Harlequin Nocturne May 2016 Box Set

by Susan Krinard

  “Here’s the deal, guys. You can get going with a message for your masters or I can hand you over to my friend here.” Lorcan indicated Tanzi with a wave of his hand. “She’s had a nice little warm-up. She’ll be ready for some real action about now.” Although his words were muffled because of what was clearly a broken nose, one of the sidhes indicated that he preferred the former option. “Then take this message back—and make sure they listen—the dryads are off-limits from now on. Got it? Good. Get out of here.”

  The sidhes made an undignified scramble toward their companions. One of them paused as he passed Tanzi, his expression undergoing a series of changes as he looked at her. Fear was replaced by recognition, then shock. The moment she had dreaded was here. Dropping on one knee before her, he placed a hand across his heart and bent his head low. “Highness.”

  Lorcan intervened swiftly, putting himself between Tanzi and the kneeling man. “I thought I told you to get out of here.”

  “I apologize. I thought...”

  “You were wrong.” Lorcan’s voice and expression were steely and she knew his words were for the benefit of the resistance members as well as for the sidhe who had recognized her. Nodding, but with a final bemused glance at Tanzi, the sidhe joined his companion. Lorcan sighed. “Lisbet, fetch the girls. Aydan, do you think there’s any chance of you finding our pants so that we can return to town looking halfway decent? Iker, let’s take a look at Sam.”

  * * *

  “We necromancers are a rare species and I thought I knew the current whereabouts of all the greats. Stella is the most powerful of us all. She is the one Merlin—or Cal, as the big feller prefers to be known—predicted would be the means by which Otherworld would be saved. He was right, too. Her powers are second to none. Then there is Cal himself. He is a sorcerer first and foremost, but his powers of necromancy are pretty remarkable, too.” Lorcan’s boyish grin peeped out. “If we’re going down the ranks in order, I suppose I would be next in line. Or perhaps Jethro. The two of us are pretty evenly matched.”

  They were seated in Tanzi’s bedroom. The journey back from the lake had been a miserable one. Rounding up the dryads and persuading them to get back into the truck had been a difficult task. Sam had sustained a nasty injury, having hit his head on a rock when he fell, and Iago was still disoriented. Lorcan, Tanzi and Aydan were damp and miserable after traveling in wet clothing, and Lisbet’s foul mood showed no sign of abating. All in all, it was a sorry group that Pedro had admitted to the safe house earlier that evening.

  Wrapped in a blanket and sipping hot chocolate, Tanzi was still finding it difficult to get warm. Underneath the blanket she wore a thick fisherman’s sweater over her underwear and a pair of Lorcan’s socks. It was as if the lake water had invaded her veins. They had brought an old electric heater up from the cellar. Tanzi was seated in the chair with Lorcan a foot away on the bed and the heater whirred noisily, blowing hot air between them.

  “Do you have other powers as well as necromancing?” It was something she had wondered about ever since overhearing Lorcan’s conversation with the imps. Now it was even more relevant given that the devastating wound inflicted on him by the zombie sword just hours earlier had faded to little more than a deep scratch.

  Lorcan had dismissed her questions about his injury with a shrug. “I’ve always been quick to heal.”

  Now he regarded her thoughtfully before answering. “I’ve a trick or two up my sleeve.” He didn’t elaborate and she sensed a distance that she’d felt before. Sometimes, behind the easy facade, there was a vulnerability about Lorcan—a torment deep within him—that placed him beyond her reach. She wondered why others appeared not to see it. He continued with his list of necromancers. “Niniane, the sorceress who was known as the Lady of the Lake, dabbled a bit in the old dark arts, but she died in the battle for Otherworld, so that’s her out of the picture. Moving down the line, there is an elderly Russian necromancer called Novak, but he is a known recluse. I can’t see him coming out of hiding to get involved in something like this. Then there are the twins, Darius and Nightshade, but the last I heard of them they had a very lucrative contract with the Ghost Lord sorting out some rebellious poltergeists. And that’s it as far as the big hitters go. There are a few minor players on the scene, but none of them have the strength to do something on this scale.”

  “You are sure there was a necromancer controlling those zombies?”

  “Absolutely. I could feel it. There was another force acting against mine. Whoever raised them was close by. I’d say they were in the house with us. And he or she was bloody good because those zombies were being controlled without words. The necromancer who raised them was commanding them with the power of his or her thoughts. Given that zombies don’t have brains, that’s some feat. I’ve heard of it but I’ve never seen it done until today.”

  Tanzi hesitated, reluctant to make a suggestion that involved a friend of his. Yet it seemed the most obvious solution. “Could it have been Jethro? He is a mercenary, for sale to the highest bidder, and he’s worked for my father before.”

  Lorcan gave it some consideration. “Jethro is certainly powerful enough. But, after Moncoya locked him up for not being able to defeat Stella on the eve of the battle, I don’t think Jethro is your father’s biggest fan. Maybe I’m being overly sentimental, but I also like to think we’ve been through too much together for him to set a trap like that for me, no matter how high the price.” He drained the last of his hot chocolate. “And he’s got other things on his mind just now.”

  “So who could it be?”

  He shrugged. “My best guess is that there’s a new kid in town. We don’t always discover we are necromancers until we are older. Look at Stella. She had all that incredible energy inside her, yet she was twenty-five before she even began to acknowledge it. Whoever did this, he or she was pretty powerful to have kept control over that many zombies at once. Sooner or later, they will surface again. Until they do, we have a bigger problem.”

  “Finding out who the traitor is.” Tanzi said it for him. She bit her lip. “Lisbet thinks it’s me. I can see it in her eyes whenever she looks my way.”

  He leaned forward and took the cup from her, placing it on the floor. Clasping her hands, he held them between his. “I know it’s not you.”

  “How can you know that?” She could hear the husky edge of emotion in her own voice. “Given what you know of me, surely I must be your first suspect?”

  “You asked me just now if I have other powers. It’s not a power as such, but I have a strong intuition, a foresight, about people. It is something that was passed down to me by my mother.”

  Tanzi raised her eyes to the endless blue of his. “What does your intuition tell you about me?”

  “It tells me that you are honest and good.”

  Her breath hitched on a gasp. Until now, in the moment of hearing those words aloud, she had no idea how much they would mean to her. She had always believed the world saw her through the warped looking glass Moncoya held up as the means by which he wanted her to be seen. To know that someone—particularly Lorcan—believed in her sent a rush of pure elation flooding through her. Unsure of her intention, she leaned closer, closing the gap between them to a mere inch.

  “Tanzi...” It sounded as if it was meant to be a protest. Even a warning. Then one of his hands cupped her cheek, and that simple gesture rocketed through them both. There was no turning back from that moment, no pretense and no finesse... Their lips ground together urgently. Lorcan’s hand, sliding up through her hair to the back of her head, held Tanzi to him, and she closed her eyes, giving herself up to the commands of his mouth on hers. Her whole body was alive and aching with instant pleasure. Twisting her head, she fitted herself to him, and Lorcan growled in satisfaction. He was tasting her, exploring her, his lips moving possessively over hers, then, as Tanzi’s mouth slowly opened, his ton
gue claimed her. That first entry of his body into hers was so stingingly perfect that Tanzi welcomed him with a soft moan.

  One of Lorcan’s hands moved below the blanket and under her sweater, sliding over her back, tracing her spine, and running all the way down to find the cleft of her buttocks. With that touch, the kiss changed again, becoming laden with new purpose. Hot and heavy. Panting slightly, Lorcan pulled away.

  “I was going to say this was a bad idea...but suddenly it seems like the best idea I’ve ever had. If you’re sure?”

  Tanzi nodded. Her own breath was suspended somewhere between her lungs and her throat. “I’m sure.”

  He drew her to her feet, holding her between his knees as he gazed up at her. Before either of them could do anything, there was an insistent pounding on the door. Lisbet’s voice was insistent. “Lorcan? We know you’re in there.”

  “Ah, will you listen to that? Does that sound like a woman who’ll go away if we keep quiet?” Tanzi gave a shaky laugh and shook her head. Pausing to lift her sweater and press a regretful kiss just below her navel, Lorcan rose to his feet. “My head tells me to leave this, but other, more insistent parts of me say we’ve unfinished business here, Searc.”

  The piercing blue of his eyes burned a pathway directly into her chest as he rose and, with a rueful smile, went to open the door.

  CHAPTER 8

  “We need to speak to you.” Lisbet, accompanied by a slightly embarrassed-looking Aydan, had her hands on her hips as Lorcan opened the bedroom door. She peered round him and, taking in the fact that Tanzi was in the room, stepped back again. “In private.”

  “No.”

  Lisbet’s existing frown deepened farther. “What do you mean ‘no’?”

  “What I said.” Lorcan held the door wide-open in invitation. “If you want to speak to me you can come in and do it here.”

  With a huffing sound, Lisbet pushed past him and into the room. There was a suspicion of reluctance about Aydan’s manner as he followed. “We know who she is. I knew it as soon as that sidhe bent his knee to her,” Lisbet announced without preamble, pointing at Tanzi.

  “She is the person who saved all our lives today.” Lorcan went to sit on the bed. He drew Tanzi down next to him, announcing his allegiance. He felt the rigidity in her slender frame and wished he could do something to reassure her.

  Lisbet snorted. Her coal-dark eyes dropped to where Lorcan had lifted Tanzi’s hand to rest on his denim-clad thigh. “Will you be so quick to fondle her when you know she’s none other than the Crown Princess of the Faeries? Daughter of the war criminal Moncoya? Hell, if it comes to that, she’s committed enough crimes of her own on his behalf.”

  “You are forgetting one simple rule by which we work here. We don’t judge those who come to us.”

  Lisbet’s eyes narrowed. “Can it be that you have known all along who she is?”

  “I have.”

  “My God, Lorcan. I never thought you, of all people, would make a fool of yourself over a pretty face.”

  Aydan spoke up, his quiet voice somehow more powerful in the small room than Lisbet’s shrill volume. “Maybe we should listen to what Lorcan has to say.”

  Shrugging dramatically, Lisbet threw herself down into the chair Tanzi had vacated. Her expression was not indicative of open-mindedness.

  “Tanzi has come here for the same reason anyone comes to us. She is escaping persecution. Her background is irrelevant.”

  “If that’s true, why have you taken such pains to keep her identity secret?” There was a flash of triumph in Lisbet’s eyes.

  “Because I knew how you would react and because, more than anything, we can’t risk Moncoya finding out where she is.” Lorcan kept his voice calm despite the fact that Lisbet was starting to annoy him. Diplomacy wasn’t his strongest point, and he was experiencing an increasing desire to tell her to get the fuck out of his face. The problem was, he didn’t know quite how much damage Lisbet could do to Tanzi if she remained this wound up. So he needed to try to dredge up some tact so that he could calm her down. He was shocked at the bitterness he could see twisting Lisbet’s face and couldn’t for the life of him guess at its cause. Okay, so she hated Moncoya. They all did. But she’d seen what Tanzi did today. There was no way that was the behavior of someone who wasn’t committed to the resistance cause. So where was all this venom coming from?

  “What if Daddy knows exactly where his darling daughter is? He’s probably using her to yank all our chains. You said yourself we have a traitor in our midst.”

  “You think I controlled those zombies at the same time I was fighting them?” Tanzi spoke up for the first time. “Thanks for the compliment, but I’m not that talented.”

  “We don’t know what you are. That’s the problem.” Lisbet’s expression hardened further. “This is a honey trap for Lorcan, isn’t it? That’s Moncoya’s strategy. Get him to fall for you and rip the whole resistance movement apart from within.”

  Tanzi rose to her feet. Even wrapped in an old blanket, with Lorcan’s socks peeping out beneath, she managed to look regal. “I should go.”

  “This is your room.” Lorcan rose to stand beside her. “You don’t need to go anywhere.”

  “No, I mean go away. Leave.”

  “Best idea I’ve heard,” Lisbet chimed in.

  “You can shut up.” Lorcan decided he’d had enough of diplomacy. Lisbet opened her mouth to speak again, took note of his expression and thought better of it. “And you are not going anywhere, Searc. It’s not safe for you to leave here. Anyway—” he glanced around to make sure everyone was listening “—if Tanzi goes, I go with her.”

  With an outraged huffing noise, Lisbet bounced up from her seat and flung out of the room, slamming the door behind her.

  “What the hell is wrong with her?” Lorcan stared at the door in bewilderment. “This can’t all be about Tanzi. We’ve had high-ranking sidhes change allegiance before.”

  He was conscious of Tanzi scanning his face. “You really don’t know, do you?”

  “Know what?” She shook her head, and he turned to Aydan. “Has anyone checked on Iago since we got back?”

  “He said he wanted to sleep.”

  “That was a few hours ago. I’ll go down to his room and make sure he’s okay.”

  “I’ll come with you,” Aydan offered.

  “I’m going to see if Maria needs help in the kitchen.” To the surprise of everyone in the house, Tanzi had become something of a favorite with the irascible housekeeper. It was an unlikely friendship, but one which worked.

  Iago’s bedroom was two floors down and, when they reached it, Lorcan knocked on the scarred wooden panels of the door. There was no response. He tried again, louder and longer this time.

  “I think we’re justified in going in, given how unwell he was at the zombie house.” He turned the handle and was relieved to find the door unlocked.

  The first thing that struck him as he stepped inside was the smell. It reminded him of his childhood, and at first he couldn’t place why. Then he remembered. He used to sit outside the smithy and watch the blacksmith at work as he shoed the horses. It was a metallic smell, like heated iron. Except this was subtly different, earthier and rawer. The next thing his heightened senses perceived was that the room was empty.

  Aydan flicked the light switch on and muttered an exclamation. The whole of one wall was filled with a giant pentagram—a five-pointed star within a circle—drawn in crude black brushstrokes. On the floor next to the bed lay a headless chicken and nearby, a copper bowl was filled with bright red, viscous liquid. That explained the smell. Fresh blood always had that metallic tang. Half-burned candles of black tallow had been placed on each side of the pentagram.

  “I guess we know who was controlling the zombies.” Aydan’s voice was shaky. “Aren’t thes
e signs of necromancy?”

  “Ancient ones. Most of us have evolved beyond these.” Lorcan looked around the room. Tacked onto another wall were grainy photographs of each of the resistance members, with a particular focus on Tanzi. There were also pictures of Lorcan, Cal, Stella and Jethro. “We also know who our traitor is.”

  * * *

  Lorcan took Tanzi back to the bustling university square and sat on the same steps where they had eaten pizza when she had first arrived in Barcelona. It had been only a few weeks, but it seemed so much longer. He judged they had enough time to risk being out in the open, away from the claustrophobia of the house and Lisbet’s disapproving glances. There would be time enough for running and backward glances very soon.

  Lorcan studied her face as they talked. She still took his breath away every time he looked at her, but he knew now it had nothing to do with faerie glamor or enchantment. It was intrinsic to her. She enraptured him with who she was, not with any external spell. And that meant he was in bigger trouble than he’d originally thought.

  “How much danger am I in?”

  There was no point sugarcoating it. “It’s not looking good,” Lorcan admitted. “I don’t know where Moncoya found him, or how Cal and I have never come across him before now, but Iago must be enormously powerful to have pulled off that stunt today.”

  “So it was all an act? He wasn’t really unconscious at all?”

  “No. He needed to be close enough to the zombies to control them, but he could do it through the power of thought. As I said, I’ve never seen it done before. Impressive stuff.” He wondered how many other new tricks Iago had tucked away and hoped he never needed to find out.

  “And afterward? When he was still semiconscious and groggy? Was that also an act?”

  “Who knows? Maybe he was still playing a part or possibly the mental exertion required to control that many zombies for so long really did sap his strength. We may never see Iago again, so we might never find out, but we know he’s gone back to your father with some key information about all of us and—most important of all—about where he can find you.”