Soulbound
Page 3
And now there was the added ignominy of having her, She of the Accusatory Stare, the very one who’d landed him in this hell, looking down upon his ruin. He wanted to snarl again. Instead, he tried to steady his breathing and concentrate upon the cold floor against his skin so that he did not cry out for mercy.
Eliza May – and oh how he’d struggled not to even think her name during these many months – stared at him out of liquid brown eyes, her expression haunted, as though he were a ghost. The irony nearly had him laughing. “So then,” he managed through his teeth, “no rejoicing in this reunion?”
Her pretty face scrunched up in a scowl. “I thought you were a helpless dog.”
“I gathered.” That she preferred a mangy dog to him didn’t burn in the slightest. Not at all. Adding insult to injury, his stomach gave a great gurgle of hunger that echoed throughout the cell.
Her lips quirked, a smile she quickly smothered. “I brought some sausages. I thought the dog would like them.” With a tentative hand, she offered him one.
Instantly, his mouth watered, and he grabbed it from her, his pride nothing in comparison to his physical needs, it seemed. Not meeting her gaze, he devoured his food in hard, greedy bites. His eyes nearly watered with relief. Pain was one thing; starvation was another.
Golden waves of hair slithered over her shoulder as she tilted her head and regarded him. “Why are you here?”
“What can I say?” He grunted as a shard of pain lanced through his broken ribs. “There are times a man longs for a good cell to rest in after a rousing bout of torture.”
Her scowl grew, the plump curve of her lower lip pushing outward. “Think you’re funny, do you?”
“No.” He was too tired to spar anymore. Wet stones pushed against his cheek, and he closed his eyes. Just for a moment.
The sound of silk rustling filled the silence, and then her scent – light and sweet like roses in this filth – grew stronger. Adam’s eyes flew open just as she moved closer. He did snarl then. “Do not touch me!”
Paling, she halted. “I’m trying to help, you oaf.”
“I do not want your help.”
“Perhaps not, but you need it.”
He sagged again, panting through the pain. “For the entirety of our association, you’ve wanted nothing more than to get away from me. Pray, do not change the pattern now. Go on with you. Get out.”
The smooth curve of her jaw tightened with a stubbornness that he’d grown far too familiar with. “At the very least, let me give you something for the pain —”
“Out.” He could not bellow as he wanted to for fear of alerting the fae bitch or her cronies. But he infused all his hate and frustration into the words, snapping his teeth at Miss May. “Get the fuck out of here.”
Abruptly she stood, and he closed his eyes. He wanted her gone, but he didn’t have to see her walking away from him. Again. Her retreating footsteps echoed, and then blessed silence descended. He drifted in a haze of pain and fevered thoughts. Eliza. Her scent, her heat, the golden glow of her soul’s light. Even now, when the light of all other souls was hidden to him, he could see the faint illumination of hers. Like a mockery.
A soft touch upon his shoulder had him flinching and his eyes flying open. “What the bloody —”
“Don’t you go cursing at me, or I’ll… I’ll…” She left the threat hanging as she eased next to him, and he lost the will to protest. The cool rim of a glass touched his lower lip. “Drink,” she ordered.
Bitterness flooded his dry mouth and numbed his tongue. He swallowed it down. A concoction to ease his pain. He did not resist when she offered him another cup, this time of fresh water. In the dull light of her lantern, Eliza’s pale hair glowed like a nimbus around her heart-shaped face.
“Now then,” her voice trembled in the dim, though she did an admirable job of hiding it, “I’m going to clean you up.”
“No.” He grasped her wrist, staying her progress. When she stared at him, mutiny in her eyes, he sighed. “Lass, if you help me anymore than you have, they’ll know. And we’ll both suffer for it.”
“Surely my aunt —” She bit her bottom lip, a little wrinkle forming between the wings of her brows. “She knows about this, doesn’t she?”
A dry laugh escaped him. “Dove, she’s the one who does this to me.” Repeatedly.
Eliza’s perplexed expression deepened. “She must have a good reason.”
“Oh, aye,” Adam drawled. “She’s a demented bitch.”
The fine bones of her wrist shifted against his firm grip. He wanted to loosen it, but his hand wouldn’t obey. He liked touching her. Too well. How could he not? He felt her. He hadn’t been privy to pleasurable feelings for centuries until she entered his life.
“Tell me why she does this. Why are you chained down here? Why were you a dog, for heaven’s sake?”
“Do you know this is the most you’ve spoken to me in all of our acquaintance?” He couldn’t keep the bitterness out of his tone. He’d waited for months to hear her speak to him. Now that she finally was, he both reveled in the sound of her blunt, flat American voice and resented her for making him wait so long to hear it.
She made a scoffing sound. “Because we are conversing now. Before, you talked at me, as though I were a dog.”
“Untrue and unfair,” he protested weakly.
Something close to a smile hovered at her lips. “Stop trying to deflect and answer me.”
Warmth and a small bit of numbness worked through his body. Adam let his head rest on the floor. “I’m turned into a dog because she believes that causes me humiliation.” It didn’t, but he wasn’t about to let Mab know that. When he was the dog, his pain was somehow more bearable. Unfortunately, the animal had no qualms about voicing its pain, which had brought Eliza to him. “Only the touch of a fae will turn me back, usually for torture.”
“I am not fae.”
Adam made a crude noise. “Oh, aye? Not of Mab’s blood, are you? Forgive me if I spoke in error, and yet, here I am, a dog no longer.”
“That is debatable,” she grumbled.
“As to why she does this,” he continued as if she hadn’t spoken, “she is fae, ye ken?” Christ, his Scots hadn’t emerged in a good five hundred years, but weakness and days without food or water had his tongue slipping. Adam swallowed hard and tried to focus. “You do understand what she is?”
Beneath his fingertips, her pulse beat faster. “Yes, but she saved me… from you.”
He snorted. “Do not start that up again.” He’d go mad if he had to justify himself once more. When she gave a stiff nod, he went on. “Fae are friends to no one but themselves.”
“She’s my aunt. Why should I believe you over all the kindness she’s shown me?” Oddly, her voice lacked heat. If he didn’t know better, Adam would suspect she was merely trying to get a rise out of him. Bollox, her tactic worked. He wanted to shake some sense into her.
“I’m the one lying here broken.” He let out a sharp breath. “She isn’t your aunt; she’s your grandmother and the fae queen.” Eliza started to protest, and he spoke over her. “I have never lied to you, and I won’t start now. It’s true, and what’s worse, if you stay here in her sphere, you’ll soon be sorry for it.”
“Why would I?”
“Because she’ll find a way to use you for her own gain.” With an odd twinge of regret, he let her go and then rubbed a tired hand over his face. “More than she already has.”
“I don’t understand how you came to be her prisoner. You are known – widely, I might add – as a great and powerful demon.”
He took a bracing breath. “I’m not a demon.” Adam caught her gaze and held it. “I’m a man, lass. I don’t drink blood, nor use it to take on another’s identity. All that’s been said about me is a lie. Thought up and circulated by me as a means of protection. I’m cursed, ye ken? Cursed by Mab to remain immortal, heal when I am injured. I had uncommon strength, the power to create life, to take a soul unto me, or
to destroy the life I create. Aside from that, the only skill I had was the fighting abilities I learned as a mortal man and my wits. What little there was left of them,” he added with a wry smile.
His smile faded as he watched her. “I’m giving you this truth as a sign of goodwill, dove. No one on earth, save a few key fae, knows. Should the supernatural world gain this knowledge, this hell I’m in now would be what you Yanks call a cakewalk.”
Her nose wrinkled. “Demons are said to be tricksters. How do I know if anything you say is true?”
He snorted. “First, I don’t know where you’ve picked up this hate and distrust of demons, but you’ve been misinformed. They aren’t all bad. Will Thorne, the man who helped set you free, was a demon.”
She had the good grace to flush at that, though her chin remained set.
“Second,” he added. “Had I these great powers anymore, were I a demon capable of taking on another’s form through blood, do you honestly believe that I’d be here?”
Eliza’s stubborn frown grew, as if she didn’t believe him. “That is my point exactly. So then, how —”
“Enough questions. I’ll no’ answer another. Just go before you’re caught.”
They glared at each other for a long moment.
“I’ll go,” she said finally.
“Saints preserve us, she does know how to obey.”
“But I’m returning,” she said, ignoring his quip and giving him a hard stare. “I want answers.”
Adam gritted his teeth against the urge to shake some sense into her. “You want answers? Open your eyes and see, lass. Pay attention not only to what Mab says but what lies beneath her pretty words. Look for the signs. Promises she’ll talk you into, pacts she’ll suggest you enter, yet somehow make it seem as though it was your idea all along. Knowing the bitch as I do, Mab will have already found ways to use you for her own ends.”
Something flickered in Eliza’s deep, brown eyes. Fear? A realization? He didn’t know. But he drove his point in. “If you have any care for your own skin, do not let Mab know you’ve seen me.”
Chapter Two
Eliza had thought that, having lived in Boston, she knew city life. Watching the endless stream of cabs, carts, omnibuses, pedestrians, peddlers, beggars, and urchins from behind the window of Mab’s well-appointed carriage, she realized she knew nothing. This was a true city, with its maze of avenues crisscrossing each other, buildings looming on either side in seemingly limitless supply. Coal soot and smoke had painted the buildings a dark, gloomy grey. That was, the small bits of buildings that weren’t papered in advertisements. London was absolutely covered in billings and posters promising this and that. Only the boys who slapped them up with a quick brush of wet paste did so in a haphazard fashion, covering old adverts with impunity, so that one slogan bled into the other. One might read of “Mr. Solomon’s hair tonic, guaranteed to be” “the finest dinner you shall ever serve your family!” Or of “Olly’s ladies face cream” to promote “quick and lustrous hair growth.”
London was ugly and foul and vibrant and beautiful all at once.
“What has you smiling, child?”
Mab’s curious question had Eliza turning from the window and pushed her thoughts away from bearded ladies. Mab, her aunt and savior, sat opposite her. Mab who tortured men in her basement.
“London, I suppose.” Stiff with doubt, Eliza gestured toward the grimy streets. “It’s like nothing I’ve ever seen.” As if to punctuate that fact, a man in lime green plaid velvet stomped down the street. On stilts.
Mab’s pretty face wrinkled. “It’s horrid. Too congested. One cannot properly breathe in this infernal place.”
“Then why do you remain?” Eliza knew Mab had a home in the countryside. Several homes, apparently.
Her aunt’s gaze slid away. “I’ve business here at the moment.”
Eliza’s fragile hold on levity crumbled. Did Mab mean Adam? Eliza did not want to picture him chained up, his body ravaged, his eyes filled with pain. He was there for a reason. Mab had shone her nothing but kindness, opening up a world of freedom and independence, while Adam had kept her prisoner for months without an ounce of remorse. Yet the itchy, ugly feeling within her remained.
He’d been tortured. Eliza hadn’t the ability to justify that and live with herself. And she found herself studying Mab again. There was a soft, green glow about her that grew brighter when she was content. After Eliza had died, she had begun to see the glow surrounding persons.
“You glow,” she found herself saying.
Mab’s red brows lifted with amusement. “Pardon, dearest?”
Eliza flushed. “I see a greenish glow about you at times.”
Her aunt watched her in silence before answering. “And out there” – she waved a slim hand towards the streets – “do you see anyone else glow?”
“Yes.” Eliza did not need to look. “All the time. Greys, blues, reds, and yellows.” Every color of the rainbow, actually. Everyone she encountered appeared to have a colorful glow about them. The hues changed, though some were similar. And it was enough to give Eliza a headache if she focused too hard on them. She’d learned, by sheer will, to let her gaze go soft or to focus on objects instead. It made it easier to bear.
Mab leaned in, resting her elbow upon her crossed leg. “You are seeing the light of a person’s soul.”
Eliza glanced at the window. Yes, she saw the light of souls. But that wasn’t the only thing she saw. Spirits, wavering misty grey forms drifted here and there, moving through solid objects. Moving through people. Ghosts. She suppressed a shiver and turned back to Mab.
“I see spirits as well.”
It was Mab’s turn to shiver. Her gloved hands clenched. “Do you now?” Mab glanced about as if fearful there was one nearby.
“All the time. All over London.” Truth be told, they were in greater numbers now. And always watching Eliza, as if pleading for her to hear them. Oddly, they did not frighten her. But they filled her with sorrow. Why did they linger when others did not? Where, for example, were the souls of her family? Did she even want to see them? No, she did not. It would be too painful when she could not truly have them in life.
“A word of caution, dear child,” Mab said tightly, her creamy skin pale. “Do not engage the spirits. Fae are not meant to interact with the dead.” Fear crept into Mab’s eyes. All the more shocking because Mab never quailed.
“Do I see these things because I died before?” she asked Mab.
A moue of distaste marred Mab’s cool beauty. “No. It is the demon’s doing.”
Eliza’s shoulders hit the cushioned squabs. “He did this to me?”
“You are essentially GIM without the disgrace of a clockwork heart. No doubt, he thought to do you an honor.” Mab’s eyes darkened in disgust. “Or perhaps he figured that, as you were already chained to his side, he did not need to control you by means of your heart as well.”
Eliza stared blindly down at her lap. Her hands, covered by the finest kidskin gloves money could buy, were clenched into fists. GIM, but not. She wondered if her spirit could leave her body as well, but did not want to try it. Horrible visions of being unable to get back into her flesh made her breath quicken. He’d made her as he was?
“He’s never tried to find me,” Eliza blurted out. Because Mab had been insistent that Adam would try. It was the sole reason Eliza was constantly watched by one of Mab’s servants whenever they went out. Only now Eliza knew that to be a grand lie. How could he come for her when Mab already had him?
Across from her, Mab showed not the slightest hint of discomfort. She merely shrugged. “Demons are mercurial beings, pet. Best not to dwell on it.” She gave Eliza a bright smile as she leaned in and squeezed Eliza’s hands with just a bit too much force. “You have my word that he will never touch you again.”
It was easy to bite her lip and nod, affecting the countenance of a girl much relieved and not a little frightened. Easy, Eliza thought, to lie.
Eliza hadn’t wanted to go to this garden party. All the tittering and social niceties made her head ache. It had been Mab’s suggestion. Hadn’t it? Frowning, she let herself be handed out of the carriage by a liveried footman and took a deep breath of smoky London air. Her bodice squeezed back in protest. Eliza smoothed a hand down her skirts, made of pure white silk foulard. The fabric cost more than most laborers made in a year.
“Eliza, dearest.” Mab gave her a small smile, the gesture managing to look both welcoming and impatient. “Let us join the party.” She turned, without waiting to see if Eliza followed, her grass-green skirts swaying as she made her way up the front stairs of the grand town home.
Follow Eliza did, she had little choice. Endless parties. New gowns. And Eliza falling deeper and deeper into Mab’s debt. Was that what Mab wanted? For Eliza to be beholden to her. Well, she already was, now wasn’t she?
It was difficult to stand idle when everything inside of her screamed to turn and run, to get away from Mab, from London even.
Damn the demon, he had put this suspicion and fear into her. Her agitation did not improve as they made their way through the fine London townhouse and into the garden, a lovely English garden with meticulously trimmed hedges and beds of newly blooming flowers marching in orderly rows.
Around her, women swarmed and converged into little groups to chatter. Mab loved this, the attention, the laughter and adulation. Eliza had long since noticed that Mab seemed to soak these things in as a flower might the sun. Oddly, when it was all done, Mab would return home and indulge in her more private proclivities. It was as if these social outings gave her the energy to fuel her hidden cruelties.