scrambled out. Not five yards beyond the point where we'd come to rest, the land fell away. A tumble of pine and rock plunged down and down until it met the sweep of slate-green sea loch. Somewhere above me a raven chuckled. Scraps of mist drifted over the treetops like lonely ghosts, blindly seeking others on the far side of the bay. I wrapped my arms around myself, suddenly chilled to the bone.

  “Mitchell?”

  I raised my head. Owen had got out too, and was standing on the far side of the granite headland we'd almost just sailed off, Thelma and Louise in a rusted Ford Escort whose gigantic spoiler would in no way have aided our flight. The four-by-four was nowhere to be seen. Probably the driver had never noticed us at all. “What?”

  “Is this the place?”

  I surveyed the rain-swept vista. Out beyond the bay, the waters of Loch Ailsa met the Atlantic in a pale sheen. At the end of a spit of tawny sand, Dove Castle was dreaming, afloat on its mist-draped rocks, crumbling stronghold of Highland chieftains now vanished as surely as the cloud-ghosts being blown to rags in the onshore wind. “Yes,” I said dully. “This is it.”

  “Then you can stop driving like a bloody nutcase. That was them. They've beaten us here.”

  I straightened up. Owen's back was to me, the set of his shoulders unreadable. I went to stand beside him and followed his gaze down towards the beach. There in the tiny car park, gleaming among extravagantly flowering rhododendrons, a huge silver Range Rover was drawing up. She stopped, and four kids in smart waterproofs jumped promptly out. After them came the driver. He too was hooded and oilskinned, but I'd have known him anywhere, at any distance. He took up his customary central position and began ordering his students about, his gestures eloquent.

  “Shit,” I said. Then I pushed aside all thought of Lewis bloody Ward in favour of the dog I could kick. “Don't ever touch the wheel while I'm driving again. You nearly fucking killed us.”

  Owen swung to face me, and his expression was anything but that of a kicked dog. His eyes were brown as rich earth: hard to read. He was an ordinary-looking guy. That was part of my problem with him. Lewis turned heads in the street. I'd felt like somebody when I was with him, like I'd tamed a white tiger to stroll by my side. I waited. Angry colour had come up under Owen's skin. Earth and roses now, then. Still ordinary. Was he finally going to give me a display?

  “I know it'll be hard for you,” he said tightly, “seeing him again like this.”

  I waited some more. But don't you take it out on me, any other man would have said. Not Owen, though. Never Owen. I'd yet to discover how far I could push it with him.

  I turned away. My eyes were prickling, my throat sore. A moment later I felt his hand on my shoulder. He was always so warm, even on a bleak Scottish clifftop in the middle of the back of beyond. His hand moved, caressing me through my thin T-shirt.

  I twisted round and grabbed him, pressing my face to his shoulder. He smelled of clean cotton and his morning shower, not Lewis's Arabian-garden cologne. His arms closed round me hard. He kissed my brow and the top of my skull, the scalp still sensitive beneath its recent radical crop. I'd worn my hair shoulder-length for Lewis, who'd taken great pleasure in closing his fists in its silk. Well, fuck him. Fuck everyone, for that matter. I hung on to Owen for five seconds more, allowing myself the simple comfort he was offering. Then I backed him up against the Escort's flank.

  “Mitchell, are you kidding? Not here.”

  “Why not here? Don't you want it?”

  “I always want you, God help me. But we're right beside the road.”

  “That car was the first one I've seen in an hour. Look, I've been a bitch to you all the way from Glasgow. Let me do something nice.”

  “Tourists, Mitchell. Hikers.”

  “They can just politely glance away.”

  I tried to go down on him. He loved that, always so hard and eager for it I would barely get him into my mouth before he was coming, thigh muscles taut under my hands. He caught me by the armpits as I
knelt. “No, lover. Really not here.”

  He tumbled us into the back seat of the Escort, our rucksacks and gear going flying. Somehow he always saved us from a perfunctory fuck: dragged us out of the mud and wrapped our encounters in affection at least, and at best a rough passion that almost drove Lewis from my mind. He landed on top of me. I let him tear into my jeans, grunting as a camera tripod poked into my spine. His cock stiffened against my thigh, and I pulled him quickly free of his underwear.

  Not perfunctory, no. Not elegant either, and sure as hell not slow. He got an arm under my neck to save me from banging my skull off our soil-analysis unit. He held me, looking into my face with smiling uncertainty, and I tried to give it back to him – the smile, the commitment to the moment – with something more than my cock. “Yeah, sweetheart.” I grabbed his arse, pulling him down. “Do it. Come on.”

  We thrust at one another frantically. He was tough and strong and so was I – no need to hold back. The elderly Ford Escort groaned on her springs. I seized his shirt, then jerked it up so I could feel the warm working muscle beneath. This was where we were best, me and Owen – lost for words, banging the daylights out of each other. Still new enough together not to notice what we lacked.

  And not enough to make me come. I'd thought this time we'd gone at it hard enough to rush me past the moment where I had to reach for fantasy. But he was waiting for me, shuddering in my grip. Staving off climax, and if I made him wait too long he would see. Already a question was ghosting into his eyes.

  I shut my own and slipped Lewis into his place. It was so easy, the memories fresh – Lewis, who never waited, laughing with scorn at my slowness, which instantly vanished in a rush of need and rage. He drove me on, and I hit my peak at full speed, shouting.

  Not the wrong name, though it was a close call. I dropped back to Earth in time to open my arms and catch Owen on his way down. God, he was sweet: leaning in to kiss me before he was done, his shaft still jolting hotly between my thighs. “It'll be okay,” he rasped, stroking my hair. “I won't let him hurt you. I'm here with you now.”

  * * *

  I lay listening to the rain. My neck was cricked and I had a trowel blade wedged against my backside, but Owen had crashed out, his head pillowed on my chest. He always needed sleep after we'd screwed. Even a quick bump-and-grind like the one we'd just shared would knock him out for a while, as though it had meant more to him than I could understand.

  He sure as hell gave it his all. He was only my junior by a couple of years, but to me he seemed young. I scratched at his soft black hair, trying not to remember by contrast Lewis's artistic blond mane, always getting blown about in some becoming breeze that seemed to love him as ardently as I did. I'd barely glanced at Owen until Lewis had informed me, eyes bright with mischief, that my latest assistant seemed to have a bit of a crush.

  Even then I hadn't really looked. We were used to a bit of hero-worship, Lewis and I. Expedition leaders in the Scottish Archaeological Institute, even new ones like us, exerted a mild glamour, and Owen wasn't a postgrad, just an import from the business school we'd hired to deal with our admin. Yes, he'd put me on a pedestal. But when Lewis had demolished it from under me, knocked me down and left me in the dirt, Owen hadn't seemed to mind my feet of clay. My red-eyed, unshaven humanity. He'd been kind. I'd fucked him the first day after I'd thrown Lewis out, right there in the ex-marital bed. Poor bastard had only come round to deliver some research notes. He'd gone down wide-eyed with shock, a warm solid vessel for my demons of loss and revenge.

  He stirred in my arms and woke up. “Oh, God. I had one of my comas, didn't I?”

  “Just a little one.”

  “I had a weird dream. About your saints, actually.”

  I wasn't surprised. Lewis and I had loaded him down with so much research on our excavation target that he was probably hallucinating. Dove Island, home to a shadowy pre-Celtic culture which had left its only traces in mysterious carved stones... We'd called them saints for convenience, but they had to be pre-Christian, part of the strange Pictish flowering of symbolic sculpture whose remains could still be found scattered over the Western Isles. “I hope you dreamed exactly where to find them.”

  He chuckled. “Nothing so useful. I was in a cave somewhere. I was incredibly cold. And I looked up, and this great stone face – weird, blank eyes, like something off Easter Island – was leaning over me, telling me to get up.”

  I was surprised. He was such a practical soul. Welsh heritage, though, with dark Celtic eyes to go with it… Less of an alien here on this west coast than Lewis and I, shiny London recruits shipped in on lottery funding. “Well, they are reputed to give miracle cures.” An odd, hard little shiver went through me, dispelling some of the warmth he'd wrapped around me. “To raise the dead, actually. Speaking of which...”

  “Yeah. Come on.” He sat up, planting an unceremonious hand on my stomach. “If we go now we'll still have time.”

  “There's no hurry. Lewis and his minions will have the site ring-fenced and dug up before we can get near it.”

  “He won't know where it is, will he? Not exactly.”

  “I dunno. I'd only narrowed it down to Dove Island, and I've got a few ideas which thank God I didn't leave on an unlocked computer. But he's like a bloodhound. Maybe he's figured it out.”

  “Well, there's only two ferries a day. Unless your mate can walk on water, he'll have to wait like anybody else.”

  Chapter Two

  Owen was right. When we reached the tiny stone jetty, lugging our rucksacks and kit, Lewis was still there. I was past the stage of shoving him into the crystalline waters of Loch Ailsa, but I was still petty enough to be glad the gnats were biting him. The air was dancing with the little buggers. He and the students were unpacking midge repellent and nets as fast as they could, which was never fast enough by the lochsides in June.

  Of course they were biting me too. Owen silently handed me the herb-based spray whose purchase I'd argued so fiercely against in the Fort William shop, convinced we needed chemicals. I put some on, trying not to break stride or lose dignity on this final approach, and the insect cloud retreated. I waited for I told you so. It never came. Why couldn't I get used to his mildness, his aversion to scoring cheap points? Why couldn't I appreciate a good man?

  Probably because I was painfully intent upon the beautiful, bad one in front of me. I couldn't see anything else. I wasn't sure he'd even have the nerve to speak to me, and as for what I might tell him in return...

  “Oh, hi, Mitch,” he said casually, as if we'd parted yesterday on perfectly good terms. “I thought you might turn up. Why aren't these bastard gnats bothering you?”

  I came to a halt. All my words deserted me, and I was the same awkward postgrad he'd picked up in the union bar two years before. He was the same bloody demigod, tall and powerfully made, jade eyes compelling my gaze. “I bought a good spray in Fort William,” I said lamely. Guilt hit me, the icing on a cake of mortification. “Well, Owen bought it.”

  “Owen,” he repeated slowly, frowning. He was a brilliant actor, as I'd found to my cost. Now he ably pantomimed amnesia and sudden recall. “Oh, Owen Meredith! The admin guy. Thanks, but these eco things are useless.” He looked past me. “What's meant to be in this one, Owen?”

  Owen didn't glance up from checking our gear. “Citronella,” he said flatly. “Eucalyptus oil.”

  “Oh, is that what I can smell? Because I thought I could detect...” Lewis took a step closer to me, inhaling delicately. “Ah, yes. The inside of Ford Escort, and... just a hint of sex. Our Mitch has got you trained well. He does like a quickie in the car.”

  The water looked good after all. Then a smack in the face looked better, and I lunged for him. He leapt back on reflex, but that wasn't what saved him. Owen had grabbed me, his grip like steel. “No,” he ordered softly. “Don't let him.”

  “Don't let...” I struggled, and he tightened his hold. “Don't let him what? Stand here and fucking insult you?”
/>
  “I don't care about him. Why should you?”

  “Because...” Lewis had recovered himself and was watching me in amusement, the centre of a worried little group of support actors, all of them looking daggers at me. “Because I can't believe he's here. How can you look me in the face, Lew, after – ”

  “Oh, please,” he interrupted wearily. “Don't tell me this is still about that damn grant.”

  I caught my breath. I'd fought the board's decision, taken my case to the Institute directors and my supervisor, Greg Wilcox. But I'd done it all behind closed doors, too much of a professional – or so I'd told myself – to haul my grievance out in public. After all, it was a matter of a fellow academic's disgrace. If he was willing to throw the subject on the dock in front of his students, though... “Of course it bloody is. What else?”

  “I'm getting tired of this. Bad enough you went to the board, but now you've trailed me out here. What did Wilcox tell you?”

  “You know. He’s looking into it, but – ”

  “But there's not enough proof. That's right. You're embarrassing yourself, Mitch. Thank God my students know me well enough not to listen to all this crap.”

  I'd been stupid. I'd never hedged off my little bits of research as separate from his. We'd worked shoulder-to-shoulder for a year on the whole West Coast project. He was the hot-shot archaeologist; I was the cultural historian who knew how to interpret what he found. I'd trusted him without question. Loved him. Swapped papers and ideas with him constantly, lifting our laptops carefully off the bed before we lay down. “You son of a bitch. That grant was meant to be shared.”