Demon's Curse (Imnada Brotherhood) (14 page)

“I’ll show you what I can do with my tongue,” she snapped.

“Is that a threat or a promise?”

“Neither. That is . . . that didn’t come out right.”

But he’d already grabbed her, crushing the breath from her lungs as his body molded against hers, his mouth blazing a trail over her lips, the power of his kiss turning her bones to jelly. Now she was furious, confused, muddy, and completely and frustratingly aroused.

The heavens chose that moment to open, unleashing a deluge, soaking her to the skin. He lifted his head, rainwater sluicing over his cheekbones and saturating his coat.

It was all the time she needed to tear herself from his arms and run like hell.

*   *   *

Had he completely lost his mind? He’d come here to confront her and ended with his tongue down her throat. Not exactly the confrontation he’d envisioned. Yet, all it had taken was a flash of those blue eyes and a tilt of that stubborn chin for his original intentions to swerve dangerously out of control. He chased her down in a small back parlor, sweat splashing hot across his back despite the cold weather, as he fought down the urge to kiss her senseless.

“It’s best if you leave, Captain,” she said. “Leave and never come back.”

“You haven’t answered my questions.”

“You mean your accusations? You’re right. I haven’t and I won’t. Besides, it’s obvious you wouldn’t believe me even if I did.”

“I don’t know what to believe anymore.”

“Good-bye, Mac. We won’t be seeing one another again.” By now her teeth chattered, her body hunched against the cold and the wet. She shouted for Molly as she pulled her coat off, dropping it to the floor.

Questions and indecision gnawed at him. Was David wrong? Had he misunderstood and Bianca had a perfectly reasonable explanation? Why would she ally herself with a Fey-blood? What would she gain? Was she lying now? Was Mac the biggest fool ever born?

Round and round he went, with no answers in sight, only anger at himself for giving in to the dazzle long enough to be hoaxed. For believing in her. Perhaps even for dreaming a little. It had been too long since he’d felt this strange swimming of his senses. Too long since he’d held a woman he hadn’t paid for. Too long since he’d had someone in his life who mattered. Bianca shouldn’t matter. But she did. More than he’d ever meant her to.

She started to leave, but he grabbed her wrist before she could escape. “Wait a moment.”

“For what?” She flicked a glance at his hand gripping her arm, anger and disappointment in her gaze. “Adam was my friend, Mac. That’s a bond I don’t take lightly.”

“Nor do I.”

Her level stare seemed to drill straight through him. “I didn’t kill him. Believe me or don’t. It makes
no difference anymore. I’ll be gone in a few days and we never have to meet again.”

A painful knot formed low in his gut at the idea, which he fought to explain away. He still had questions about the curse. Bianca was his only connection to Lord Deane. He needed her—and not like that, though with her wet gown clinging to her curvaceous body, certain parts of him were definitely experiencing more need than others. “What if I told you I believed you? Would you still go to Dublin?”

“Of course. There’s nothing for me in London until Adam’s murderer is found or the gossip dies.”

“
I’m
here.”

She shot him a dubious look. “That’s supposed to convince me?”

“Let’s say I had hopes.” He released her, shrugging out of his coat to drape it over her shoulders before her lips turned blue. It was completely waterlogged, but better than nothing. “Where’s that maid of yours? You’re sopping wet.”

She reached up to wipe the hair from his face. “You’re just as wet and drippy as I am.”

He sucked in a quick breath at her touch. Covered her hand with his own, noting the dirt beneath her half-moon nails. The smudge up one wrist. He wanted to lay his lips upon the pulse fluttering there. Hell, he wanted to lay his lips on every part of her sweet body.

She glanced at their linked fingers. “Your hand is so warm.”

“ ‘Warm hands, cold heart.’ Isn’t that the saying?”

“I’ve never heard that before.”

If she thought his hands were warm, she’d be shocked by how hot the rest of his body grew with
every shivering, trembling breath she took. Every brush of those long black lashes against her cheeks. Desire burned like a lit fuse along every nerve ending until his arousal grew embarrassingly evident, inner warnings shoved aside by flat-out lust.

“How about ‘But kiss, one kiss! Rubies unparagon’d, How dearly they do’t,’ ” he quoted.

“Cymbeline. The soldier knows his Shakespeare.”

“Aye. I can read and write and everything.”

Her lips curved, soft and full and pink as rosebuds. How would they taste? What would they feel like wrapped around . . .

Shit, he was a bloody goner.

Bracing for a stinging blow, he drew her against him, leaning in for a kiss, the taste of rain and earth and wind in the sweet velvet lushness of her mouth. But no virago’s temper met his embrace. Instead she breathed soft gasps as she opened to him, his tongue sweeping in to taste her wet, sweet heat. Her scent rose from her damp skin to wrap round him with exotic hints of orange and spice. He cupped her head in his hand, delving deeply, the shivers running through his body having nothing to do with the weather but with a hunger growing every second that he plundered her mouth with kisses.

His hand skimmed her side, the rounded slope of her hip, the long plane of her torso to the swell of one perfect breast. He thumbed her pebble-hard nipple, eliciting a whimper from deep in her throat, her body swaying against him, one arm coming round his neck to tangle in his hair.

“The sweet lovers. How touching. I wonder if you’d think the same if you knew what he was, Madame
Parrino,” came a thickly accented voice from just behind them.

Mac and Bianca turned as one to face the startling newcomer: a tall man in a long black greatcoat. Over his shoulder, he carried a canvas bag.

“I hope you don’t mind me inviting myself in. I sent your maidservant on an errand. A nice long one. So much easier than trying to dispose of a body.”

Bianca stiffened in Mac’s arms. “Who are you?”

The man’s gaze flicked toward Mac, intent written in the brilliant, gold-flecked eyes as he swung the bag to his side and reached into it. “Your savior against a treacherous, blackhearted monster.”

Mac went rigid, his panther strength boiling up from that secret well where it slept until called upon—or until the curse pulled it screaming forth. His muscles wound taut as a low snarl curled up into the back of his throat. “Fey-blood.”

The man pulled his hand from the bag. “A gift from my mistress, Captain!” he shouted as he tossed a net fine as spiderwebs toward Mac, the binding silken mesh settling heavy and entangling over his shoulders.

Silver.

All Mac’s doubts vanished as a low drone vibrated from the base of his skull down his spine and along his ribs. The Fey-bloods knew of the Imnada’s existence. And, more frightening, knew how to destroy them.

“Leave him alone!” Bianca grabbed the man’s thick arm and tried to pull him away. The stranger looked down at her, his golden eyes narrowed to violent slits, his mouth curling in a leering, fiendish smile. “Stupid
putain,
you may have your uses yet.”

She stumbled as he shoved her off, her hem
tangling under his boot heels. Losing her balance, she flailed as she fell, striking the edge of a chair before she sprawled lifeless on the floor.

“Bianca!” Mind aflame, Mac struggled to drag the strength-sapping weight of the silver net from his shoulders.

“Crull! Hoyse!” the man shouted. “
Vite!
”

Shadows fell over Mac. Someone knocked him to the floor. Hands grabbed him by the elbows, shoving him onto his stomach, dragging his arms painfully behind him. A boot struck him in the ribs. Another slammed against his head. He fought back, but only managed to tangle the net more firmly around him, snared by the buttons on his jacket.

“It is useless to struggle,” the Fey-blood warned, his black coat billowing like raven’s wings as he pulled a wicked knife from a sheath at his waist.

Useless or not, Mac wasn’t about to surrender without a fight. Wrenching loose and rolling up onto his knees, he lunged for the man, his fist slamming into the Fey-blood’s chest.

“
Fils de pute!
” he cursed, though he did not run.

Why should he? If he knew the lethal power of silver on the Imnada, he knew enough to be patient and let the net weaken Mac until there was no fight left in him. Already his muscles cramped with pain, his breathing labored as the element acted on his body like a poison.

Another attack met another retreat before the Fey-blood’s cohorts stepped in. A fist to the jaw knocked Mac back on his knees. A blow to the gut left him doubled over and retching. He struggled, but the blows came too swiftly. There was no time to react. No time to strike back. The poison sucked him into a downward
spiral in which every breath hurt and his heart crashed against his sore ribs.

He shot another glance toward Bianca, lying in a crumpled heap of silks and petticoats, her hair spilling free of its pins to lie in a ripple of gold around her head. A thin trickle of blood dripped onto her pale cheek from a cut on her scalp. He tried dragging himself toward her, hoping to discover whether she yet lived, but the Fey-blood stood in his way, towering over him, his face twisted with disgust and hate.

“The stories talk of the Imnada’s incredible strength and cunning in battle, but they were wrong. You are weak. Weak and powerless.”

Mac barely felt the vicious kick to his ribs as he retched, hands curled into fists against his chest, agony radiating through his body as if he were being cleaved in two. His lungs worked like a bellows, yet he couldn’t breathe. Spots danced in front of his eyes, his vision narrowing to a pinprick.

“You’d love to kill me, wouldn’t you, shifter? So close and yet so far, eh?”

Each taunt was accompanied by a flick of the Fey-blood’s blade. Each wicked jeer matching a wicked punch to the ribs or a kick to his side from heavy boots. Mac tried curling away from the worst of it, but nowhere was he safe against the violent onslaught.

“We will kill you, your comrades, and then the rest of your filthy unclean race. It will be just as before, when the rivers ran with shifter blood and our swords feasted on your flesh.”

“Are Fey-bloods always this melodramatic?” Mac shot back, spitting blood, the words clawing their way out of a painful throat.

His bravado earned him a clout to the side of the head that left his ears ringing.

“If she didn’t want to kill you herself, I’d enjoy gutting you like the dirty hell-spawn you are.”

She? For a moment, as Mac watched, something—or someone—else seemed to enter the man’s lethal gaze. A woman. Mac sensed her presence. A musky-sweet scent in the air. A shadow’s flicker caught out of the corner of his eye. If he focused, he could feel her tangled thoughts fuzzing his already fuzzy brain.

So the man’s purpose was to capture Mac, not kill him outright. This left a chance. Slim, but he’d take it. It might be the only one left to him. Sucking in a last shallow breath, he twisted away from his captors’ grasp, lunging for the man’s knife. Forcing it from his grip. Celebrated his success for a mere heartbeat’s time before the Fey-blood’s battle magic struck. Enough to slow him. To knock him from his stride.

He ducked as another scorching ripple seared the air above him, striking the wall at his back. He never saw the toppling bookcase until it fell, slamming him to the ground. A boot swung toward his head. He threw up a hand as it connected. Lights pinwheeled across his vision.

He never saw the second blow.

Never felt the third.

*   *   *

Images came to Renata along ribbons of smoke, sparks dodging and darting within the spiraling columns erupting from an endless black sea. Alonzo was her eyes and ears. Through him, she observed, she planned. Able to travel where a woman of fortune
and standing could never remain unnoticed or unmolested. Away from duty’s confinement. Freed of her husband’s clinging control.

Even as a tiny part of her mind remained aware of her surroundings—the rumpled bedcovers, the soft gray light pouring through the lace at her windows—she became one with the smoke, traveling out across the depthless void to crouch behind Alonzo’s eyes as she clutched the locket containing a curl of his dark hair.

The smoke rolled thick and black-red, revealing the dimly lit interior of a house. A man, bent and stumbling, a hand pressed against his stomach. He possessed a face of chiseled lines and angles, a clean jaw, a thin nose, lips that if not pressed grimly together would curve deliciously upon a woman’s flesh, and eyes of an unnatural yellow-green, irises long and cat-thin.

Imnada. Her certainty washed over her like a warning from her father’s ghost.
Imnada,
his voice whispered up from the void. Older than the Fey. A demon race. A dead race. This one would be dead soon. She, with Alonzo’s help, would make it so.

The smoky billows rose high before dispersing out across a roof of dim stars, dragging her spirit back to her bedchamber, her body torpid and slack, the sounds of her house unnaturally loud against the leaden silence of the smoky, spark-filled blackness.

She gripped the locket tighter, willing herself back into Alonzo’s mind. His elation sped her own pulse as he bent over the man, caught like a herring in a fisherman’s net, his breathing ragged, his face a sickly green as the silver sucked him dry. From the corner of her
sight, Renata caught a glimpse of tangled golden hair and the ivory features of Bianca Parrino lying still upon a carpeted floor.

“Madame, are you awake?” her maid queried from beyond the door. “The gong has sounded to dress.”

Letting go of the locket, Renata retreated into her body. She fought back the pressing desire to storm free of her bedchamber, call for a carriage, and fly to the actress’s home. A fool’s desire. Froissart expected her to be dressed and downstairs within the hour, ready to attend one more boring political dinner. Weakened from such a focused use of her powers, she had no strength left, even for the simple manipulation of her husband’s feeble mind. She must appear. There was no escape.