Shadow's Curse (27 page)

“Can you put Mr. St. Leger’s fears to rest, Badb?” the man asked.

The girl closed her eyes for a brief moment. “Flannery lives. More than that, I cannot see. The shifters cloud my vision and all is hazy.”

David relaxed a fraction of an inch.
I’ve been warned about her, but who are you?

The man shrugged. “A traveler . . . a friend . . .”

Friends are a danger. They make you care. I prefer enemies.

“Those you seem to acquire with ease,” Badb snipped, tossing her cap of curls.

“Gray sent me to bring you to him,” the man said. “And the book.”

It remains within the fair, but it’s not safe to return. There are men searching for me.

“Ossine?”

Men in service to Victor Corey, a gang lord. A man with half of London in his pocket.

“And why would this lord of gangs be searching for you? Does he also desire to study Zwanis Xhelho’s
Book of Seven Forgotten Stars
?” the man asked.

Corey hunts a girl.

“The woman you take north to Dunsgathaic.”

That’s no concern of yours. Who are you? What are you?

“You sense the answer, but you fight it. I can feel your resistance.”

David reached out once more, his mind pressing, searching.
You’re Imnada, but you don’t bear any signum I recognize. It’s no clan or holding I know, which is impossible. As younglings, we’re taught them all by the Ossine as part of our learning.

“The Lythene died out long ago. I am all that is left.”

A thought niggled at the base of David’s brain. Some story heard at his grandmother’s knee. A legend only half remembered.

The Ossine would never have allowed an entire clan to just die out without working to save it. That’s one of their jobs—to chart the bloodlines and to keep the aspects feasible in new generations.”

“The Ossine have the power over life . . . and death,” the man answered. “They have grown in importance since I knew them last.”

David had no answer, but more than enough questions.

He’d no time to ask any of them. Badb stepped forward, her cloak trailing over the ground with a soft rustle. She placed a hand on his head, ignoring the tension stringing his muscles, his lips drawn in a silent growl.

“You are dying, shapechanger. The curse and the draught working in harmony threaten to kill you. It is only a matter of time.”

And whose fault is that, Fey? It was you and your companion who offered us this devil’s solution.

“Enough,” the dark-haired giant said. “If there are enemies in these woods, we must be swift away to Addershiels. Take us to retrieve the book. We cannot leave without . . .”

But David was gone. He tore away from them, losing himself in the deeper trees, muzzle lifted to the air, his body alive with fear and anger. She was in the woods . . . somewhere. He smelled the panic on her skin, he felt the mad gallop of her heart, heard her shout in his head.

Callista was in danger.

Through the thick tangle of ancient trees, light filtered weakly from above to lie green and gray upon old moss-covered trunks and sheened the pale leaves of ash and oak. He leapt over a rotten stump, slid on his belly beneath a web of bindweed as snaring as a spider’s trap. There. He veered free of the thick, grasping undergrowth to find himself on a beaten-earth track. Up ahead, the chase came closer. He heard the crack and snap of bracken as it was shoved aside in haste, a cry quickly stifled as she fell roughly.

I’m here. You’re safe. I’ll not let them harm you.

Callista broke through the trees, her hair falling free of its pins and speckled with leaves, his greatcoat dragging half off her shoulders, her satchel banging against her thighs. She skidded to a halt as she caught sight of him emerging from the night.

“David!” she gasped.

It’s me. What’s wrong?

“They’ve found us. He’s just behind . . .”

She stumbled forward, the satchel dragging her shoulder. David heard the twang of a broken wire and the squeak of a pivot, his body in flight before the spark hit the flint.

Spring gun.

A roar shook his blood, pain shot through his side, and he fell hard to the ground, the wind crushed
out of him and every new breath shooting fire along his nerves, the trees swirling as if a great wind shook them. He heard a scream and felt a hand upon his neck, clutching at his fur.

“David! Please. Look at me. Don’t close your eyes.”

A roaring like the rush of a waterfall filled his head . . . the trees swept into a hurricane of color and sound . . . a great tear opening within a sky of sparkling cloud.

Don’t follow the path. Stay with me here.

Callista’s voice echoed in his head. He tried to answer, tried to hold to this world by his fingertips, the hole pulling him toward it, but his thoughts grew foggy and finally, he let go.

*  *  *

The wolf was David. The wolf was David and he’d saved her life. The wolf was David, he’d saved her life, and he was not dead. He wasn’t. He couldn’t be. She wouldn’t allow it, and if anyone could fight death tooth and claw, she could. If not, what good was her power of necromancy, anyway?

Magic seeped up from the ground like mist. It crackled the air and tingled along her skin as it wrapped itself around the wolf’s body. Then the drifting swirl of magic retreated, and David lay sprawled on his side, legs drawn up, one arm bent underneath him, another flung out, fingers dug into the soil. His ribs expanded ever so slowly, each breath dragged free of him in a painful sucking wet wheeze.

The door to Annwn cracked open and a bitter cold rushed to meet the hot wind, the violent mixture lifting leaves and bending branches. The pressure beneath her
breastbone increased as if her ribs might crack wide, and she pressed a hand to her chest, unable to breathe.

A figure came up behind her. “I’d say good riddance and may he burn in hell, but Corey’ll have my head if he dies.”

She flinched but was too numb to care and too tired to run. She could hardly work up the energy to turn and face him.

“Here”—he tossed her a flask—“scoop up what blood you can. There’s enough leaking out of him, should be easy. If we’re lucky, Corey will be happy enough at having his bride returned that he’ll overlook the shifter’s death. And I’ll still get my fifty pounds.”

She gripped the flask, disgust rolling her belly. A crow circled, alighting on a nearby branch. A scavenger waiting its chance to feast.

“He’s dying,” she sobbed. “Just leave him to pass through the doorway in peace.”

He struck her a hard blow to the side of the head, leaving her ears ringing, jaw sore. “The creature killed three of my men. As long as Corey wants the thing’s blood to sell and so long as it’s my skin if he don’t get what he wants, you’ll do as I say. Now, get busy.”

Sell his blood? David had accused Corey of madness. Perhaps he was right. She could think of no other reason for such a gruesome desire. She bent closer to David, gently rolling him over, in the hope that his injuries would not be as bad as they appeared.

She closed her eyes

They were so much worse. She turned aside long enough to retch, wiping her mouth on her greatcoat, smelling the spicy musky scent of him in the heavy wool. “I can’t. I won’t.”

The man dragged her to her feet by her arm. “Fine. Leave him. I’ll tell Corey I got here too late. He was already dead. Half pay is better than none.”

She dug her heels in, fighting him with all her strength as he tried to drag her away, but he struck her again. And again, until her teeth felt loose in her skull and her jaw throbbed. “He said he wants you. He didn’t say in what shape.”

“David!” she cried, though she knew it was useless.

“You think the shifter will save you? He couldn’t even save himself.”

She looked back over her shoulder, straining to see through the dark. Was that a hand moving? Did he lift his head?

She couldn’t be certain, and then the trees closed around him and he was lost from view.

You claim friendship? Help her.

The thought burst in her brain. She frowned in confusion. What did he mean? Who was he speaking to?

“That shifter can’t save her.” A towering black shape stepped into the path ahead of them, head scraping the sky, arms folded over his chest, face hard as stone. “But this one can.”

*  *  *

He needed to remember. It was vitally important. He grappled with his scrambled thoughts, but they slid like sand through a sieve. He tried speaking, but his throat was raw and his tongue wouldn’t respond.

He swam through a red haze of pain before the black swallowed him once more, every sense jumbled up inside his head and then amplified a thousand-fold.
He smelled the putrid musk of a battlefield, the charred burn of torn muscles, and the powdery snap of broken ribs with every shallow breath he inhaled. He saw the scarlet shock of blood behind his eyes with every rapid thud of his heart as, back arched, he bit down on the inside of his cheek to stop from screaming. He tasted the bitter tang of iron from a kiss laid upon his lips amid a swirl of soft black feathers and a narrow, pointed face. He heard the Fey magic as it coiled around him, passed through him, slid within the darkest parts of his soul, and burst out of his hair and fingertips, a song like a million voices twining and rippling in infinite shades of sapphire and plum, emerald and crimson, topaz and opal.

And, last, an endless series of bells ringing. Over and over. Pounding against his skull. Vibrating along his bones.

He sought to close his mind to the battering of sensations, but they followed him down into the dark, where hands reached for him and Adam’s face swam up out of the gloom. His features blurred in David’s memory until Adam smiled and reached out a hand.
Not yet, old friend.

He woke.

Then he screamed.

*  *  *

Callista’s hands shook. Her knees trembled. And bile rose into her throat at the memory of the . . . she could not call it a fight. The man had merely been alive one minute and dead the next, his head toppling from his neck after a single deadly blow from a blade she’d only seen as a blur of steel.

But where there was one dog, a pack was sure to follow.

There was no time to lose. They must flee before more followed the trail laid by Sam and his jealous plotting.

Lights shone throughout the fairground, cookfires and bonfires, the steady glow of lanterns and the flickering flash of rush dips. Shouts and calls interspersed with an occasional scream while fiddles, drums and the bellowing wheeze of a squeeze-box acted as orchestration to the more primal rhythmic grunting and moaning from a nearby tent that had Callista blushing.

She hoped the confusion would mask her movements, and that the night’s amusements had drawn the players away from the wagons. She crossed the trampled dirt of the clearing at a half run, set a foot upon the wagon step and prayed none had even noticed her absence. Hoped they assumed that she was resting in Nancy’s wagon.

As she opened the door, Sally emerged from a pavilion strung between the last caravan and a tree, dropping her skirts into place as she pecked a greasy-looking chap in a striped waistcoat on the cheek. He murmured something in her ear and she gave a girlish giggle, taking his arm to lead him back in for another round. Before she disappeared, she met Callista’s stare, her expression gloatingly hostile before she dropped the flap back in place. Another few moments and the grunts began anew.

Callista swallowed back her repugnance. Who was she to condemn Sally’s profession? Was she any better with her velvet draperies and flickering candles?

They both sold a dream.

Gripping the latch with slippery fingers, she opened the door. All was as she’d left it. Just as if the last hours had never occurred. She dropped to her knees to rummage in the cupboard for David’s saddlebag and the book he carried north.

Callista had agreed to fetch it. She was the only one with a reason to be among the wagons. The only one who wouldn’t arouse suspicion if challenged. And the least needed while David hovered between life and death. With her breastbone vibrating as the door to Annwn swung wide, she’d fled, heart slamming in her ears, breath short and sharp. The toppling head, gushing blood, and sprawled body had replayed themselves over and over in her mind while she hurried through the wood toward the fairground.

Moving Big Knox’s plates and batons, sticks and hoops, she pulled the saddlebag out, smiling at her success.

Now, to leave as unobtrusively as she arrived.

Slinging the bag over her shoulder, she rose to dust off her skirts. Cracked the door, peering into the night. The way was clear. No one to stop her or ask questions. With a hasty prayer and a held breath, she stepped outside. Went three paces and froze.

“Where do you think you’re going?”

Sally had emerged once more from the canvas pavilion, lips pursed in an ugly frown, eyes hard as flint. Her blouse gaped open to reveal the swell of her breasts, and her hair hung in a wild tangle down her back.

“I’m leaving,” Callista said, tightening her grip on the saddlebag.

“If you think to run off looking for St. Leger, I wouldn’t bother.” Sally raked Callista with a dismissive glare.

“You’re the one who told Sam?”

“ Course I did. You should thank me. St. Leger didn’t care about you. He was just using you, same as he used all of us.”

“Or maybe you told because David
wasn’t
using you? That’s closer to the truth, isn’t it? You’ve been making sheep’s eyes at him for a hundred miles and he’s barely glanced in your direction. So you got even by turning him over to the men hunting him.”

“They’re Runners.”

“They’re killers.”

Sally sniffed, her disdain obvious. “What do you care? St. Leger’s like all the rest. He wants what’s between your legs and nothing else. He’ll toss you aside as quick as that fancy bloke who abandoned Nancy. You’ll come crawling back fat with his bastard, and you think Sam will have you then? You’ll be spreading your legs for any man with pennies to buy you and not so high and mighty.”