by Alexa Egan
A woman with eyes of silver and a face like a cherub. Another whose hair floated in an auburn ribbon. They hooked themselves on Christophe, their hellish wails vibrating along Sarah’s bones and echoing across the moors like banshees.
Christophe peeled one from his neck, his strong golden fingers now scaled claws. He stretched to drag another from his back, skin sloughing from the bones of his face to reveal a clacking jaw and long razor teeth. The mist seemed to roll away, replaced by a creeping black shadow rising up from the ground around him.
Sarah lifted her arm to bring it down on the final gem, but this time she was caught in an unyielding grip. One of the hive, his eyes glazed with indifference, his jaw slack. He tore the stone from her fingers. Flung the bracelet away into the night before raising his blade to strike.
She braced herself for the blow that never came. A shape rose up from the dark with a punch of deadly steel that took the man in the stomach with a gush of steaming blood.
“Lucan?”
The shifter’s face contorted with anguish, his body doubled over in agony as he motioned for her to flee.
“I can’t . . . I have to finish this . . . now . . .” she cried.
He grabbed her arm to drag her down the hill but a man stepped into their path, his pistol drawn. Lucan shoved her aside as the gun exploded in a burst of flame, spinning him to the earth. She took the moment to escape. By now, the shadow reached the outer earthworks to pour down the side of the ridge into the trees below, but at its center, Christophe stood battling. Little of the beautiful prince remained beyond a few tufts of hair on his skull and a chest streaming blood, skin shredded and hanging to reveal a carapaced body beneath.
“The base of the throat . . . he’s weakest at the base of the throat . . .” she muttered.
Snatching up a dagger as she ran, she scrambled the few yards through the choking black shadow. It clung to her skin, tangled in her hair, but she held her breath and ran on. The Naxos never saw her. Never noticed her approach until he spun, his honeycombed eyes freezing her motionless, a tongue sliding from a jaw wide as a snake’s.
“Mia Sarah,” he hissed, as she plunged her dagger deep.
The knife skittered sideways off his scaly chest, leaving a jagged tear but nothing else.
“You missed, my sweet,” he said, tossing her aside with a swipe of one enormous armored claw. “Courage will get you only so far.”
* * *
The woman remained where she’d fallen, her hair a tangled mane, her heart-shaped face defiantly raised to the Naxos, though tears tracked her dirty cheeks.
He would tell her it didn’t hurt. That it was an honor to be chosen. That she would leave fear and grief and pain behind once she gave in to the hive.
He would tell her all these things but his mouth couldn’t form the words as he struggled against the strands knotting themselves into his brain, pulling free his consciousness as it bound him to the hive’s central mind. He fought, but that only served to burn his memories away faster, his emotions ripped free, leaving a gaping hole where his heart should be.
“Sebastian!!” she screamed. “Seb, don’t let go!” This was a name he knew. A woman he remembered. Soft skin and whispered words. Eyes haunted by sorrow and a mouth shaped for kisses. “Fight back,” she continued. “Don’t let the shadow take you over!”
He was too tired to fight. Too weak to battle. He’d mere moments before his soul would be forever lost. He could not save himself, but perhaps he might save her. As the moon broke free of the eclipse, a crescent growing to a half, he scooped up a cocked pistol from a shredded corpse. Stumbled to his knees and then his feet. Aimed it carefully, knowing he had one chance . . . one shot.
“Christophe! Over here!!” His voice came raspy and threaded with pain but still commanded attention.
The monster spun to face him only to be blown backward into the mud with a hole the size of a dinner plate in his neck, his head hanging by a few stringy tendons.
“I told you we’d fight.” Sebastian leaned against the upthrust boulder, his shattered ankle an agony of crushed bones, ribs grinding with every shallow breath, and a grim smile curling his lips at every throbbing, horrible—human—ache. “And I told you we’d bloody well win.”
7
The view beyond the window was as gray as his thoughts. A dour rain-soaked landscape, the moors shrouded in fog. Heaving himself from bed, Sebastian hobbled to the armchair by the fire. His ankle had mended, thanks to Katherine’s healing gifts, but it remained achy in the damp weather. It was the less tangible injuries, unresponsive to Katherine’s Other magic, that truly unsettled him. The whispers invading his dreams to the point where sleeping more than a few hours at a time was impossible, the frustrating blanks in his mind as if parts had been scraped away only to be replaced with dark and terrible memories that were not his own. After two week’s recovery, he might be healed in body. His soul had not recovered as completely.
“Lucan is gone.” Duncallan leaned against the door frame. “That’s the second time he’s done that to me. Up and disappeared in the dead of night. You’d think I’d be used to it by now.”
“Perhaps it’s for the best. The Kingkiller wouldn’t be an easy companion. There’s too much hate bound up with his presence. Too much misery. What does Gray say about it?”
“After the initial shock when I told him, very little. I’d have been happier if he’d raged at me for keeping such a secret. At least I’d know how he really felt. These unnerving silences of his just leave me walking on eggshells. One of these days that iron control is going to snap . . . and the gods help us when that happens. We’ll be picking up the pieces.”
“So says the heedless care-for-nothing who’d rather thumb his nose at the world than follow the rules.”
Duncallan smirked. “Being a good boy is highly overrated.” He straightened from his post to drop back into a chair, arms folded as his gaze traveled over Sebastian with a searching look. “But I think you know that as well as I do these days. Duty is well and good, but not at the cost of what—and who—is most important.”
Sebastian’s chest tightened as he sought to still the voices in his head; though these were not the ghosts of the Naxos hive but his own conscience. His mother would be furious. His family outraged. Society agog.
He didn’t bloody care.
A smile curved his mouth and lifted the oppressive weight of the grim day from his shoulders. Now he just had to convince Sarah not to care, either.
* * *
Sarah held the gold disk between thumb and forefinger as if it might bite. Forgotten until now, it gleamed dull in the flickering light of the fire, the inscriptions rubbed almost invisible. Why had Christophe hidden it? Was it a keepsake from one of his murdered brides? A token of the Naxos? The only one who might know the answer was dead, the truth with him.
“What’s that then?” Hester asked.
Sarah closed her fingers around the disk, the edges biting into her skin. “It belonged to the prince.”
Hester snorted her scorn. “Another shoddy bit of broken jewelry he tried to pass off as some ancient treasure, no doubt. Well, put it in with the rest, and I’ll call a footman to carry it all down.”
Sarah placed the disk in the case and closed the lid with a snap of a clasp, ready for Hester to pack it into her trunk for the long trip home. She was already two weeks overdue in London. Time to return to the real world, where Italian princes didn’t turn into monstrous killer insects, enormous bears did not shift into naked men, and temptation didn’t lie with a splinted ankle and taped ribs a few doors away.
“Are you certain you want to leave?” Hester asked. “Mr. Harris will grouse, but he’ll hold your place if you work it right. He knows what side his bread is buttered on.”
“It’s best this way. Lord Deane is out of danger. Staying longer will only complicate matters and make things difficult for both of us.”
“If you love the man, it’s simple as a sunrise.”
/>
“Loving him is what makes it complicated.”
“Hmph. You’re making less sense than usual, and that’s saying something. At least you sent that prince fellow packing back to Italy. Good riddance, I say. Better a nice respectable Englishman than a royal foreigner any day.”
Sarah kept her mouth shut. There was no way she could explain to Hester what really happened on that windswept moor within the shadow of the eclipse. Sebastian had fallen during a climb. Prince Christophe had been recalled to Italy. There were none to contradict the tale Duncallan had concocted. Like puppets with their strings cut, Christophe’s hive had died with him, naught left but a few greasy smears upon the rocks where they’d fallen.
Hester bustled around the room in a scurry of folding, her face hard with impatient disapproval. “Not that you care what an old woman thinks, but seems to me you’re being a complete nodcock about this whole business. It wouldn’t be the first love match between Mayfair and the Muse. What of Eliza Farren and Lord Derby or Catherine Stephens and that Essex gent? I could go on and on. So, why not you and Deane?
Sarah gripped the handle of her bag as she stared out on the snowy park and the gray line of trees rising up toward the bleak empty moorland.
“Yes, why not you and Lord Deane?” A different voice. A deep raspy baritone that shivered along her bones and made her blood race.
She turned to find Hester gone. In her place Sebastian leaned against the bedpost, new lines etched into his pale face, new silver strands threading his dark hair, but whole . . . alive . . . still human. “You thought to slip away without saying good-bye? I’m hurt.”
She retreated into a businesslike bustle as she finished packing her last few items. “You’d recover soon enough.”
“I didn’t the last time I let you leave. You’re an incurable obsession.”
She paused, a scarf clenched in cold white fingers. “Today perhaps or next week, but what of next year or ten years from now? What happens when you look on me with the same sneering disappointment as the rest of the world? What am I left with then?”
“Finally the truth is spoken,” he answered quietly. “You were never afraid of what others would think of you. It was always what I might think.”
He crossed the room to her, slowly, painfully, but she didn’t move, though she knew she should. Every second she lingered to let him convince her would make it harder to leave when she knew she must. He reached for her hand, threading his fingers with his. Holding her close. Tipping her chin to meet his sun-gold eyes. Lines crinkled the corners and a small scar ran pink and ragged near his mouth, but his smile was the same. And his body felt perfect where it melded to hers like a puzzle piece.
“Do you truly believe I would offer up my very soul to save a woman I did not love with all my heart? Now, ten years from now, and forever?” She tried to look away, heat rising into her cheeks, but he refused her escape. And ensnared by his hunter’s stare, she finally let go to fall into his inferno gaze.
“Christophe was right about one thing, Sarah. Courage is one of your most admirable traits. I find it hard to believe you’d allow a little scandal to scare you away from what you truly wanted . . . that is, if I am truly what you want.”
She blinked back tears, the swell of her heart nearly chocking off her breath. Wanting only to melt into the strength of his arms. “You know you are.”
“Then marry me, Sarah, and damn the consequences. I’ll gladly face any amount of gossip as long as I can face it with you.”
He kissed her. Her knees wobbled, her toes curled and the tight fist of fear released its hold as she finally closed her eyes and opened her heart.
“Sarah, Countess of Deane,” she said in her most polished aristocratic accent. “It has a nice ring to it.”
He nuzzled her neck, desire shivering through her with every brush of his lips on her skin. “Not nearly as nice a ring as wife.”
Keep reading for a sneak peek at Book Two in Alexa Egan’s dark and sexy Imnada Brotherhood series
Shadow’s Curse
Available October 2013 from Pocket Books
1
LONDON, MAY 1817
The man stood over his victim, knife flashing in the dim light of Silmith’s round yellow moon. The scent of blood and urine hung on the stale breeze, and the clink of a money pouch echoed in the quiet of the alley. David hung back in the shadows, awaiting his moment. The thief would have to pass by him to reach the street and disappear into the warren of dockside wharves and warehouses. When he did, David would pursue. It was a tactic he’d perfected over the course of the past year.
Not once had he allowed his prey to escape his particular brand of justice. Not once had he been caught or even seen except as a ghostly shape, an enormous dark shadow with glowing gray eyes. Some called him a demon or a monster—the newspapers who prospered from his exploits and those who worked the darkness for their own gains. But those who’d been saved by his intervention labeled him a guardian angel, a mysterious hero.
He was neither. Merely bored.
And angry.
Very, very angry.
If any member of the five clans of shape-shifting Imnada were to discover he spent the time between sundown and sunrise saving the lives of humans, they’d deem him mad. Not that he cared what they thought. He was emnil, dead to his clan. An outcast and an outlaw.
And while he was no longer condemned to pass his nights in his clan aspect of the wolf, having escaped the clutch of a curse that forced him and his friends to shift, these short, vicious hours had become a solace; these cluttered, squalid alleys and dark, twisted lanes his personal hunting ground. If he couldn’t spend his rage upon those who’d banished him to this tormented existence, he’d turn it on the villainous cutthroats and slimy pimps who prowled the stews in search of victims. Not that he cared overmuch about the men and women he assisted, but few questioned the deaths of thugs or mourned the loss of murderers. Only the Fey-bloods might realize the truth behind the monstrous beast prowling London’s stews, but that only added to the knife-edge thrill he craved like an addict—an existence he knew all too much about these days.
The clouds passed over the full moon, the breeze kicking up in starts to ruffle the fur along his back, the bristly ridge at his neck. He lifted his face to it, felt it curl over his muzzle, bringing with it the salty tar-laden stench of the Limehouse docks. Just then the victim moaned and stirred as he regained consciousness. His hand groped feebly for the knot at the back of his head. Shoving the money pouch in his coat pocket, the assailant lifted his knife with deadly intent. Theft soon to become murder.
Thought fell to instinct, and, with fangs bared in a vicious snarl, David sprang.
* * *
Callista rubbed a cloth over the last silver bell before returning it to its case alongside the other two. Closing the lid, she secured the lock with a roll of her thumb over the circular tumblers. But instead of tucking the mahogany box upon the high shelf beside her bed, she remained at her desk, the box in front of her. Her finger followed the familiar loops and swirls decorating the lid. Her mother’s box. Her grandmother’s. Her great-grandmother’s.
Necromancers, all.
The power to journey into the realm of the dead and speak to those who walked its paths had been gifted to the women of her house, stretching back beyond anyone’s memory. At least that’s what Mother had claimed. Callista couldn’t know for certain. She’d never met any of the women of her house except Mother to ask them.
Now she couldn’t even ask Mother.
Callista slid open the top desk drawer, removing a bundle of yellowed letters wrapped in a frayed ribbon. The wax was dried and crumbling, the writing smudged and faded. Mother had kept them all, every single missive she’d sent to her family that had been returned unopened. The prominent Armstrong family of Killedge Hall never forgot or forgave the shame of their daughter’s elopement.
Callista pulled free the top letter, reading the words, though she knew them by h
eart. A cheerful letter, despite the anguish and the dread prompting this last desperate attempt to reconcile. Mother had died a month later.
Mother’s letter had been returned a week after the funeral.
Every time Callista walked into death, the urge to summon her mother’s spirit almost overcame her. And yet, she held back. Refused to trace the symbols that would bind her mother to her. Callista couldn’t bear to let her see how far her only daughter had fallen, trading her power for coins like a huckster at the village fair alongside the dog-faced boy and the bearded lady. To her mother, the gift of necromancy had been a sacred trust. To Callista, it had become a trickster’s ploy.
The door behind Callista opened, a breeze stirring the hair at the back of her neck, raising gooseflesh over her arms. As she slid the packet of correspondence back into the desk drawer, she felt Branston’s thunderous stare bore into her, his fury like a shimmer of red behind her eyelids.
“Running away again, sister dear? You should know by now, Mr. Corey has eyes and ears all over London. There’s nothing happens in this town he doesn’t know about.”
Callista shuddered with loathing for her half brother’s new business partner but wisely kept her opinion to herself.
“I almost wish his men hadn’t found you in time for your appointment,” he said. “Better to postpone the summoning than have poor Mrs. Dixon’s hopes dashed so cruelly.”
“Your concern for the grieving mother is touching,” Callista answered wearily. “I’d not have taken you for a sentimentalist.”
“What I am is a businessman and you, my dear, are the business. A fact you keep forgetting.”
She rose to confront Branston. His small, washed-out blue eyes narrowed, his nostrils flared as if he smelled something rank. “That’s where you’re wrong. I know it all too well. You haven’t let me forget for one moment in the past seven years.”
His hands flexed and curled into fists, his well-fed body wired with tension. “Is that what your sulks are about? Your feelings are hurt? You don’t feel appreciated? Is that why you decided to dash a grieving mother’s hopes by telling her you were unable to speak to little Jonny?”
