Earl of Darkness

by Alix Rickloff

  One hand splayed against his chest, she rocked forward. Bent to take his nipple in her mouth. Tongued until he moaned, spasms rippling through him. The rhythm of their joining intensified until he crumbled under the blast of white heat, his climax exploding through him like lightning. She followed him in the toppling ecstasy, her inner muscles closing around him, head thrown back, eyes closed, skin like pearl in the light from a waning moon as she rode him to her own release.

  Spent, they snuggled in the bed, their limbs sweat slick but rapidly cooling, their breathing raspy from the race. He pushed a damp tendril of hair from her face. Caught the sliver of the ancient scar on her cheek. Dropped a kiss upon it. “How did it happen?”

  She reached up to cover his hand where he touched her cheek, her eyes sleepy, her mind open to sharing confidence. “My stepfather’s riding crop.”

  Aidan stiffened. “What kind of man raises a hand to a defenseless girl?”

  A corner of her mouth twitched in a half smile. “You did once if you’ll remember.”

  He flushed. “That was different. And you were hardly defenseless. You about emasculated me with that kick.”

  She brushed provocatively against him. “Had I only known.” She giggled. “But I wasn’t exactly defenseless that time either. He received a fist to the face in response. It was the last time he struck me.”

  “Learned his lesson, did he?”

  “I walked out. It was when he learned about Jeremy and the baby. ”

  Aidan went completely still, her last word dropping like a weight in the quiet room. Repeating with the echo of complete shock. His hand unconsciously found her stomach. Brushed the flatness of it, imagining it stretched and heavy with pregnancy. Envisioning her caught in the throes of childbirth. Images battering him of her and Jeremy together. Impossible to ignore after he’d just experienced her reckless passion for himself.

  “Baby? You have a child?”

  “Had.” She stared long and hard at some invisible distant point, anguish as raw upon her features as pleasure had been only moments before. “He lived for only a few days,” she said, interpreting his silence as approval to continue. “I’d not even enough coins to bury him.” She sniffled in the darkness. “He lies in a pauper’s grave. I try to . . . to tell myself at least he’s not alone. He rests among souls as lost and lonely as he.”

  Aidan closed his eyes against the heartbreak in her voice. Damning the thrice-cursed Jeremy to hell even as his stomach curdled, his fragile peace cracking along a thousand fault lines.

  “I worry every day I’ll forget him. That some morning I’ll open my eyes and the memory of his face, his little wrinkled fingers, his need for me will be gone. And I’ll be truly alone in the world.”

  Why did every syllable congeal his blood to icy sluggishness? This was Cat. She was courageous. Defiant. Displayed the will of a lion, yet conveyed a vulnerability generating unfamiliar knight-errant tendencies in him. Her sins meant less than nothing. He’d told her that. Believed it.

  His hand slid away as his head buzzed with questions.

  “Aidan?” she asked tentatively.

  He couldn’t answer, still trapped between acceptance of Cat’s tarnished past and shock at the existence of a child. A concrete and very real symbol of that past.

  Her breath caught in her throat, her body going still. “You bloody great hypocrite,” she murmured in the same sultry sexy voice used only moments earlier as a wanton invitation. “I should have known.”

  She catapulted from his bed, dragging the blanket with her. Wrapping herself in its folds like some quivering vengeful Roman goddess, finger pointed in wrathful accusation. “ ‘You’re a marvel, Cat,’ ” she mocked. “‘I won’t let you fall.’ So my bedding another is fine. But bearing his child puts me beyond the pale? How dare you!” Her jeers came ugly and hoarse with fury. “You strung me along like some stupid, senseless female until I trusted you not to judge me. Until I thought maybe—just maybe—you’d understand, but you’re like all the rest. How many women have you gulled into your bed with a honeyed tongue then left when you’d had your fill? How many of your children lie buried in forgotten graves? Answer me that.”

  For a split second, his mind retraced a string of nameless, faceless women whose sole memorable feature was their willing compliance in his artful seduction. Flinched from the thought that somewhere out there a child might cry for a father he’d never known.

  He crushed the thought. “No. It couldn’t happen. Wouldn’t. And I’d know if it had.”

  But Cat’s scarred face and bruised soul told him it could and did happen all too frequently.

  She fumbled with the blanket, her hands shaking as badly as her voice. “I’ve been a fool twice over. And that makes what we’ve done here my folly. Not yours. So I can forgive your seduction. What I can’t forgive is your betrayal.”

  Unable to speak or move or defend against the truth, he merely lay there in stony silence, left alone with a whirl of questions, and a gnawing emptiness where his heart ought to be.

  Cat’s rage carried her back to her rooms. Through a clumsy, hurried dressing into petticoat and gown whose buttons seemed suddenly overlarge, the fabric harsh against flesh still tender from lovemaking. Stuffing her hair into a loose roll and pinning it with a set of silver and bone combs she’d unearthed from one of the trunks, she sank among the crates and barrels, wishing she could turn to uncaring wood and stone like the trinkets and treasures surrounding her.

  She pressed the heels of her hands to her eyes, refusing to give in to the humiliation and anger squeezing her throat. Searing her cheeks. If she cried, she’d never stop. Simply drown in a river of stupid tears taking her nowhere. She knew that from bitter experience.

  The world didn’t change to suit your dreams. It was your dreams that had to change to suit the world. Another of Geordie’s maxims. Thoughts of the dwarfish little thief brought a fresh ache to a throat sore and throbbing.

  “Cat, open up.” Followed by a soft tap at the door. “We need to talk.”

  “I think we’ve said all that needs saying.”

  The door opened, a slice of Aidan’s face appearing in the crack. He’d dressed. She caught the white of his shirt, and a boot slid into the opening, wedging the door open. “Someone will hear. Let me in.”

  “Afraid they’ll reveal your lechery to Miss Osborne and she’ll call off the wedding?” A new realization brought her quivering to her feet. “Or is it that you think if you don’t play nice, I’ll stop translating.” She nodded. “That’s it, isn’t it?”

  Discarding his conciliatory pose, Aidan stepped into the room. Closed the door behind him, leaning back against it as if she might flee. His clothes looked as if he’d flung them on in haste, and his uncombed auburn hair stuck out in elflocks. “Don’t be daft.”

  She tilted her chin to meet the annoyance flickering in his eyes. “So now what? Do you lock me in again, Kilronan? Tempt me with proper clothes and coal for my fire as if I were a stray you could toss a bone?”

  “Kilronan again, is it?”

  “It’s a finer title than the one I could be using.”

  That brought a gruff laugh and a bitter twist of his lips. “True enough.” He reached for her. “Cat, if you’ll just let me—”

  But he never completed his sentence. Instead, his head jerked up as if he’d been pulled by invisible strings, his pupils constricting to obsidian chips in a face suddenly devoid of color. “He’s here.”

  “Who?”

  But the space where he’d been had no answer for her.

  Not that she needed one.

  Aidan plunged down the dark stairs. Beat a path through the house, pausing only long enough to gather the loaded pistol from the chest in the hall. A knife from the kitchens.

  What he’d do with them, he hadn’t the foggiest notion. They certainly wouldn’t stop Lazarus. Barely slow him down if his last encounter with the Domnuathi was anything to go by. But he had to try. For the diary’s sake. Fo
r Cat’s sake, even if she wished him to the devil just now. Not that he didn’t deserve it. Her revelation still sizzled along his nerves in sickening little bursts, but he’d gotten past the initial lightning shock. And that’s just what it was. Cat—the walking storm cloud. The living breathing hurricane force blowing apart every preconceived notion of what he wanted. Who he needed.

  He rushed out onto the wide back steps leading down to the garden. A yellow moon hung just above the trees, a bite taken out of it, leaving it jagged and pale against a sky dark as ink.

  Somewhere out there, Lazarus waited. The hairs on Aidan’s neck prickled. His skin itched and stretched as if his whole body expanded to seek out the intruder. Fisting the handle of the knife, he descended the steps slowly. Scanning the terraces for traces of movement.

  “Lazarus!” he shouted. “I know you’re out there. I can smell your death stench!”

  Probably not the brightest of ideas to taunt a man who had the ability to kill you a thousand different ways, but what the hell? He rode close to the edge. Half-crazed from a night spinning so out of control, it seemed the very sky tilted on an awkward axis.

  “Afraid to face me like a man? Oh, that’s right. You’re not a man. Not anymore. You’re a wraith with no more power than what your creator gave you!”

  He worked his way toward the closest grove of trees in an attempt to lure Lazarus away from the house. Made it as far as the first scraggly shrubs when his quarry appeared behind him. At first no more than another shadow among many until the Domnuathi separated from the gloom. Stepped into the clearing.

  Damn, he’d forgotten how bloody huge the creature was. His head scraping even with the tree limbs, his expression lost in the murk, all except for the inhuman animal eyes. They speared him with the emptiness of the grave. Burned like twin embers.

  “For that, a slow and painful death is yours.” Lazarus’s voice came rough and creaky as if he seldom spoke. His hand fell to his waist where Aidan had been trying not to notice the long outline of a scabbard hanging with menacing promise. “But first the diary.”

  Aidan pulled the pistol from his belt. Steadied it at Lazarus’s chest. The soldier of Domnu smiled, a thin terrible smile full of pity and longing, emptying Aidan of his last hope. This man wanted to die. Would welcome it. And who could stand against a fool who chased death with such naked yearning?

  “If only you could, Kilronan,” he sighed. “I might just let you live.”

  And then he struck.

  Cat banged on the bedchamber door. Rattled the knob. “Wake up. Please. Get up. Aidan needs you.”

  She collapsed sobbing against the panels. Almost tumbled into the room as the door was wrenched open to Maude in cap and wrapper, hair in a messy night plait down her rounded back.

  Daz sat up in the enormous four poster bed behind her, rubbing his eyes.

  “What the devil!” Maude scolded. “You’re making enough noise to raise the dead.”

  “He’s already been raised,” Cat blurted. “And he’s out there now. Aidan’s trying to stop him.” She looked past Maude to Daz. “Please. You have to help him. Lazarus will kill him.”

  Daz cocked his head. “Lazarus?”

  “Brendan’s conjured killer. He attacked us in Dublin. And now he’s tracked us here.”

  “Brendan?”

  “He’s after the diary.”

  Daz flinched, his face ashen, his eyes wide and fearful. “The Nine are no more. Brendan’s no more. The Amhas-draoi killed them all. They’re no more, and the dream is dead. The High King’s return stale as yesterday’s bread.”

  Cat crossed to the bed, taking him by the arm. Trying by sheer force of will to propel him up and into sanity. “Stop it. Stop prattling like a damned Bedlamite and do something.”

  Maude sought to intercede, but Cat was beyond listening. Beyond understanding. Beyond anything but panic and the fear that even now it was too late. Surely that was the steady approach of Lazarus she heard across the boards below. And there was his breathing as he climbed the stairs. The drip of a blood-splattered blade.

  “Get up, damn you!” she shouted.

  Daz started to move. With agonizing lethargy, he drew on his breeches. Wrapped a banyan about his shoulders. Too slow. Far too slow.

  Hurry! she wanted to scream.

  Hurry before it’s too late.

  “Even without your help, I’ll find it, Kilronan. And your silence will mean less than nothing.”

  If Aidan closed his eyes, the earth would devour him. The soil would close over his head. Roots would snarl in his hair, and his flesh would dissolve to naught more than food for the worms. So he kept his eyes open and locked on the fiend striding triumphant toward the house, while his mind fastened on the only answer to this unwavering onslaught of devastating mage energy.

  Gulping a fiery breath, he descended. Pulled forth the words he’d read only once, yet which had sat upon his tongue like a bitter taste ever after. Words with the force to summon an Unseelie. The only being he could think of with the ability to vanquish the reanimate.

  “Yn-mea esh a gwagvesh. A-dhiwask polth. Dreheveth hath omdhiskwedhea.” Just speaking took monumental effort. Placing the emphasis in the right spot. Shaping the harsh vowels and chewing the raspy consonants. Pushing them through cracked lips from a mouth sticky and numb. “Skeua hesh flamsk gwruth dea. Drot peuth a galloea esh a dewik lya. Drot peuth a pystrot esh a dewik spyrysoa.”

  The words seemed to draw a shadow over the sky, as if some great beast had swallowed the moon. And he shivered despite a heat beginning in his belly. Spreading along his arteries and veins in the usual fiery race to his brain. But something else traveled in the same current as this molten flash flood. Something foreign and potent and bearing the weight of oblivion.

  Aidan repeated the phrase. And again. Each time feeling death recede and a new existence beckoning with skeletal fingers. The air thickened, making it difficult to breathe. His lungs worked like a bellows, yet dizziness spun the stars overhead and spots clouded his eyesight.

  A form took shape at the corner of his narrowed vision. A creature more shade than substance, yet gaining mass with every passing second. Craning its thick, wattled neck back and forth as if seeking the origin of its summoning.

  Laying its gaze upon Aidan, its lips peeled back on a mouth full of razored teeth and a lolling tongue like a lizard’s.

  “Hwot gelweth mest, Erelth.” It spoke in a slithering, hissing speech, its unblinking vertical-lidded eyes pale as bleached stones.

  “I called you forth.” Aidan heard the words come from his mouth. But his voice had deepened. Bore the same unnatural reptilian crawl. “Join with me. Take your place within me.”

  “Mest akordyesh, Erelth,” the Unseelie answered. “Hwot esh biest mest.” It punched its fist into Aidan’s flesh, his body parting bloodlessly. Again came the pain like a breath-stealing bullet’s rip. And the Unseelie’s other arm disappeared into Aidan’s body.

  He shifted against a feeling as if his bones had hardened to iron, his blood turned to acid, his brain whirling and overflowing with thoughts and memories not his own.

  Fury. Rage. Murder. Hate. Chaos. Destruction. Ruin. Death.

  The creature’s voice filled his head with a screeching buzz like metal against metal. “Esoest hwot, Erelth. Owgsk vest. Oa hunot.”

  And like stepping through a door, the creature settled beneath his skin. Controlled him. Became him.

  With the Unseelie’s help, Lazarus would be a dead man. Again.

  Cat stumbled to a crashing halt at the top of the stairs.

  Below her, an expression of grim determination upon his upturned face, climbed Lazarus. His gaze settled upon her like a knife at her throat, his steps unfaltering.

  Spinning, she fled back toward her bedchamber. Slammed the door closed behind her, sobs knotting her throat, her heart thundering. She scanned the room for a hiding place. Somewhere she could crawl into and become invisible to the searching, killer eyes of the de
athless Domnuathi.

  Steps sounded on the floorboards. Slow. Sure. As if confident none could stand against him. And wasn’t that true? How did one kill something already dead? How could one hurt something for which pain was less than nothing?

  She’d prodded Daz and Maude to action. Now she prayed the old man and woman huddled safely in their chamber while Lazarus searched. He didn’t want them. He wanted the Kilronan diary. She wished she could give it to him. Hand it over and be done with it. All she’d found within it had been sorrow. Sorrow and misery. The pages seemed to bleed these emotions, as if agony had been written into the mysterious language with every stroke of the pen.

  “Lazarus!”

  The shout erupted in the torpid silence of the house. The footsteps paused.

  “Your bravery does you credit, Kilronan,” came the grim voice on the other side of the door.

  “Abomination of Annwn. Your cannibalized half-life is over.” Aidan’s voice—yet hardly his words. No, these came clipped and enunciated with careful and formal precision. As if the speaker used a language not his own. “Yntresh esh dea hesh dea tarosvana, not bodsk diwedsk mesk nana.”

  Chained rage quivered off every syllable, and Cat’s throat closed around a panicked moan. She knew this language. Had heard it once before in Aidan’s library the night he’d called the Unseelie. This wasn’t Aidan. Or at least not the Aidan she knew. This was a merging of man and monster. He must have summoned a being of the Dark Court to aid him against Lazarus. But who could be the victor between two such unspeakable creatures?

  A blast of mage energy lit the space beneath the door. Sparkled the very dust hovering in the air. The wood panels buckled, the lock rattling, the nails glowing red-hot.

  There came a shout and a scream, and again the mage energy crackled through the air with a sulpherous stench.

  “Hold, damn you!” That was Aidan, for certain. But then his words came again with the same odd dissonance as before. “No peaceful sleep, Domnuathi, but a wakeful eternity in the deepest pits of Annwn.”

  The sounds of battle rang up and down the corridor and the stairs. The crash of a gunshot. The whistle of arcing steel. The grunts and curses of men locked in a death struggle.