Shadow's Curse

by Alexa Egan

He grinned. “I apologize, my lady. I came straight from ‘dress like your favorite dustman’ night at my club. Silly, but then, you know what revels go on at these places. Bad as the old school days.”

  “Yes, of course,” she answered smoothly, her wary expression growing more than appreciative as her gaze leveled off somewhere south of his waist. “If only our local dustman had your masculine attributes, sir,” she purred.

  Out of the corner of his eye, David saw Corey’s men approach, though the press of Mayfair’s finest held them back from making a full frontal assault. Beskin, on the other hand, crossed the street like a hound on the scent, his sneer positively fiendish. David doubted a minor obstacle like a mob of mere humans would stymie him for long.

  “Yes, well, I’d love to chat, but is your daughter within?” He edged Callista and himself around Lady Fowler and ever closer to the door. “Such a sweet girl. Full of . . . verve.”

  “Really? I don’t remember your ever noticing Harriet. She’s just inside by the—”

  “No worries. I’ll find her myself.” David made a final storming of the breach, dashing past the proud mother and into the entry hall.

  “What are you doing?” Callista hissed.

  “Saving our asses,” David answered. “No one will risk barging into the Fowlers’ drawing room after us.”

  “We barged in.”

  “But we—or at least I—was invited. That’s different.”

  “Fine. So, we’re in. How do you propose we get out?”

  “Just stay close, follow my lead, and try not to draw attention to yourself.”

  Callista pinched her lips together. “A bit late for that advice, wouldn’t you say—Mr. St. Leger?”

  He acknowledged the hit with a smile and took her hand. Together they shoved through a gaggle of girls in virginal white hovering by the stairs, a cluster of rowdy young men by the punch table, and a row of stern matrons overseeing the couples on the dance floor like high court judges. Most were too caught up in their own amusements to notice an oddly dressed couple scurrying through the crush. And the few who recognized David and raised a voice in friendly greeting were left behind with a tossed grin and a wink. Luckily, Callista didn’t seem to notice the appreciative nods or knowing nudges.

  “We’re almost there,” David encouraged. “Freedom is through those terrace doors and across the garden to the mews beyond.”

  “Then what?”

  “Damned if I know.”

  “Oh, Mr. St. Leger!” toodled Lady Fowler above the din. “We need to speak.”

  That was one raised voice that would not be so easily fobbed off.

  “Bugger all. Quick. In here.” David dragged Callista through the closest curtained archway into a tiny alcove full to the brim with wraps, coats, hats, umbrellas, and cloaks. Trapped. No other way out. They were pressed together on the six inches of floor space not taken up with cast-off outerwear, Callista’s body snug against his.

  “Is this supposed to be better?” she asked, her breath whispering against his throat.

  “Much,” he answered as her warmth, combined with the tingle of Fey-blood magic, shivered over his skin.

  “Mr. St. Leger? I have some lovely etchings I want to show you,” Lady Fowler’s voice sounded from just outside their refuge, a slight predatory edge coloring her tone. “I think you’ll find them exquisite.”

  “Etchings?” Miss Hawthorne scoffed. “Really?”

  A ringed hand gripped the curtain to draw it aside.

  Frantic, out of ideas, and because, damn it, this whole horrible mess could be laid squarely at Callista Hawthorne’s door, David kissed her—again.

  * * *

  No sooner had David’s lips touched hers than Callista’s spine stiffened with instinctual fear and her stomach clenched in knots. No, not David. His name was Mr. St. Leger. A very proper and formal address to stop the wild quivering up her spine.

  Follow my lead.

  The words flickered to life in her mind, but so, too, did the deep velvet of his voice, roguish amusement coloring even his mental touch.

  He slid an arm around her resisting body, crushing her against him just as Lady Fowler dragged the curtain back. Light blazed into every corner of the dim cloakroom, and Callista quickly shut her eyes, trying to look like a woman enjoying the attentions of a man.

  Trouble was, she didn’t know what that looked like. She placed a tentative hand upon his waist, but that seemed so intimate somehow. So possessive. Not that lips were less intimate, but somehow offering him encouragement made it real and not the act it was.

  “Oh!” Lady Fowler exclaimed waspishly. “Second cousin indeed.”

  This was where St. Leger would break away to offer his apologies or make some flippant joke to turn the woman’s wrath aside. Callista would be left to gather her damaged pride and her shattered nerves.

  Instead, his hold on her tightened, his free hand cupping her cheek to tip her face up to his, the kiss spinning deeper.

  Relax, Fey-blood.

  Relax? She was trapped against his chest, the heat off his body singeing her insides as his lips moved warm and soft against hers. Yet her shoulders did seem to be inching down from around her ears with every second they remained locked together, and that strange influenza-like fluttering had begun again in her stomach. She didn’t seem able to help herself. It was as if her body had mutinied. It knew what it wanted, and what it wanted was more of this delicious heat worming its way through her until even her toes curled with delight.

  She found herself answering the slow movement of his mouth, and her hand moved from his waist up his ribs to his shoulder and then to the stubbled strength of his jaw. She’d never felt a man’s face before. It was so different from a woman’s. All hard bony angles and jumping tension.

  Through the roaring in her ears, she heard Lady Fowler’s snappish voice turn suddenly muted. In the dim recesses of her captive brain, she knew the curtain had dropped back in place, and the two of them were once more alone, the immediate danger passed. But the kiss didn’t stop. David cupped her face gently in both his hands as she melted into him, her knees now dangerously weak, her heart drumming. His tongue slid along the seam of her lips, and she felt herself unconsciously opening to him; letting his tongue dip within, slide against hers in a teasing, tasting dance she found herself answering. Her breasts tightened as the fluttering in her stomach sank between her legs, and she tilted her head back as his kiss deepened and grew more powerful, almost hungry. The hand that had caressed her cheek dropped to trace the length of her throat, glide along the collar of her gown, brush her painfully sensitive nipples through the serviceable fabric.

  This was nothing like the rushed groping of the fair men she’d spent years dodging. Nor was it the crude ugly fury of Corey. This was a shimmering tingling buzz of anticipation. This was light and fire and joy and laughter. As natural as breathing.

  “Beautiful Callista. Theosai nostimmeth,” he murmured as his kissed moved to her cheeks, her eyelids, behind her ears.

  “David . . .” Her voice barely more than a gasped breath.

  Her grip on the bag unclenched. It slithered off her shoulder toward the floor, and before her mind even registered what her body was doing, her eyes flew open and she jerked loose of his embrace. The bag hit the floor with a startling clanking thud.

  And the moment ended.

  * * *

  “I’m sorry. I don’t . . . that is . . . I never . . .” She inhaled a shuddery breath, confusion stammering her words.

  David knew exactly how she felt because he felt the same. Off-balance. Bewildered. His mind topsy-turvy. He chalked up his reaction to the continued debilitating effect of the silver. Heart palpitations, shaky-kneed weakness. That had to be the reason. He’d kissed hundreds of women and never experienced these odd, yet not completely unpleasant, sensations before.

  He opened his mouth to confess his confusion when she glanced up at him through the frame of her lashes. Her great dark eyes swam
black as sin, an infinite emptiness without light or warmth. He tried to look away, but her gaze trapped and held him fast, visions flashing across his mind. He smelled the tang of pine, the crisp clean of new snow, and the sharp odor of rabbit as he hunted in the form of his aspect, his pack lifting their voices in unison with him as they ran the deep mountain trails. He tasted blood on his muzzle and the crunch of bones between his teeth, and later took his pleasure with a lithe young female, both as wolf and then again as man, beneath the bright round moon of Silmith. He felt silver burning like acid against his bare skin and the Ossine’s flames searing his clan mark from his back with the stink of charred flesh. He heard himself screaming as if he were being cleaved in two before his agonized shouts died away to slow gulping moans, whispered pleas for mercy, and finally begging for death.

  Darkness and a frozen, knifing cold pierced every part of David as he was buried beneath an avalanche of happiness and heartbreak. On and on it went, tumbling him breathless, lifting him high only to crush him with a mountain’s weight of raw emotion. He felt the earth-shattering passion of a marriage bed, moonlight gleaming in a pair of dark eyes as his bride took him inside her and he marked her forever as his chosen mate. He tasted the salt of her skin and the wine upon her tongue and the sweet lush heat of her woman’s place as she gasped her release. He smelled the powdery fresh scent of a child’s hair and the starch of clean linen as he held the precious bundle in his arms. He heard the cries of a new mother and the squall of an angry infant and the soft voice of a young girl calling for her father to read her a bedtime story and chase away the bogeymen.

  A tremor racked his body, and he gritted his teeth until the battering storm of sensation passed. Not memories this time; not shades pulled from his past. He would call them dreams, but somehow he knew better. They held too much power, buried themselves too deep into his brain. This was Fey-blood magic at its most potent and most prophetic. But did Callista realize what she’d done? What he’d seen?

  He squeezed his eyes shut, but not before a final horrible image passed like a shadow over his heart. “David?” A hand touched him, heat where there had been only cold. It filled the emptiness, tore through the dark like a blade through a curtain.

  He opened his eyes to see Callista watching him carefully, worry in her gaze, but nothing else. Her pulse beat wildly in her throat and her cheeks were flushed pink.

  “Did I do it right?” she asked. “Do you think we convinced her?” Her head tilted like a bird’s as she awaited his answer. Nothing but innocence in her expression. She was either unaware of what he’d seen or a damned good actress.

  He shoved the darkness away and forced a weak smile. “Covent Garden cyprians couldn’t have been more convincing.”

  A line appeared between her brows. “Is that supposed to make me proud?”

  “Only if you appreciate what skilled professionals they are.”

  She gave a tiny shake of her head, almost but not quite reaching for him. He wouldn’t have even noticed the slight movement except they were still crushed against each other amid the mountain of discarded coats. She offered him a quick smile, here and gone between one breath and the next. “I’ll assume you know all too well, so I shall take it as another compliment.”

  She looked as if she wanted to continue the conversation, but he forestalled her by taking her arm and leading her back into the crowded corridor. The last thing he wanted to do while he remained off-kilter and dazed was to talk. Who knew what foolishness he might utter?

  By now the guests had thickened to an outright crush. None would notice two more amid the cacophonic mob of rich and titled packed into every square inch of breathing room. Holding his head above the swarm and gripping Callista’s hand in his, David bulled his way through to the French doors fronting the gardens, an instance where his sheer mass was an advantage.

  The terrace was nearly deserted. Fairy lanterns strung between the trees glimmered down on only a few strolling couples. The press of humanity had not yet reached this far.

  “We’re almost there. The mews is through that gate. We can be away before our pursuers realize what’s happened.”

  They crossed the lawn to the back wall in silence. David shoved hard on the gate, hinges giving way with a spine-sizzling rusty screech. Then they were through, lights and laughter left behind as they made their way through the heavy gloom of the narrow mews.

  “You call yourself a soldier, St. Leger? My granny could foil a scent better than you.” Eudo Beskin’s voice oozed like slime as he stepped out from the shadow of the stables.

  Once the Ossine discovered that David was living under the shadow of a Fey-blood’s curse, his sentence of exile had been returned quick as a headsman’s ax. If only the punishment had been so clean and swift. Instead, it had been a drawn-out torture by inches meted out by the enforcer now standing a few feet away, eyes glowing in his pale face. David had spent the past two years dreaming of the day he would exact ruthless vengeance on the man who’d stripped him of his clan mark and then his dignity; who’d stolen his life but never once offered him the death he craved.

  Here was his chance and yet fear stole his breath and his will. Faced with the moment of reckoning, he couldn’t move, his brain thick with fog. Despite all his preparations, he froze, drowning beneath a flood of paralyzing memories no amount of whisky had been able to obliterate.

  “Caught in the act with a pretty little Fey-blood whore,” Beskin sneered, his eyes raking Callista with one disparaging glance. “Do you whisper Imnada secrets in her ear while you’re stuffing her? Does she pretend to enjoy it as she wheedles information out of you?”

  Beskin drew his sword from a heavy leather sheath. The moon’s faint shine glinted down the length of the blade.

  Silver.

  No wonder David wanted to be sick.

  Trained over a lifetime of service to withstand its effects, all enforcers carried such weaponry as part of their arsenal, though they rarely resorted to it. Silver didn’t affect humans or Fey-bloods, the Imnada’s normal enemies. It was a dangerous sign of the times that Beskin carried such a sword. More so, that he seemed so comfortable attacking one of his own.

  “Hand over the book, St. Leger, and I might spare the Fey-blood’s life,” Beskin said in a smooth, cold voice. “Of course, I might have to remove her tongue first. Can’t have her blabbing about our little encounter to her Other friends, can I?”

  “David, what’s happening?” Callista’s frightened voice finally jarred him free of his demons.

  “What are you talking about?” he asked. “What book?”

  “Don’t play the fool with me,” Beskin snarled. “Kineally stole it. Sir Dromon and the Ossine want it back.”

  Immediately, David began to regroup. Plan. Scheme. Plot. He was a soldier, damn it. Beskin might hold all the cards—and a silver sword—but there was no fucking chance David would lie down and make it easy. He might play the fool these days, but he still knew how to outsmart an enemy.

  He snatched up a discarded shovel and the lid from an empty grain bin. Hardly knightly sword and shield, but in a pinch, they’d do. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I don’t have a book, though if I did, I sure as hell wouldn’t give it to you.”

  “Maybe not voluntarily.” Beskin’s slash of a smile widened, fangs extended and gleaming like knives. “But by the time I’m finished with you, you’ll be begging to tell me where the book is, along with the names of your dirty traitor friends. It will all come spilling out of you along with your bloody entrails.”

  David swallowed down the sour bile clawing its way up his throat. Slammed his mind against the images of his vicious punishment at the hands of this man ready to stun him into frozen panic once more if he let them.

  “Tough talk from a coward whose opponents are usually chained and helpless,” he snarled.

  Beskin lunged, his sword striking David’s makeshift shield. Again the enforcer thrust and again David countered. Attack and parry ov
er and over, David giving ground as he struggled to keep the silver blade at bay. As weak as he was, it wouldn’t take but a scratch to bring him down. The sword flashed, Beskin bringing it up and under David’s guard. He threw up his shovel handle in a last-ditch effort to keep the blade from taking him in the ribs. But Beskin’s strength and the force of his blow proved too much. The handle splintered, the flimsy wood unable to withstand a determined effort to crush it. David threw himself sideways to escape the sweeping follow-through edge of the silver blade from opening his unprotected gut.

  “Give me the damn book!” Beskin snarled.

  “Fuck you!” David replied through a clenched jaw. His muscles screamed in protest. Sweat rolled down his face, damped his shirt to his back. He rolled up and onto his feet, but he was trapped. There was nowhere to escape and no weapon at hand, not even a stray piece of planking.

  Beskin closed in, triumph glittering in his eyes. “Tell Kineally I said hello when you see him in hell.”

  “Leave him alone!” The satchel came from nowhere and struck Beskin square on the side of the head. The man crumpled dazed to his knees, his sword clanging to the cobbles.

  David immediately grabbed it up, his hand falling easily into the grip’s well-worn grooves. He stood over the enforcer, fury and vengeance eating through him. Hazing his vision. Vising his chest. His lips pulled back in a low snarl from deep in his chest, his own fangs extended, the beast prowling close to the surface. “Tell Kineally yourself, you fucking bastard.”

  Pounding boots rang on the cobbles. Raised voices bounced off the close walls of the narrow mews. “There they are!”

  “Stop! Corey wants you!”

  David couldn’t fight. He was too weak. Too slow.

  With a muttered oath, he tossed the sword away, shot a last rage-filled glance at Beskin, and, grasping Callista’s hand, fled into the dark.

  5

  Mac wasn’t at home. Of all the possibilities David had envisioned, that one hadn’t even entered his mind. Mac was always at home. The man barely budged from his hearth these days. He and Bianca had been married for almost six months, and though David assumed the novelty of a bride would have worn off by now, Mac seemed content never to leave the side of his new wife unless absolutely necessary. Now that she was breeding, he was practically glued there.