by Egan, Alexa
She gave a hard bark of laughter. Then silence but for the slosh and gurgle of drains, a steady drip from a leak in the roof, and a banging in his skull like musket fire. Or was that the jump and squeeze of his heart as the Fey-blood’s curse pushed its way through him like an unstoppable rising tide?
Sagging against the ropes, he dropped his head onto his chest. Sensed the sun’s final drop below the horizon like a grenade exploding in his chest, his mind ripped open in one horrific blast of dark Fey magic like a dagger to the brain.
He squeezed his eyes shut, tensed against his body’s internal incineration, and waited. One . . . two . . . three . . . four . . .
Behind the black-bellied clouds, the earth turned on its axis. Day became night.
Man gave way to panther once more.
* * *
Outside, the temperature dropped with the onset of dusk. Snow swirled and billowed in a stiff wind, stinging Bianca’s face, stealing her breath. Already the ground lay beneath a blanket of dirty white, and the normal street sounds bounced and echoed, oddly muffled by this blast of early winter weather.
She stumbled as a voice roared in her head. A shout of pain and rage and fear, but nothing like the terror driving her onward into the storm.
Head down, she scurried across the street, repeating Mac’s directions like a mantra. Jory Wallace . . . Bear Green . . . Jory Wallace . . . Bear Green . . . It would take hours to travel to Surrey and back, and even if she managed to find her way there, how on earth would she convince a complete stranger to help her?
Second guesses and worst possible outcomes battered her as she moved through the narrow streets and filthy lanes, deaf to the shouts and crude laughter coming from dingy wineshops and greasy gaming hells. Brutal images filled her head, making her pulse rush and her mouth go dry.
She couldn’t do it. Terrified as she was, she couldn’t leave Mac alone. She had to rescue him somehow.
Spinning on her heel, she retraced her steps. Down a street marked by a few flickering lamps set in windows. A quick cut through an empty coal yard and across a muddy lane until the house loomed up before her once again, its dark windows as empty as staring eyes, its front steps covered in drifting snow. No prints marred the narrow passage to the yard behind. The Frenchman had yet to return. There was still time.
She knelt at the cellar window. “Mac,” she hissed.
No answer.
She chewed her knuckles, peering into the darkness, swallowing back a renewal of her earlier panic. “Mac, it’s Bianca.”
Was that a movement below her? A sliding of black on black? Was she walking into a trap?
Only one way to find out.
Sliding her legs through the window’s hip-crushing gap, she scraped and squeezed through, dangling for a moment by her hands, before dropping lightly to the floor and peering around her as her eyes adjusted to the dark. “Where are you?” she whispered.
Feeling her way across the room, she bumped against an empty chair. Squatted to find the abandoned ropes and discarded necklaces. By now she could make out the steps up to the ground floor, the cold hearth, the boxes in the corner.
“Mac? For the love of God, are you here?”
Movement from beneath the stairwell flickered at the edge of her vision.
Why the hell didn’t you do what I asked?
She froze at the familiar voice. Deep. Luscious. A bit of that honey-smooth brogue.
But it didn’t come from the corner of the room. Instead it rolled around inside her head, like a whisper or a thought, although it was nothing like either of them.
“Who’s there? What have you done with Mac?” she gasped, smothering a tiny cry as one shadow disconnected itself from the surrounding gloom and an enormous paw stretched tentatively forward. She snatched up the chair, holding it out like a shield, fear splashing icy across her back, breath snatched from her lungs. “What are you?”
I think you know.
It couldn’t be. Sebastian’s tales of shapechangers and King Arthur and Fey and magic had been just that—tales. This was real life. This was reality. “The book . . . you can change into . . . but that can’t be . . . it’s impossible . . .”
Yet, here I stand talking to you.
His words from the very first afternoon they met. Her wildest suspicions blossomed into certainty: it was Mac.
Everything jumbled and spun in her head. She backed away, the chair’s rough wood biting into her palms, the cellar wall cold against her spine. Concrete sensations keeping her brain from falling to the floor in a blubbering heap. “I don’t know how or what you are, but—”
You’re safe, Bianca. Put the chair down. I’ll not harm you.
She dragged in a shaky breath. “Let me see you first.”
Edging into a dim patch of light, a paw became the coiled strength of one muscled forearm that in turn became a pair of broad shoulders. All covered in black, rippling midnight fur. Last, his head emerged into view. Powerful and powerfully built, fangs as long as her index fingers extending white and savage, and always those familiar eyes shining pale yellow-green, pupils round and large and fixed on her with—she could swear—part chagrin, part arrogance.
Finally he stretched into full view on the stone floor. An enormous panther, long and lean and dangerous, his ribs lifting and falling in short, panting breaths, the twitching of his tail matching the beating of her heart.
Every inch of her body tremored with shock and fear, her knees barely holding her up. “Don’t faint, Bianca,” she muttered to herself. “You’re dreaming. This isn’t real. This isn’t real. This isn’t real.”
She squeezed her eyes shut. Opened them again. Still there.
Pinched herself. Twice.
No luck. He was still there. All six and a half feet of lethal impossibility.
Why the hell did you come back?
His anger was like a slap on the face. She leaned upon the chair to steady herself, forcing herself to meet his feral gaze. “You didn’t want me to see you like this, did you? That’s why you sent me away.”
I sent you away because I didn’t want you hurt.
Strange as it seemed, once she grew used to the rumbling, growling quality of his voice blossoming up from inside her, she lost her fear. Less easy to overcome was the idea that the voice emanated from the animal lying supine at her feet.
“As soon as Adam left his journal with me, I became involved. You can’t just think I’ll turn my back on you.”
That’s exactly what I want you to do. Leave the way you came, and this time don’t come back. Don’t even look back.
“No.” Convinced now that she’d fallen into some crazy netherworld, she swung past him to climb the stairs, each creaking step sending her heart into her throat as she strained to hear any sound that signaled the Frenchman’s return. “I don’t know what’s going on. I don’t know what you are. I don’t even know if I’m going completely stark, staring mad. But I do know that we leave here together or not at all.”
You barely fit through the window. There’s no way I’ll squeeze through. And the cellar door is too sturdy to break. I’ve tried.
With a shaking hand and a few dozen prayers, she turned the knob, throwing a relieved smile over her shoulder. “It’s unlocked.”
He must have trusted to the ropes to keep us secure.
“Can you walk? Or do you need my help?” Not that Bianca had the least idea how she’d shepherd a beast like this through the streets of London without being seen.
He limped behind her, his left front leg curled against his stomach, eyes glazed with sickness and pain. I’ll make it.
Doubtful, but they had no choice. They couldn’t remain here.
Hardly more hospitable than the cellar, the house’s ground floor consisted of two empty rooms, front and back. So far, so good. The place seemed abandoned, but an oil lamp flickered low on a hearth beside a half-empty coal scuttle, various tools leaning beside the chimney where a smoldering fire burned. Their captor may
have stepped out, but he intended to return soon.
“Leaving, shifter?” A figure loomed up in the doorway, his black coat hanging damp over his shoulders, the light from the lamp illuminating the snow speckling his dark hair, the leer on his face, and the ugly pistol he pointed at the panther’s head.
Bianca threw herself back against the tiled hearth. Had the man seen her or had the heavy chimneypiece shielded her from his view?
Her fingers touched, then closed around the fireplace tongs resting beside her.
“You’re stronger than the lieutenant,” the Frenchman said with smug approval, “but that will only make your death sweeter.”
A low, menacing growl met the man’s taunt. Bianca tightened her grip on the tongs, fighting the urge to huddle on the floor with her hands over her head until the danger passed.
The man stepped farther into the room. “The chevalier should have killed you all when he had the chance. She will not make the same mistake.”
The panther that was Mac crouched, ears pressed flat against its skull, tail lashing back and forth.
For one tense moment, no one moved. No one breathed. And the only sound roaring in Bianca’s ears was the crashing of her heart.
Then all exploded into chaos.
The great cat lunged, claws reaching for the man’s throat. A flash of silver met the dusty air. A gun roared, belching smoke and sparks. The Frenchman flitted across her sight, his coat billowing behind him.
Now or never.
Tongs raised. Teeth clamped. Eyes focused on the spot where his neck met his skull. On the count of—
One.
Two.
Three!
Bianca stepped forward. Swung. Connected.
The Frenchman dropped to his knees, twisted, fell. And lay sickeningly still.
Dizziness tipped the room on its side, sickness clenching her innards with all-too-familiar horror. She dropped the weapon to the floor with a clang, doubled over, clutching at her stomach, and was violently, disgustingly ill.
She’d killed a man.
Again.
10
Bianca woke with a start, half expecting, half hoping to be in her bedchamber with Molly’s off-key singing wafting from belowstairs. Instead, the dirty, abandoned storeroom where they’d hidden for the night proved to be as uncomfortably real as the naked man curled feverishly in the far corner. Dark hair clinging, sticky with sweat, to his forehead and his left arm cradled protectively against his chest, he murmured in a restless sleep. His words she didn’t understand, but the tight-throated moans and white-lipped grimaces were more than comprehensible.
No longer hidden beneath a panther’s camouflaging coat, a million shallow slashes marred Mac’s torso, each one an ugly black ribbon against the background collage of purple and green bruising. His face had fared little better. A swollen eye, lips split and bloodied, a deep cut above his eyebrow. Yet nothing prepared her for the stretched and shining flesh scarring much of his upper back. A hideous burn, by the looks of it, long since healed over.
Not a crime to be laid at the Frenchman’s feet. Someone else had tried very hard to kill Mac Flannery once upon a time. Had they ended as this last one? Struck down? Dead? Limbs a twisted rag-doll mess?
Bianca trembled as violent memories beat at the walls she’d put up all those years ago. She shoved the images aside as she’d done so many times before, instead concentrating on Mac: a human who could change into a panther. Or was it a panther who could become human? No wonder Mac was like no man she’d ever met.
He wasn’t a man at all.
She locked that away with the rest of the things she wasn’t going to think about. There would be enough time when they were safely away from here to unravel the enormous, colossal, unsolvable impossibility of Mac’s existence. They were alive. Now they needed to remain that way. And here she’d been worried about a few nasty gossips and a sacking. She’d give her eyeteeth if that were the worst of her problems.
A cursory inspection of their refuge last night had uncovered little beyond a few empty boxes, a lot of occupied mouse nests, and a dusty leather haversack stuffed with clothing and an enormous wool greatcoat. This she now draped over Mac’s naked body, then put a hand to his burning forehead.
He shuddered, coming alive like a drawn bow, every muscle coiled to attack before his unfocused gaze cleared in recognition. “Bianca?”
“I worried you’d not remember.”
“Slim chance of that.” He grimaced, pushing his matted hair out of his eyes. “The sun’s up. You didn’t see me . . . I mean, when I . . .”
She shook her head. “When I woke, you were as you are now.”
This seemed to comfort him. He settled back against the wall, the coat sliding into his lap. Their eyes met, heat stealing over her cheeks even as the rest of her shivered in the early-morning cold. “You needed to stay warm. You’re burning with fever,” she explained.
He closed his eyes as if just speaking took more energy than he possessed. “Silver. It sickens us. Makes us easy to trap. Easy to kill.”
That explained the net and the hundreds of necklaces looped around his neck.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
She touched the tender lump on her scalp, the hair around it stiff with dried blood. “I’ll live, though what I wouldn’t give for a hot bath and a headache powder,” she said, trying for levity. It was that or fall to her knees gibbering mindlessly.
Mac must have sensed the churning of her thoughts and the wariness beneath her outward calm. “I never meant for you to find out, Bianca.” He gave a gallows laugh. “Mother of All, that’s the very last thing I wanted. A millennium of secrecy, and I’ve bungled it in less than a week.
“Here.” He took the greatcoat and wrapped her back within its heavy folds. “Feverish or not, you need this more than I do.”
“You’ll freeze.”
“Imnada don’t feel the cold as humans do.” He frowned in thought as he studied the room.
“Neither, apparently, do they feel embarrassment as we do,” she muttered, inhaling the coat’s combination of soap and sweat, brandy and smoke, as she studied Mac from beneath half-lidded eyes. No fat softened the whipcord strength in his exquisite chiseled frame. And even battered and bruised, he bore a warrior’s precise movements and remorseless intensity. Enough to make her heart lurch painfully in her chest and heat to tingle beneath her skin. Enough to make her wonder what might have happened had the Frenchman not burst in on them.
Would that kiss have grown into something more? Would she have surrendered to the mind-erasing, body-scalding desire that had turned her inside out and upside down? Or would she have come to her benumbed senses and tossed him aside with her usual tongue-lashing?
She cast one more surreptitious glance at his long legs, hard-packed muscles, and square-jawed, steely-eyed face.
Who was she trying to fool? It wasn’t a question of would she have surrendered, but how quickly.
He prowled the room, finally pausing by the far wall. Then, closing his eyes, he gritted his teeth and slammed his bad shoulder hard against the bricks. Again. And again.
“Mac!”
He dropped to his knees, face blanched beneath the bruising, a strangled moan escaping from between his lips. “Fucking bloody hell, that hurt.”
“Are you insane?”
Sweat dripped off him, eyes cloudy with pain. “Had to . . . dislocated . . . better now . . .” He moved his fingers gingerly. “Feelings back.” Grabbing the haversack, he rummaged through it, retrieving a linen shirt, a pair of breeches. “I need to find David. Warn him the Fey-bloods know. Time is running out.”
“None of this makes sense. How could you exist and the world never know?”
“Mortals would”—he slowly eased his way into the shirt, hissing in pain at every movement of his shoulder—“would be amazed what shares this earth with them.”
“Like these Fey-blood you keep talking about?”
He strug
gled to his feet, resting his back against the wall as he slid on his breeches with one hand. “The Other. Aye. They’re the most common and, to the Imnada, the most dangerous.”
“Because of King Arthur and the Imnada warlord’s treachery?” She couldn’t believe she was saying this.
“Is that what Deane told you? Treachery is a slippery customer, and there are always two sides to a tale, mi am’ryath.” He glanced over at her, his gaze sorrow-filled. “I expected you to be long gone when I woke.”
She offered him a tremulous half smile. “Where would I go? Home? To Deane House? They’d demand answers I couldn’t possibly give.”
He pushed off the wall to stand upright for the first time. Hovered for a moment before gravity took over, and he began to sway.
She grabbed him before he fell, her arms wrapping round his torso, her head coming just beneath his chin. Even ill as he was, he had the solidity of an oak, his furnace heat kindling fires everywhere they touched, his manhood pressed close between her thighs. “You can barely stand. Stay here where it’s safe. I’ll go find Jory Wallace.”
Sliding his right arm around her waist, he drew her closer against him, the slightest hint of a dimple showing at the corner of his mouth. “Do you intend to dose me with enough laudanum to fell an ox? Again?” His smile glimmered like the weakest of suns, stabbing at her heart with a dull, unacceptable ache.
She stepped out of his reach, the October cold and definitely not Mac’s embrace raising goose pimples up and down her body. “How did you know about the haversack?” she blurted. A stupid question, but it bought her time and space in which to calm her jagged nerves and the crackling heat engulfing her.
He accepted her maneuver with a tired shrug. “I’ve five such caches throughout the city, just in case.”
“In case of what?”
He lifted his brows in a look of incredulity. “You have to ask?” He raised his right arm, palm up, as if in supplication. “My kind has lived beside you since the dawn of time. I’m Imnada, Bianca. Not a monster. Not a creature.” He reached for her. “I’m a man.”
She stared at their linked hands, his fingers blunt and capable and warm with promise. Lifted her eyes to his face, hysterical laughter bottled in her throat like cut glass.
