Shadow's Curse (18 page)

“You think it’s because I’m a necromancer?”

“It makes sense.”

“But I was already working for him—or as good as.”

“But you weren’t completely under his control. What if you wed another? Or left for your aunt’s? There was always a risk.”

“A slim one, as you’ve just pointed out. What man in his right mind would want me with nothing but the clothes I stand up in? ”

The trees outside scraped and creaked, an owl called. David continued to watch her, his gaze as potent as a touch against her cheeks, her lips, her throat. “I can think of one.”

“Sam?”

A pause. A breath. “That’s right. Sam.”

Why did she have the feeling a moment had passed her by? That something precious had slipped away to be lost forever?

He lay back down, his mouth kissably close, his eyes like new steel, burning almost silver in the darkness. Tiny shocks ran up her nerves to slam against her heart. She curled her fingers into her palms to keep from reaching for him. She licked her lips, afraid to breathe lest she surrender to the impulses firing like fireworks.

David chuckled quietly and she gasped, terrified he had somehow read the thoughts quickening her blood.

“Would you believe that a week ago, I was at a dinner with the Duke of Melksham, Lord and Lady Braunton, and Mr. Wissett from the Prime Minister’s office?” he said.

She let out an enormous breath. “Yes, I would. You may dress like Sam and the others”—her gaze flicked over his clothes—“but there’s no way you’d be mistaken for one of us. Your breeding is stamped all over you as clearly as if you had it written across your forehead.”

“What if I let my beard grow, shunned all combs and brushes, and kept bathing to once a month, needed or not?”

“Not even then.”

He huffed. “Killjoy.”

A rush of laughter added to the fires already licking along her body. “It just occurred to me that I said the very same thing to Victor Corey once. You took my opinion far better than he did.”

“I certainly hope so.” As he sighed and moved beside her on the mattress, his arm brushed her ribs, his shoulder knocked against her elbow.

“Is something wrong?”

“Definitely. I’m lying in bed beside a beautiful woman and . . . chatting. It feels decidedly odd.”

“You don’t chat?”

“I usually find far more entertaining ways to pass the time with a lady.”

“Perhaps none of those women were friends.”

“Diamond-encrusted pit vipers would be more accurate, and no, I wasn’t attracted to them for their sparkling conversation.”

“Again, I think I’m being insulted.”

Callista was crushed against him with nowhere to go. Her arms were folded against her chest, but that wasn’t what made it so hard to breathe. Instead it was the light caress of his fingers as he pushed her hair off her face, the intensity of his gaze as he watched her, the slide of his hand down her bare arm raising shivers of gooseflesh.

“Not at all. In fact, I could learn to like this friendship thing,” he murmured.

“You said I was safe from any dishonorable intentions.” She tried to sound flirtatious, but it came off strained and awkward.

“Did I say that?” David cupped the curve of her hip, but he did not pull her close, merely touched her. His fingers were warm and strong through the fabric of her gown, and she ached without quite knowing what she ached for. “Then it must be so.”

“What if I don’t want to be safe?” she whispered, just a breath, soft and trembling.

“Wanting and having are two very different things,” he answered. “I know that all too well. Good night, sweet Callista.”

She rolled over to face the wall, rigid and hot, but now with embarrassment. “Good night.”

*  *  *

He came awake with a gasp, his body crackling with unfilled desire, every inch of him painfully aroused. It had been so real. The scent of her in his nose and clinging to his skin, her body beneath him, writhing with need, her voice soft and urgent in his ear as he took her. But that was not what had roused him, heart racing and sweat crawling cold down his back. No, the dark images that had shocked him awake had followed after like a cloud across the face of the moon. Even now, they clung to his mind like damp streamers of fog.

Callista had been part of them as well, though there was nothing of passion in her presence then. Only heartbreak, pain, blood, and loss . . . and a void more infinite than forever.

He ran a hand over his face as his breathing and heartbeat slowed, the dream seeping back into the shadows that had conjured it. With all thoughts of sleep at an end, he rose stiffly. The night called to him, and perhaps if he couldn’t shake the dream, he might outrun it.

“David?” Callista’s quiet voice in the darkness tightened his already cramped muscles. “Where are you going?” she asked.

Desire lifted the hairs at the back of his neck on its way down his spine, and he fought the urge to pull her close and plunder her mouth with kisses, cup the firm round breasts beneath her gown, slide a hand under her skirts to touch the silken flesh of her calf, her thigh, the hot sweet junction between her legs. She would not cry out or push him away. He knew how to
gentle a woman until she matched his urgency. Until she moaned soft and breathless. Until she guided him inside with her own hand.

Only afterward would she have hated him for it.

No, Callista was no bored matron or practiced seductress, and he’d not fallen so far as to seduce maidens—despite his reputation. His cock hard and throbbing, he forced his breathing to a slow even pace and did not answer. For while the vision of her tantalized, the darker dream burned like acid on the surface of his mind. And he would not take a chance on its coming true.

Friends was all well and good, but he would not fall in love.

He would not die knowing he’d failed her.

The book was old. Mildew stained the cover with green, fuzzy splotches, the binding hung by a few ragged threads, and it smelled as if it had been lying in a cave for a million years—not exactly out of the realm of possibility. David ran one finger over the four interlocking circles burned into the leather, then cracked open the pages. One drifted free to spill across the floor. He bent to scoop it up, scanning a few lines as if somehow that might explain its importance to Gray.

Ha! Who the hell was he fooling?

The writing, if it could be called that, had faded almost to invisibility. Columns of odd scratches and dashes, squiggles and dots, twisted and looped down the page before ending in a mouse-nibbled edge. He ran a confused eye down the page, stabbed one symbol among the dozens with a finger—a double crescent. The mark of the Imnada.

The door opened on a squeak of hinges. “David? Sam needs you to help with the mules. You’d better come—”

He shoved the pages back into the binding and slammed the book closed with a puff of ancient dust.

“What have you got there?” Brows crinkled in curiosity, Callista shut the wagon door behind her, eyeing the book with interest.

“I have no idea.”

She clearly didn’t believe him. Her gaze moved from the book to his open saddlebag to his face and then down to the floor. She bent and pulled a paper from the floor caught between a cupboard and the wall. “Is this writing or some wild, ugly artwork?”

“Again, I have no idea.”

Now she regarded him with a mix of confusion and exasperation. “If you don’t want to talk about it, just say so. You don’t have to be deliberately obtuse.”

“I’m not. I truly don’t know. I told you, my friend Adam was the scholar. Mac was the soldier. And then there was Gray, who kept us all in line and out of trouble . . . well, mostly out of trouble.”

She hesitated before taking a seat on the one and only stool as if sitting beside him might be dangerous. “Where did you fit into the mix?”

“I didn’t.” He cocked her a grin. “Still don’t, though this”—he held up the book—“is their latest and most impressive attempt at persuasion.”

“Persuading you to do what?”

“Make war. Make peace. I’m not sure anymore. Maybe they aren’t, either. But this book has cost at least one man his life. I’d rather not be the next one to die for a few moldy, illegible pages.”

“Die? Why would . . .” She frowned, her gaze locked once more on the book. “This is what Beskin wanted, isn’t it?” she said. “He was after this book.”

“Beginning to wish you stayed in Soho and took your chances?”

Her head shot up, mouth a firm determined line. “No.”

He laughed before running a hand over the book’s cover, feeling the burnt pattern in the leather rough under his palm. His expression darkened with his mood, a roiling twist of emotion rising up from his gut to tug at his chest. “The Fey-bloods know we exist, Callista. What they do with this knowledge is still anyone’s guess, though if your brother and Corey are any indication, it won’t be pretty. And what are the fucking Ossine doing while danger to the clans looms? The whoreson bastards are hunting their own people down and slaughtering them. The Fey-bloods won’t need to lift a finger. We’ll destroy ourselves.”

His fingers dug into the book, frustration and fury crowding his vision.

“But, David, if Beskin is willing to kill for the book and you have the book, do you think he’s still”—her gaze shot to the door—“following us?”

He took a deep breath, focused on the worry lines wrinkling Callista’s brow, the shine of her hair in the light of the lamp, the hollows and curves picked out in the flickering light. It helped to ease his rage, but his frustration doubled. “Eudo Beskin is one of the Ossine’s most brutal enforcers, but he’s a scavenger. He prefers to finish the nasty job others have started for him. On the run, I stand at least a fifty-fifty chance. Seventy-thirty, hidden among Oakham’s motley band of misfits. But it should be only a few more days. I’ve sent a message to Gray.”

“And once the book is delivered, will you finally be safe?”

“There is no safe for me. No forever. The curse took that away.” He shoved the book back into his saddlebag, buckled the flaps, and placed it back within the cupboard among Big Knox’s painted silver plates and blunted steel knives. Flashed her a bright smile, only slightly ragged at the edges. “And on that happy note, I’ll go face Oakham and his mules.”

She grabbed his arm. “That’s it? You just give up hope? Surrender without a fight?”

He slammed to his feet, the bed behind him too big, too soft, too close. Callista looked up at him with challenge in her eyes. What would she do if he took her up on her dare? It was a question he’d asked himself every night since they began sharing this rolling cupboard, lying side by side in a purgatory of sweet-smelling skin, soft curling hair, and luscious curves. Then he would close his eyes, the dream would come, and his answer would be clear as the death he saw over and over.

“Do you think I just rolled over and accepted my fate without a whimper? Damn it, I fought tooth and claw with every power at my command, Callista, and yet every night the curse overtook me just the same, twisting me against my will from man to wolf. And every dawn, blue and silver flames torched my flesh, and I shifted back. Dusk and dawn relentless, unstoppable.”

“But the draught . . . it’s a cure . . .”

“It’s a temporary stay of execution, that’s all. I take it because to stop is to die more quickly and more painfully. All my raging and all my struggle did nothing but tighten the noose about my neck.”

She was either courageous or foolish, but she didn’t shrink from his anger. Instead, her gaze burned brightly and she lifted a hand to his face, her touch cool on his fevered flesh. “Mac and Gray . . . your friends . . . have they given up hope? Or could this be the answer? This book you’re carrying?”

“Mac and Gray are revolutionaries and dreamers. I’m a pragmatist. I play the odds and face the facts. I don’t hope.” He gripped her fingers, pulling them away from his face. When had this damn wagon grown so small? He could barely breathe. His skin prickled and danced in the presence of her magic. He felt battered and bruised, with nowhere to run and no way to avoid her barrage of unanswerable questions.

“What a horrible way to live,” she said simply.

He offered her a gallows smile and a lift of his shoulder. “Yes, but definitely a far easier way to die.”

*  *  *

Just before nightfall they’d drawn up on the windy brow of a long sloping hill north of town. By tomorrow, the place would be a crush of humanity as rowdy crowds moved through the maze of stalls and booths to gawk at the minstrel shows and wild-beast menageries, the fortune-tellers, chapmen, quacks, and cookshops. Already the place teemed with activity as farmers and herdsmen mingled with peddlers and prostitutes, and Oakham’s faded and careworn caravans were forced to set up shop in an out-of-the-way corner behind the farthest sheep pens.

There had been a few hours of frantic activity as mules were hobbled and set to graze, water was fetched, and supper set to simmer over a hasty cookfire,
but with the hour growing late, the troupe had settled into a state of resigned readiness for tomorrow’s performances.

Callista sat with Lettice, the two discussing the latest fashions from London, the best way to scrub stains from muslin, and whether a husband’s snoring could be grounds for murder.