by Alexa Egan
“Isn’t she? Defiling herself with a shifter lover? Taking a demon into her bed? If you ask me, she deserves whatever happens to her.”
“What do you want?” Mac asked. “Tell me and I’ll do it if you’ll just let her go.”
The man’s smile widened, a ruthless light glowing in his dark eyes. “For starters, I want to see you on your knees.”
“As you wish.” Mac’s eyes burned, his heart thrashed against his ribs. Sweat washed cold across his back as he bent slowly. First to one knee. Then the other.
Something oozed through the leather of his breeks, and a jagged pot edge drew blood as it ground into his knee.
“Mac, don’t,” Bianca murmured.
But Mac had already bowed his head, arms loose at his sides, surrender evident in every rigid muscle. He trained his eyes on the floor, on the broken greenery, the pieces of shattered drawers, the dark feathers turning and drifting over the boards. Behind him, he continued to hear Ringrose’s aggrieved murmurs as he crooned to his dead familiar. And something else: the whisper of fabric across a carpet, the brief sound of a quick, indrawn breath.
“You thought you could win against us, shifter? You thought you could kill and not face justice?” the Frenchman jeered. “You’ll beg for the kiss of my blade before I’m through with you. You and then the rest of your filthy kind.”
Rage swept Mac like a fever, but he remained where he was, subservient, submissive. Whatever it took to buy him a few seconds. Until . . .
Drop, Bianca. Now! Mac’s pathing ripped the air between them.
With a cry of pain, Bianca threw herself to the side, catching the Frenchman off guard as she fell.
Mac’s third and final blade—whipped free from his back, where it had rested against his spine—flew toward the Frenchman’s heart. Only the man’s sudden grappling with Bianca’s deadweight kept him from being speared like a pig on a stick. Instead, the blade bit into his breast just below his collarbone. The force of it threw him backward, blood erupting in a ribbon of scarlet.
Bianca rolled clear of the fight as Mac snatched up a second knife from the pile. The Frenchman lay on his back, arched against the pain, his left hand grasping to remove the dagger from his shoulder. Mac stood over him, adjusting his grip for a final downward thrust. Their eyes locked in a terrible drawn-out contest of wills.
“You fail—again,” Mac snarled.
“Kill him, Renata,” the man gasped, his eyes gazing beyond Mac. “Do it now.”
The reek of Fey-blood magics intensified until Mac’s eyes watered, the grip on his dagger growing slick, a buzz along his nerves until every hair stood on end. He knelt until the point of his blade touched the man’s chest. “Where’s Froissart?”
Bianca’s whispered words touched Mac’s ear and mind simultaneously: “She’s here.”
A shadow speared the floor, the oppressive smell of scent hanging like a cloud in the air. The Frenchman’s eyes darted about, then froze and glazed over, his breath coming in quick, rasping pants.
“We finally meet face-to-face, Captain Flannery, though I’ve seen you many times through Alonzo’s eyes and even reached into your mind as easily as sifting through a jar.”
Mac straightened. At last he looked upon the woman behind Adam’s murder. A woman whose journey, begun in vengeance on four, threatened to drag the entire races of Imnada and Other into a new conflagration if she wasn’t stopped. He recognized her deep-brown eyes, her blue-black hair, her intensity of expression. But now the skin stretched tightly over the bones of her face, and her hands curled like talons at her sides. Power rolled off her in waves until Mac grew nauseated, the floor seeming to roll in the sudden dizziness that overtook him. He tightened his hold on his knife lest it slide from his trembling fingers. If only Bianca weren’t in the way, he could gain a clear shot. A quick kill.
“It’s over,” he said, even as he sought to path instructions to Bianca, but something blocked him. He could gain no connection with her mind.
Renata’s eyes gleamed. “In this we are in agreement, shifter. It is over and you have lost. Just as your friend Kinloch surrendered to me in the final minutes of his life, so, too, will you know the shame of begging before the end. As will Gray de Coursy and David St. Leger.”
Mac flinched.
“Yes, I have discovered them. It took time and seeking both on this plane and in the void, but I have found them and soon they will know the same degradation and shame. They will see their end coming, with no way to prevent it.”
“He didn’t do it. He didn’t kill your father.” Bianca’s gaze remained riveted on Mac’s face, her hands lost in the folds of her skirts.
Renata’s eyes burned black and soulless, her fingers gripping Bianca’s bare arm. “You fight for him. How sweet, but how simple to turn that defense into an attack.”
Fey-blood magic crackled the air around Froissart like a twining ribbon of fire before leaping to entangle Bianca within its powerful embrace.
“Do it! Now!” Froissart screamed.
The muscles in Bianca’s neck went rigid with strain, her pupils dilated, and a dark presence crouched at the edges of her gaze. “She’s . . . there’s something . . . I can’t control . . . Oh, God, I’m sorry, Mac.”
She raised her right hand.
Mac caught the glint of steel, the stench of black powder. He only had time to shout, “Bianca, no!”
A deafening roar shook him to his knees, a searing pain lanced his head, and Mac fell tumbling into an endless void, the darkness rushing up from below to swallow him.
24
Deep breaths in and out. Slow, calm, easy breaths to relieve the panic blistering her mind. She had air to breathe. The walls were not closing in. No one ever died from a locked door.
She stalked the area of her makeshift cell, trying to rub warmth back into her freezing-cold arms, relief and disgust warring for dominance in her sloshy, scattered head.
She had not murdered the Frenchman. She could erase that debit from her life’s account, more’s the pity. She shuddered, recalling his powerful arms wrapped round her body, the gloating in his voice as he sought to humiliate Mac before he murdered him.
But he had not been the one to strike the killing blow. They had made Bianca do it. They had used her as a weapon against the man she loved.
She stumbled, her knees buckling from under her as she sagged against the wall. She pressed the heels of her hands to her eyes as if she might erase the image of Mac’s body sprawled at her feet, blood pooling beneath his head. As if she could claw out the slithering hatred that had infected her mind, taking her over, compelling her against her will.
In the moments she’d been under Renata Froissart’s influence, she’d felt the woman’s warped perversion. Her hatred and the desire to be avenged had eaten into her soul until there was only a black and empty hole where her heart had been. A hole she’d filled with dark and powerful magic.
Bianca could only console herself with the bitter knowledge that the shot had not been fatal. Mac lived still, though for how long was anyone’s guess.
Long enough for the Frenchman and Renata to annihilate him in a death of inches until there was naught left but a husk for the ragpickers, another victim left to rot in London’s streets.
Long enough for him to dwell on Bianca’s apparent betrayal and hate her for it.
She banged a fist against the wall. No. She would find a way out. She would put right the mess she’d created. She would find Mac before it was too late. Another try at the door. Still locked, and no amount of fiddling, pulling, pushing, or kicking did anything but frazzle her already shaky nerves. Another study of the empty room as if some answer might magically write itself upon the walls. Not that escaping from the room would accomplish anything except get her into more trouble. She and Mac had been brought to the Froissart house this time, the center of the spider’s web.
She sank upon the floor, drawing her knees up tightly to her chest, wrapping her arms around them.
Loosed her mind as if unfettering a caged bird. Mac, where are you? It’s Bianca.
A faint shimmering touch brushed against the edge of her awareness, but she closed her eyes, concentrating on reaching out, seeing the thought in her head and then letting it go. It was Renata. She can control people. Somehow she can reach into my head—into anyone’s head—and make me do what she wants.
The shimmer grew stronger until it became a prickling, listening tension that twitched her shoulder blades. You have to believe me. You have to . . . you have to trust me.
No answer to her plea, but the shimmer flared brightly, a warmth wrapping round her as if arms embraced her. Then, as if a shadow blotted out the sun, the warmth fled beneath a cold, sour wind, and Bianca was left alone once more.
* * *
Mac swam in and out of delirium, every movement sending shock waves of pain from his skull into his stomach until his throat ached from retching. Like ghosts, voices came and went. Some angry, hitting his fractured mind like bullets, and others stealing softly and poisonously into his consciousness like thieves. But all with one goal: to discover the secrets of the Imnada. To learn what they could of the five clans before they destroyed him.
He clamped his jaw against the agony and said nothing, though each session ended with another slash of the Frenchman’s knife across his flesh and another blow to his broken body. Mac merely curled tighter into himself and endured.
Once the voice changed from the unceasing interrogation, and he lifted his head to Bianca’s shadowy presence, which acted like ice water on his burning body. He reached for her, trying to answer, to reassure her, but before he could focus on her words, she’d vanished. Swallowed by a whirling pool of darkness, to be replaced by a girl whose shiny black eyes and narrow face seemed oddly familiar. Then she, too, was gone and he woke alone, the chamber empty, no candle or fire to ease the impenetrable gloom.
His first thought upon opening his eyes was that the horrible clawing ache along his bones and the slow one-by-one crush of organs was a result of the silver-threaded cords binding him hand and foot.
A notion revised as soon as he looked to the window and the slender gap between the heavy curtains showing the dimming afternoon light.
No, this brand of perpetual incineration was much worse.
The Fey-blood’s curse fought to consume him as it did every night, but the goddess moon’s absence from the sky prevented the forced shift. Mac was trapped in his human form while two great magics battled for his soul.
Sunset. Morderoth.
The longest night began now.
* * *
The sound of a key turning in the lock brought Bianca’s head up. Shadows hung thick and close around her, and the air held a dank, musty chill along with a strange metallic taste that seemed to coat her tongue like fuzz. She had no idea how long she’d been here, and despite repeated attempts she had never felt Mac’s touch upon her mind or his voice sounding in her head.
The latch clicked and she threw herself to her feet to take up a position on the wall beside the door. She braced herself for the attack, fists clenched. Tension wiring her back. She’d get one chance only. She’d better make it count.
The door opened with a sudden jerk before easing slowly wider, a gnarled hand upon the frame. As the intruder stepped through, Bianca brought her fist up in a quick cut to the jaw, dropping her jailer to the floor like a puppet whose strings had been cut.
“See there. I knew I should have gone in first,” a voice sulked. “Now he’ll likely wake with a knot on his head and a foul temper to match, and who will he blame? Me, of course.”
Before Bianca could react or recover, a girl entered the room to kneel beside the body of Mr. Ringrose. Almost boyishly thin, with a crop of short, black curls and eyes as shiny as beads, she wore nothing but a trailing cloak of black feathers, while her skin where it peeked through her garment glowed with an almost deathly pallor.
“Badb? But you’re a . . . were a . . . crow.”
Catching sight of Bianca’s shocked stare, the girl smiled, eyes dancing, mouth curved impishly at the corners. “Aye, among an infinite number of things, but we’ve no time to discuss it now. The sun has set. He’ll be at his weakest this night.” Before straightening, she took a dagger from a sheath on Ringrose’s belt.
Was this a trap? Another of Madame Froissart’s manipulations? A dream?
“No dream and certainly no conjuring of hers.” The girl’s brows drew into a pouty frown as she handed the dagger to Bianca.
“But I saw you attack Mac,” Bianca stammered even as her fingers curled around the blade’s handle with a grateful squeeze. “I saw him strike you down.”
The girl’s feather cloak ruffled as if annoyed. “Make a decision. I’ve not much time. Come with me or stay here and await your fate.”
Bianca hesitated, glancing again at Ringrose’s unconscious form. “We can’t just leave him behind.”
The girl grinned, though no warmth reached the jet sparkle in her black eyes as she bent to touch Ringrose on his forehead. “There. He will return to the shop. Wake and be as irascible as ever. Satisfied?”
As Bianca watched, the body on the floor took on a translucent rainbow glow, pinks flowing into reds, which in turn flowed into purples and blues. With every changing shade, Ringrose—or what had been Ringrose—faded until there was nothing but specks of dazzling color bursting against the darkness. Then even the bursts died away, leaving only the gloom of a moonless night and no body at all.
“Come on.” Grabbing Bianca’s hand, Badb pulled her from the room into a narrow, whitewashed corridor, locked doors to either side. The corridor led to a kitchen. Spotless, organized, and empty of life. No glowing stove or bustling of servants. It echoed with the sound of their footsteps on the tiles, the rasp of their breathing.
The girl took the lead, Bianca following as they crept up the stairs to the main house, pausing at the green baize door. “He’s being held in her bedchamber upstairs.”
“How do you know?”
Badb threw her a look of disgust. “Because I do, that’s all. But it’s late and he hasn’t much time.” Bianca started forward, but the girl grabbed her sleeve. “They will seek to use you against him as they did before. Do not allow Renata Froissart entry into your mind.”
“How can I keep her out? I’m not one of you. I don’t have any powers. I can’t change into a bird or a lion. I don’t have a wand I can wave. I’m improvising here.”
“You’re doing fine.” The girl reached up to tap Bianca’s forehead with a tip of her finger.
Light flared, washing the inky stairwell a brilliant silver before it faded, leaving a faint halo burning at the backs of Bianca’s eyelids.
“My wards will protect you,” the girl explained, “but they will not last long. You will have to move quickly.”
“Can’t you just do what you did to Mr. Ringrose and carry us all out of here?”
“I’m afraid not.” Her curls bobbed as she shook her head. “Bartholomew is a Realing. Disrupt the magic holding him together, and he will return to his source back at the shop.”
Bianca wished even a word of her explanation made sense.
The girl seemed to understand, for she threw Bianca another, almost sisterly grin. “It’s not important. Just know that Bartholomew is safe, I can’t carry anyone anywhere, and you need to hurry.”
“Aren’t you coming with me? Strength in numbers and all that?”
“I can’t. I’m not allowed. Get you out: those were my instructions. I’ve done more than I should already.”
“Who gave you those instructions? Who sent you? Was it Lord Deane? Gray de Coursy?”
But even as she spoke, the feathers of the girl’s cloak seemed to curve and ruffle up around her face, the trailing end whipping around her body until all of it was a moving, shifting curtain of black growing smaller until it was no larger than a crow. But instead of taking flight, the bird itself took on the same prismatic glow as Rin
grose, body fragmenting as it moved from violet to indigo to blue and continuing down through the color spectrum in a sparkling cloud of multihued light.
“Wait,” Bianca rasped. “You can’t leave me.”
But the brilliance of the flashes had already dimmed, fading until they resembled dust motes caught by the sun before disappearing completely.
Bianca touched her forehead, feeling once more the faint buzz of whatever safeguards had been offered to her. And with a deep breath and a swift prayer to any and all gods out there, she stepped through the green baize door.
* * *
A touch on his shoulder jerked Mac awake to struggle uselessly against his bonds, the silver cutting into his wrists and ankles until he moaned in agony. He cracked his eyes open against a candle held close to his face, every muscle tensed, waiting for the blow of a fist or the searing pain of the knife.
“Dear God in heaven, what have they done to you?”
Mac let out a suspended breath, his relief mixed with terror. “Bianca, love. Is it you? I was dreaming of a girl in a cloak all of feathers.”
She kissed him, her tears spilling onto his face, her sobs uncontrollable. “I’m so sorry, Mac. Renata was in my head. I couldn’t . . . couldn’t . . .”
He tried to smile around the pain engulfing his body, the constant fire burning under his skin. “ ’Tis all right, alanna. I know her powers. She would use you to destroy me, body and soul. Which is why you need to run before they find you here.”
“You’re coming with me.” A sharp tug, and he had to bite back a scream. His wrists were free. Another, and his ankles were no longer bound. “They’re busy downstairs. If we hurry, we can escape before they ever know we’re missing.”
She draped his arm around her shoulder, hoisting him against her. The flames within him leapt and snarled, his knees almost buckling.
“Can you walk?” she asked, struggling to keep him upright.
“I can,” he said, forcing one foot in front of the other in a somewhat straight line, every shuffling step tearing at muscles cramped with fever and reopening the jagged cuts imparted by the Frenchman’s blade.