Catspell

by Colleen Shannon

To her astonishment, she felt the stirring of a girlish need to kiss that mouth and find out for herself the measure of his manhood. The fact that he apparently sensed her unusual interest only increased her fury at herself--and him. She straightened to her full, imposing height, not hapy she still had to look up to him. “Who, may I ask, are you? And who gave you permission to invade the Blaylock crypt?”

  His strange, slanted green eyes had begun to sparkle with interest. “I might ask the same of you.”

  “You might.” Their eyes met.

  Challenge made, measure taken. On both sides.

  Those lips quirked, becoming even more tempting, as the fullness of the lower lip curved. “Miss Holmes, I presume. Your reputation precedes you.”

  “You have the advantage of me, sir.” She could have kicked herself for the trite response when she saw the rakish way he eyed her, end to end, as if he did indeed want to take advantage of her posthaste.

  But he only replied mildly, “Oh, I am quite well known too, in some scientific circles, in my own modest fashion.”

  Shelly made a rude noise. She’d just laid eyes on the fellow, but she already knew he had very little modesty.

  “No, truly.” He clasped his hands to his bosom and raised his gaze toward the heavens. “May the dear Redeemer strike me dead on the spot if I lie.”

  They both waited a second, Shelly half hoping for a salient lightning bolt whether she believed in its source or not. Meanwhile, the stranger was the picture of piety, but she knew it for a lie. She sensed in him a prodigious intelligence, a cool curiosity of the world around him, both seen and unseen, and a healthy skepticism very like her own. However, he differed from her in a marked way: He was a man who knew that a smile could open more closed minds than a scowl. That was a lesson she herself was still trying to learn, but she had no taste for him as tutor.

  She turned away, ignoring his large, well shaped hands that indicated both breeding and good grooming. For the tiniest instant of self betrayal, she wondered what those hands would feel like on her flesh, but she rushed into speech to quell the image. “I make no doubt you are well known in one place.”

  When he quirked an eyebrow, she finished, “The stage. But go find the Divine Sarah to practice your blandishments upon and leave me to my investigation.” She turned a cold shoulder to him and knelt back to study the markings. To her irritation, the set down that had overset richer, more powerful men than he, didn’t seem to affect him in the slightest.

  The only indication of his feelings was that his merry tone had cooled. “You can either deprive yourself of a kindred spirit also wondering why Isis killed herself, or you can cooperate and hope that, if we compare notes, we can figure out the link between mother and daughter that marks Arielle’s flesh and takes her on these strange astral projections.”

  Slowly, Shelly turned back to him. Astral projections. Most people had never heard the term, much less knew Arielle suffered from it.

  His mouth was solemn now. “I want to know why Isis killed herself. And I want even more to help save her daughter from the same madness.”

  I need to know why Isis killed herself. Shelly heard the words, not spoken, but inferred in several illustriously illuminated volumes in his tone of voice. “What concern is it of yours?”

  “Let’s just say that I have a fondness for her daughter and leave it at that.”

  Whatever ‘that’ was went much farther than he admitted, but Shelly finally took pity on him, stood, and extended her hand. If she sensed a kindred spirit in him, a fellow quester and questioner, she refused to let him see it. She pumped his hand brusquely. “Shelly Holmes.”

  When she tried to pull free, he caught her hand between his much larger ones and warmed it. Nothing untoward or overly forward, yet Shelly felt a rush of heat warm her cheeks and descend, more alarmingly, to an area of her body she seldom thought about.

  “Ethan Perot, Viscount of Trent. And, of more interest to one of your bent, Royal Society member interested in physics, chemistry and paranormal phenomena.”

  As she listened, Shelly eased her hand away, backing a step before she could stop herself.

  But that wide mouth only quirked, increasing her strange urge to stare at it. “And perhaps your greatest challenge, my very dear Miss Shelly Holmes.”

  Quelling the primitive impulse to flee both the look in his eyes and her own response to it, Shelly stood her ground and thrust the lantern at him. “Very well, make yourself useful and hold this. I shall let the Earl decide what to do with you.”

  “A pity. I’d much rather you made that choice.” His soft laughter warmed her cheeks as he knelt next to her. He held the lantern high while she began to copy the strange marks and words into a notebook.

  After she’d sketched all she could, Shelly knelt down to study the markings again. “I need to get a thin piece of parchment and do a rubbing…” The words were scarcely out of her mouth when she saw him go to a black bag she’d not noticed earlier and–what was the matter with her? She noticed everything, normally.

  While she’d scarcely laid eyes on the man she already knew he did nothing in the normal way. Steeling herself against the strange allure of his presence, Shelly stood, folded her arms over her formidable bosom and watched him remove a long roll of parchment and a thick piece of leaded pencil from his bag. He approached, a wicked gleam in his eye.

  “You ask, I give. Rubbings are something I excel at, my very dear lady.” As he passed her, he used one of those excessively large and excessively capable hands to brush his fingers very lightly down her back. “And foot rubbings are my specialty.”

  She arched her back at him like a spitting cat at his implication, but her high dudgeon was for naught. He was all the studious scientist again, bending to unroll the parchment over the inscription. “Now, are you going to stand there grinding your teeth down to nubs, or are you going to help me hold this paper so I can do a respectable job of duplicating this devilishly intricate script?”

  Still grinding her teeth in frustration, Shelly knelt again to help, trying hard to ignore the scent of his sandalwood soap and the far more exotic aroma so heady to her heightened werewolf senses–the scent of an aroused man.

  Unfortunately, the tingling in her unmentionable area was its own response and longed, despite her iron will, to be its own reward. How long had it been? She tried to remember, and suddenly realized she had not been intimate with a man since Jeremy, several years past.

  Jeremy Mayhew, the little cockney sailor, Lil’s general factotum and Shelly’s general nuisance, who’d been so rough around the edges he titillated the werewolf sensibilities that had come with her ‘gift.’ All too briefly they’d been lovers, and shared something wonderful despite the difference in their ages, their stations, and their intellects. She seldom thought of him any more.

  She seldom let herself think of him.

  They’d parted after Lil and Ian broke the curse of the Haskell heiresses and Shelly left for her next adventure. But the strange feelings assailing her now, so similar to the ones she’d felt then, made her recall the scents and sights of that bleak Cornwall moor a bare few years ago--and the event that had changed her utterly and forever. For the better, or for the worse? She did not know herself.

  Her eyes began to glow as she saw not the dim mausoleum and the man watching her curiously, but the alluring moonlight that had brushed the barren wastes with a strange golden beauty…right before the giant wolf bit her. Enough to make her bleed, though at the time she’d not been overly concerned, as she was still doubting herself the truth of something so fantastical as a being part man, part wolf, but all wild.

  And then the change began…Shelly’s nostrils flared as the scent of sandalwood filled her head, and suddenly she was hungry for touch and tongue. Only then did she realize that a large capable hand had closed over hers, and that this powerful rush of memories she usually squelched were all his fault.

  “My dear lady, are you all right?” came a voice much
more cultured than Jeremy’s, yet its effect on her was very similar. She wondered if he had rough edges, too, and how it would feel to smooth them.

  She stared down at that well shaped, sensitive hand, imagining it gliding over her skin. When the long fingers curled between hers, she felt a tangible lurch in her middle, her eyes glowing brighter as she longed to clutch back. To pull him into her arms, or better yet, fall into his.

  And precisely because she wanted to be a woman again so badly, to forget the responsibilities and burdens of her ‘gift’, she forced herself to jerk away. “Nothing is the matter except I have no predilection for forward men. Keep your hands to yourself.”

  He arched a brow at this, as if he’d sensed her inner battle, but he merely bent back to his work. Despite her inward catechism, however, loneliness, perhaps inspired by the look and scent of a man she knew instinctively was dangerous to her, battled for primacy with longing as, inevitably, their hands brushed again in the close quarters during the rubbing. But this time he kept things impersonal, only suggesting she hold the paper a certain way.

  Damnation, would she never stop feeling the inconvenient instincts of a woman? Vowing to crush every vestige of these disconcerting notions, she moved her hands to the very edge of the paper and concentrated on the hieroglyphics appearing under the lead.

  Inside his carriage, sitting before Hafford Place at the curb, Luke Simball stared up at the tiny patch of light visible on the second floor between thick curtains. Morosely, he wondered when he’d ever start feeling more like a man instead of like a cat on hot bricks. Despite how hard he tried to resist, he always found himself here at the same hour, like a tomcat on the prowl, the sun sinking before the night’s dominion. While he felt much more at home in the night, only Arielle could make his nocturnal world complete.

  No matter how many women he bedded in an effort to end this hunger, it was she who haunted his waking hours and tormented his dreams. Since she’d become a recluse after her fall several years ago, until the dance, he’d only actually glimpsed her once, getting into a carriage. Now, the memory of holding her in his arms was as vibrant as she was herself. He didn’t have to close his vivid green eyes to see her, so bright and strong was her allure. She was meant to be his, had always been meant to be his down through the ages.

  She just didn’t know it yet.

  Despite the limp, her skin pale and circles under her eyes, she had a haughty aura of power, a grace of movement, that made every hunting instinct he possessed go on full alert. The fangs he’d learned to suppress except when he was ready to feed formed of their own accord, beyond his power to control. Claws grew from his fingernails and soft pads began to form on his palms. The primitive urge to conquer her, to let her know him and learn him as he lavished her with delicate strokes of his claws and little love bites on her neck and shoulders, almost overcame him.

  He enjoyed their dance of desire in their dreams, but he knew that if he took her then, he might lose all chance of winning her in the tangible world. The time would come when she would choose him in both worlds.

  Her dreams would be made reality…but only by her open, willful choice of him over the other.

  When she’d paused on the step of the carriage, looking over her shoulder into the setting sunlight, as if sensing his heated stare, a primeval growl of response had come from his throat. Her eyes were so blue, exactly like her mother’s. Her raven hair, even coiffed severely at her neck under a netting, shone like the blackest panther’s hide. Such would be her true form when she took her rightful place at his side.

  Now, staring at that patch of light, he frowned, focusing his acute senses on the room behind the curtains. A flashing vision of the empty, neatly made bed came to him and he realized she wasn’t there. His glowing green eyes, his pupils now slitted like a cat’s, roved the windows and stopped on the broad terrace, its wide french doors half open.

  The faint sound of silverware clinking on china drifted to him on the breeze. She was at table tonight, so she must be feeling better. Good. Soon she’d be ready for the more direct portion of his wooing. No more sitting alone, using the natural magnetism of his kind from a distance, urging her to him in spirit if not in body. He knew he was partly successful, because the psychic link between them was so strong that sometimes he saw her behind those barred windows, tossing and turning in the bed as she would soon toss and turn in his arms.

  Arielle–lioness of God.

  She alone was blood of his blood, joined to him by her ancestor Cleopatra. She alone would be mother of his children when she finally stopped fighting him.

  Tapping on the roof of his plush brougham to indicate to his driver he was ready to move on, he stared resolutely forward. His green eyes glowed amber in the gathering darkness when he whisked the carriage curtain closed. His glossy gold mane, brushing his starched shirt collar, shone even in the dimmest patch of moonlight peeking through the curtains. Impatiently he brushed it out of his face.

  He leaned down and picked up the book he’d acquired a few days earlier. A knife fell from a hidden sheath at his hip. It was a wickedly long, thin blade of gold inlaid with carnelian and lapis lazuli. It pleased him as it had pleased the pharaoh Akhenaten himself who had once owned it. He stuck it back in the sheath and pulled his coat closed over it.

  Then he turned his attention to the book. He read it in the dark without bothering to light the carriage lanterns. The title was: “Scotland Yard: Their Practices and Stratagems in Pursuing Persons of Ill Character.” In his other hand, he ceaselessly rotated a small, oval golden scarab inscribed with hieroglyphs on one side. As he flipped the scarab from finger to finger, balancing it perfectly without moving his eyes from the page, a lion stared inimically out from the other side.

  For an instant, the same cold arrogance glowed in his eyes.

  Sitting at the dinner table with her father, her odd new companion, Miss Holmes, and Ethan Perot, her mother’s childhood friend, Arielle Blaylock tensed, her eyes going blank. Usually this feeling came upon her only at night when she was abed, but she felt that magnetic presence so close. Surely if she reached out…

  “Arielle? Do you wish me to pass you something?” her father asked, automatically reaching for the bread basket.

  Arielle blushed as she realized her arms were extended. She clasped her chair arms, mumbling, “No, Father, I was merely stretching.” And yet, her senses, so heightened of late, heard a carriage receding from the gate. She knew one of them had come again. As the wheels receded, so did the feeling that all her nerve cells were stroked with the tender-rough texture of a cat’s tongue.

  Her father had accepted the excuse and returned to his veal, but Miss Holmes gave her that direct, unblinking stare that was increasingly unnerving to Arielle. Who was this woman her father passed off as her ‘companion?’ She had none of the dull submissiveness of any companion Arielle had ever met.

  Instead of ignoring the acute appraisal as usual, Arielle returned an unblinking, direct stare. “When shall you return me my amulet, Miss Holmes?”

  “When I am assured your…malady is cured.”

  Arielle stiffened. “I have no malady. Everyone has bad dreams on occasion.”

  This won a raised eyebrow of polite disbelief in return, but no comment.

  Ethan was not so forbearing. “Arielle, if you have no malady, how do you explain the scratches on your arms and bosom you always awaken to?”

  “I…am too restless in bed. There’s a splinter on my bedpost and I–”

  A sputtering noise interrupted her. Her father had just spit his expensive Madeira back into his glass in a gauche behavior unusual for him. “My dear, I have stood beside your bed on more than one occasion and watched the marks appear from nowhere. Why will you not admit that something is amiss here? Something of the dark. Something benighted. I cannot let you end as your mother did.”

  Tossing her napkin over her half eaten food, Arielle rose with all the dignity she could muster when she felt like a spec
imen under glass. One these all too rational beings found a bit fascinating, and a bit distasteful. “From all accounts, Father, you did nothing to get her help.”

  Her father blanched and half rose. “You don’t even remember her, how could you possibly--”

  “I see her nonetheless. She is watching over me and will guide me in the end. And she’s warning me now that you’re lying to me. If I find out you were complicit in her shunning by the ton, I shall never forgive you.” She moved to sweep out of the room, her slight limp detracting not in the slightest from her regal posture and haughty chin.

  The earl blocked her, his cheeks flushed, his eyes bright with anger. “How dare you…I did everything I could to help her, to protect her, but the madness took her away from me. And now, the same ailment affects you, and all you do is curse me and defy me.”

  He seemed to choke with rage and then he sank back into his chair, covering his face with trembling hands. “I see her when I look at you. When you tell me she guides you, how do you expect me to react given the way she ended?”

  Arielle’s own eyes grew bright as she ignored her aching leg. Unable to bear the widening rift between them, she moved to span it by kneeling next to her father to take his hands in hers. “Tell me. Don’t keep secrets from me any more.”

  From his seat at the table, Ethan said gently, “He’s only trying to protect you, child.”

  “How can I fight what I do not understand?” Arielle responded, still staring at her father. She sensed him weakening. “Please.”

  With a deep breath that seemed to steady him, the earl began, “Isis always had a strange prescience and sensitivity to the unseen world that intrigued me. I used to tease her about being a witch. At first we were very happy. But after you came along and you were both in the carriage accident, she…changed.”

  Unconsciously Arielle rubbed her aching leg. She remembered nothing of that night for she’d been but a babe, but she still had the remnants of that trauma in the scars and limp.

  She squeezed her father’s hands and he continued, “She was unconscious for over a month, and that was when the marks first began to appear. Tiny scratches, like yours, coming from nowhere. And when she awoke…” He swallowed harshly. “At first they were little changes. More cream in her tea than was her wont. A restless inability to sleep at night. She began to wander the halls and disappear for hours. When she returned, she had grass stains on the hem of her night rail. One of our neighbors saw her one night, and that’s when the talk began. At first I tried to ignore it, but it only worsened. And then…” He closed his eyes, his face twisted with pain, and when he opened them he was looking at Ethan. “I can’t.”