Demon's Curse (Imnada Brotherhood) (17 page)

Would that kiss have grown into something more? Would she have surrendered to the mind-erasing, body-scalding desire that had turned her inside out and upside down? Or would she have come to her benumbed senses and tossed him aside with her usual tongue-lashing?

She cast one more surreptitious glance at his long legs, hard-packed muscles, and square-jawed, steely-eyed face.

Who was she trying to fool? It wasn’t a question of would she have surrendered, but how quickly.

He prowled the room, finally pausing by the far wall. Then, closing his eyes, he gritted his teeth and slammed his bad shoulder hard against the bricks. Again. And again.

“Mac!”

He dropped to his knees, face blanched beneath the bruising, a strangled moan escaping from between his lips. “Fucking bloody hell, that hurt.”

“Are you insane?”

Sweat dripped off him, eyes cloudy with pain. “Had to . . . dislocated . . . better now . . .” He moved his fingers gingerly. “Feelings back.” Grabbing the haversack, he rummaged through it, retrieving a linen shirt,
a pair of breeches. “I need to find David. Warn him the Fey-bloods know. Time is running out.”

“None of this makes sense. How could you exist and the world never know?”

“Mortals would”—he slowly eased his way into the shirt, hissing in pain at every movement of his shoulder—“would be amazed what shares this earth with them.”

“Like these Fey-blood you keep talking about?”

He struggled to his feet, resting his back against the wall as he slid on his breeches with one hand. “The Other. Aye. They’re the most common and, to the Imnada, the most dangerous.”

“Because of King Arthur and the Imnada warlord’s treachery?” She couldn’t believe she was saying this.

“Is that what Deane told you? Treachery is a slippery customer, and there are always two sides to a tale,
mi am’ryath
.” He glanced over at her, his gaze sorrow-filled. “I expected you to be long gone when I woke.”

She offered him a tremulous half smile. “Where would I go? Home? To Deane House? They’d demand answers I couldn’t possibly give.”

He pushed off the wall to stand upright for the first time. Hovered for a moment before gravity took over, and he began to sway.

She grabbed him before he fell, her arms wrapping round his torso, her head coming just beneath his chin. Even ill as he was, he had the solidity of an oak, his furnace heat kindling fires everywhere they touched, his manhood pressed close between her thighs. “You can barely stand. Stay here where it’s safe. I’ll go find Jory Wallace.”

Sliding his right arm around her waist, he drew her closer against him, the slightest hint of a dimple showing
at the corner of his mouth. “Do you intend to dose me with enough laudanum to fell an ox? Again?” His smile glimmered like the weakest of suns, stabbing at her heart with a dull, unacceptable ache.

She stepped out of his reach, the October cold and definitely not Mac’s embrace raising goose pimples up and down her body. “How did you know about the haversack?” she blurted. A stupid question, but it bought her time and space in which to calm her jagged nerves and the crackling heat engulfing her.

He accepted her maneuver with a tired shrug. “I’ve five such caches throughout the city, just in case.”

“In case of what?”

He lifted his brows in a look of incredulity. “You have to ask?” He raised his right arm, palm up, as if in supplication. “My kind has lived beside you since the dawn of time. I’m Imnada, Bianca. Not a monster. Not a creature.” He reached for her. “I’m a man.”

She stared at their linked hands, his fingers blunt and capable and warm with promise. Lifted her eyes to his face, hysterical laughter bottled in her throat like cut glass.

“And an ally,” he said, a glint of rueful humor in his haunted gaze. “Since events are now officially and irrefutably sticky.”

*   *   *

After a garbled story of murderous footpads running amok near Cumberland Place, Mac and Bianca had been shown by David’s housekeeper into a downstairs salon to await the master of the house. Mac had barely counted the number of wineglasses on the sideboard when David came bounding in, sporting his usual
rakish seediness. Over the years, Mac had witnessed again and again St. Leger’s personal blend of smooth-talking charm and scoundrel’s magnetism that transformed perfectly normal women into giddy trollops.

He cast a surreptitious glance at Bianca and was curiously cheered by her lack of reaction. No blushing. No fluttering eyelashes or tossing of curls. If anything, she seemed to retreat into herself. Her expression hardened into implacability. Her actress’s mask settled into place with the firmness of cement. Yet, he’d discovered her secret: she used that well-armored demeanor not to keep the world at bay but to hold her own fears tight within.

Had any man ever discerned her monumental struggle to bury all doubts and vulnerabilities beneath that famously cool exterior? Had any man ever tried? Or had they all taken her sleek, pleasure-loving façade at face value?

Adam perhaps. No wonder she mourned him. He’d been the only one to truly understand her—until now.

David had only a few minutes to work his charm before Bianca had been taken in hand by a maid to be fretted over upstairs. Once alone, David shed his gallantry, pacing the room like a prisoner.

“You brought her here? Didn’t you hear my warning about Lord Deane? What the bloody hell were you thinking?”

“I was thinking that if it weren’t for her, you and Gray would be attending my funeral.”

“And she and the earl? How do you explain their connection?”

“I can’t. Or at least, I can’t explain where Deane fits in, but I trust she’s telling the truth. Whatever Deane is up to, she’s not involved.”

David shook his head. “You’ve fallen under the famed ice queen’s spell, haven’t you? I can see why. The woman’s a bloody stunner, and from the looks she kept throwing in your direction, it wouldn’t take much to wiggle your way between those perfect thighs. Or mayhap you already . . . ?” He lifted his brows in question.

“She’s not like that.”

David merely offered a thin, knowing smile that made Mac want to hit him. Hard.

“Fine, if you don’t want to talk about her, we’ll talk about you. You look awful. Like death on a stick. How do you feel?” he asked, handing Mac a whiskey.

“Like I’ve been flattened by a whole convoy of runaway caissons.” Mac accepted the drink but didn’t taste. Instead he toyed with the glass, running a finger across the rim and swishing the amber liquid round and round as he talked: of the ambush at Bianca’s house, the dirty cellar in Southwark, the hours he spent at the mercy of a man who’d unleashed a thousand years of fury with vicious precision on Mac’s body.

David sat silently, only the sharpening angles of his face and the narrowing of his eyes revealing his growing rage. “You’re sure he said ‘she’? ‘She’ wanted you dead?”

“Whoever ‘she’ is, she was going to take great pleasure in killing me.” Mac slumped in a chair, the room spinning enough to make walking straight downright dangerous. He remained weak, his guts cramping as his fever climbed, his shoulder aching down to the bone.

“You’re certain we’re dealing with Fey-bloods?”

“His powers scraped against my mental shields like a saw blade. I felt the mage energy’s vibration all the way back to my fucking molars. They know, David.”
Mac closed his eyes as the room spun, the walls sliding into a shimmer of hallucinations. Opened them again at the touch of a hand upon his forehead.

David stood over him, looking paternal. “Your fever’s raging,” he commented grimly. “How long did he have you trapped again?”

“Long enough.” Memories clawed at him. Memories of pain when every breath was agony, the silver eating into his flesh like wires dipped in acid. And always the questions. Over and over, without end. With a what-the-hell last wish, he tossed the whiskey back, the heat scorching his throat to land like lead in his curdled stomach. “We need to send word to the Gather. To warn them.”

“And how do you propose we do that?” David asked, crossing to draw back the curtain on a late autumn morning, the sun climbing through a haze of coal smoke.

“Your
krythos
. We can summon them with the far-seeing disk.”

David dropped the curtain in place. “And have the Ossine’s enforcers down on us like a pack of damned hounds? You know the penalty for contacting the clans. Exile becomes extinction. And despite the shithouse my life has become, I still like living it, thank you very much. If you’re so determined to end on the point of an enforcer’s sword, why don’t you use your disk?”

Mac dug his hand into the borrowed coat pocket out of habit. He’d not noticed his
krythos
’s loss until this morning. And then it was far too late to go searching for it. His last link with home and family was no more. He shook his head. “Gone.”

David shrugged, his dismissive indifference infuriating Mac.

“We have to do something,” he chided. “We can’t just sit back and let the worst happen without trying to stop it.”

“Why not?” David argued. “Adam massacred an entire family of out-clans to keep our secret. Don’t you find that disgusting and slightly hypocritical? That we destroy to keep from being destroyed? We’re as guilty as the Fey-bloods.”

Caught by surprise, Mac fell back on tradition. “Adam did what was required to keep us safe. The laws were put in place for a reason. The Gather acts only for our survival.”

David sprang to his feet, the wolf revealed in his fierce gaze, bared teeth, fangs white as pearls, a quiver of rage surrounding him like an aura. “And will you enforce them, Mac? Will you do as Gather rules demand and take a knife to Bianca Parrino to claw your way back into their good graces? She helped you escape. Will you return her courage by slitting her throat?”

“No! But . . .” Mac collapsed into his chair, heart pounding, head blasting with a new fire. “It’s not the same. She’s different.”

“Of course she is. But so were many who met their deaths because they discovered what we are.” David resumed his seat, dropping his head in his hands as if he bore a great weight. “The Gather elders are fools and old men, frightened of their own shadows. So lost to stories of ancient treacheries, they can’t see our race is dying now.”

“What are you talking about?”

“The Imnada are failing. How many of us are left?
How many births replace those who have died? One to replace ten? And our powers? They’re dwindling just as we are.” David lifted his head, face ashen, eyes lost and staring. “This constant hiding in the shadows is dooming us to certain extinction.”

Mac had never seen David like this. Never heard him utter such a blatant heresy. Not even during the first frenzied shock following the Other’s curse. Even then he’d possessed a will of steel, holding longer than any of them to the hope their affliction could be overcome by their Imnada strength, their Imnada power. Perhaps that was what made his rage burn higher and hotter after that hope had been cruelly dashed. Shattered faith in his race and his own invincibility.

“You just said you didn’t care what happened to the clans,” Mac challenged.

David’s dark eyes shone, and for a moment he looked as if he might continue to argue. Instead, he rose to pour himself another drink. Mac had lost count of how much he’d taken in just the few hours they’d been together, but surely it was more than enough. Hell, it wasn’t even noon yet.

“I’ll send word to de Coursy,” David said. “And I’ll get you to Wallace’s before nightfall.” He rang for a servant, passing Mac on his way out the door. “Even with all Adam’s notes, do you really imagine you’ll find a way to break the curse?” The desperate hope in the question twisted Mac’s insides. “There must have been a reason Kinloch didn’t tell us what he’d learned. Something you’ve overlooked.”

“Only one way to find out,” Mac replied. “But it’s one more way than we had before.”

David nodded, dropping a hand on Mac’s
shoulder. “Sorry to burden you with my moral quandaries, old man. Suppose it’s an argument without an end. Stay here and rest while I have a chamber prepared and a bath sent up.”

Mac nodded, slumping into his chair, letting the last frenetic hours spin away in a feverish haze. “David?” he asked, breaking the brittle silence.

St. Leger swung around, a brow raised in question.

“If you’re right about the Imnada, what can we possibly do about it?” Mac asked. “We’ve been cast out. We’re as good as dead.”

David took a long time to answer, his gaze trained on some far-distant invisible point, a wild light in his dark eyes. “Perhaps that’s our greatest strength, Mac. No one expects the dead to cause trouble.”

*   *   *

In a mad scramble, Bianca retreated from the library door, hoping to make it seem she’d only just arrived at the bottom of the staircase as Mr. St. Leger emerged. In reality, her hand gripped the banister to keep her steady, her head swimming with snippets of the overheard conversation between Mac and this man.

Gathers, curses, the dying out of a race that until last night she’d assumed lived only within the pages of a picture book—why did every answer she gain only spin off a dozen more questions? She hated this constant state of confusion, this loss of control. It harked back to a time when these were all she felt and her life had been in someone else’s hands. If she was ever to wrest herself free of the mess she’d fallen into, she would have to turn the situation to her advantage. She needed answers.

And she’d begin with Mr. David St. Leger.

His gaze brightened upon spotting her, and he came forward, hand extended. “Simply stunning, Mrs. Parrino. The color matches your eyes as if made with you in mind.”

“Is that what you told the courtesan who wore it last?” she asked tartly, wishing she had her wreck of a morning gown back instead of this translucent confection of silk and lace and ribbons. It made her feel like the icing on an unusually erotic cake.

“Actually, I warned her she’d been nibbling between meals and was beginning to look a bit like a partridge, which is why the gown is here and the lady is not.” He offered her his arm. “You must be famished. Breakfast is laid out in the dining room.”