Demon's Curse

by Alexa Egan

  “The sun’s down, Mac, and you haven’t changed. Does that mean—”

  Already Mac felt Bianca weakening, his weight bearing down on her. They’d never make it to freedom. Not like this. She hitched him farther onto her shoulder, her breath coming in quick pants.

  “The curse remains. It’s Morderoth, the night the goddess moon hides her face. Shifting’s impossible, so I suffer in the torture of between.”

  She reached for the doorhandle with her free hand, her other arm wrapped around his midsection. He could feel his broken ribs grating under her hand, blood trickling over his torn flesh and drenching her gown.

  The corridor beyond lay in darkness but for a single candle upon a table at the top of the landing. Mac focused on the flickering light to keep the anguish from overwhelming him.

  “Just a bit farther,” Bianca hissed under her breath as he flagged halfway down the corridor.

  He nodded now that speech took too much effort. Counted silently in his head Ten steps to the stairs. Another twenty to the first floor. Then another landing. Another set of stairs. An entrance hall. A street. Too far to travel and too many opportunities to be caught.

  By now he heard Renata and the Frenchman locked in heated conversation, perhaps an argument. As their voices rose up the stairs, Mac and Bianca caught a word here and there.

  “. . . Amhas-draoi should know . . . Scathach’s army . . . steps to eliminate . . .”

  “. . . will make him talk . . . others pay . . .”

  “. . . kill or be killed . . . them or us . . .”

  Mac’s sentiments almost exactly. Fey-blood and shapechanger. All Gray’s efforts would be for naught. There was too much hatred and too many years of suspicion to be overcome by a few idealists. War would come. To the death this time, for when the shielding power of the Palings was breached, no Imnada holding would be safe from Fey-blood attack.

  By now the pain had overtaken him until it filled every cell in his body, but with it came an unnatural calm and a purpose that sent him, not toward the second set of stairs and escape, but toward the closed door.

  Gray was right. The four of them had been offered a chance to break free of the hidebound traditions chaining them. Mac had been given love with a woman whose courage, loyalty, wit, and beauty constantly amazed him. He’d found a truth kept hidden from his kind for centuries—a truth that could spell their ultimate survival. But only if those who would begin a new Fealla Mhòr were stopped.

  “What are you doing?” Bianca said as he dragged himself free of her supporting arm to stand wobbly but upright.

  “Following my destiny, Bianca.”

  * * *

  She fought to hold him, to slow him. They were so close. The unguarded front door lay a mere twenty paces away. But whereas before he’d clung to her, hunched and battered, now he stood on his own. His blade-like gaze scythed the darkness of the corridor, his body as bristling with energy as a summer storm. She sensed a difference in him, a wildness, a power as raw as the surging of the ocean, as if he’d shed his humanity. This, then, was the otherworldly Imnada. This was the fantasy creature come to life.

  “You’ll be killed,” she pleaded, though she knew before she spoke that her words would be turned aside by the aura of invincibility he wore like impregnable chain mail. “You’ll be killed and I’ll . . . I’ll be left alone. I can’t go back, Mac. I’ve felt too much. You’ve made me feel too much.” She hated the whine underpinning her words, but the truth was indisputable.

  He brushed his lips over her brow, the girl’s magic mingling with the power of his kiss. “Then I’ll just have to win, won’t I?”

  Sliding the knife free of her grip, he flashed her a last killer smile before moving toward the murmur of conversation, then turned to face her at the very last moment. “Go, Bianca. This is not your fight. It never was.”

  Before she could argue, he placed a hand on the door, adjusted the grip on his knife, squared his bloodied shoulder, and slammed like an army unleashed into the room.

  * * *

  Bianca had always imagined battle to be a glorious affair of snapping banners and rattling drums. Brightly plumed officers upon prancing horses and heroic last stands amid the roar of cannon. A clash of chaotic, noisy thousands over scarred and sacred ground.

  This struggle was dirty and bloody and fierce—and oddly silent. No shouted commands or inspirational battle cries, just a street scrum over broken furniture and a bloodstained rug. The air crackled with the same summer heaviness of a coming storm, and a taste of metal coated the back of her mouth.

  Renata lay beside an overturned chair, a torn ribbon, jewel-bright gold against the ebony cascade of her hair. Her skirts sodden with blood but for a few inches of untouched hem that retained the delicate pale stitching of woodland flowers.

  Locked together, Mac and the Frenchman exchanged cruel and wicked blows, Mac already a mess of bruises, blood streaking his face and arms, slicking his bare back. Which blood was the Frenchman’s and which flowed from wounds already sustained by Mac in the torture of long hours? Bianca couldn’t tell.

  Unlike the fight at Adam’s house, there was no brutal joy or wild excitement. Mac fought with grim-faced purpose. Each ring of knife on knife made her stomach tremble. Each grunt and snarl and swiftly drawn breath threw her heart into her throat as she waited for the feint that would end it. The parry that would be turned to an attack. The point where Mac’s broken body could no longer endure.

  She scrambled in search of a weapon. A book? A paperweight? A broken china figurine? But they fought too close to allow for any interference. Any intrusion could be the second the Frenchman needed to press his advantage. Already Mac slipped, his knee giving out, his arm falling to his side, ripped open by a blade’s jagged edge.

  Transfixed, Bianca watched, hands gripping the doorframe. Eyes focused on the man she loved bleeding out before her.

  Pinned back, Alonzo reached into the hearth, dragging out a flaming log, striking Mac across his scarred back in a shower of embers and sparks that spun and fell to the carpet or flew upward onto the drapes.

  Mac reared back in a cry of rage, eyes wide, the irises vertical slits in a face that bore nothing of the human in its ruthless savagery or chilling brutality.

  “Alonzo!” The scream tore the air like the lash of a whip.

  Bianca’s head whipped around to stare at the risen shape of the woman, hair trailing wildly over her shoulders, a hand clutching a single glittering strand like thread or the silk from a spider.

  End it!

  The order slid into Bianca’s mind like a creeping tide, a whisper filling the cracks left by her doubt and her fear. End it now and she would no longer need to fear Mac and the predator that hovered at the back of his gaze, the monster that could rend her limb from limb if he chose or spill her blood with the ease of instinct.

  Smoke curled and thickened as sparks ignited and flames crept unguarded over the floor. Then Renata was at her side, pressing a pistol into her hand. This time Bianca would not miss. She would center the bullet in Mac’s chest. She would kill him, and he would look into her eyes and know she had won.

  No. Bianca shook her head, but the power of the voice would not be dislodged. It clung like the smoke that clawed at her lungs and stung her eyes.

  A stumbling, off-balance lurch, and Mac’s knife flashed in a quick thrust, punching deep into Alonzo’s gut.

  The man dropped to his knees on the blazing rug, his face drained of color, his hands grasping the handle of the blade lodged in his stomach as if uncertain how it had gotten there.

  End it now!

  The command tumbled and turned her like a stone upon a beach until Bianca saw no choice but to agree. To end the fight and destroy the creature that would destroy her if he had the chance.

  The pistol’s grip was warm against her palm, the heat of it comforting against the cold infecting her body, numbing her until she felt nothing, knew only the voice. Saw only the point she must aim for in
order to shatter Mac’s heart as he stood above his beaten enemy.

  She closed her eyes, hoping blindness would delay the moment she must choose, and that’s when she sensed it. A warmth beyond the heat of the pistol and the unrelenting pressure of Renata’s hand over her own. This was a winking, darting sliver of heat that uncurled from a spot in the middle of her forehead, stretching downward, wrapping her in a strange, dancing silver light.

  Kill him. For Father. For Alonzo.

  Like the blade impaling Alonzo, the force holding Bianca sank deep into her brain until she was left once more bereft of any but Renata’s cold, hollow echo beating against her mind like a hammer strike against an anvil.

  Kill him now.

  The wards crumbled. The protections disintegrated. Bianca must obey or be rent apart by the strength in the voice.

  She lifted the gun. Cocked the hammer.

  End it!

  Mac’s gaze met hers, his eyes a blaze of knowing. His body awash in blood and gore, humming with unspent violence. He lifted his hand as if in gratitude or farewell.

  Tears streaming down her face, Bianca turned and fired, the scream as the bullet struck tearing her apart.

  She had done as she was told.

  She had ended it.

  25

  A burning white light seared the backs of her eyelids, pulling Bianca from the tumult of the endless nightmare in which Mac’s broken body was carried away by a giant crow, disappearing behind a wall of silver blue flame.

  She opened her eyes on a choking gasp of pained breath to find herself in her Deane House bedchamber, tucked up under blankets and quilts, Sarah’s anxious face hovering above her.

  “Donas,” she ordered. “Go tell His Lordship she’s awake.”

  The young footman was alive? The last Bianca had seen him, he’d gone down like a felled tree beneath a well-swung cudgel. “What’s happened?” she croaked, her voice rusty, her throat sore. “How did I get here?”

  “What do you remember?”

  Bianca tried to concentrate, but memories slid away just as they swam to the surface. A pistol’s deafening report followed by the gagging stench of black powder. The slithering, clinging presence in her head cut off as Renata went down in a spray of blood and bone. And flames licking up walls, over fabric, devouring all in its path as the town house burned. “I killed her. I killed her to save Mac.”

  A line creased Sarah’s brow, her mouth thinning. “Rest now, darling.”

  Bianca struggled to sit up, but the blankets held her captive, the weight of them pinning her down. “Where is he? He should be here. Tell me where Mac is.”

  “Careful. You’ve been unconscious for a week. We thought we’d lost you.”

  Why was Sarah evading her questions? Why couldn’t she remember anything beyond Renata’s death? Why unless . . .

  The giant crow. The wall of flame. It hadn’t been a dream. She’d killed Renata, but it hadn’t been enough. It hadn’t been in time. Mac was dead anyway. She’d lost him.

  She closed her eyes, the grief and ache in her chest almost unbearable.

  A draft of cool air hit her face as someone entered the room. She opened her eyes, hoping for a miracle; but it was Sebastian, whose solemn visage only cemented the pain in her heart.

  “She’s asking for Flannery,” Sarah murmured, rising to greet her husband. A touch. A shared look. All things Bianca would never know. Would never experience. This was why she’d armored herself. To keep from feeling this small and alone and frightened again.

  “What have you told her?” Sebastian asked.

  “Nothing yet. Perhaps it would be best coming from you.”

  He took the seat beside Bianca’s bed that Sarah had vacated, his features drawn into austere lines, his golden eyes dimmed.

  “Mac wouldn’t leave when he had the chance. He wanted to end the threat to the Imnada. He called it his destiny,” Bianca said, blinking to hold back her tears.

  “I wish I could say he’d succeeded, but despite Renata Froissart’s death, events have moved beyond any hope of containment. I fear the secret of the Imnada is a secret no longer. What happens now is anyone’s guess.”

  “So Mac died for nothing.”

  “Died? I think”—he shot Sarah an accusatory look—“there’s been some confusion. Flannery’s not dead, Bianca.”

  She sat up among her pillows despite the sudden whirling of the room and spinning of her stomach. “What? Where is he?”

  “We don’t know. Flannery delivered you to us that night. We tried to convince him to stay, at least until we could have him seen by a surgeon, but he resisted. By then I believe instinct had taken over. He wasn’t solely Captain Flannery. Not even solely human. And a house of Fey-bloods, even those who meant him no harm, overloaded his every animal sense of survival. He fled. Disappeared completely, and we had no word for five days.”

  “Five days when we despaired of you as well,” Sarah interrupted.

  “We sought news of him but heard nothing until a letter arrived this morning. Flannery is alive, though where he is or what he does is not written.”

  “He didn’t even wait until you woke or even looked at you once you were taken from his arms. I’m sorry, sweeting,” Sarah said, her indignation toward Mac evident in her voice.

  “Don’t be. He’s still alive. That’s all that matters.”

  “But he abandoned you. He left you without a farewell. No word. No nothing. All as if you were naught more than passing acquaintances.” Sarah’s anger for Bianca’s sake touched her deeply. She’d always taken for granted Sarah’s breezy charm and dramatic flair. Only lately had she found that the new Countess of Deane possessed hidden strengths and unflagging loyalty. “I thought for certain he loved you. I’m not usually wrong about such things.”

  “He’s doing what he must.”

  The gesture amid the flames of the town house. The words they’d spoken. Bianca might wish it had ended differently, but she understood Mac’s leaving. Trust me, he’d said. That was what she would do. Trust that he would return. Trust that he would succeed.

  Trust that he loved her.

  * * *

  With his hand on the knife at his waist, Mac gazed upon the floor of rose-and-gold marble, the milk-white walls stretching stories above him into an enormous vaulted ceiling painted in dazzling frescoes he could only catch glimpses of in the flickering torchlight. Ahead of him four corridors stretched away into infinity, all of it mirroring his dream, down to the golden light spilling from some unseen source and the sound of burbling water as if a fountain were close by.

  The magic of the place carried the raw, elemental power of the true Fey. It beat against his skull like a sword striking a shield, sank through his healing flesh into his blood like frozen needles through his veins.

  He swung around, but where the apothecary shop’s peeling door had been, a row of tall, arched windows now stood. Draped in scarlet velvet tasseled with silver cords, they looked out upon fields of flowers, a haze of mountains on the far horizon.

  No way but forward. No idea why he’d been summoned here.

  “Hello!” he called out, his voice bouncing back to him in a ripple of echoes from each of the branching corridors.

  Ticklish misgivings slid coldly across his shoulders, lifting the hairs at the back of his neck. Why would creatures as elusive and indifferent as the Fey bother with him? He’d have to tread very carefully if he didn’t want to end up a pawn in their schemes.

  “Ringrose! Are you there?”

  “Who is it?” a familiar voice creaked from down the left-hand corridor. “We don’t want any. Go away.”

  “It’s Cormac Cúchulainn. An Imnada of the five clans!” Mac shouted in answer.

  A faint circle of light bobbed closer as someone approached. “The five clans . . . the five clans . . . almost fifteen hundred years they fall silent with nary a peep, and in the space of six months I can’t turn around without falling over them.”

  The flick
ering light revealed itself to be a lamp Ringrose carried high above his head, but it was the girl by his side who drew all Mac’s attention. The girl from his fevered dreams. The same short, dark curls. The same trailing cloak of crow feathers over skin as pale as bone.

  “He’s the look of the clans about him, eh, Badb?” Ringrose said. “Don’t know what it is, but I can tell an Imnada from a league away. Two, if I’m wearing my spectacles. So you survived, did you? Happy to hear it, though you can tell that woman of yours she needs to keep her hands to herself. Ungrateful filly.” Ringrose rubbed his jaw.

  “I know why you’re here.” The girl stepped forward, her smile welcoming as she reached on tiptoe to put a finger to Mac’s forehead. “You’re here for the death-bringer. You want to know how to harness its power without losing yourself to death and Annwn’s dark paths forever.”

  Mac rubbed at the spot, prickling heat bursting behind his eyes. “Who are you? What is this place?”

  The cloak’s glossy feathers ruffled with a light whisper as the girl shrugged. “Does it matter? The important thing is that we have what you seek: the answer to your questions.” The girl grinned and grabbed his hand. “Come this way and all will be explained.”

  Mac dragged his hand free. “Why should I believe you or accept your help? When have the Fey ever offered assistance without wanting something in return?”

  No longer smiling, the girl’s lower lip jutted out in a childlike pout.

  “I told you he wouldn’t be a pushover like the last one,” Ringrose snipped. “He’s savvy. Had to be to survive this long.”

  “We helped free your woman from Madame Froissart. We offered our protections to her. Now we seek to hand you your greatest desire. And you still question us?”

  “I don’t question your generosity or your courage. Only your motives.”

  “I told you,” Ringrose asserted. “Too clever by half.”

  “Oh, hush, Bartholomew.” The girl waved him off like a pesky insect. “See here, son of the Imnada. We held up our end of the bargain. We told him how to unravel the dark spells binding him. We assisted in gathering what he needed. We even offered up the secret to surviving the death-bringer’s influence. Now he wanders the paths of the dead. Unable to do as he promised. Unable to repay us for our kindnesses.”