Soulbound (3 page)

“You poor thing,” she whispered past her fear. It occurred to her that there might be a very good reason for the beast to be locked up. Perhaps it was mad, a killer. But nothing could excuse the treatment it had received. If the dog was a killer, it ought to have been put down. Not brutalized and left to suffer.

That thought alone prompted her to set her lantern down before kneeling near the bars. The dog’s yellow eyes tracked her movements without bothering to lift its head. If anything, it seemed to be resigned to its fate. But its body shivered, and she knew it was fighting the pain. She shivered in sympathy.

“I want to help you.”

A soft snort came from the dog’s snout, as if it understood her words and thought very little of her abilities to do so.

Eliza glanced around, searching for something to strike at the lock, when she noticed a ring with a key hanging from a hook on the wall. She hurried to it, only to stop. She needed supplies. Turning around, she spoke to the dog. “I’ll be back soon.”

Determination gave her speed. No longer afraid of what lurked in the cellar, she hurried to the kitchens, pilfered the cupboards for food, collected Cook’s medicinal kit that he kept on hand for household emergencies, and then grabbed a stack of freshly washed hand linens. By the time she returned to the cell, she was breathless.

“Now then,” she said in a low voice, as she opened the cell door, “we’ll get you sorted.”

The black dog, however, had other opinions on the matter and began to growl, a steady menacing snarl that curled its upper lip and revealed a set of wickedly long fangs.

“It’s all right,” Eliza said. “I am going to help you.”

The dog’s snarling intensified. He was chained against the floor but had enough reach to bite her if she came too near his wounds. Which wouldn’t do. Crooning softly, Eliza opened the green bottle she’d removed from the medicine bag. Mindful of the fumes, she soaked a rag. As if the dog knew precisely what she was about, it snapped and writhed, only to cut itself short with a yelp as the frantic movement jostled its leg.

Eliza took advantage and threw the chloroform-soaked rag over the dog’s massive head. Enraged, it struggled to free itself, but the drug did its job. Soon enough, the dog fell still, and its breathing turned slow and steady. Eliza waited, counting to one hundred, before moving close. She dared not move the rag just yet, but took the time to try out the sole key on the padlock that held the dog’s chains to the cell. But it did not work.

“Damn all,” she muttered, before setting the key ring aside. Frowning, she studied the dog’s leg. She knew nothing of resetting bones. Especially for a dog.

“No matter,” she muttered. “First things first.” She’d clean those weeping wounds. Eliza rested her hand upon the dog’s hind quarter where the fur was slick and damp. But no sooner did her palm make contact then a great puff of glittering dust rose up around the dog, obliterating it from her sight.

Eliza coughed and sat back on her haunches to get away from the swirling dust. Just as fast as it had appeared, the dust dissipated. A strangled sound escaped her. There, on the stone floor, lay not a dog but a man. Long, muscular limbs, broad shoulders, narrow hips. He was battered and wasting away now. Muscles stood out like thick hemp ropes beneath too-tight and too-pale skin. Skin that was slashed and bleeding.

“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph.” Gaping down at his badly broken leg, Eliza found herself too shocked to move.

The heady scent of myrrh and heated male flesh surrounded her with dizzying effect. She knew this scent. The torment of it and how it made her breath quicken and her nipples tighten. No, no, no. It cannot be. With a trembling hand, she reached out and plucked away the linen that covered the man’s head. Her heart turned over in her chest as her insides plummeted.

“You!” Her shout echoed in the small space.

Gold eyes peered at her from under a mop of black hair. His rich, dark voice was weaker now, slurred and stilted. But it still had the power to unsettle.

“Hello, dove. Did you miss me?”

Adam.

During his seven-hundred-odd years stuck in this life, Adam had been tortured numerous times. He’d like to think that, eventually, he would become accustomed to the pain. No such luck prevailed. Agony held him in a tight grip from the tip of his big toe to the top of his head. For months now, he’d been battered and humiliated by the fae bitch. His life had become this cell. This pain.

And now there was the added ignominy of having
her
, She of the Accusatory Stare, the very one who’d landed him in this hell, looking down upon his ruin. He wanted to snarl again. Instead, he tried to steady his breathing and concentrate upon the cold floor against his skin so that he did not cry out for mercy.

Eliza May – and oh how he’d struggled not to even think her name during these many months – stared at him out of liquid brown eyes, her expression haunted, as though he were a ghost. The irony nearly had him laughing. “So then,” he managed through his teeth, “no rejoicing in this reunion?”

Her pretty face scrunched up in a scowl. “I thought you were a helpless dog.”

“I gathered.” That she preferred a mangy dog to him didn’t burn in the slightest. Not at all. Adding insult to injury, his stomach gave a great gurgle of hunger that echoed throughout the cell.

Her lips quirked, a smile she quickly smothered. “I brought some sausages. I thought the dog would like them.” With a tentative hand, she offered him one.

Instantly, his mouth watered, and he grabbed it from her, his pride nothing in comparison to his physical needs, it seemed. Not meeting her gaze, he devoured his food in hard, greedy bites. His eyes nearly watered with relief. Pain was one thing; starvation was another.

Golden waves of hair slithered over her shoulder as she tilted her head and regarded him. “Why are you here?”

“What can I say?” He grunted as a shard of pain lanced through his broken ribs. “There are times a man longs for a good cell to rest in after a rousing bout of torture.”

Her scowl grew, the plump curve of her lower lip pushing outward. “Think you’re funny, do you?”

“No.” He was too tired to spar anymore. Wet stones pushed against his cheek, and he closed his eyes. Just for a moment.

The sound of silk rustling filled the silence, and then her scent – light and sweet like roses in this filth – grew stronger. Adam’s eyes flew open just as she moved closer. He did snarl then. “Do not touch me!”

Paling, she halted. “I’m trying to help, you oaf.”

“I do not want your help.”

“Perhaps not, but you need it.”

He sagged again, panting through the pain. “For the entirety of our association, you’ve wanted nothing more than to get away from me. Pray, do not change the pattern now. Go on with you. Get out.”

The smooth curve of her jaw tightened with a stubbornness that he’d grown far too familiar with. “At the very least, let me give you something for the pain —”

“Out.” He could not bellow as he wanted to for fear of alerting the fae bitch or her cronies. But he infused all his hate and frustration into the words, snapping his teeth at Miss May. “Get the fuck out of here.”

Abruptly she stood, and he closed his eyes. He wanted her gone, but he didn’t have to see her walking away from him. Again. Her retreating footsteps echoed, and then blessed silence descended. He drifted in a haze of pain and fevered thoughts. Eliza. Her scent, her heat, the golden glow of her soul’s light. Even now, when the light of all other souls was hidden to him, he could see the faint illumination of hers. Like a mockery.

A soft touch upon his shoulder had him flinching and his eyes flying open. “What the bloody —”

“Don’t you go cursing at me, or I’ll… I’ll…” She left the threat hanging as she eased next to him, and he lost the will to protest. The cool rim of a glass touched his lower lip. “Drink,” she ordered.

Bitterness flooded his dry mouth and numbed his tongue. He swallowed it down. A concoction to ease his pain. He did not resist when she offered him another cup, this time of fresh water. In the dull light of her lantern, Eliza’s pale hair glowed like a nimbus around her heart-shaped face.

“Now then,” her voice trembled in the dim, though she did an admirable job of hiding it, “I’m going to clean you up.”

“No.” He grasped her wrist, staying her progress. When she stared at him, mutiny in her eyes, he sighed. “Lass, if you help me anymore than you have, they’ll know. And we’ll both suffer for it.”

“Surely my aunt —” She bit her bottom lip, a little wrinkle forming between the wings of her brows. “She knows about this, doesn’t she?”

A dry laugh escaped him. “Dove, she’s the one who does this to me.” Repeatedly.

Eliza’s perplexed expression deepened. “She must have a good reason.”

“Oh, aye,” Adam drawled. “She’s a demented bitch.”

The fine bones of her wrist shifted against his firm grip. He wanted to loosen it, but his hand wouldn’t obey. He liked touching her. Too well. How could he not? He
felt
her. He hadn’t been privy to pleasurable feelings for centuries until she entered his life.

“Tell me why she does this. Why are you chained down here? Why were you a dog, for heaven’s sake?”

“Do you know this is the most you’ve spoken to me in all of our acquaintance?” He couldn’t keep the bitterness out of his tone. He’d waited for months to hear her speak to him. Now that she finally was, he both reveled in the sound of her blunt, flat American voice and resented her for making him wait so long to hear it.

She made a scoffing sound. “Because we are conversing now. Before, you talked
at
me, as though I were a dog.”

“Untrue and unfair,” he protested weakly.

Something close to a smile hovered at her lips. “Stop trying to deflect and answer me.”

Warmth and a small bit of numbness worked through his body. Adam let his head rest on the floor. “I’m turned into a dog because she believes that causes me humiliation.” It didn’t, but he wasn’t about to let Mab know that. When he was the dog, his pain was somehow more bearable. Unfortunately, the animal had no qualms about voicing its pain, which had brought Eliza to him. “Only the touch of a fae will turn me back, usually for torture.”

“I am not fae.”

Adam made a crude noise. “Oh, aye? Not of Mab’s blood, are you? Forgive me if I spoke in error, and yet, here I am, a dog no longer.”

“That is debatable,” she grumbled.

“As to why she does this,” he continued as if she hadn’t spoken, “she is fae, ye ken?” Christ, his Scots hadn’t emerged in a good five hundred years, but weakness and days without food or water had his tongue slipping. Adam swallowed hard and tried to focus. “You do understand what she is?”

Beneath his fingertips, her pulse beat faster. “Yes, but she saved me… from you.”

He snorted. “Do not start that up again.” He’d go mad if he had to justify himself once more. When she gave a stiff nod, he went on. “Fae are friends to no one but themselves.”

“She’s my aunt. Why should I believe you over all the kindness she’s shown me?” Oddly, her voice lacked heat. If he didn’t know better, Adam would suspect she was merely trying to get a rise out of him. Bollox, her tactic worked. He wanted to shake some sense into her.

“I’m the one lying here broken.” He let out a sharp breath. “She isn’t your aunt; she’s your grandmother and the fae queen.” Eliza started to protest, and he spoke over her. “I have never lied to you, and I won’t start now. It’s true, and what’s worse, if you stay here in her sphere, you’ll soon be sorry for it.”

“Why would I?”

“Because she’ll find a way to use you for her own gain.” With an odd twinge of regret, he let her go and then rubbed a tired hand over his face. “More than she already has.”

“I don’t understand how you came to be her prisoner. You are known – widely, I might add – as a great and powerful demon.”

He took a bracing breath. “I’m not a demon.” Adam caught her gaze and held it. “I’m a man, lass. I don’t drink blood, nor use it to take on another’s identity. All that’s been said about me is a lie. Thought up and circulated by me as a means of protection. I’m cursed, ye ken? Cursed by Mab to remain immortal, heal when I am injured. I had uncommon strength, the power to create life, to take a soul unto me, or to destroy the life I create. Aside from that, the only skill I had was the fighting abilities I learned as a mortal man and my wits. What little there was left of them,” he added with a wry smile.

His smile faded as he watched her. “I’m giving you this truth as a sign of goodwill, dove. No one on earth, save a few key fae, knows. Should the supernatural world gain this knowledge, this hell I’m in now would be what you Yanks call a cakewalk.”

Her nose wrinkled. “Demons are said to be tricksters. How do I know if anything you say is true?”

He snorted. “First, I don’t know where you’ve picked up this hate and distrust of demons, but you’ve been misinformed. They aren’t all bad. Will Thorne, the man who helped set you free, was a demon.”

She had the good grace to flush at that, though her chin remained set.

“Second,” he added. “Had I these great powers anymore, were I a demon capable of taking on another’s form through blood, do you honestly believe that I’d be here?”

Eliza’s stubborn frown grew, as if she didn’t believe him. “That is my point exactly. So then, how —”

“Enough questions. I’ll no’ answer another. Just go before you’re caught.”

They glared at each other for a long moment.

“I’ll go,” she said finally.

“Saints preserve us, she does know how to obey.”

“But I’m returning,” she said, ignoring his quip and giving him a hard stare. “I want answers.”

Adam gritted his teeth against the urge to shake some sense into her. “You want answers? Open your eyes and
see
, lass. Pay attention not only to what Mab says but what lies beneath her pretty words. Look for the signs. Promises she’ll talk you into, pacts she’ll suggest you enter, yet somehow make it seem as though it was your idea all along. Knowing the bitch as I do, Mab will have already found ways to use you for her own ends.”