Master of Shadows

by Angela Knight

  Tristan stood with the other Knights of the Round Table to the right of the bier, an honor guard in full armor, swords at their sides. The men talked among themselves in low voices, heads bent together, expressions solemn.

  Carefully managing her long silk gown with the practiced ease of centuries, Belle made her way through the crowd to join Guinevere and Morgana, both grimly beautiful in black velvet trimmed in pearls.

  “I hate funerals,” Gwen murmured. “At least mortal deaths are usually from old age. We never get anything but combat fatalities and murders.”

  “It doesn’t help that this whole situation was a clusterfuck from first to last,” Morgana growled. “First the mess with the werewolves, then this poor child’s death. That magic bite of theirs is a development I could have done without.”

  “We’ll find a solution. We always do.” Guinevere gave Belle a wicked smile obviously designed to lighten the mood. “So, how’s it going with Tristan?”

  “Oh, fine. He . . .”

  “You slept with Tristan?” They stared at her, eyes wide and incredulous. Belle cursed silently. The problem with being friends for a millennium was that your confidantes became all but telepathic. They could read every eye flicker and lip twitch, then decipher them in a blink.

  “Why?” Gwen demanded.

  There was no point in denying it. She gestured at Tristan. “Oh, come on. Look at him.”

  “Yes,” Morgana protested, “but he’s a dick.”

  “He also has a dick.” Belle suspected her own smile was feline. “And it’s . . .”

  “I do not want to know about Tristan’s dick.” Gwen spread her hands as if to ward off any other information.

  “You know it’s a bad idea to get involved with a fellow agent.”

  “I get involved with agents all the time, Morgana.”

  “Recruits, not agents. This is different and you know it. This is Tristan.”

  “No, it’s sex. Sex with somebody I do not have to worry about killing.”

  “Avalon is full of men you don’t have to kill. Only one of them is Tristan.”

  “But Tristan is . . .”

  “Shush,” Gwen said. “Here comes the chorus.”

  The double line of twenty white-garbed Magekind filed into the square and moved into place beside the bier, opposite the honor guard. Utter silence fell, almost vibrating with anticipation. Avalon’s City Chorus always gave gorgeous performances.

  The choir began to sing an ancient Celtic dirge of loss and grieving, the women’s voices soaring high, the men’s a deeper, rolling rumble that made the old words echo across the city. As they sang to the infinite darkness overhead, the light of the moon poured down over Cherise’s still form, surrounded by masses of flowers like sweet-smelling clouds.

  The priest spoke next, since Cherise had been Catholic. Father John de Clairvaux had been a Templar knight before becoming a vampire, and now he served the spiritual needs of Avalon’s many Catholics. He had a fine, deep voice, and he spoke with an elegant simplicity and a quiet faith. There was genuine grief in his voice when he spoke of his young parishioner.

  Next her friends moved to stand before the bier, one by one, telling the story of the young Maja who had been with the Magekind such a short time.

  When Davon started forward, Belle tensed. “Oh, great.”

  “What?” Gwen whispered.

  “This is not good.”

  Davon looked haggard, as if he’d lost weight just in the three days since his partner’s death. “Cherise was more than my partner,” he said, his hoarse voice ragged. “We only went on two missions together, and one of them we shouldn’t have been on anyway. Yet in that short time, she demonstrated her love of duty. She believed in the importance of Merlin’s Great Mission to serve and protect mankind. Our oath wasn’t just words to her. They were etched on her bones and written in her blood. And when a werewolf charged me”—Here his voice broke—“it didn’t matter to her that he was seven feet tall and resistant to her only weapon, her magic. She stepped in his way and met his charge. And he bit her.” A tear rolled down his cheek. He made no sound as he cried, made no move to wipe it away. “She died for me because that’s how she lived. And there’s no way I can repay her.”

  Morgana frowned as Davon walked away from the bier. “That one needs help.”

  “I’ve sent the healer to him,” Belle whispered. “He refused care.”

  “Yes, well, he won’t be able to turn her away if Arthur sends her. I’ll see to it.”

  “Thank you.”

  She only grunted in response, but Belle wasn’t fooled. Most thought her friend a cold-blooded bitch, but Morgana had a warm core of genuine compassion. True, it was locked under a mile of icy calculation, but it was still there.

  Arthur stepped forward. “Once again, my friends, we face an enemy who has claimed the life of one of our own. Warlock and his agents have killed thirteen innocents, both Latent and mortal. Now he has used one of us to kill an innocent, preying on my agents’ loyalty and sense of duty to do so. He’s trying to start a war because he imagines he can destroy us. He is not the first to make that assumption, and he won’t be the last. We have survived fifteen centuries of war, and we are not so easy to kill. He will pay for his crimes. This I so swear.” Arthur drew Excalibur, the big blade ringing bell-like as it slid from his scabbard.

  As one, his Round Table knights drew their weapons. Tristan’s deep voice led the chorus. “This we so swear.”

  All the other vampires followed suit, thrusting their blades heavenward. “We so swear.”

  Morgana stepped forward. “The Majae join this oath as we send our sister home.”

  “We so swear,” Belle said, her voice rising with the other Majae as she called her magic. The power burst from her hands, joining with the blazing magic the others summoned to blast into the flower-piled bier.

  The bier flared white, glowing brighter and brighter until Belle wanted to shield her tearing eyes. Instead she raised her arms in concert with her fellow witches, sending the great globe of energy shooting skyward. It detonated, raining sparks of golden magic over the empty space where Cherise’s body had lain. The Maja, her bier and her flowers had vanished, consumed by the raw magic of the spell.

  She’d become part of the Mageverse again, returned to the source of all magic.

  Darkness fell, a moment of dazzled blackness after the detonation. Belle sighed. It could just as easily have been her or Tristan on that bier. And one day it would be.

  The Magekind might not age, but they weren’t truly immortal.

  Not in this business.

  The Magekind started making their way to the Great Hall, where Cherise’s memorial feast was being held. Cooking was considered an art form among the Majae, who actively competed to impress one another. Belle had worked all day on her offerings: roast pheasant with black truffles—she’d used her magic ruthlessly to obtain enough pheasant and truffles to produce the dish in sufficient quantity—and Daube de Boeuf Provencal, a complex beef stew she’d marinated for eighteen hours. She was looking forward to the reaction.

  Tristan appeared beside her with astonishing silence for a big man dressed in armor. He opened his mouth, and she absently cast a spell before he could even voice the request. His mail disappeared back to his quarters, replaced by breeches, tooled black knee boots, a white shirt with flowing sleeves, and a black velvet doublet embroidered with Celtic designs in silver thread. A cape draped over one shoulder and under the opposite arm, fastened with a silver chain and a ruby clasp. He glanced down at himself, taking in the somber elegance of his clothing. “Very nice. Thank you.”

  The genuine pleasure in his voice gave her a warm little glow, and Belle smiled at him. She suspected her expression was a touch sappy, but she couldn’t seem to help herself. To make up for it, she shrugged. “Well, you’re a Knight of the Round Table. I can’t dress you like a peasant. The other witches would talk.”

  A smile teased up the corner of
his tempting mouth. “Can’t have that, can we?” She took his offered arm and they started toward the Great Hall.

  A few feet behind them, Arthur, Guinevere, and Morgana strolled along together. He was still brooding about the girl they’d just committed to the light when Morgana said, “Look at those two. ‘Just sex’ my pert little ass.”

  “Who?” Arthur asked. The two witches always seemed to pick up on whatever was going on with his men long before he did.

  “Tristan and Belle,” Gwen replied, nodding toward the couple walking along arm in arm, blond heads together. “She said they’re ‘just’ having sex. Does that look like ‘just sex’ to you?”

  Now that they’d brought it to his attention, he could see the tenderness in Tristan’s hold on Belle’s hand and the flirtatious way she looked up at him with a sassy little tilt to her head.

  “Oh, shit,” Arthur growled. “She’s going to chew him up and spit him out.”

  “Who, Tristan?” Gwen stared at him. “I don’t think so.”

  “It’s more likely that ice-cold fucker will stomp her heart into pāté the way he does every other female he beds,” Morgana growled.

  “Oh, come on,” Arthur protested. “This is Belle Coeur. Do you have any idea of how many male hearts she’s ground into meatloaf?”

  “That’s different,” Gwen said. “Those are the recruits. They’re supposed to fall a little in love with her. She never lets it get too serious.”

  “Exactly. Tristan’s too vulnerable for that shit.”

  “Tristan? Vulnerable?” Morgana hooted. “He’s got his heart locked behind six feet of glacial ice. She’ll never touch him. Meanwhile, she’ll fall for him and he’ll chew right through her. It’ll be the Titanic all over again.”

  “Morgana, you don’t know what the hell you’re talking about. That wife of his left a hole in Tristan’s soul that’s never healed. If Belle’s not careful, she’ll crack him wide.” Arthur glowered, staring as his friend’s back. “And I don’t want to have to put my best knight back together with spit and Super Glue.”

  “Yes, well, I think it’s more likely that Belle will be the one hurt,” Morgana said grimly. “And I’m not going to just stand back and watch.”

  Arthur was too busy making his own plans to be suitably alarmed at her tone.

  Cherise’s memorial feast was held in Avalon’s Great Keep, a five-story granite castle surrounded by topiary knights and ladies. Inside the hall, banners from ancient battles hung from the vaulted ceiling, their colors as bright as the day they were captured thanks to the spells that preserved them. The stone walls were decorated with thousands of swords, pikes, and maces of all sorts, arranged in intricate geometric patterns that shone with a muted metallic gleam.

  In contrast to all that cheerful barbarism, the Majae had decorated the hall with flowers and candles anywhere they found a flat surface to put them on. Several easels held Cherise’s formal portrait, framed in heavy gold and wreathed in white roses. She looked heartbreakingly young, her smile bright with optimism. It made Belle’s chest ache to look at her.

  Gone now. Gone like so many others.

  A string quartet played in one alcove of the Great Hall, magically amplified to fill the room. That was saying something, considering the sheer size of the space and the murmur of conversation from all the people that filled it.

  The Magekind always went all out for memorial feasts.

  Tables swathed in linen creaked under the weight of countless steaming dishes on sterling silver serving platters. Artful flower arrangements surrounded candles that cast a mellow glow over the food. The Majae strolled up and down along the tables as they chose whatever delicacies they planned to enjoy. A particularly large group swarmed around the dishes Belle had prepared. Smiling slightly, she wandered closer to the table, the better to enjoy the murmurs of praise and muffled sensual groans.

  “Oh, God,” Caroline moaned as she forked up a bite of pheasant and rolled her eyes in mock ecstasy. Her husband, Galahad, watched her indulgently. “I hate you. I really do. Every man in Avalon is in love with you, and you cook like a goddess. It’s not fair. Aren’t you ashamed, you greedy bitch?”

  “Ummm.” Belle pretended to consider the question. “Nope. Nope, really not ashamed at all.” Then she smiled. “But it’s sweet of you to suggest I might be.”

  “Excuse me,” Caroline sighed, “I need to be alone with my pheasant.” She wandered off, carrying her loaded plate across the shining checkerboard marble floor.

  “I think I’m jealous.” Galahad grinned at Belle. “I’d better go make sure she doesn’t eat herself into a coma.”

  Though the group around the food tables was mostly female, the bar served both sexes. Satisfied at the reception her dishes had received, Belle headed in that direction, hoping to find Tristan and escape back home. She was in the mood for a bubble bath in her huge sunken tub.

  With company.

  “Belle?” Arthur spoke from her shoulder.

  She turned around, but her smile faded as she noted the line bisecting the royal brow and the muscle flexing in his jaw. Oh, God, what did I do to piss him off? Aloud, she managed a more politic “Yes, my liege?”

  “I would like you to take a little more care with my knight,” he said in that low, careful tone that told her he was both furious and worried. Like everyone else that spent any time at all in Arthur’s immediate presence, Belle had learned to read the finely calibrated signs of his temper.

  “Your knight?” She stared at him warily. “You mean Tristan?”

  “Yes, Tristan.” There was an edge to the words now. “I know it will come as a surprise to you, but he is more vulnerable than he seems. Isolde’s betrayal wounded him deeply.”

  “That was fifteen hundred years ago.” Her temper started to get the better of her. Arthur might be the Liege of the Magi, but that didn’t give him a right to butt into her love life. “Tristan doesn’t know you’re talking to me about this, does he?”

  “No, and I would take it as a great favor if you did not tell him.”

  Oh, boy. When Arthur got all formal and precise like that, he was dead serious. You didn’t fuck with him in such a mood. You could find yourself missing favored body parts. Figuratively, if not literally.

  “And with some wounds, it doesn’t matter how long ago they were inflicted,” Arthur continued. “Ask any amputee.”

  Okaaaaay. “So what, exactly, do you want me to do? Or not do?”

  “Don’t make him fall in love with you.”

  Belle opened her mouth, and he cut her off with an impatient gesture. “You know very well what I’m talking about. You make all of them fall in love with you—every one of your boys.”

  “They’re boys. He’s Tristan.”

  “Exactly,” Arthur snapped. “He’s also my good right arm, as well as my dearest friend. Do not play your usual games with him, Belle Coeur. I won’t appreciate it.”

  He turned and stalked off, his cape flaring wide at his heels.

  “Well, merde,” Belle said.

  EIGHT

  The slug of Irish whiskey burned all the way down Tristan’s throat. He sighed in pleasure. Man cannot live on blood alone. That’s why God made booze.

  “Why, hello there, Tristan.”

  Tristan turned at the seductive purr, brows lifting as he took in its source.

  Sabryn Sans Merci wore a black velvet gown that seemed to have been shrink-wrapped over generous curves. Some skillful spell lifted her truly outstanding breasts and pressed them together like two scoops of vanilla ice cream in a very decadent sundae. The soft red shimmer of her hair was piled high on her head, a few curls cascading artfully down around her long neck. It was an arrangement designed to drive any vampire into a frenzy of lust.

  Her eyes glittered, catlike and dark green above full lips slicked with something bronze and shimmering. She was flamboyantly beautiful, every line of her face in perfect relation to every other, as though God had mathematically plotted her
features. Like Belle, she was a High Court seducer. Unlike Belle, she had a tendency to leave wreckage in her wake.

  She spoke in a throaty cat’s purr. “Morgana tells me you’re looking for a partner.”

  “Morgana tells you wrong.” Tristan turned his back, having neither time nor patience for whatever game Sabryn was playing. He took another sip of his whiskey and started off through the crowd to look for Belle. Sabryn’s high heels clicked after him, determination in every tap.

  Two months ago, he’d have happily flirted with Sabryn in hopes of getting her into bed. She was reputed to be very good there, with an intriguing edge of kink. Belle, for all her impressive erotic skills, had no apparent interest in kink whatsoever.

  Tristan was a bit surprised to find himself not in the least intrigued by Sabryn’s wicked green eyes and whatever outré thought processes went on behind them. If he’d really wanted kink, it would have been more fun to coax Belle into joining him.

  “Would you stop and talk to me?” Sabryn demanded, catching up at last to grab his arm and glower into his eyes. “What sort of game are you playing?”

  “Do you find it so difficult to believe I’m not interested?” Tristan said lightly. “Better check your ego, darling. It’s getting unwieldy.”

  “Are you trying to snow Belle into believing you’re faithful? She’s much brighter than that.”

  “I have no interest in snowing Belle into believing anything.” Tristan eyed the witch like the dangerous beast she was. “What are you up to, Sabryn? When I told you I needed a partner six weeks ago, you wouldn’t give me the time of day.”

  “I like Belle.” Sabryn frowned at him, a militant light in her eyes. “She doesn’t deserve to get hurt.”

  “I like Belle, too. Why the hell do you think I’m going to hurt her? Besides, isn’t that a little hypocritical coming from you?”