Demon's Curse

by Alexa Egan

  “Yes, because they assume I’m guilty of Adam’s murder. I have to say, this alliance idea isn’t working out quite as I’d hoped.”

  “I agree. But we stay together and we stay safe.”

  “Do we?” she asked, her voice hoarse with emotion, a queer light blazing in her eyes. “Then why do I feel as if the real danger is only beginning?”

  * * *

  Bianca rested in a corner of the hired coach conveying them to Bear Green. The interior smelled of a mixture of camphor, soiled straw, and unwashed socks, the windows were coated with a dusty film, and the creaky springs groaned at every bend in the road. But the brazier held coals enough to keep her warm, the weather had cleared to a brilliant cloud-threaded blue sky, and she was alive.

  Amazing how skirting death can turn once monumental concerns into petty problems.

  She snuck a peek at her traveling companion from beneath lowered lashes. Mac slumped across from her, long legs stretched toward the brazier, face averted, dark hair falling forward over his brow so that only a narrow curve of jaw and cheekbone showed.

  As she studied him, she tried to work up a little lingering terror—perhaps a touch of disgust. A hint of repugnance. Nothing. It was as if all her earlier shock had been overwhelmed by larger, more dangerous fears.

  The heart of a hero. David St. Leger’s words from this morning came back to her now as she watched Mac’s fidgety attempts at finding a comfortable spot among the lumpy cushions with a typical sick man’s grumbling. Mummified beneath a mountain of traveling rugs, he couldn’t have looked further from heroic if he tried. At this point, between the mottled bruising, lacerations, and waxen greenish pallor, he resembled a corpse. Yet those work-scarred hands gripping and releasing the edge of his blanket, the tension leaping in his bruised jaw, and the keen-edged determination lingering in his bloodshot eyes all pointed to an unflinching courage, an unshakable resolve.

  She couldn’t help but wonder what it would feel like to be cared for by such a man. To feel safe and protected within the circle of his arms, knowing nothing could break the bond between them. To experience a love that burned as steadfastly as the devotion to duty in his warrior’s gaze.

  A lightning charge sparked over her skin, simmering up from her center in a quicksilver caress to flare between her legs.

  What would it be like to go to bed with him? Would her heart thunder? Would her stomach clench with pleasure rather than dread? When had this dangerous attraction outstripped her guarded resentment? When had desire trumped astonishment and alarm?

  Probably the very moment she’d lost the surprising comfort of his solid presence. When she thought she’d never see him alive again. When his death had been a mere pistol shot away.

  She refused to dig deeper into that troubling realization, afraid of what she might unearth. Already she felt like flotsam being swept along before a wave: Adam’s murder, then Mac’s entrance on the stage, turning her life upside down and inside out. She dare not wade further into such treacherous waters.

  Mac shifted on his seat with a heavy sigh and mumbled, “Shite all. Why David sent us off in this rattletrap of a jarvey, I’ll never know.”

  “Are you warm enough?” she asked. “Do you need another blanket? You can have mine.”

  He waved her off. “I’m fine.”

  “We can change seats if yours is too uncomfortable.”

  He shook his head.

  “I’ve some whiskey if—”

  “Bianca, enough!” Mac exclaimed. “I marched from Portugal to Paris without expiring, I think I can manage twenty miles in a carriage even if it is about to rattle the teeth straight out of my head.”

  “It was Mr. St. Leger’s idea. He said it would throw off anyone with a mind to follow us.”

  He grunted. “More likely his idea of a bad joke. Did I ever tell you about the time he sent me out after a Spanish guerrilla who’d made his headquarters in a convent? I was nearly emasculated by a gaggle of enraged nuns.” He gave a shuddering groan.

  Bianca smothered a smile behind her hand.

  “Of course, it’s funny now,” he complained.

  “Can you . . . I mean, how . . .” Embarrassment caused her to stutter as she sought a foothold on the questions swamping her brain. “Do you have a choice? Could you shift now if you wanted to?”

  He looked up, and she flinched anew at his gaunt, sunken cheeks, the dark smudges beneath his dull eyes. “It takes strength and concentration. I couldn’t manage either at the moment.”

  She turned to watch the passing landscape, though her mind recorded nothing of her surroundings, as she was too busy recalling Sebastian’s tale of Arthur and the Imnada warlord Lucan. He’d paid for his crime, not only with his life but with the lives of all his kind. Adam had carried a dangerous secret. His life had been shrouded in mystery and fear. Just not in the way she’d imagined.

  A chill slithered up her spine as she thought of the Frenchman’s hatred, his twisted, venomous fury. Those moments before she struck would forever be inscribed in her memory. The way the light shone dirty gray, the thick dust hanging in the air, the spittle at the corners of his mouth as he hurled his threats, and the slick, cold feeling of her hands gripping the fire tongs. It was all locked in her head like the scene of a play.

  Could Mac and St. Leger be right? Could Sebastian be a magical Fey-blood out to kill the remaining Imnada in a feud dating back a thousand years? Had she been an unwitting dupe in the earl’s ongoing war? The idea didn’t sit well. “Why do the Fey-bloods hate the Imnada? I mean, Arthur and the Round Table and Camelot, that’s a story . . . a legend.”

  “As are we,” he replied evenly.

  “Do you mean King Arthur was real?”

  He pulled the blanket higher up on his shoulders with a muttered oath.

  “Mac?”

  His pale gaze shone like rubbed pewter. “The Fey-bloods looked on us as monsters, Bianca. We didn’t spring from the seed of Ynys Avalenn as they did. Our origins lay out among the stars, far beyond the Gateway, and thus their powers affected us differently or not at all. This made us a threat. Whether the Fealla Mhòr grew out of this long-standing insecurity or one crushing battlefield betrayal, who can say a hundred generations after? All I know is few Imnada survived the purges. And those that did kept themselves so hidden that none suspected they’d survived—until now.”

  Mac turned away to lean back against the lumpy seat cushions, his half-lidded gaze vague as if his thoughts drifted miles away.

  They passed through a village, Bianca’s attention drawn to a vicar hurrying down a churchyard path; a group of women chatting in front of a dressmaker’s window; a young girl hanging laundry; sheep being herded by an old man and his dog. None of them with a clue that just beyond their awareness lay another world. One that seemed to hold both the stuff of daydreams and the creatures of nightmares.

  She cut her eyes once more to Mac, stiffening when she found him watching her. His face had grown tight, darkness crowding his expression. Something else St. Leger had said occurred to her.

  “Is it true the Imnada are dying out? Is that what you and St. Leger meant by a curse?”

  “Listening at keyholes?” he asked, his gaze suddenly needle sharp.

  “Searching for answers,” she responded curtly. “Something in short supply at the moment.”

  “No, Bianca. The Imnada aren’t cursed. Only four of us were imprisoned by a Fey-blood’s dark spell.”

  The truth dropped heavy into the pit of her stomach, horror dawning with her sudden understanding. “St. Leger, de Coursy, Adam, and you.” Her heart pounded with each name she counted off. “All of you served together in the army.”

  “Aye, Bianca. And all but for Adam suffer together now.”

  The coach turned onto a rutted farm lane, passing beneath a tangled canopy of autumn elms and oaks, the wide meadows to either side a thousand shades of dun. Then through a gate and into a farmyard, halting before a brick-and-beam house standing foursquare
and solid. A cluster of barns and outbuildings stood farther on, the ringing of an anvil coming from the closest. Geese and chickens waddled between the legs of two horses tied to a fence.

  A woman in a mobcap and apron came out onto the back steps of the house, eyes squinting in curiosity. Slowly, Mac unwrapped himself from his blankets, opened the door, and stepped gingerly down to meet her. “You must be Mrs. Wallace. I’m—”

  Bianca had never seen anyone move so fast. One minute the woman’s hands were empty, a hesitant welcome upon her features. The next she’d an ax hefted before her, its gleaming edge pressed to Mac’s neck. “You’re dead. That’s what,” she hissed.

  11

  “Good thing I was close to hand or Annie might have taken your head off.” Wallace drew a line across his neck in vicious pantomime.

  “Had I thought twice, I might have let her,” Mac answered.

  After the initial shock and fluster of their arrival, he and Bianca had been hustled into the house, where she had been offered a chair by the fire and a cup of sweet tea. Mac had been handed a towel to press against the bloody score on his neck. Unfortunately, it did little to stem his teeth-chattering fever or the throbbing ache infecting his joints. He clamped his jaw and fought to ignore it. Fainting was not an option.

  Marianne Wallace set down two steaming mugs of coffee. “I’m sorry, Captain, that I took you for one of them. When it comes to my family, I’m not afraid of man or beast or those that fall anywhere in between, and I’ll thank you to remember that.”

  The woman’s firm tone made him feel about ten years old and four feet high. In real life, the bewitching siren he’d imagined sweeping Jory Wallace off his feet was tall and large-featured, with a wide mouth, a hawkish nose, and an expression in her eyes hinting at untold strength. She would have needed it to accept the husband she’d chosen—in both his forms.

  Mac shot Wallace a questioning look as he took a fortifying gulp of coffee and nearly spat it out with a grimace. Whiskey didn’t carry the potency of this thick, burnt-flavored, throat-scorching brew. It stung his cut lip before roaring into his stomach like lye. “ ‘One of them’?” he wheezed and swallowed at the same time.

  Jory sucked his coffee down, and only Mac’s fleeting glimpse of a flask disappearing into a vest pocket explained why the sludge hadn’t affected his host the same way. “Aye. We’ll not be dragged into it, and so I told the fellow that came to recruit for the cause.”

  Mac tried and failed at a second sip. “I have the feeling I’m coming in near the middle of this story.”

  “Shoe’s on the other foot now,” Bianca chimed in, a little of the dangerous sparkle back in her eyes.

  Jory chuckled before growing serious. “About a year ago, a chap showed up. A clansman from my old holding in Kilbanif.”

  “Imnada here? But . . .”

  “I’m emnil. Outlawed and dead to them. I know. That’s what I thought too.”

  “What did he want?”

  “Said he and some others were frustrated with the Ossine-influenced Gather and their rulings. They’d started meeting in secret. Making plans. They hoped I’d join with them.”

  “To do what?” Mac’s ill feeling returned, worse than before.

  “Save the race from extinction. They believe the future of the Imnada depends on coming into the open. Making peace with the Fey-bloods. That we’ll die out if we remain hidden away.”

  This constant hiding in the shadows is dooming us to extinction.

  It was David’s complaint echoed almost word for word. Mac sat up, a new tightness in his chest. One not associated with the silver poisoning. Could St. Leger be mixed up with these rebels? The man was reckless, desperate, and completely irresponsible. A perfect recipe for fomenting revolution. Mac barely heard Jory’s next words over the rushing in his ears.

  “. . . packed him off the place quick. Then a couple months ago another fellow showed. This time from the Ossine.”

  The tightness crushed the breath from Mac’s lungs. “An enforcer?”

  “Aye. The Ossine know about this splinter group. Know and don’t like it. I’d nothing to tell, but the punishment if I dare aid the conspirators was spelled out in grisly detail.”

  “Hence—”

  “My wife playing executioner with a kitchen cleaver.”

  “Mac?” Bianca frowned. “This may make perfect sense to the rest of you, but I’m floundering with no script to follow.”

  A door slammed, bringing with it a brisk wind and the chatter of lively voices. “Pa said it was your job to mend that bit of wall where the bullock got through.”

  “Are your arms broken? I’ve the turnips still to see to. You do it.”

  “But Pa said—”

  Two boys muscled their way into the kitchen. One Mac remembered from his first visit, but the older of the pair looked to be in his late teens by the swagger in his stance coupled with the belligerent glint in his eye.

  “Henry, Jamie!” Jory barked, his mug banging against the table. “Don’t come brawling in here like a couple of tinker’s brats. We’ve visitors.”

  The two boys skidded to a halt and dragged their caps from their heads, manners chastened, eyes blazing with curiosity.

  “You’re late for luncheon. Where’s Sam?” Mrs. Wallace plunked a plate of warm crusty bread upon the table. Another of crumbly white cheese and thick slices of ham. “And if you tell me you’ve locked him in the icehouse again, James Wallace, I’ll set a switch to your backside. Don’t think you’re too old for a good hiding.”

  “He gets in the way, Mum,” Jamie complained. “He’s always underfoot except when you need a hand and then he disappears like a rabbit down a hole.”

  “That’s no excuse for nigh freezing him to death.”

  “It’s always my fault. Why don’t you yell at Henry? He’s the one who did it.”

  Mrs. Wallace spun to face her younger son. “Where’s Sam now, Henry?” she asked ominously.

  “He’s helping Hetty and Aldith gather apples,” Henry explained. “Really, Mum. Honest.”

  Mac shot a look over Jory’s shoulder at Bianca, who watched the byplay with amusement.

  “You came here before.”

  Mac returned his attention to Henry, who stood sidling back and forth with obvious curiosity.

  “I’m surprised you recognize me.”

  “Were you set upon by highwaymen?” the boy asked. “Or did you fight a duel? Maybe you were in a battle?”

  “Idiot, who would he be battling in Surrey?” Jamie jumped in with all the contempt of an older sibling for a younger.

  “A bit of all of the above and a lot of none,” Mac answered Henry.

  “Make yourselves a sandwich,” Mrs. Wallace advised. “Then, Jamie, go find Aldith and tell her I need her to help with the washing up. Henry, I want you to take Sam and Hetty and deliver this soup to the vicar. He’s suffering dreadful from a cold, and this will do him good.”

  Both boys moaned, groaned, and complained, but one stern look from their mother had them slapping together a meal before heading for the door, their departure leaving a gaping hole in the cluttered, comfortable kitchen.

  Jory took a last swallow of his coffee and rose from the table with a heaving sigh. “Now you see why I sent that rebel agent packing. I’ve a tie more binding than any clan allegiance, Flannery. These are my people now.”

  * * *

  Bianca tarried by the well, tossing stones into the depths. Listened for the echoing sploshes as they struck far below. Strung too tightly to sleep despite her fatigue, she’d spent the afternoon exploring the farmyard. Nosing through barns and storage sheds, stroking the flat, sturdy heads of sheep shoving their way to feed, walking out into the orchard as far as the first stile to help gather the windfall apples.

  The sounds, the smells, and even the sharp, earthy air lying on her tongue reminded her of her home an ocean away. Nothing here to hint at the incredible, magical secret hidden beneath the ordinary-seeming surface. />
  She heard the trills of children’s laughter and looked up from her pile of pebbles. The boy Henry and his younger brother Sam swung on the kitchen garden gate while two little girls with identical snub noses, auburn curls, and matching aprons drew in the dirt with sticks.

  Bianca watched them play, surprised at the tears pricking her eyes and the lump that caught in her throat. She’d long ago given up on the pretty fantasy of a life with a devoted husband, a cozy house where they would love and laugh and share their days, and children with their chubby hands, messy faces, and constant happy noise. Such a dream did not exist. She’d certainly never shared it with Lawrence. And after his death, when suitors had first come buzzing round her, she’d seen the falseness of their smiles and the deception behind their charming manners. They had wanted to win her, not because they loved her but because they saw her as an ornament to be worn upon their arms, a prize to be flaunted in front of their friends. And she, hardened and unmoved, had sent them on their way. Untouched. Untouchable.

  The children’s suddenly staring faces and hurried whispers alerted her to an intruder approaching. Wiping her eyes with the back of her hand, Bianca sat up straighter, smoothing her expression as if drawing a veil across her sorrow before turning to face Mac.

  Bent-shouldered, he trod as if every step pained him. The bruising on his face had become a grotesque palate of green, yellow, and purple, though the swelling had receded, the blood had been bathed away, and illness no longer clouded his gaze.

  “May I join you, or is this well taken?” he asked with a gallant nod.

  She shifted to offer him a seat, all too aware of his body so close beside her, the dampness of his newly washed hair, the masculine scent of his skin. “You look much improved.”

  “Marianne Wallace’s medicinal tonic, three whiskeys, and four hours of uninterrupted sleep. Never felt better.”

  “Jory is the man in the picture. Adam’s . . . his friend. The one I saw in London. Is that why we’re here?”

  “It is. And now you see why I knew you were mistaken about Adam. You could say it was their animal nature rather than their sexual nature that brought them together. Jory has agreed to let us stay on until I hear from David, but I had a hard time convincing him. I don’t blame him for being unwilling. It’s dangerous and he’s a family to look after.”