Master of Shadows

by Angela Knight

  “There’s no poetry in you, Celt.”

  “I save my poetry for my wife.” He raised Excalibur. “She’s a hell of a lot more inspiring.”

  “And there’s your weakness,” Warlock said, his orange eyes blazing with arrogant hate over his axe. “You’ve tied yourself in that little whore’s apron strings. No wonder you’re weak.”

  The humor fled Arthur’s face. “Oh, you just signed your own death warrant, Fido.” Excalibur flashed in a glittering sweep aimed right for Warlock’s head. Axe met sword in a ringing parry, and the two magical weapons shed an explosion of sparks as their power fields clashed.

  Instinctively, Belle moved up next to Gwen, offering silent support to the woman who watched her husband fight to the death. Tristan joined them, planting the point of his sword in the bloody grass as he watched the fight with catlike attention.

  Tristan loved watching Arthur in action. His friend moved with surefooted grace and a vampire’s breathtaking power, swinging Excalibur in elegant arcs, the magical blade shining with its own white-gold light. He’d never seen anyone who could match Arthur with a sword.

  Until now. Warlock used his axe with awe-inspiring strength and all the skill his centuries had given him. He wasn’t quite as fast as Arthur, but his reach and power made him a force to be reckoned with.

  The werewolf and the vampire circled each other, eyes cold and watchful. Warlock struck like a snake, his axe arcing straight at Arthur’s head. Arthur ducked and spun aside, swinging Excalibur up and across in a diagonal stroke intended to gut Warlock like a rabbit. The wizard leaped back with a curse, his powerful legs carrying him five feet back.

  Arthur charged in as Warlock landed, thrusting for his enemy’s heart. The werewolf brought his axe slashing down, catching Excalibur and driving the sword’s point into the blood-soaked soil in a shower of magical sparks. Any other sword would have broken under the impact of the heavy axe, but Excalibur only chimed like a great bell. Arthur disengaged, jerking his blade free, spinning in a blur, Excalibur aimed for the Dire Wolf’s neck.

  Warlock caught the blow on the double-headed blade, then twisted his weapon against the sword, trying to break it with his greater strength and leverage. Arthur kicked him in the gut and jerked free.

  Belle glimpsed a blur of movement from the corner of one eye and spun to see Tanner, in werewolf form, grab Gwen’s helm and jerk it off, pulling her head down in the process. Before the witch could throw him back with a spell, the werewolf dove for the base of her neck and bit down. Magic flared blue around his teeth, and she screamed in agony, falling to her knees, both hands wrapped around the back of her neck.

  “Gwen!” Arthur roared, whirling toward her, taking a single staggering step before his legs gave out beneath him. He fell to one knee with a grunt of pain.

  “Tanner, you fucker!” Tristan jerked his sword out of the ground and swept it up in a merciless diagonal slash that cut the werewolf in two. The bisected corpse tumbled to the ground as the rest of the Round Table surged into the dueling circle, roaring battle cries.

  Warlock laughed at Arthur as he struggled to rise. “Weakling,” the werewolf shouted. “I told you the whore would be the death of you.” He raised his axe to behead his opponent. “Now I rule!”

  Lancelot spun in out of nowhere, his blade catching the descending axe. Lance muscled his sword up, throwing the bigger weapon aside so that he could ram a shoulder into Warlock’s side, driving him back from the fallen vampire.

  The knights hit Warlock en masse, Morgana, Caroline, and Lark at their heels. The werewolf roared and fired a blast of energy at them, but the witches’ shields sent the attack splashing harmlessly away.

  Apparently unaware of all that, Arthur started crawling toward his wife. Tristan snaked an arm around his torso and hauled him upright, half-carrying him to his mate as their comrades attacked the werewolf.

  Belle dropped down beside her friend. “Healer!” she screamed. “I need a healer!” God, not Gwen. Her loss would kill Arthur and rip the heart from the Magekind.

  “Let me!” A towering female werewolf as red as a fox loomed out of the dark, another wolf at her heels. Belle almost blasted them both before she recognized Miranda and Justice.

  “I know werewolf magic better than you do,” the Dire Wolf said, kneeling to cup Gwen’s face between her furry palms. “Maybe I can work out how to take the spell apart.”

  “Fine, do it,” Belle said as Gwen gritted her teeth in pain, her blue eyes glazing. “Do whatever you can.” Before she dies and takes Arthur with her.

  The werewolf went to work, Justice standing behind her, scanning the battlefield around them with the acute paranoid focus of a bodyguard.

  At least they’re not fighting anymore, Belle thought. And I’ll take all the help I can get.

  Tristan strode toward them, half-carrying Arthur. Despite his gritted teeth and sweat-slicked face, the Once and Future King clung to Excalibur with a white-knuckled grip.

  Warlock’s black-armored bodyguard charged in out of nowhere, slamming into Arthur’s right shoulder so hard, the vampire lost his grip on his weapon. The assassin wrenched Excalibur from Arthur’s hand and raced away like a rabbit, heading for the trees with the magical blade.

  “No!” Arthur gasped, and almost fell on his face. He could barely speak.

  “I’ll get it back,” Tristan growled, lowering his king to the ground beside Gwen. He bounded after the thief like a stag.

  “Morgana!” Belle shouted, but the witch was already there, white-faced with fear for Gwen. “Help them. I’ve got to go with Tristan, or that fucking assassin will eat him.”

  “Go,” Morgana snapped. “And get that sword before Warlock does. God knows what spell he’d cast with it.”

  Which was a damned good point. Bors’s son had almost destroyed the Magekind by working death magic using Excalibur. Belle sprang to her feet and ran, sprinting across the field after Tristan and the fleeing assassin.

  The men vanished into the trees, but Belle could feel Tristan in the Truebond. She didn’t even break step as she hit the woods, leaping brush and ducking overhanging limbs, desperate to catch up before the killer turned on Tris.

  Something roared, a deep, echoing bellow of animal fury. Belle’s heart slammed into her throat as she hurdled a jagged stump and slid to a stop.

  The biggest Dire Wolf Belle had ever seen had Tristan pinned to the forest floor with one clawed hand around his throat.

  The beast’s other hand gripped Excalibur.

  Belle could feel Tris’s fury as he bucked against the killer’s hold, but the damn thing had to be twelve feet tall, with the strength to match. She flung up her hands for a blast . . .

  Too late. The assassin dove for Tristan’s chest, jaws opened wide, and bit down hard.

  BOOOOOM!

  The magical blast detonated straight up from Tristan’s chest in a tightly focused beam that hit the the big monster and sent him flying like a ping-pong ball. Oh, yeah, Belle remembered, watching him tumble through the air, Miranda booby trapped Tristan’s armor.

  He came down hard, crashing through the limbs of a nearby loblolly pine to hit the ground with a meaty thud and a yelp of pain.

  “Yes!” Belle pumped her fist in triumph. The spell had worked exactly the way the young werewolf had predicted. The kid might be young, but she knew her stuff when it came to Dire Wolf magic.

  Unhurt, Tristan rolled to his feet. All the force of the blast had been aimed outward at his attacker; he wasn’t even singed. “Let’s go get that sword,” he growled.

  Stunned, Dice stared up at the tree limbs he’d crashed through, his body aching from countless bruises and what he suspected were a couple of broken ribs. For a moment, he had no idea how he’d gotten there.

  Then he remembered. Tristan’s armor had blown up in his mouth. He was lucky he still had a head.

  Running footsteps approached, and Dice shook off his confusion to scramble to his feet. His skull shrieked in pain at
the movement, and he had to swallow hard to keep from vomiting. His helm was gone, lost somehow during the tumble through the loblolly’s branches.

  The blast had not only hit him like a train, it had drained the magic he’d absorbed at the enchanted pool. He’d even reverted back to human form, though at least he’d retained his armor. What the hell kind of spell was that, anyway?

  Excalibur! Fuck, he’d lost the sword!

  He looked around desperately, spotted a silver gleam lying among the leaves, and pounced on the weapon a heartbeat before Tristan and Belle charged out of the trees.

  As his fingers tightened around Excalibur’s hilt, he felt strength flood his body, and his aches and pains instantly vanished. He looked down at the weapon, brows lifting. No wonder Warlock was so determined to get his hands on it.

  “Are you going to give that sword back,” Tristan snarled at him over his own drawn weapon, “or do I take it off your corpse?”

  “Neither.” Dice gave him a wild grin. “I’m going to kill you with it.” He swung Excalibur up and charged.

  Miranda winced in pity as Gwen gasped, fighting to breathe despite the bite’s magic raging through her body. Her normally pretty face was so grotesquely swollen as to be unrecognizable. Arthur lay in the gory grass next to her, sucking in desperate breaths in concert with her struggles. He, too, looked swollen, his eyes slits in his distorted face. One hand clasped Gwen’s hard, as though trying to lend her strength. His gaze caught Miranda’s, silently demanding. Save her.

  Miranda took a deep breath, caught Gwen’s wounded neck between her palms, and sent her will questing into the punctures, seeking out the magic that was killing the former queen. She found the spell in the werewolf’s saliva easily enough, wound tightly in the DNA.

  Carefully, she explored the structure of the ancient magic, trying to tease out how it did its killing. Yet no matter how carefully she probed, she kept coming up with the same frustrating answer.

  “Damn it to hell!” she snarled, jerking out of her trance. “This makes no sense at all. That spell isn’t designed to do anything but turn humans into werewolves. It shouldn’t kill anyone!”

  “Yeah, well, there are a half dozen people lying dead on that field who could tell you differently,” Morgana said grimly. “It also tries to fry me every time I attempt to probe anyone who’s been bitten.”

  “Well, of course,” Miranda told her absently. “The spell is locked against the kind of magical energies you people use. Dire Wolf magic works on a different frequency, has a different structure. But that still shouldn’t kill anyone.”

  “Morgana . . .” Davon moved out of the group of helplessly watching witches to crouch beside Gwen’s laboring body. “I have an idea. I—”

  “I think you’ve done enough, don’t you?” Morgana snapped. “Get the hell away from her and let her work.”

  “I’m a doctor, Morgana!” Davon rapped back. “And I know why these people are dying. This looks exactly like a massive allergic reaction. I should have seen it when Cherise died, but I was too rattled.”

  “It’s a spell, Davon, not a bee sting,” Morgana growled.

  “Open your eyes and look at her, witch! See the way she’s swollen? She can’t breathe because her windpipe is swelling shut. It’s a histamine reaction!”

  Miranda’s jaw dropped as she stared at him. “The Direkind magic is fighting the Magekind magic, and her body is reacting as if the spell is an invader. If I neutralize the spell . . .”

  “We tried that. It didn’t work.”

  “Because you’re Magekind. I’m not.” Miranda laid both hands over the punctures again, closed her eyes, and sent her power burning into the werewolf DNA, wiping the spell away. Then she whispered a new spell, reversing the lethal allergic reaction and shrinking the swelling in Gwen’s airway. Distantly, she heard the witch suck in a relieved breath. Next to her, Arthur began breathing more easily, too, the Truebond carrying her healing magic to him.

  Miranda opened her eyes to give Morgana a tired smile—just as a strange werewolf came racing out of the darkness to hit her like a runaway train. She didn’t even have time to scream.

  Belle watched in horror as Tristan jolted backward, reeling from the brutal impact of Excalibur slamming into his sword. The assassin pursued him, raining blow after blow against his guard, trying to force his sword aside so he could bury the enchanted blade in Tris’s heart.

  Yet somehow Tristan kept parrying, kept meeting the killer blow for blow, spinning aside, ducking back. Staying on the move because if he slowed down, if he gave his opponent the slightest opening, the killer would take him apart.

  “The bastard’s fighting with Arthur’s strength. What’s worse, the way he fights reminds me of Bors,” Tristan snarled in the Truebond.

  Belle cursed silently. She knew Excalibur enhanced Arthur’s speed and power, as well as healing almost any injury he suffered. It even allowed him to sense an opponent’s intentions so Arthur could beat a foe to the punch. Not that Arthur had ever been a slouch on the battlefield. He was counted one of the Round Table’s finest warriors even without Excalibur.

  The other champions of the Round Table were Lancelot—and Bors.

  She clenched her hands into fists and ached to wade into the fight. “Don’t even think about it,” Tristan warned her. “He’d eat you alive.”

  Belle wanted to charge in anyway, but she knew she was more likely to prove a lethal distraction for Tristan than anything else. She had nowhere near the skill of a Knight of the Round Table, and she certainly didn’t have a vampire’s strength.

  An expression of horror flashed across the killer’s face. He bounded straight upward and brought Excalibur smashing downward toward Tristan’s head, obviously meaning to cleave the knight’s skull in two.

  Tristan spun aside and rammed his elbow into his foe’s face, sending him staggering back, shaking his head as if stunned. An odd smile twisted the Dire Wolf’s mouth before his expression shifted into lethal determination again. “You can’t beat me, Tris, you never could.”

  “Fuck you,” Tristan said, and hacked his blade at the werewolf’s head.

  The assassin jerked back, then slammed the flat of his own sword against Tristan’s head, sending the knight staggering back. He fell to one knee. Again, horror flickered over the killer’s face, replaced an instant later by savage determination as he brought Excalibur flashing down toward Tristan’s neck. Tris threw himself into a backward roll, avoiding the stroke.

  Tristan’s friends call him Tris, Belle realized suddenly. Bors had called him Tris.

  Suddenly the pieces slotted together with a click she could almost hear. Those horrified expressions right before every attack, the twisted smiles whenever Tristan hurt him. Her mind skipped to the glowing antlers Eva wore, outward manifestation of Zephyr’s ghost, who had possessed her after the stag’s death.

  . . . The way he fights reminds me of Bors . . .

  Bors, Belle realized. When he ate Bors’s magic, he ate Bors’s ghost.

  She knew the beast’s mental shields would block any magical attack she launched. But what if it wasn’t an attack?

  Reaching through the Mageverse as though opening a communication link to another agent, Belle slipped past his shields to touch the killer’s mind below the level of conscious thought. Careful, she thought. I can’t let him know I’m here, or he’ll block me.

  There, in the depths of the beast’s consciousness, she found Bors. And the Magekind couple Emma and Tom Jacobs, and an entire family of werewolves, and the criminal members of a biker gang. All of them bound behind a spell that tasted of Warlock’s work, a bit of minor magic designed to keep them from interfering with the killer’s conscious mind.

  So Belle broke the spell.

  Tristan was tiring, Dice realized. His parries were slowing, his attacks losing their clean, hard snap. Any minute now, Dice could . . .

  Howls of rage and pain exploded in his ears, so shatteringly loud Dice jolted. What the
flaming hell . . .

  The ghosts boiled up from the depths of his brain, screaming in fury at a child left orphaned, a man murdered with a coward’s blow, a little boy butchered in his bed, bikers betrayed by their own leader. Dice saw them in his mind, their faces ringing his, pale and twisted as they howled for vengeance. Their fury blinded him, and Excalibur dropped from fingers gone suddenly numb. He started to bend down and retrieve the sword, but he couldn’t move.

  The ghosts had locked his muscles.

  Tristan met his horrified gaze and smiled as something metallic flashed toward Dice’s face. “Payback’s a bitch.” And so am I,” Belle said, watching in satisfaction as the killer’s head tumbled almost lazily off his shoulders, hacked off by Tristan’s sword. His body toppled into the leaves with a meaty thud.

  Tristan blew out a hard, relieved breath and bent to pick up Excalibur with his free hand. “No, darlin’, a bitch is the one thing you’re not. Let’s take Arthur his sword.”

  Justice fisted a hand in the werewolf’s mane and dragged him off Miranda before the bastard’s claws could do any more damage than the long, raking strike he’d inflicted. “Andrews, you bastard, I am really sick of you.” Wrapping one arm around the councilman’s throat, he grabbed his foe’s head and jerked hard to the side. The werewolf’s neck snapped.

  “Traitor!” Rosen spat, galloping out of the darkness at an awkward run, apparently following on Andrews’s heels. He drew back a sword he must have stolen off one of the bodies. “I should have known you’d throw in with the vampires.”

  “Hell, who can blame him?” Davon growled, thrusting out a hand toward Miranda. Knowing what he wanted, she gestured, and a sword appeared in his palm. He closed his fist around the weapon and struck in one blurring motion.

  Rosen’s headless body hit the grass.

  “Well,” Morgana drawled, eying the doctor. “Decided you’re one of us after all, did you?”