Earl of Darkness

by Alix Rickloff

  A high whinny startled her fingers from their work. Lazarus’s mount called to another.

  Aidan was coming.

  The shrill welcome of a horse shredded the silence. His own animal returning the greeting with a clarion call of his own.

  So much for surprise.

  Dismounting within the sheltering woods, Aidan tethered the bay to a tree. Pulled the velvet-swathed Kilronan diary from the saddlebag.

  He’d toyed with the idea of offering Lazarus a fake. If he and Cat could no longer read his father’s gibberish, it was doubtful Lazarus would be able to do so either. But the limits of the Domnuathi’s abilities remained elusive. And Aidan refused to risk Cat’s life. Were it just his own? Perhaps he’d have given it a go.

  He knelt in the protection of the tree line. Scanned the gatehouse. It looked empty.

  Wait. There. He narrowed his gaze.

  A glint that could be the moon in a broken pane of glass or the reflection of readied steel. A skitter of movement that might be some innocent nocturnal prowler or could be the shifting of a much larger and more deadly predator.

  He straightened, but as yet made no move beyond the sheltering trees. “Bring her out where I can see her!” he shouted through cupped hands.

  Another shifting of bodies. Words exchanged. And the door opened on a screech of hinges. Cat stepping into the faint spreading light of the moon. Hair loose down her back in a tangled ebony wave. Soaking up the midnight. Eyes bright in an otherwise impassive mask.

  “Has he harmed you?” Aidan asked.

  “No, but Jack—” her voice constricted with weeping.

  Lazarus cut her off. “The diary, Kilronan. Bring it forward into the clearing.”

  His scar burned. His whole shoulder on fire. A deepening well of heat digging roots into the soil. Burrowing far into the bones of the earth where the creatures of the void waited. “And what’s my guarantee you won’t kill me as soon as I do?”

  A silence followed, Cat’s figure a wavering flicker of light, her clasped hands, her posture as defiant as if she strode to the scaffold.

  His hand found the pistols he’d strapped to his chest. The knife at his waist. Closed around the sword at his side.

  Finally, the voice rolled out from the well of the house with the answer Aidan expected: “No guarantee.”

  Even as the scar’s spreading arctic plunge numbed his body, his mind sharpened to diamond clarity. He inhaled a lung-filling breath and stepped into the breach.

  “Dwi’n cofio hwn.” I remember this.

  Again the words in that sorrowful language of lost causes. Spoken just before Lazarus stepped in front of her. Drew his sword on a high metallic note.

  Aidan moved from the trees with a stiff gait and a stiffer expression.

  Lazarus’s eyes focused on the wrapped bundle Aidan carried in his left hand. Ignoring the aimed pistol in his right, he gestured toward the low stone wall. “Place it there and back away.”

  Aidan did as instructed, and only after did Lazarus’s attention drift from the diary to the man.

  “Now free the girl,” Aidan’s voice edgy and dangerous.

  “The girl?” Surprise colored Lazarus’s words. “You speak of her as if she were the horse or the dog. My lady has a name, does she not?”

  Aidan’s breath sharpened in his throat. “Gallantry from a deathless monster? What would something like you know of it?”

  Did Lazarus flinch against the insult? She couldn’t tell in the uncertain light. But his shoulders squared, his sharp-featured face holding an ancient warrior arrogance. Raising an empty palm, he shook his head. “Nothing at all anymore.”

  The pistol shot caught him square in the chest, knocking him backwards. Aidan drew again. And a second pistol roared, this one just as well aimed. Just as deadly.

  Lazarus lurched backward, knocking into Cat, reaching for her as he fell. Their fingers barely brushing.

  Aidan crossed the space between. Stared down at the bloodied body. Kicked aside the man’s sword with a spat curse before drawing his own.

  “Run, Cat.”

  That voice. Echoes of another overlaid the rich baritone. Slippery. Discordant. Malevolent.

  She shook her head. Saw the glimmer of Lazarus’s gaze. Watching. Waiting. “He’s not dead.”

  Aidan’s face flared with a hate-filled ecstasy. “He soon will be.”

  “But—”

  Lazarus closed his eyes. Breath expended on a sigh. “Go, my lady.”

  Two handed, Aidan lifted the sword high. “Or watch me take him apart piece by unholy piece.”

  Panic, long held in check, released itself on his snarled threat. She grabbed up her skirts. Began to run for the wood’s edge. Slowing only briefly at the plunge of steel meeting flesh. A raw scream of agony. And again. Repeated.

  How many wounds would it take to destroy the soldier of Domnu? How much of Aidan would be lost amid the slick spilling of blood upon the ground?

  Another terrible scream burst against her ears.

  No way to tell whether it was Lazarus or Aidan whose suffering shredded the night.

  Hate hazed his vision. His body crawled with malicious glee. Blood streaked his clothes. Splattered his face. Dark. Sticky. Tasting of iron and salt and offal. His sword arm ached with strain but never faltered. Every downward slice of the cavalry saber another nail in Lazarus’s coffin. His father. The Amhas-draoi. Brendan. Daz. Máelodor. Cat.

  Lazarus became the focal point of all Aidan’s anger and despair, grief and rage.

  Raising his sword high for the final stroke, he aimed for the neck. Swung.

  A bloodied hand caught the sword’s pommel. Yielded but did not collapse. And the death-bringing thrust was turned aside.

  Aidan screamed his fury. Found himself staring down into eyes hell bleak. A face as grim and gore soaked as his own. And one as bent on annihilation.

  The battle had only now begun.

  Cat squatted in the heavy underbrush. She couldn’t move. Frozen to this small patch of earth. Hands over her ears. Eyes squeezed shut. It didn’t work. The battle filtered through her closed senses. The smell of blood and struggle and horror just beyond the trees.

  “Cat!”

  The tormented shout battered through her pressed hands. Shot her to her feet without thinking.

  Aidan was down. Lying amid Lazarus’s blood, spasming against the burn of battle magic. Lazarus stood over him. Shaky. Wavering. But alive and in command.

  He leaned to pluck his discarded sword from the ground. Raised it high in a horrible reversal of roles.

  “No!”

  The scream tore up from her chest. She threw herself from the wood to scramble for the only thing that might delay Lazarus for a life-altering second.

  The diary.

  She snatched it up. Held it high. “Kill him, and I destroy Kilronan’s diary.”

  Would he believe her bluff? Or tear her apart bit by bit with his soul-destroying dark magic? It was now or never.

  Glancing at the dry brush and tumbled deadwood by the gatehouse wall, she mumbled the household magic through lips dry and rubbery. Prayed for enough concentration to prove her point.

  Flames appeared. Slivers of red and yellow seeping up through the kindling. Snapping to life. Fed by the wind and dry, fire-ready branches.

  “Don’t, my lady.”

  He did believe her. She smiled as she held the book over the flames. “Back away from him,” she commanded through chattering teeth.

  Lazarus offered her a solemn, heavy stare. Took a step back. And in a move defying sight, whipped a dagger free. Hurled it, spearing the diary and knocking it out of Cat’s hand to lie dusty, pages fluttering in the breeze. Safe from her futile threat.

  The wind picked up. Embers rose. Wafted toward the gatehouse roof. Smoldered. Caught.

  Lazarus’s gaze followed them.

  And Aidan rolled up and to a crouch. His voice slow and steady on a summoning.

  Numbness gripped his body, b
eginning above his heart where the scar seared him with a frozen heat. Needles of ice ran along veins and arteries. Lungs crushed beneath a constricting shell of frost. His fingers stiff. His movements slow as glaciers. But he called forth the magic of the Dark Court.

  Soon, the creature had promised.

  Soon had become now.

  The diary would remain free of Máelodor. Cat would remain alive. Anything beyond that, he would put aside as wishful thinking.

  “Don’t, Kilronan,” Lazarus warned.

  “Too late,” he sneered, already feeling the Unseelie’s approach in the thickening of the air, the narrowing of his vision. Or was that the fire?

  Flames rippled along the gatehouse roofline. Ash drifting and mingling with smoke. A horse’s scream came from somewhere behind him.

  His fingers fell onto the sword’s grip. Easily. Without thought. As if another worked through him. Someone used to war. To survival. To death.

  Lazarus accepted the challenge. “So be it.”

  And the clash of metal rang in a crescendo of sparks and the singing of steel.

  The Domnuathi’s skills were battle honed. Even bearing the wounds of Aidan’s previous attempts, he fought with incredible finesse. Parrying every thrust. Attacking upon every opening.

  Aidan called forth the Unseelie magic. Felt it like a million latching claws into his skin. Biting. Tearing. Pushing its way through him. Taking him over bit by rabid bit. Heat met ice in a boiling fog of thought and action. Another controlling him. Another matching Lazarus move for move with snarling ferocity.

  Aidan connected with a sliding blow to the Domnuathi’s ribs. Lazarus responded with a slash into Aidan’s off shoulder, deadening his fingers. Followed it with a spell that overwhelmed him. Crushed him with a mountain’s weight of stone. Dropped him to the ground, his mouth filling with blood. His lungs useless.

  Aidan drew deeper into the demon’s well of power. The raw Unseelie magic dropping him through the void. He fell and fell without end, the passage littered with wraiths. But within that abyss there was strength and cunning and survival—of a kind.

  Hands reached for him. Voices jeered. He caught a glimpse of the blind-eyed, faceless monster of his dreams laughing. Drawing him down. “Erelth,” it called. “Join with me.”

  His mind screamed against the overthrow. But Aidan ignored it as he ignored the slow thieving of his will and then his body. The demon saw with his eyes. Spoke with his voice. Fought with his limbs. With every push of blood through their shared body, the bond between them solidified until the horizon between man and monster blurred and then disappeared. The abyss dragged Aidan on with the strength of a vortex. Pulling him farther into the darkness where eternity awaited with dripping jaws.

  Death without the mercy of dying. An end that would be endless.

  No. He wouldn’t give in. Let it control him. He rebelled. Crawling from the black. Heaving himself through the inky veil of shadows. The nothing that was the Dark Court’s abode. The Unseelie shrieked its curses. Sank its talons deep. Its fangs deeper, until Aidan screamed against the pain and the burning cold sliding through his veins on its inexorable path to his heart. And the fight became twofold. A physical contest with Lazarus. An inner struggle against a demon who craved his body for its own.

  He couldn’t stand against both. Slowly he gave ground. His arms growing feebler with every blow. Panting. Sweat stinging his eyes. Streaming off his body.

  Lazarus backed him toward the gatehouse where fire now licked along the beams. Curled down walls. The trapped horse’s terror jolting along Aidan’s spine with clawing shrieks. Echoed by the inner vengeful demonic scream of the Unseelie.

  Embers fell onto his coat. Singed his hair. The heat and smoke grew oppressive. He couldn’t see. Couldn’t hear.

  Lazarus fought harder, strengthened by an internal drive rivaling and surpassing even the Unseelie hatred. He herded Aidan. Closer. Closer. Up the path. Into the shadow of the building, where fire leapt high from every window.

  Aidan sought to evade the guiding point of the sword, but every blow was parried. Every attack defended.

  He stumbled upon the threshold. A wall of flame taking over his vision. Curtains of it running like water across every surface.

  Lazarus took that one clumsy moment to pounce. Slammed his sword home. The bite of the blade like the kick of a horse. Or a heavy fist against Aidan’s chest.

  He felt nothing but empty. With a final keening wail, the Unseelie fled. He was a man. Alone. Defenseless. Dying.

  He dropped to the floor. Stared up into the red gold burn of the world. Locked on the behemoth in black. Waited for the enveloping darkness that would signal the end.

  Cat flung herself between them. Stood her ground though her heart hammered against her ribs and every second within the gatehouse was like a second within hell. Flame. Smoke. Ash. She coughed, her lungs seared with the heat, her throat parched and sore. The horse’s screams had long since become one note among a symphony of destruction.

  “It’s over! He’s dead! Just take the diary and go,” she croaked. “Go!”

  Lazarus faltered. The inferno’s glow reflected in his dark, endless gaze.

  “You’ve won!” She closed her eyes, averting her face from his. Shoulders back. Head up. Steeling herself for the sword thrust.

  Let it be swift. Let it be clean. And let her find the ones she’d lost on the other side.

  The mage energy held him. Crushed him. Tightened its serpent coils around him until he suffocated. Couldn’t think. It wanted to strike. Wanted blood. Wanted to swallow him whole until hate and killing and death were all he remembered. All he knew.

  He hadn’t always been like this. Had once known more than murder. Had shared laughter with friends. Pleasured a woman. Honored a king.

  The dark magics sustaining him doubled in force. Sank their fangs into him like spears to the brain. The Great One commanded. His orders had been clear—end it. No witnesses. No one left behind who knew the truth. Kill them all. He, Lazarus, was death undone. He must obey.

  He cried out. Fought back. Fed the evil. And in the tiny cracks of his mind, a memory evolved. A night like this. Dark. Starless. Damp with rain and a wind off the sea. Men fighting for their lives. Dying around him as the ambush played itself out amid the summer cool of a Welsh wood.

  He had slipped. Fallen. And a figure in steel helmet and leather hauberk—faceless behind a bent nose guard, ageless within the armor of war—had delivered the death blow. A killing stroke that tore through his belly. Another slashing his heart. He’d been dead before his last thought had floated on a frothy breath. Remember me. Remember me. . . .

  He strained to capture that last crystal moment of another age. Another existence. But the name was gone. Her name. His link to a past that dissolved like cloud every time he reached for it.

  Only the woman remained fresh in his mind.

  Dark. Slight. Eyes blue as gentians.

  He held her image like a talisman. Lowered his sword.

  Offered the lovers before him a second chance. One he’d never been given.

  Lazarus disappeared into the heart of the house. Through flame and rolling smoke.

  What caused him to back down? What had she done to sway the ruthless mage-spawned creature? Or had it been something he’d done? A battle just as violent within that she’d not been privy to?

  A beam snapped. Fell in a sheet of flame. Broke her from her useless musing. Did it matter? He was gone. She lived. For now. But every second sent new flames leaping high. New sparks igniting new fires throughout.

  Cat gripped Aidan under the arms. Struggled against his deadweight as she slid him through ash thick as a carpet upon the floor. He caught upon a board. His coat snagged and tore against a nail. He never helped. Never made a sound. But his eyes, brown and gold and crackling with reflected light, burned through her.

  Glass shattered. Smoke coated her lungs. Breathing became gasping became held breath.

  And then
they were free. On the step. In the yard. A pyre blazing behind them. The diary gone. The horse’s screams no longer knifing the air.

  She cradled his head in her lap. Brushed his hair from his brow. Kissed his soot-blackened face. Threaded her fingers through his.

  “Aidan?” she choked through weeping. Tasting the salt of her tears as they curved into the corners of her mouth. “Please don’t die. Please don’t leave me.”

  “Saved . . . saved me . . .”

  Hysterical teary laughter staved off the pain. “You saved me first.”

  His gaze flickered. His hand moved in hers. And a question rose from bloody lips. “Stay?”

  Anything. She’d offer anything to keep him with her. “Yes, Aidan. I’ll stay. I promise.”

  He closed his eyes. His body stilled. But his heart kept beating.

  July 1815

  The three men stood in various poses of uncomfortable impatience around the drawing room. All bore themselves with military precision. Confident stances. Prideful, level gazes. Arrogant swaggers, even at rest.

  Aidan smoldered against their presence even as he knew he must suffer through it if he was to do anything to clear Brendan’s name with the Amhas-draoi.

  He sat upright in a chair. A victory against gravity. Against the stream of visitors who’d shaken their heads and counted his hours. Hours stretching to days then weeks as he fought the surrender of a body whose only remaining sense had been pain. The memory of that battle remained in the reflection staring back at him every morning from his mirror.

  Scarecrows bore more elegance than he. Gaunt body. Deep grooves cut into the sides of his mouth. An emptiness in his eyes. Silver threading his thick auburn hair. His impression borne up by three sets of cynical gazes.

  “About”—he glanced at his pocket watch—“two months late, aren’t you?”

  The eldest of the Amhas-draoi—a man who’d introduced himself with the one-word sobriquet Garrick—barely flickered an eyelid. “We’ve had much to concern us of late, Lord Kilronan. We came as events allowed.”

  “You make it sound as if I invited you to a bloody summer fete. Did you read my letter?” He held his temper by the merest of threads.