Master of Shadows

by Angela Knight

  “Who wants to bet it was Warlock?” Belle asked. She looked pale as a shroud, and blood streaked her armor. Tristan couldn’t tell if it was her own.

  “Anybody got a clue what that thing was?” Bors asked, flipping up the visor of his helmet.

  Anger sizzling through him, Tristan flipped up his own and stalked over to his brother knight until he could stare into his eyes. Even as dark as it was, Bors’s pupils were contracted into pinpricks. It was a miracle he’d been able to see to fight. “How much blood did you have tonight, Bors?” The words emerged in a growl so deep, he scarcely recognized it as his own.

  Bors planted one hand in the middle of Tristan’s chest and shoved hard, forcing him to step back a pace. “Get out of my face, Tristan.”

  “How much?”

  “That’s none of your damned business!”

  “It is my damned business when you endanger Belle!”

  “What, did you elope while I wasn’t looking?” He raised his sword. “Get off my ass, Tristan, or I’ll put you down.”

  “Did you have too much blood tonight, Bors?” Arthur asked the question softly, but with a dangerous note in his voice Tristan recognized. That Pendragon temper was on the verge of detonation. He raised his visor and stared into his knight’s face.

  Anguish and shame slid across Bors’s handsome features. Which was all the answer any of them needed.

  “See the healer,” Arthur told him shortly. “You’re not going back into combat until you kick the addiction.”

  The knight’s broad shoulders slumped. “Yes, my liege.”

  Morgana opened a gate with a gesture. Bors looked through it, then glanced at Arthur, straightened his shoulders with an obvious effort, and strode through the gate.

  After it closed behind him, Arthur sighed. “I knew he had a problem. I just didn’t realize it was that bad.”

  “I did warn you,” Tristan said.

  “I’d hoped you were wrong.” Shaking his dark head, Arthur turned toward the deck. “Let’s see if our monstrous friend left any clues behind.”

  Belle stared down at what was left of Emma Jacobs, her stomach tying itself into a sick, sour knot. Morgana crouched beside the body, both hands spread wide as she conducted a magical autopsy, sensing both every injury the woman had suffered and when they’d occurred.

  Justice stood just behind her, staring down at Emma with an appalled expression on his handsome face. Belle had brought him in so that he could report what he saw to his council, since they’d probably refuse to believe anything the Magekind had to say. Arthur stood next to the werewolf, looking grim as his hand rode Excalibur’s hilt. He’d sheathed the weapon, but he looked as if he badly wanted to draw it and start hacking at something.

  Morgana’s fingers traced the air over the ragged edges of the hole in Emma’s abdomen. “This bite was postmortem,” she said, voicing the conclusion Belle had already drawn. “It appears this is the wound that killed her.” She gestured, indicating the woman’s forearm. It was crushed and mangled despite Emma’s armor.

  “See those puncture wounds, Morgana?” Belle said. “It looks as though it bit her arm and just held on.”

  “She fought back pretty hard,” Tristan said, gesturing at the arcs of blood that splashed across the room. “Judging by the smell, a lot of this blood is the creature’s.”

  Justice crouched to eye the distance between the two puncture wounds the beast’s fangs had left. “Damn. That’s not a typical Direwolf bite. The thing must have a head the size of a grizzly’s.”

  “No shit,” Tristan growled, in a thoroughly foul mood. “We told you it did.”

  The werewolf leaned down over Morgana’s shoulder and sniffed, frowning. “Does that bite smell like the one that killed Cherise to you?”

  Morgana rose to walk around the body, studying it. “Could be the same death spell, though it worked far more quickly. Otherwise, this wound would not have killed her so fast.”

  “My human nose isn’t worth a damn.” Magic detonated around Justice as he shifted to Dire Wolf form. He didn’t appear to notice how everyone else tensed. Going to one knee, he lowered his head over Emma’s arm and drew in a deep breath.

  He promptly jerked back his head, as if he’d smelled something rotten. “This wound smells corrupted, as if the bite was poison. And the magic is rank.”

  “Death magic smells like that,” Tristan told him.

  Belle turned away, grief weighing at her. Poor Noah. Both parents gone. She bent to pick up one of the books that lay scattered and crushed on the floor. As she opened it, she frowned. It was one of Emma’s spell books. “Where’s the magic?”

  “What?” Arthur looked up at her.

  “This is one of Emma’s spell books, but the magic is completely drained from it.” She traced the deep punctures in its cover. “It’s as if the wolf drank its magic like a vampire drinking blood.”

  “You’re right.” Morgana’s eyes widened. “There should be magic lingering around Emma’s body even now, but there’s nothing. It drained her dry.”

  “Remember how it seemed to bite into your shield?” Tristan asked. “The fuzzy bastard eats magic.”

  Arthur’s lip curled. “Now, there’s a twist we didn’t need.”

  Even Justice looked appalled.

  Dice stood in the cavern on shaking legs, blood streaming from a dozen cuts. He’d survived a battle with Arthur, his knights and his witches, but it had been too damned close.

  And he’d eaten the Maja. Nausea curdled his triumph as he remembered the taste of blood and meat in his mouth. The human part of him had been revolted, but the wolf had been too hungry to care.

  He’d drunk down Emma’s magic in greedy gulps that had somehow sucked in her husband’s, too. His name had been Tom Jacobs, he knew. And they’d had a son, Noah. A son they’d both loved.

  Orphaned now.

  Dice shook his head hard. He’d done some nasty shit in his life, killed men, even tortured when he’d had to, but none of it had meant anything to him. This was different.

  When he’d eaten Emma’s magic, he’d gotten her memories. Memories of the life she’d lived, the battles she’d fought, her dedication to the Great Mission Merlin had sold the Magekind on all those centuries ago.

  Bullshit. It’s all bullshit. Emma had been weak, and so was that husband of hers. Tom could have fought Dice, maybe avenged his woman and kept his kid from being orphaned. Instead his love had killed him.

  It really wasn’t Dice’s fault. He’d only done what he had to do. Their weakness had done the rest. He was fucking well not going to moon about it. It wasn’t even his guilt anyway. He’d caught it from Emma like a cold.

  But damn, the woman had known her magic. She’d spent eight hundred years studying magic—how to draw on the Mageverse, how to make it do what she wanted with spells and chants and pure, raw will.

  Now Dice knew what she’d known. He reached for the power of the Mageverse as Emma had done so many times . . .

  And nothing happened.

  Warlock’s deep voice rumbled from the darkness. “You can’t draw on the Mageverse the way they can. You get your magic from killing.”

  Dice whirled as the wizard stepped into the cave, claws clicking on the stone. “I did it.” He wanted the bastard to know. “I fought them. Arthur and his knights. And I killed the witch and her husband.”

  “I know. I saw you. Good work. Although—” He bared his white teeth. “They would have killed you if I hadn’t opened a gate for you and kept them from following. You’re not quite up to their weight yet.”

  “I did well enough.” He eyed Warlock hungrily. The fucker had so much magic. More than a hundred Emmas. If Dice could kill him, he could gorge. All that power would be his. Enough to kill any witch or vampire he wanted.

  Which was the problem. Warlock had too damned much power, and he was mean as a snake. Not only would he kill Dice, he’d make it a long, nasty death.

  Smarter to leave the bastard alone. An
d watch. Maybe an opportunity would come. Dice would damn well take it if it did. But only if he was sure he could kill Warlock and survive.

  He realized that as he studied Warlock, Warlock was watching him just as intently, calculation in his glowing orange eyes. Creepy fuck.

  “I need a war,” the wizard announced. “Our people could accomplish so much—but unfortunately, the Magekind is in the way. Arthur will never allow me to make the moves that are necessary. Which means Arthur needs to die.”

  He turned away and began to pace. “The trouble is, I have to persuade my people that Arthur has gone mad. I managed to capture a couple of green agents and get them to light the kindling for my war. Unfortunately, Arthur is now alert to my plans, and I haven’t been able to capture any cat’s-paws since.”

  Dice frowned, watching Warlock stride from wall to wall. He moved with a feral grace, despite the odd anatomy of his legs, more like a wolf walking upright than a man. His voice rumbled in a deep growl that echoed in the cavern. Something in its feral timbre made Dice’s hackles rise.

  Many people are going to die, Emma’s ghost breathed in his ear. Magekind and Direkind will fall to his madness. And he is mad.

  Get the hell out of my mind, witch!

  You’re the one who put me here. You’re the one who ate me.

  Tasting blood and other things, Dice shuddered. And wondered if Warlock was the only one who was mad.

  ELEVEN

  Accompanied by Tristan, Arthur, and Morgana, Belle walked through the dimensional gate, following the bodies of Emma and Tom Jacobs, which floated along on a wave of magic.

  They arrived at the Mageverse’s clinic that served as a combination morgue and funeral home. A grim healer waited to take possession of the bodies.

  “How’s Noah?” Belle asked anxiously.

  Aaliyah sighed, sadness in her large, dark eyes. She was a tiny woman who wore her black hair straight and shining to her hips. “Petra is with him,” she said in her soft, Farsi-accented English. “He sleeps still while she works to take the edge from his pain. She will not be able to eliminate it, of course—she would not if she could, for she would have to blunt his love of his parents to do it. But by the time he wakes, it will be bearable for him.”

  Belle’s heart ached for the boy. The idea of being a parent again jammed a hot needle into her heart, but she couldn’t stand the thought of Tom’s son being left alone. Any grandparents would be long dead, considering the age of Noah’s parents. “Does he have a place to go?”

  The healer nodded. “His parents left a will. Ria Tizia and her husband Michael have a daughter a couple of years older than Noah. Both couples had agreed that if anything happened, the other family would take in their child. The Tizias say Noah will have a home with them.”

  “Oh.” Belle would have expected to feel relief that she didn’t have to raise the boy. Her disappointment surprised her. She still grieved for her daughter, but she also remembered the joy of raising her.

  Belle was still thinking about Tom and his family as she followed Arthur, Morgana, and Gwen back to the Pendragon home. Tristan fell in step beside her.

  “You okay?”

  She looked up at him, a little surprised at the rough concern in his voice. “I’m fine. Tom was one of my boys, you know.”

  “I could tell.” When she blinked, Tris explained, “The expression on your face when we found him.”

  “It’s funny. I gave him the Gift two centuries ago, but seeing him like that . . . It brought it all back.” Belle stared down at the toes of her boots as she walked, remembering that first meeting. “I arranged an introduction at some ball or other. He was such a cocky young rakehell. Third son of a baron. Thought he was mad, bad, and dangerous to know. I half expected that learning he was a descendent of the Round Table would quite go to his head, but it didn’t. He was oddly . . . humbled.”

  “You have that effect on a man when you want to.”

  She looked up to find his smile was a touch dry. “Really? Doesn’t seem to work on you.”

  “Touché.”

  “I was so happy for him when he and Emma found one another, I guess it was fifty years ago now. Emma was a hell of a lot older than he was, and God knows she was powerful. But they really loved each other. I wasn’t surprised when they Truebonded. He was so damned happy afterward. And yet it killed him.”

  “There’s always risk in love.” Gwen lifted a blond eyebrow as they looked around at her. “And yes, I was eavesdropping shamelessly. I can tell you that if the same thing happens to me, I’ll have no regrets. The Truebond Arthur and I share has added so much to my life, I’m willing to pay whatever cost it exacts. I’d imagine if you could ask Tom, he’d tell you his only regret is leaving Noah.” She grimaced. “Though, admittedly, that’s a pretty damned big regret.”

  Arthur folded her hand in his. “Since our son is grown, I can say I don’t really mind the idea that Gwen’s death would take me, too. I wouldn’t want to live without her.” He gave his wife a slow, intimate smile. “We’ve been together so long, she’s gotten to be a habit.”

  “Yes, well, the rest of us don’t want to lose either of you,” Tristan told him tartly. “So try to stay alive.”

  Arthur shrugged. “Well, that is the plan.”

  Warlock was casting another spell. The magic burned over Dice’s furry hide like acid, and he had to resist the urge to moan in pain. He didn’t want to give the bastard the satisfaction, since Warlock hadn’t exactly offered him a choice.

  The wizard’s deep voice chanted, twisting the hot energies of the Mageverse around him with every syllable. It reminded Dice far too much of the first time, when the werewolf had turned him into a monster.

  God, what was he going to become now?

  The energy built, sizzling over his skin, wrenching bone and muscle with ruthless force until the world went white around him.

  The pain faded along with the light, leaving him shaking and sick, every muscle twitching with remembered torment. It took long moments before he could see again.

  When the purple spots finally faded from his vision, he stepped back in instinctive fear. Warlock stood far too close, towering over him. Which meant . . .

  He glanced down and barely resisted the urge to shout in delight. He had hands again! He was human!

  “Now, boy,” Warlock said. “Work me some magic.”

  Dice shot him a look. He’d love to work the bastard some magic—like a fireball right in the face. Better not. Warlock would probably fry him like a piece of bacon.

  So he gestured, casting the spell with the knowledge he’d stolen from Emma Jacobs. A ball of light appeared over his palm, floating there as demurely as a helium balloon.

  “Smells like Mageverse magic.” Warlock grinned in an intimidating display of teeth. “You’re not very strong, but you can draw on the Mageverse now. Most of your power will still come from death magic, so I wouldn’t advise you to get in any fights with Majae until you’ve killed someone. They’ll kick your ass.”

  Now that he knew something about the Mageverse, Dice realized just how difficult it must have been to change his magical nature. “How did you do that?”

  Warlock grinned again, until Dice wished he’d stop. “I’m powerful, boy—a lot more powerful than you. Keep that in mind.”

  Did he have a choice?

  Smoke examined Emma’s gauntlet, a frown on his handsome face. “He bit through the enchanted steel as if it were cardboard.” The Sidhe and Eva had joined them at the Pendragon home.

  “We noticed,” Arthur told him dryly. “Do you know what the hell that thing is?” Given Smoke’s millennia in the Mageverse, they’d figured if anyone could identify Warlock’s monster, it would be him.

  He looked up at the three-dimensional image of the creature Morgana had magically created. “Never seen anything like it. Looks like a cross between a wolf, a tiger, and a grizzly bear.”

  “Bet fighting it was no fun at all,” Eva observed.

&
nbsp; “It wasn’t,” Tristan growled. “And if it had managed to bite one of us . . .” His gaze slid to Belle.

  “You’d have ended up like Emma.” Smoke put the punctured gauntlet on the coffee table and leaned back in his seat, frowning. “One thing is for damned sure: you’ve all got to reinforce your armor. None of you can afford to get bitten.”

  “It might be dangerous for you, too, Smoke,” Eva pointed out. “We don’t know how a bite would affect you, either.”

  “And I’d rather not find out the hard way.”

  “The question is, how much reinforcement is needed?” Arthur drummed his fingers on the arm of his chair. “It’s going to add weight and reduce flexibility, even with an enchantment to lighten the armor. That’s going to make fighting in it more difficult.”

  “We’ll just have to experiment.” Morgana took a sip of her tea, eyes narrowed in thought. “It’s going to be a time-consuming process, so we’d better put out the word. I’ll issue an order to all my Majae to get to work on armor, including suits for vamps who have no partners.”

  Arthur nodded. “And nobody goes in the field without the new armor.” His expression turned even more grim. “I don’t want to hold any more funerals.”

  Smoke and the witches started discussing armor weight versus flexibility ratios, spells to counter that effect, and speculating about the bite strength of Warlock’s monster. To Tristan’s experienced ear, this had the sound of a conversation that would go on past dawn. Since sunrise was only an hour or so away, he excused himself and headed home. He needed time to think, and he wasn’t going to get it at Casa Pendragon.

  He was no longer sure he should take Sabryn up on her offer. Yeah, doing so had plenty of benefits from his point of view, but he hadn’t considered the implications for Belle. Watching her fight beside Bors had made Tristan sharply aware that abandoning her was not a good idea. Bors had damned near gotten her killed.