shadows of salem 01 - shadow born (19 page)

How was that possible? There’s no way I would have forgotten something like this.

But the memory was
part of me
. And even though I was viewing myself from Maddock’s eyes, I could feel every sensation rippling through me-then’s body, could witness each moment in a way I could never deny as truth.

Maddock’s fingers curled around my rib cage, his fingertips digging into my skin. It was passionate, not aggressive, but he didn’t know his own strength. Still, his bruising grip was a nearly imperceptible feeling beneath his powerful thrusts.

The arousal building inside me was unlike anything I’d experienced before, almost like magic. Hell, it probably
was
magic. Some kind of preternatural fuck magic—a mind-warping, skin-buzzing, simmering spell that had me on the verge of explosion but somehow held me there, begging this man for more.

Certain I was about to shatter completely from the pleasure, a panic fluttered through my chest at the thought of him stopping. The me-then bit into his shoulder, apparently believing that would get a reaction.

It did.

Maddock pulled my hair, his urgency rising to meet my frenzied need for completion. Something came over me as the magical sensation sparked over every nerve cell in my body, shifting my moan into something more primal as I came, screaming his name. Moments later, the Maddock from the vision groaned again, burying his face in the crook of my shoulder as he found his release.

The memory shifted then, moving so that I could see both of us lying in a hand-carved wooden bed that was fit for a king. It was strange, watching my hands stroke his broad back, brushing droplets of sweat away as every muscle in his body relaxed. As Maddock’s eyes closed, a strange mix of tenderness and sadness filled my eyes, and then they hardened with what looked like determination.

My hands continued stroking Maddock’s back, but they took on a faint blue glow. The more they stroked, the brighter the glow grew, until my entire body was engulfed in the strange energy.

I gasped as I began to see a pattern—the energy was wafting up from Maddock’s body…and
into
mine.

“No!” Maddock’s eyes flew open as he growled the word. His big body shuddered, and he braced himself using his knuckles, trying to rise. But whatever I was doing to him left him too weak, and he collapsed on top of me again, helpless against whatever voodoo I was performing on him.

When I was done, his tanned skin had taken on an ashy tint, and I was resplendent with power. Smiling, I pushed him off me as if he weighed nothing, then sauntered over to a chair on the other side of the room, where a blue velvet dress and some lacy undergarments were draped.

The same blue dress I’d seen myself wearing in the other vision.

“Bitch…” Maddock croaked, his body still trembling. The fury radiating off him was palpable, but he couldn’t do more than shift his head to glare at me. “I’ll kill ye the next time I see yer bloody face.”

“Don’t be so angry, darling.” I pulled the dress over my head. It was really strange to hear myself speaking with a Colonial accent. “We both know you were using me, and now it’s my turn to use you. I need your power for something important, and besides, it isn’t as if you won’t regenerate it. A week of bed rest and some chicken soup, and you’ll be just fine.”

I winked as I tied a bonnet over my silver curls and slipped my feet into elegant slippers. A coat came on next, and then I headed for the door.

“I wilna…forget this…” Maddock gasped, still struggling to move from the bed.

I turned back to face him, profound sadness weighing down my features. “I know. But at least I can take comfort in the fact that if I succeed, you and I will both live on to remember this. Even if you do hate me for the rest of your eternity.”

The vision broke, and Maddock shoved away from me, his chest heaving. He glared at me, but the anger in his eyes was tempered with confusion.

He snarled. “How did ye do that?”

“W…what?” I was still gasping for breath, still reeling from what I’d seen. “How did I do
what
?”

A muscle beneath Maddock’s left eye twitched. “You tampered with the memory. You
changed
it.”

“How the fuck could I have done that?” I cried. “How would I even know what to change, since I’ve never seen it before?”

“I dinnae know!” Maddock snapped, raking a hand through his dark hair. He cut his gaze away from me, looking like he wanted to break something. “But that last bit…yer parting shot… I dinnae remember that. I’ve never remembered that.
It didn’t happen.
”

“As far as I’ve always known,
none
of this has ever happened!” Fed up, I stalked toward him, curled my fist into his collar and yanked his head down to face me. I was done letting him push me around; let’s see how
he
liked it for a change. “Are you telling me that we used to be lovers several hundred years ago? Because that can’t possibly be true. I was born twenty-three years ago, Tremaine. I didn’t live in colonial times. That vision you showed me—it’s a woman who looks remarkably like me, but it’s
not
me. It’s got to be a phoukas or something.”

My voice wobbled a little, and I pressed my lips together. I was
not
going to panic over this.

“The woman in that vision
is
ye.” Maddock’s hand clamped around my wrist, yanking it away from his collar. “Ye went by Veronica Moussall at that time, and ye were a mystery, not a phoukas. Believe me, I would know. Ye were a member of the Sisterhood of the Forgotten—one of the five ruling witch clans in the area of that time—and yet ye were something more, different somehow. I thought that perhaps if I could seduce ye, I could unravel yer secrets. I thought ye might be the key to helping me regain my power.”

“Regain your power?” I frowned, looking him up and down. “You look plenty powerful to me.” No, I hadn’t
seen
Maddock use much of his magic, but the confidence and energy rolled off him in abundant waves. He’d said that he was put in charge of this entire sector by the Seelie Court, which had to mean he was powerful. The idea that he was somehow diminished, that he’d once been even stronger, even more dangerous, chilled my spine.

“Aye, but my strength is not what it once was.” Maddock dropped my hand, a muscle in his jaw clenching. I’d never seen him so agitated. “As I mentioned before, my kind cannae be truly killed—we reincarnate after we are vanquished. But it takes a very long time, and we lose some of our magic every time it happens. I have lived for millennia, and have been reincarnated more times than I can count.” His narrowed gaze turned back to me. “The fae have long searched for an answer to this affliction, but we’ve yet to find it.”

I let out a soft laugh. “I see. So you tried to seduce me, thinking you could use me to get your power back, and instead I took yours.” I shook my head in wonder. “Sounds like you’re a sore loser, Tremaine.”

Maddock’s eyes flashed at that. “Excuse me?”

“You tried to use me, and instead I used you.” I folded my arms across my chest and stared up at him. “And because you’re a chauvinistic male, you’re still butt-hurt about it after…what? A hundred years? Two hundred?”

“Over three hundred years,” he growled.

I paused as something occurred to me. “If I’m reincarnated, does that make me fae?” I looked down at my hands—my ordinary, oh-so human hands. Was I really part of a race of such extraordinary beings?

“What ye are, as I said, is a
mystery
.” Maddock’s expression was stony as he regarded me. “Fae don’t reincarnate as quickly as you have. It’s unprecedented. Besides, the way that you stole my power…that’s something only a witch can do.”

“Right…” I said, recalling what he’d said back at the mill. “It’s how they fuel their magic. I get that. But it’s not something I would do.”

Maddock pressed his lips together, agitation darkening his gaze. “It’s certainly something you did, though.”

I shuddered, remembering the boy with the ram’s horns I’d seen in my vision at the mill, and how emaciated he’d looked. Cold horror filled me at the thought of more fae like him chained up in a dark cavern somewhere, reduced to little more as a battery for a group of power-hungry supernaturals. “What they’re doing to your people is horrible.”

“It is.” Maddock glared at me again. “Much more horrible than what you did to me.”

I huffed. “According to that memory you showed me, I seemed to have had a good reason for taking your magic. In fact, it sounded a lot like a life and death thing to me.”

“Indeed.” Maddock didn’t sound impressed. “You seem to have a knack of attracting those sorts of things. I meant to show you a second memory…the one of the last time we met, before we broke apart.”

“Oh?” A nervous tremor rippled through me. “And what memory was that?”

“I was at the Seelie Court, returned after a long spell away, and I found out they were holding ye there. They wouldn’t tell me why, but I gathered that ye’d destroyed something of ours, something powerful enough to merit an execution. They refused to let me speak to you despite my status, but I went to the execution, and ye spotted me as you were led up to the platform.” Maddock’s eyes glimmered as he spoke, and if I didn’t know better, I could have sworn I saw sadness in them. “Ye looked me in the eye as they lowered you onto the chopping block and told me ye would see me again. Ye also told me that when that day came, things would get even darker.”

“That’s just crazy,” I said, rolling my eyes now. “You’re making me sound like some kind of prophet or something.”

Sure, I had a strange talent, but the idea that I was some kind of powerful, witch-like creature with the ability to reincarnate was bat-shit crazy no matter how you looked at it.

“Do you want me to show you?” Maddock taunted. “Because I assure you, the memory is real.” He reached for me again.

“No!” I sidestepped him. “Umm, no, thanks. I don’t really have any desire to watch myself get beheaded.”

“You were slain with a spear through the chest.”

“Fantastic.” I glared at him, easing my hip onto an armchair. “Anything else you’d care to share?”

“No. But I will say this.” Maddock’s face turned stony again. “Ye had better be ready for what’s coming, because if yer premonition was accurate, our lives are about to become more hellish than ever. And I’ve lived a long time, Detective. Long enough to know that if something has the capability to scare me, it might just have the capability to end the world.”

CHAPTER 20

M
addock’s words echoed in my head during the drive home, clawing at the edges of my mind and pulling me perilously close to a panic attack. Reincarnation? End of the world prophecies? What the hell kind of world had I walked into? And why had nobody prepared me for this?

Anger and fear roiling inside me, I slammed my apartment door behind me, then made a beeline for my bedroom. I stripped off my dirty outfit, then flung myself onto the mattress facedown and closed my eyes.

And then I breathed.

Inhale, two, three. Hold, two, three. Exhale, two, three.

I repeated the words over and over inside my head as I followed the breathing exercise Oscar had taught me when I was little. It helped me focus, helped still my thoughts and emotions, and was a great tool in times of stress.

After several minutes, my heart rate finally slowed, and enough tension bled from my body that I was able to unclench my hands and roll over onto my back. Letting out a sigh, I finally allowed my mind to think again, and the first thought that popped into my mind, naturally, was Oscar.

Oscar should have prepared me for this. My parents had given me into his care. Was it really their idea that I not be taught to use my magic, or was it his? I wanted to think that my parents would have wanted me to be well-armed and able to defend myself from all this. But what if they didn’t? What if they thought that by keeping me in the dark, they could stop whatever was coming to pass?

And how did they even know
anything
was coming to pass?

Turning over, I pounded my fist into my pillow, half to fluff it up and half in anger. The truth was, I had no idea why my parents had sent me away. They could have been bandits, living a life of crime, and having a kid on the run was too tough. Or maybe I’d been in actual danger.

Either way, I was tired of speculating. I wanted to know the truth. I wanted to know why my parents had sent me away, and more importantly, who they really were. Had I gotten my magic from them? Since Oscar knew supernaturals existed, that likely meant my parents did, too. Were they witches, or something else?

My mind made up, I picked up my phone and speed-dialed Oscar. The phone rang, and I stared up at the popcorn ceiling as I waited, trying to detect patterns the way one tried to find shapes in the clouds. But like my life at the moment, much as I tried to find meaning, all I saw was chaos.

“Hey, kid.” Oscar’s rough voice drew me back to the present. “Glad you called. What’s up?”

I opened my mouth, wanting to launch straight into my interrogation. But instead, I said, “Everything. And it really, really sucks.”

I told him about the events that had transpired—about the missing fae, the assassination attempts, the strange markings on the walls, the dead body I’d found, and what I’d learned about Tom at the orphanage. The only thing I
didn’t
mention was the memory Maddock had showed me. Even though Oscar was the closest thing I had to family, I couldn’t bring myself to tell him about something so crazy.

Not that I had to. What I told him was enough to make him fly off the handle as it was.

“Dammit, Brooke, you need to come home!” I heard a thud, and I pictured him slamming his hand down on the counter. He was probably standing in the kitchen, drinking a glass of scotch and staring out the glass doors leading to the backyard like he usually did late at night. “Please, come back to Chicago. You can stay with me for as long as you need. I don’t care about you paying rent. You just need to stop digging.”