Demon's Curse (Imnada Brotherhood) (37 page)

“Are you in such a rush to meet death, shifter?” the Frenchman asked. “For that is what Renata has planned for you. A slow and very gruesome death.”

Fey-blood magic pulsed the air like a dissonant chord. It jolted along Mac’s nerve endings like a constant strike at his funny bone. How much of it was attributable to the Frenchman, Ringrose, or the
hidden presence of Froissart was impossible to determine from the cacophony blurring his vision and making his head throb. “You tried and failed once. What makes you think this time you’ll be any more successful?”

The Frenchman’s lips curled in a cruel rictus of a smile, his eyes empty as death, the grip on his pistol unwavering. “Her.”

Bianca lifted her chin as the barrel of the pistol dug into her neck.

Mac’s hands curled to fists, his body aflame. Every ounce of fear and sorrow and guilt accompanied the ribbon of his pathing.
I’ll not let him harm you, Bianca.

Bianca’s gaze clouded, and she answered with a barely perceptible shake of her head.

“Throw down your weapons, shifter. Now.”

Mac tossed his dagger to the floor with a clang, pushing it forward with the toe of his boot. Then he pulled his brace of pistols from under his coat, laying each one down, shoving them one by one toward the Frenchman’s feet.

“And the blade you’ve hidden away in your boot.”

Mac hesitated until the Frenchman pressed his gun into Bianca’s neck once more. Kneeling, he drew a second slim blade from his boot, adding it to the pile. “Let her go. She’s not part of this.”

“Isn’t she? Defiling herself with a shifter lover? Taking a demon into her bed? If you ask me, she deserves whatever happens to her.”

“What do you want?” Mac asked. “Tell me and I’ll do it if you’ll just let her go.”

The man’s smile widened, a ruthless light glowing in his dark eyes. “For starters, I want to see you on your knees.”

“As you wish.” Mac’s eyes burned, his heart thrashed against his ribs. Sweat washed cold across his back as he bent slowly. First to one knee. Then the other.

Something oozed through the leather of his breeks, and a jagged pot edge drew blood as it ground into his knee.

“Mac, don’t,” Bianca murmured.

But Mac had already bowed his head, arms loose at his sides, surrender evident in every rigid muscle. He trained his eyes on the floor, on the broken greenery, the pieces of shattered drawers, the dark feathers turning and drifting over the boards. Behind him, he continued to hear Ringrose’s aggrieved murmurs as he crooned to his dead familiar. And something else: the whisper of fabric across a carpet, the brief sound of a quick, indrawn breath.

“You thought you could win against us, shifter? You thought you could kill and not face justice?” the Frenchman jeered. “You’ll beg for the kiss of my blade before I’m through with you. You and then the rest of your filthy kind.”

Rage swept Mac like a fever, but he remained where he was, subservient, submissive. Whatever it took to buy him a few seconds. Until . . .

Drop, Bianca. Now!
Mac’s pathing ripped the air between them.

With a cry of pain, Bianca threw herself to the side, catching the Frenchman off guard as she fell.

Mac’s third and final blade—whipped free from his back, where it had rested against his spine—flew toward the Frenchman’s heart. Only the man’s sudden grappling with Bianca’s deadweight kept him from being speared like a pig on a stick. Instead, the blade
bit into his breast just below his collarbone. The force of it threw him backward, blood erupting in a ribbon of scarlet.

Bianca rolled clear of the fight as Mac snatched up a second knife from the pile. The Frenchman lay on his back, arched against the pain, his left hand grasping to remove the dagger from his shoulder. Mac stood over him, adjusting his grip for a final downward thrust. Their eyes locked in a terrible drawn-out contest of wills.

“You fail—again,” Mac snarled.

“Kill him, Renata,” the man gasped, his eyes gazing beyond Mac. “Do it now.”

The reek of Fey-blood magics intensified until Mac’s eyes watered, the grip on his dagger growing slick, a buzz along his nerves until every hair stood on end. He knelt until the point of his blade touched the man’s chest. “Where’s Froissart?”

Bianca’s whispered words touched Mac’s ear and mind simultaneously: “She’s here.”

A shadow speared the floor, the oppressive smell of scent hanging like a cloud in the air. The Frenchman’s eyes darted about, then froze and glazed over, his breath coming in quick, rasping pants.

“We finally meet face-to-face, Captain Flannery, though I’ve seen you many times through Alonzo’s eyes and even reached into your mind as easily as sifting through a jar.”

Mac straightened. At last he looked upon the woman behind Adam’s murder. A woman whose journey, begun in vengeance on four, threatened to drag the entire races of Imnada and Other into a new conflagration if she wasn’t stopped. He recognized her deep-brown
eyes, her blue-black hair, her intensity of expression. But now the skin stretched tightly over the bones of her face, and her hands curled like talons at her sides. Power rolled off her in waves until Mac grew nauseated, the floor seeming to roll in the sudden dizziness that overtook him. He tightened his hold on his knife lest it slide from his trembling fingers. If only Bianca weren’t in the way, he could gain a clear shot. A quick kill.

“It’s over,” he said, even as he sought to path instructions to Bianca, but something blocked him. He could gain no connection with her mind.

Renata’s eyes gleamed. “In this we are in agreement, shifter. It is over and you have lost. Just as your friend Kinloch surrendered to me in the final minutes of his life, so, too, will you know the shame of begging before the end. As will Gray de Coursy and David St. Leger.”

Mac flinched.

“Yes, I have discovered them. It took time and seeking both on this plane and in the void, but I have found them and soon they will know the same degradation and shame. They will see their end coming, with no way to prevent it.”

“He didn’t do it. He didn’t kill your father.” Bianca’s gaze remained riveted on Mac’s face, her hands lost in the folds of her skirts.

Renata’s eyes burned black and soulless, her fingers gripping Bianca’s bare arm. “You fight for him. How sweet, but how simple to turn that defense into an attack.”

Fey-blood magic crackled the air around Froissart like a twining ribbon of fire before leaping to entangle Bianca within its powerful embrace.

“Do it! Now!” Froissart screamed.

The muscles in Bianca’s neck went rigid with strain, her pupils dilated, and a dark presence crouched at the edges of her gaze. “She’s . . . there’s something . . . I can’t control . . . Oh, God, I’m sorry, Mac.”

She raised her right hand.

Mac caught the glint of steel, the stench of black powder. He only had time to shout, “Bianca, no!”

A deafening roar shook him to his knees, a searing pain lanced his head, and Mac fell tumbling into an endless void, the darkness rushing up from below to swallow him.

24

Deep breaths in and out. Slow, calm, easy breaths to relieve the panic blistering her mind. She had air to breathe. The walls were not closing in. No one ever died from a locked door.

She stalked the area of her makeshift cell, trying to rub warmth back into her freezing-cold arms, relief and disgust warring for dominance in her sloshy, scattered head.

She had not murdered the Frenchman. She could erase that debit from her life’s account, more’s the pity. She shuddered, recalling his powerful arms wrapped round her body, the gloating in his voice as he sought to humiliate Mac before he murdered him.

But he had not been the one to strike the killing blow. They had made Bianca do it. They had used her as a weapon against the man she loved.

She stumbled, her knees buckling from under her as she sagged against the wall. She pressed the heels of her hands to her eyes as if she might erase the image of Mac’s body sprawled at her feet, blood pooling beneath
his head. As if she could claw out the slithering hatred that had infected her mind, taking her over, compelling her against her will.

In the moments she’d been under Renata Froissart’s influence, she’d felt the woman’s warped perversion. Her hatred and the desire to be avenged had eaten into her soul until there was only a black and empty hole where her heart had been. A hole she’d filled with dark and powerful magic.

Bianca could only console herself with the bitter knowledge that the shot had not been fatal. Mac lived still, though for how long was anyone’s guess.

Long enough for the Frenchman and Renata to annihilate him in a death of inches until there was naught left but a husk for the ragpickers, another victim left to rot in London’s streets.

Long enough for him to dwell on Bianca’s apparent betrayal and hate her for it.

She banged a fist against the wall. No. She would find a way out. She would put right the mess she’d created. She would find Mac before it was too late. Another try at the door. Still locked, and no amount of fiddling, pulling, pushing, or kicking did anything but frazzle her already shaky nerves. Another study of the empty room as if some answer might magically write itself upon the walls. Not that escaping from the room would accomplish anything except get her into more trouble. She and Mac had been brought to the Froissart house this time, the center of the spider’s web.

She sank upon the floor, drawing her knees up tightly to her chest, wrapping her arms around them. Loosed her mind as if unfettering a caged bird.
Mac, where are you? It’s Bianca
.

A faint shimmering touch brushed against the edge of her awareness, but she closed her eyes, concentrating on reaching out, seeing the thought in her head and then letting it go.
It was Renata. She can control people. Somehow she can reach into my head—into anyone’s head—and make me do what she wants.

The shimmer grew stronger until it became a prickling, listening tension that twitched her shoulder blades.
You have to believe me. You have to . . . you have to trust me.

No answer to her plea, but the shimmer flared brightly, a warmth wrapping round her as if arms embraced her. Then, as if a shadow blotted out the sun, the warmth fled beneath a cold, sour wind, and Bianca was left alone once more.

*   *   *

Mac swam in and out of delirium, every movement sending shock waves of pain from his skull into his stomach until his throat ached from retching. Like ghosts, voices came and went. Some angry, hitting his fractured mind like bullets, and others stealing softly and poisonously into his consciousness like thieves. But all with one goal: to discover the secrets of the Imnada. To learn what they could of the five clans before they destroyed him.

He clamped his jaw against the agony and said nothing, though each session ended with another slash of the Frenchman’s knife across his flesh and another blow to his broken body. Mac merely curled tighter into himself and endured.

Once the voice changed from the unceasing interrogation, and he lifted his head to Bianca’s shadowy
presence, which acted like ice water on his burning body. He reached for her, trying to answer, to reassure her, but before he could focus on her words, she’d vanished. Swallowed by a whirling pool of darkness, to be replaced by a girl whose shiny black eyes and narrow face seemed oddly familiar. Then she, too, was gone and he woke alone, the chamber empty, no candle or fire to ease the impenetrable gloom.

His first thought upon opening his eyes was that the horrible clawing ache along his bones and the slow one-by-one crush of organs was a result of the silver-threaded cords binding him hand and foot.

A notion revised as soon as he looked to the window and the slender gap between the heavy curtains showing the dimming afternoon light.

No, this brand of perpetual incineration was much worse.

The Fey-blood’s curse fought to consume him as it did every night, but the goddess moon’s absence from the sky prevented the forced shift. Mac was trapped in his human form while two great magics battled for his soul.

Sunset. Morderoth.

The longest night began now.

*   *   *

The sound of a key turning in the lock brought Bianca’s head up. Shadows hung thick and close around her, and the air held a dank, musty chill along with a strange metallic taste that seemed to coat her tongue like fuzz. She had no idea how long she’d been here, and despite repeated attempts she had never felt Mac’s touch upon her mind or his voice sounding in her head.

The latch clicked and she threw herself to her feet to take up a position on the wall beside the door. She braced herself for the attack, fists clenched. Tension wiring her back. She’d get one chance only. She’d better make it count.

The door opened with a sudden jerk before easing slowly wider, a gnarled hand upon the frame. As the intruder stepped through, Bianca brought her fist up in a quick cut to the jaw, dropping her jailer to the floor like a puppet whose strings had been cut.

“See there. I knew I should have gone in first,” a voice sulked. “Now he’ll likely wake with a knot on his head and a foul temper to match, and who will he blame? Me, of course.”