Demon's Curse (Imnada Brotherhood) (13 page)

Wallace rubbed a finger against the tabletop. “I tried to help as I could—even went up to London once or twice, close to the new moon. Adam and I shared clan and holding once. I needed to honor that bond, even broken as it was. Adam didn’t like me to see the curse working, but I couldn’t leave the poor lad alone.”

Mac understood Adam’s dread of those nights of Morderoth. Trapped between man and animal, the curse flooded his body like shards of glass through his veins, his brain throbbing with a wracking, crushing pain and sight, naught but a river of blue and silver fire.

One of those visits to Adam must have been what
Bianca had witnessed and misinterpreted. Not two lovers, but a man ministering to a helpless friend.

He’d laugh if the whole horrible situation wasn’t so goddamned bloody tragic.

“But Adam broke the curse,” Mac said, pulling the conversation toward the point of his visit before he could fall into self-pity. “He found a way to combat the Fey-blood’s magic.”

“Aye, he did. He said it was his fault the four of you lived under the Other sorcerer’s taint. Fell to him to repair the damage.”

“It wasn’t his fault. There was nothing else to be done. The Fey-blood knew too much. The threat had to be eliminated. Who could foresee what would come of it?”

“Mmm, yes. A useless, worn-out argument, by my way of thinking.” Wallace’s tone hardened, his hand tightening around his tumbler. “But a thousand years of indoctrination is hard to fight.”

“I didn’t mean your wife was a threat just because she’s out-clan.”

“Didn’t you?” Wallace rose to poke once more at the kitchen fire, his arms thick around as tree limbs, his hands scarred and callused with work. He looked back over his shoulder. A keen-edged light in his eyes. “Well, since I’m the one happy with wife and children and you’re the sorry bastard infected by the Other’s twisted magic, I guess I can afford to be forgiving.”

Mac winced at the truth of that bald statement of fact. The man pulled no punches. He was tough, but with reason.

“Adam was a good friend,” Wallace continued. “I was away in Gloucester when I read about his murder in the papers. Rode straight for London. Don’t know
what I thought I’d do when I got there, but I knew Adam had recorded his discovery and that he’d have wanted you and yours to have it.”

A redheaded man. Brawny. Tall. “It was you who gave the constable a clout on the head?”

“Aye, the idiot fool tried stopping me. Said I wasn’t allowed in, but I knew once those blockheads laid hands on Adam’s rooms, there’d be no hope at all. Not that it did me a bit of good. The place had already been turned upside down. Everything broken and busted and naught to be found among the rubbish but a few stray pages and a letter or two he’d never finished writing. I’m sorry, Flannery, but Adam’s journal was gone, and with it any hope of breaking the curse.”

Mac pulled the battered book from his coat pocket, laying it on the table between them. “Was this what you were looking for?”

*   *   *

“Jory Wallace? Damn, there’s a name from the past. He’s still alive? I figured he’d have turned up his toes long ago.” David St. Leger tipped his chair back against the wall as he flipped a coin back and forth across his knuckles like some gaming-hell elbow shaker.

Tobacco smoke hung low in the crowded chophouse’s greasy air as Mac poked at his fatty beefsteak. “Not only is Wallace alive, but he lives a mere thirty miles away.”

“So, Adam and he knew one another. Not so hard to understand.” Back and forth. Back and forth. The coin jumped and spun across David’s knuckles. “Adam probably figured that, as a fellow
emnil,
they’d have lots to chat about.”

Mac forced himself to ignore the annoying sleight of hand. This was David at his most infuriating. Aloof. Unpredictable. An enormous pain in the arse. “He did more than drink whiskey and swap stories. He helped Adam break the curse. I was right. Adam wrote it all down in his journal.”

Catching the coin and pocketing it, David lowered his chair’s front legs to the floor. “So we can just whip up another batch of whatever it was and it’s over?”

“I don’t know. Wallace thinks he can help. I’ve left the book with him. I plan on returning in a few days.”

“Before you mire yourself in alchemical research, you might want to pay a visit to Mrs. Parrino.”

“Is she safe? You kept an eye on her, didn’t you?”

“Oh, ye of little faith. Of course I did, but that’s what’s interesting. She spent the day at Deane House.”

“What’s so interesting about that? Isn’t his new wife an actress?”

“
Was
an actress. Yes, the marriage of Sarah Haye to the Earl of Deane is still the London gossip du jour, but it’s not so much the man’s wife I’m curious about. It’s His Lordship.”

Mac’s fork paused on the way to his mouth, a lump settling in his throat. “What’s curious about Lord Deane?”

“He’s one of them, Mac. The Earl of Deane is a Fey-blood.”

*   *   *

Mac leaned upon the sill, staring out onto a smutty red sky, the dull pewter wash of nightfall creeping ever westward, and knew he had mere moments left.

He’d already disrobed, the October breeze cooling
the feral heat of his naked body. Drawing in a gritty, coal-smoky breath, he let it fill his lungs until they burned, then expelled it in a whoosh of frustration, disgust dropping like a weight into his chest. Pressing his forehead against the glass, he closed his eyes, wearier than he’d been in long years. Sighed—or maybe it was a groan.

What the hell was wrong with him? The soft silken touch of Bianca’s lips, the heady, spicy notes of her perfume, the way her body fit perfectly against him as she looked on him all worried concern and nascent trust . . . And it had all been a lie.

He should have known better. After all, it wasn’t the first time a woman had played him false. Lina had been the same: beautiful and smart. He’d considered himself the luckiest of men to have had the Ossine choose such a compatible mate for him.

The curse had destroyed that as it had everything else in his life.

Lina refused to follow him into exile. She’d laughed at his suggestion as if he’d made a great joke. After that, no matter how often he asked for her or how many letters he wrote, she never responded. Then the Gather elders confirmed his sentence.

His last sight of her had been at the great hall at Deepings just before he was handed to the Ossine for punishment. She stood between her father and mother, her disgusted gaze passing over him without recognition. In her eyes, he’d become a grotesque figure. Tainted. Spoiled.

A monster.

No doubt Bianca would feel the same if she ever discovered the truth.

He finished off his whiskey, hoping the reassuring burn would ease the tension across his shoulders, the tightness in his back, and the stiffness of his cock. It didn’t.

He’d been right to mistrust Bianca. Right to believe that she was involved in Adam’s death. David’s surveillance proved she was in league with Fey-bloods. And Fey-bloods were the enemy. The slaughterers of his people. The monsters who stalked his childhood nightmares. And, in the end, the cause of his accursedness and exile.

With regret and not a little discomfort, he prepared himself to face the oncoming night as twilight became dusk, the sun sliding beneath the horizon.

He shuddered at the first cauterizing blast of heat that signaled the curse’s awakening. Even on the night of Silmith, when the moon rode round and fat and shifting came easiest, the curse’s possession was nothing like his voluntary transformation from man to animal. He still remained vulnerable while the magic enveloped him. Still knew the ecstasy of release as the chained parts of his being flooded free and he felt himself filled with a sleek, powerful strength. A predator with a predator’s mighty grace.

But the curse blighted what should have been joy in realizing his aspect. Fire needled along his blood like venom. Muscles strained as bones warped; organs twisted as limbs stretched. His vision filled with a sheet of blue-white rippling flame. Even now, long after he should have inured himself to the futility of fighting the shift, he continued to try. Willing his body to obey. Struggling to break the immutability of a dead man’s final words.

No use. It never was. The curse never yielded.

He spun from the window with a shout of pure rage, dragging his hand across a shelf, uncaring at the shattering of broken china, the splintering of wood, the smashing of porcelain.

Dropping to his knees, he squeezed his eyes closed, tears leaking beneath his lids as the curse consumed him. Above, the curtains billowed in a sudden wind, his shirt sliding off the bed to lie forgotten and unneeded on the floor beside him.

Sides heaving, he opened his eyes, his feline gaze cutting the darkness like a knife. His claws extended as he stretched his body loose of the last shreds of its humanity.

The night rolled out before him into a solitary eternity.

The dream of Bianca Parrino obliterated beneath a bitter, monstrous impossibility.

There were moments when he envied Adam the peace of death.

8

“Molly said you were out here grubbing in the dirt.”

Bianca looked up from her mulch spreading to see Mac standing on her terrace, his gaze cold as the gray fall sky. Trowel in hand, she rolled back on her haunches, pushing her hair from her face. Dressed in a grubby coat and battered hat, she wasn’t exactly prepared for company, but one look at his clenched jaw and the harsh planes of his face and she knew he’d not come for a comfortable afternoon call. “What brings you back? After all your fine words, I never thought I’d see you again,” she said, working to remain civil but cool. Hard to do as her stomach tumbled and unwanted heat danced across her skin.

He stepped off the terrace and onto the lawn. “What can I say? You’re becoming a bad habit.”

Bianca rose, picked up her bucket of tools, and crossed the grass to meet him. “A habit you’ll have to break. I’m leaving for Dublin in a few weeks.”

His jaw jumped, face unusually grim, even for him.
“The queen of London theater is heading for an Irish stage?”

“Time away will be time for the gossips to forget. Perhaps I can as well.”

“I hadn’t taken you for a coward.”

“Courage is tiring. Even the brave need a chance to rest between battles.” Her gaze fell to his side.” Do your ribs still bother you?”

“They’ll mend.”

She set down her bucket and peeled off her gloves. Why had he come back? He hadn’t said. She should be wary of his continuing attentions and downright afraid of her unwelcome reactions to them. Too much about him remained a mystery. Too many questions had been left unanswered.

And yet, he had only to glance at her with that blade-sharp gaze and heat slid along her limbs to pool between her legs, her heart pounded in her chest, and pleasure prickled her skin. Just what she didn’t want or need. She gave herself a mental slap, schooling her rebellious features into their usual expression of calm. “Why did you leave, Mac? I told you I didn’t worry about what people thought. Those I care about know me better than that. The rest don’t matter.”

“Then why run away to Dublin? Is it the rumors about Adam?” His eyes hardened like flint. “Or something else?”

Caution slid sharp as a blade along her bones. “Excuse me?”

“Why did those men attack us, Bianca? Were they in the employ of Lord Deane? Is he behind Adam’s murder?”

“What do you know about Sebastian?”

“I know you were at his house yesterday.” Mac’s eyes sparked, the very air around him crackling. “What did he tell you? What lies did he spin to convince you to betray Adam?”

Even as she tried to understand Mac’s barrage of accusations, she lifted her chin, meeting him head-on, refusing to drown in those iridescent eyes. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Sebastian hasn’t told me anything. Or rather, he told me a story and he gave me a book to read because I asked him to. It’s nothing to do with Adam.”

“It’s everything to do with him. It’s the reason he died,” Mac snarled. “He trusted you and you betrayed him. Am I next on your list?”

Faced with his irrational rage, she retreated to the cold, empty place where anger didn’t touch her. Where harsh words and heated threats meant nothing. His questions pounded against her like stones hurled at a wall. She remained unmoved. Unfeeling. No matter how he tried, he couldn’t dent her armor. No matter how she hurt, no hint of it touched her face. “Despite the insane ideas rolling around in that hard, hollow head of yours, I did not betray Adam, nor would I have ever betrayed him.”

“Bianca, so help me—”

Instinct overcame pride and she flinched, taking a step back. One foot landed in the bucket. In one farcical moment, she lost her balance, floundering wildly, arms flailing, hat flying. Gloves went one way, tools another, and she dropped with a soft, squishy thud backside-first in the mud. “Damn and blast!”

His mouth thinned, his eyes widened, and a snort of laughter escaped him.

“You!” She struggled to her feet, coat spattered with dirt, hair tumbling out of its pins and scarf.

“Lost for words? I’m surprised, after hearing about your reputation for cutting a man to ribbons with your tongue,” he sneered.