Shadow's Curse (31 page)

He dragged himself out of bed, wincing only once or twice. The cool night air slapped him awake, and he was able to concentrate on the thunderous expression darkening her eyes and tightening her face. Of course, he was also able to focus on the way her gown dipped low and revealed the valley of her breasts, the perfume rising warm and fragrant off her heated skin, and the shapely curve of her hips.

He padded across the floor, combing a hand through his hair, noting the way her gaze traveled over his naked body before her chin lifted in a show of defiance and she stared only upon his face.

“I wish you wouldn’t do that,” she snapped. “Most men would at least don a dressing gown for propriety’s sake.”

“You came to my room in the middle of the night. Propriety was left behind long ago,” he said calmly. Taking her hand, he threaded his fingers with hers, feeling the stiffness in her body, the way she held herself rigid and unwilling. “You must have had some reason for coming.”

“Yes, to pummel you with a heavy object and tell you what a cowardly, backhanded, deceitful creature you are. Wolf? More like a rat.”

He raised their linked hands for a kiss on her fingers, on the underside of her wrist. “Do you think I want you to leave? To put you on that coach and know I’ll never see you again? But it’s for the best. The Duncallans are highborn Fey-bloods. Your aunt will welcome them—and you—with open arms. Far different if you arrive escorted by an Imnada shapechanger who also happens to be a single gentleman of scandalous repute.”

Bare inches separated them. Her perfume intoxicated him, her gaze was both endless and clear as a mountain stream. He knew what she wanted. He sensed it in every rise and fall of her chest, every sweep of her lashes across her cheeks, every expression rushing like wind across her face. His body would go up in flames if she kissed him.

“This is your chance to erase the weeks we spent together. No one need ever know.”

“I’ll know. Don’t pretty this up by claiming you’re doing it for me. You’re doing it for yourself. You’re running away like you’ve been running since the war ended. Since the curse was cast.”

Her breath smelled of wine and cinnamon and oranges. Had he called her eyes muddy hazel? They shone with amber and glimmered with jade. Her lips were moist. He smelled desire and heat on her flesh. He closed the inches between them, his mouth hovering above her own as their breath mingled in the prelude to a kiss. Arousal damped his own skin and licked like honey along his nerves.

“I’m trying to save your blasted life,” he whispered.

“You’re trying to control it,” she answered.

She stepped back, taking him with her. Step by slow step, she backed toward the bed, her gaze still hot, but now it contained as much passion as anger. His brain locked. He knew what he should do and what he wanted to do, but his legs just kept moving in pace with hers, his groin tightening as she pushed him down on the edge of the mattress and stood between his legs, her hands upon his shoulders.

“This is my life, David St. Leger. And I’m in control.”

He closed his eyes, but every inch of her was etched upon his brain, the creamy skin, the round perfect breasts, nipples pebble hard, long slender legs, a brush of fine brown hair between them. He opened his eyes and she was there blazing in the crimson and gold of a flame or a comet. He was the moth, the dust pulled along in her wake. He couldn’t break free, but he tried. Really, he tried.

“Damn it, Callista. You don’t understand.”

She kissed his chin, the corner of his mouth, his nose. “Then explain it to me. I’m not simple. I walk the tangled paths of death. I think I can fathom the inner workings of the male mind.”

He rested his hands on her hips. His chest hurt, but it wasn’t the bandages cutting off his breath or the blood flow to his brain. It was Callista, in front of him, within him. Waking and sleeping, she was there, offering him dreams of exquisite pleasure and horrific tragedy. Speaking of tangled. He throbbed with wanting her, every nerve strained and tense.

“Death. It’s all death. I have a dream over and over. A dream of killing you, Callista. I don’t know how or why, but I know it as well as I know my own name. I refuse to let this dream spill into waking.”

She pushed him back upon the bed, climbing up beside him, her gown hiking up to reveal the silk of her stockings, the ribbons of her garters red against the white of her thighs. He was erect, his need evident, his surrender inevitable. She smiled, a dimple flashing in her otherwise solemn face.

“And if I know this dream?” she asked. “If I’ve seen this future and don’t believe it?” She leaned close, her breath hot against his ear. “What’s the use of visions if they can’t serve as warnings? If you can’t change the truths they reveal?”

He’d but to turn his head and her lips would be on his. Instead he held still. He could be strong. He could refuse the seduction. None would believe St. Leger the rakish bed-hopper would turn away a woman, but this wasn’t just any woman. And this night would spell the beginning or the beginning of the end. “I won’t hurt you, Callista. Not ever.”

“Then that is the truth and the dream is just that—a dream.”

She retreated, and for a moment, he thought she meant to leave him there, alone on the bed, his body
shuddering with unspent desire. Instead she straddled him, the gown around her hips. She pulled the combs one by one from her hair, letting it fall like a cloud around her shoulders, then she reached behind her with one arm to slide loose a ribbon. A shoulder lay bare. Another ribbon and the bodice spilled open. Where the hell had this wanton come from? He’d known experienced mistresses with less tongue-tying pillow moves than this. She took his wrists, guiding his hands to her breasts. He couldn’t help himself. His palms cupped them, his fingers traced the delicious curve of them, his thumbs grazed her nipples until they blossomed beneath his touch and she gasped.

“I don’t want you to see me”—his voice shook and then broke—“see me fail under the draught and the curse. To wait and watch as I die.”

“The truth at last. You’re frightened. What happened to ‘the wolf doesn’t hide and the wolf doesn’t run’?”

She rocked against him before sliding onto his shaft. Inch by inch, she took him within her tight, wet heat. It was his turn to gasp, his body jerking up as she arched, taking him deeper, harder, her muscles closing around him. Spasms of pleasure and fear and pain and desire hit him like a mountain storm, his body driving up into her over and over as he groaned his release.

“The wolf,” he panted as he spilled his seed within her womb, “is a craven.”

She’d asked for a quiet spot and a close-faced servant had showed her to this small summerhouse. Looking around, she wondered if he’d acted out of kindness or spite. The paint was peeling, the roof had more holes than a sieve, and weeds sprouted from between the floorboards. But it
was
quiet, with only birdsong and a constant breeze rustling the ivy that twined its way up the posts and over the railing.

The bells stood abandoned on a rickety, leaf-strewn table while Callista sat in drowsy contemplation of the wild expanse of lawn, populated only by a dozen sheep and a boy set to watch them.

She’d gotten as far as tracing the patterns, shattering the air with the ring of the first bell, and seeing the way open before her.

Then fear stopped her cold.

Fear and dread of what she might discover. Of what she might unleash.

“You say you mistrust what I have told you, and yet
you hesitate. Perhaps there is some small part of you that believes.”

Callista had not heard Badb’s approach. Hardly surprising, though after their last talk, she thought the Fey might have wreaked enough havoc for one lifetime.

Apparently not.

“The Fey are known to speak in riddles and half-truths when it suits them,” Callista answered. “The old stories are full of examples. You could have some hidden reason for making me doubt myself and my ability.”

Badb shone pale as milk in the sunlight, but for the dusky rose of her nipples beneath her cloak of feathers and the snapping black of her eyes. “I’ve lived among your kind long enough that I’ve learned to speak plainly and in words of few syllables lest I be misunderstood. St. Leger is right to worry over the man Corey’s intentions. Lord Arawn in his arrogance has always believed his realm impregnable. He has never understood the threat the daughters of his seed could be, should they choose to wield their true power over the shadows. The grel are not the worst of Annwn’s creatures that would rise up at the chance to hunt among the living.”

“I would never offer Victor Corey such a weapon. I would die first and the door would be closed to him forever.” The kneeling woman and the upraised knife.

“What is it about you humans?” Badb’s pearly white teeth were bared in an angry grimace, the feathers of her cloak upright and rustling. “You are so gallant and so childish with your noble vows of sacrifice. Do you
truly know what it means to swear such a vow? Or to live with the folly of it ever after?”

“Do not take your impatience out on her, Badb. She is not to blame for your plight.”

Another visitor. So much for quiet and out of the way. Callista’s solitary summerhouse was busy as a London thoroughfare. Lucan pushed through the overgrown shrubs, his steps oddly silent for such a large man. He offered her a bow as if he were a knight and she a great lady. She supposed at least the knight part might be true, but she was no lady. David had made sure of that.

“No, she is not to blame. You are,” Badb snapped, her cloak aswirl, the black feathers purple and indigo and silver in the morning sun.

“I did not force you to honor your oath,” Lucan answered gently.

High spots of color flashed in Badb’s cheeks. “You did not force me to keep my promise, but you knew I would. I had no choice.”

“You are more worthy than you know, Badb.” His unfathomable gaze passed over Callista’s bells to rest on her face. “There is always a choice, my lady.”

“Corey would have me unlock the gates of hell,” Callista answered. “The world would be helpless against Arawn’s creatures.”

“It cannot happen once you are among the
bandraoi
on Skye. None can scale those walls.”

“And what happens to David when I leave?”

“He stays here,” Lucan said. “He works to make peace between the shapechangers and the Fey-bloods. He dies. As you have your path, he has his.”

She had been walking the path marked out for her
by others her whole life. First as her mother’s acolyte in the ways of necromancy. Then as Branston’s mummer’s monkey, dancing to his tune. And in death, paths were her lifeline, where she risked losing herself forever with one stray step. When would she ever have the chance to forge a trail of her own?

“What if I choose to stay with David and not travel on to Skye and my aunt?” Callista asked.

“As paths have forks, so, too, can you make the choice to take a different turning,” Lucan replied. “But there are always consequences to our decisions. Joining the sisters of High Danu would offer you protection, instruction, and a chance to heal the rift within your house. You could rise in the ranks of
bandraoi
, in time perhaps become Ard-siur and rule Dunsgathaic yourself. Death would be as easy as stepping between rooms in a house, and the creatures there no more dangerous to you than biting fleas at your ankles.”

“And if I don’t choose to go?”

“Danger, treachery, and a heart’s greatest sorrow,” Badb said. “I have seen it. You have seen it.”

“That doesn’t mean I believe. My gift is one of necromancy. The only knowledge of the future I have is that offered by the dead. Snatches of moments handed to me like crumbs.”

“It is well known that Fey magic works in uncharted ways when it comes in contact with the shapechangers,” Badb replied. “The Imnada are not of this world, perhaps not even of this plane of being. This disparity has always been their greatest strength as well as their greatest vulnerability. Perhaps St. Leger is affecting the mage energy within you and this gift of prophecy is a product of this strange warping and shifting.” She
shrugged with a ruffle of feathers. “Or perhaps it is as you say and there is nothing to these dreams but cobweb and moonlight and you have nothing to fear in what you see.” Her black eyes crackled. “But dare you take that risk?”

“You will go to Skye, my lady,” Lucan interrupted, his voice never rising, but still the command was unmistakable. “You will lose yourself in study. You will become a true daughter of death. In time, the memory of these few brief weeks will fade, and you will learn to be content.”

Knots twisted her stomach, her skin cold as she met his black gaze. “Content? You were imprisoned out of time for a thousand years and more. Did you grow content? Did your memories fade?”

He bowed his head, his look contrite. “Nay. They shone pure as eldritch steel and trapped me tighter than the silver chains the Fey bound me with as they sent me to my doom. And no passing of years ever dulled them.”

Callista touched each bell in turn: Key, Summoner, Blade. Within the curved and polished silver bowl of the metal, she saw the distorted reflection of her face, the columns of the summerhouse, the shimmering green of the trees. She opened her heart, seeing deeper, using her mind to push into the power running and rippling under her skin. A daughter of death, Lucan called her. And so she was. Her powers were inherited from Arawn and passed down through his human lover and the daughter she bore him; diluted over the centuries but never disappearing. Power that offered her life, death, and the answers found within both worlds.