Shadow's Curse

by Alexa Egan

  She needed to find out what he was.

  He opened his eyes, the vacancy now replaced with a razor-keen stare. He jerked, coming up hard against his bonds, his gaze flicking down over the silver chain interlacing the thin cord at his ankles. “Fucking bollocks,” he grunted. “Damned bastard Fey-blood.”

  He might look aristocratic Mayfair, but his vocabulary came straight from the St. Giles stews. “Can you hear me?” she asked again. “Do you know who you are? Do you remember anything?”

  “Of course I bloody well hear you.” For the first time, he seemed to take her in, that frightening, steel-edged gaze raking her like a sword point. “You’re the minx that clobbered me over the head.”

  She slumped, her breath heaving out in a sigh. “I’d hoped you might not remember that part.”

  “Do you always bash in the heads of your rescuers?” He worked at his wrists before leaving off with a small moan that might have been frustration or pain. He looked pale, great shadows pooling beneath his eyes, his chest heaving in short gasps. “Fuck all,” he muttered. “Bloody silver. No wonder I feel like shit on a stick.” His gaze flicked back to her. “Here to smash another great piece of wood down on my skull, Fey-blood?”

  She frowned. “Why do you keep calling me that?”

  “It’s what you are, isn’t it?” He snorted, once more working at his wrists. “Caught by a damned Other,” he muttered under his breath.

  “You were coming to my rescue?”

  He paused to scowl at her. “That was the idea. Seems you weren’t in as desperate straits as I thought. Maybe those bastards had a perfectly legitimate reason for cornering you. If I were untied, I might throttle you myself.”

  She shuffled another arm’s length away. The knots held for now, but who knew—he might be strong enough to free himself or turn back into a wolf and gnaw his way out.

  “Where am I, Fey-blood?” the man asked, glancing about the sparse attic.

  She didn’t like his tone, but then, she couldn’t fault him for being angry if he had in fact been trying to rescue her from Corey’s villainous crew. “You’re in a house just off Queen Street in Soho—for now.”

  A corner of his mouth curled up in a grimace, dimple flashing. “Wondering what to do with me?”

  She sat back on her knees, arms folded in her lap. “If I know my brother, he’ll know exactly what to do with you.”

  “Why is that not a comfort?” He closed his eyes, sagging back against the beam. By now, his skin had gone clammy, and shudders ran through his body. Was he ill? Had she hit him harder than she thought?

  “May I ask you a question?” she ventured.

  “Turnabout’s fair play,” he answered without opening his eyes. “Go ahead.”

  “Who are you?”

  “The name’s David. Anything else?”

  “What are you?”

  This time a dry snort of laughter broke from his chapped lips, and she was once more subjected to a stare that could melt steel. “Didn’t take long to get round to that. I assumed you’d know exactly what I was—hence the bash over the head and the silver chains.” He shot a look at his ankles, which by now had swollen and turned an ugly shade of purple.

  “What has silver to do with it? Or you?”

  “You really don’t know?” He laughed again, though it no longer held the angry edge of earlier. Instead it was almost with pride that he said, “Just my thrice-damned luck. Clubbed over the head and lashed to a post by a Fey-blood who’s never heard of the Imnada.”

  * * *

  “But shifters died out ages ago. How have you managed to hide from the world without anyone finding out?”

  Interesting. Fey magic fairly shimmered off her, yet she gazed on him with wonder rather than revulsion. In fact, her power seemed to shine right through her skin and gilded her dark brown hair with strands of butter yellow, auburn, and burnished copper. David had always enjoyed beautiful women, and this one, while not his typical style—her chin was a little too narrow, her mouth a little too generous, and her eyes a muddy hazel without even the flecks of gold that typically signified one with the blood and magic of the Fey—still possessed a certain quality that held his eye and piqued his interest.

  That or he was still reeling from the effects of a blow to the head.

  Perhaps this was all part of an extremely elaborate dream in which he chatted with a lovely young woman about the Imnada clans while chained nude to a post. Not actually the strangest dream he’d ever had, but certainly the most vivid. Though he supposed if he were dreaming, her gaze would not be locked on his face as if her life depended on it, and her hands would not be white-knuckled in her lap. Instead, she’d be . . . He smiled. And her hands would be . . . His groin tightened.

  “Why would you hide?” she asked earnestly, tearing through the shreds of his fantasy.

  He sighed while envisioning glaciers, icebergs, his housekeeper’s warty bulldog features, all in the hope of reducing his burgeoning erection. This situation was awkward enough without humiliating himself.

  “Hiding is easy. The human race tends to ignore what they can’t explain. The Imnada don’t fit into their neat and tidy view of the world, so we don’t exist.”

  She cocked her head and continued to eye him the way he imagined a botanist might look at a particularly odd new species of fungus. A change from the usual practiced flirtations and seductive half-smiles offered by the typical females of his acquaintance. He knew how to behave around those women. This one didn’t play by the rules. Instead, she stared at him as if she wanted to understand him, not undress him. Not that she needed to. He was already as bare-assed as the day he was born. Still, she piqued his interest, awakened a long-dead curiosity. And, fuck it all, few things did that these days when life had narrowed to drunken carousing and unemotional coupling with women chosen for nothing more than their easy virtue.

  “If we’re going to continue this scintillating discussion, do you mind . . .” He motioned with a jerk of his chin and a lift of his brows.

  Her eyes snapped back to his face after another surreptitious perusal of his nether regions, her face coloring to a blotchy red. “Oh, right. Of course.” She leapt to her feet to rummage in a nearby trunk, pulling out a length of moth-eaten pink wool. “Will this do?”

  “Not my color, but I’ll endure.” She hesitated for a moment before quickly draping the fabric over his midsection. Thank heavens his Arctic imaginings seemed to have succeeded, though he remained uncomfortable in the extreme. “Much better. Thank you.”

  She knelt once more, though he noticed she maintained a discreet arm’s-length distance, as if afraid he might snatch her. If only he could, but the knots held and the silver sapped his strength with every painful breath.

  “You said the world doesn’t see what it can’t explain, but the Other would believe. After all, we’re as impossible and out of the realm of normality as you.”

  “You’re why we hide—Fey-bloods.”

  “You mean the Other? Why would you want to hide from us?”

  “You don’t know the legends?”

  “Of course, but that was all so long ago. Surely, the shifters no longer fear the Other. We’re not killers.”

  “No? I’m a prisoner in the attic of a Fey-blood who bashed me over the head. Forgive me if I remain skeptical.” He glanced briefly at his fetters. “Perhaps if you loosened the cords round my ankles and wrists, I’d look on you with more charity.”

  Alarm flickered across her face. “I can’t. I’m not even supposed to be up here. If my brother catches me, there’ll be hell to pay. If Mr. Corey finds me . . .” She shuddered, throwing a glance at the door.

  “Coward,” he murmured.

  “I’m not.” Her eyes cut once more to the door. “It’s complicated.”

  “Ahh, well, guess I’ll catch some sleep while I can.” He slumped back against the post, closing his eyes. Immediately, his thoughts turned to Kineally. Would his fugitive houseguest wonder what had happen
ed when he didn’t return home? Enough to contact Mac and set the wheels of rescue in motion? Recalling the spring-loaded tension of the man, David doubted it. He was on his own.

  “Wait. You haven’t told me how you’ve survived so long,” she said. “For heaven’s sake, I don’t even know your last name or anything about you. That’s not fair.”

  “Neither is trussing your knight in shining armor to a pole, but there you are.”

  “I didn’t truss you. My brother did.”

  “But you can untruss me.”

  She looked torn. A hopeful sign. Escape might be only a little more charm and persuasion away. “I would, but—”

  The approaching heavy tread of boots up the attic stairs interrupted her explanation. She threw herself to her feet, alarm replacing her earlier curiosity as she scanned the room for a place to hide.

  The latch turned, and a chubby, rumpled fellow stood upon the threshold. “What are you doing up here?”

  So much for charm and persuasion.

  * * *

  There were two of them: a tall shadowy figure by the door, and a second, shorter, plumper, shifty-eyed chap sitting in a chair drawn up close, though not too close, as if he feared David might escape and rip his throat out.

  If only he could.

  But after endless hours of the silver’s poison seeping into his system, his head pounded, his muscles stiffened in painful spasms, and every breath felt as if his lungs were being chewed through slowly. Even if he did escape, he’d barely have the strength to drag himself across the floor, much less tear his captor’s head off and shove it up his ass.

  “Extraordinary,” the man in the chair said for a third time, shaking his head. “Absolutely amazing.” He eyed the silver laced cords with another shake of his head. “The silver’s working just like they said it would, Mr. Corey. Can you believe it? Sickened by the mere touch of the metal. It’s extraordinary.”

  The figure in the doorway stepped into the light of the lamp. Dressed in an immaculate tailcoat with a diamond winking in the folds of his starched cravat, the man looked as if he’d just left Almack’s. Any matron’s dream for her daughter, but for the emptiness of his eyes and the scar twisting one side of his mouth into a strange parody of a smile. “This is the monster terrorizing London, Hawthorne? One of these dangerous Imnada demons you told me about? He looks more like a little mouse to me.” He reached out with a gold-knobbed cane to prod David’s side. “A naked little mouse caught in my trap. What should we do with you, mouse?”

  “Send me happily on my way?” David ventured.

  The man’s laughter was as empty and frightening as his eyes.

  David had heard of Victor Corey, of course. One couldn’t read a newspaper without some mention of the London street urchin who’d begun his career picking pockets and ended up with enough ill-gotten wealth to finance a small country. The man had a finger in every pie and owned half of Parliament; it was whispered that the Prince Regent himself owed Corey a tidy fortune.

  “You said they were supposed to have died out over a thousand years ago, Hawthorne. Perhaps we should help this one back into extinction.” The cane poked David’s ribs again, this time leaving a bloody scrape.

  “An admirable sentiment, Mr. Corey, certainly, but perhaps . . .” Hawthorne let his words trail off enticingly as he scratched at his chin. “We might turn this to our advantage. After all, it’s not every day one’s handed an opportunity like this.” He turned his attention to David. “Where are the rest of your kind, shifter?” he said, enunciating every syllable at a roof-rattling volume. “Tell me and we will let you go.”

  “I’m neither deaf, foreign, nor stupid. If you want us, find us.”

  “Cheek for someone in your position,” Corey said as he smashed his cane against David’s ribs, eliciting a hissed indrawn breath. “Show a little respect.”

  “Respect’s not my strong suit.”

  “What did you want with Callista? What did my sister tell you?” Hawthorne asked.

  “Is that the pretty Fey-blood’s name?” David asked.

  Hawthorne stiffened. “What did you call my sister? How did you know about that?”

  “About the power in her? She fairly glows with it.” He lifted his eyes to the ceiling. “Callista. A beautiful name for a beautiful woman,” he mused aloud.

  “You’ll keep your tongue between your teeth about my betrothed or I’ll cut off your tail, little mouse.” Corey’s cane found David’s shoulder, his thighs, aimed for his crotch, but David arched away before it did any permanent damage.

  “Stop. Stop,” Hawthorne whined. “Don’t you see, Mr. Corey? This creature could make us our fortune.”

  “What do you want to do? Sell tickets? Look at him, Hawthorne. He’s naught but a man. Who’ll pay to see that? I say we take him apart in pieces.”

  “He may look human, but he’s far more. He’s Imnada. A shifter. You heard the men that brought him here. He can become a wolf with a snap of his fingers. People will definitely pay to see that. You give me twenty-four hours and a loan of a hundred pounds, and I’ll double—mayhap even triple—your initial investment in a week.”

  “You’ll not wriggle out of our deal so easily. Callista’s still mine.”

  Hawthorne rose from his chair. “Of course—wouldn’t hear of backing out of that part of the agreement; but there could be more. The scope staggers. Twenty-four hours for me to make some inquiries about our friend here. If I can’t make the creature pay in spades, you can feed him to the fishes.”

  Corey grunted his reluctant assent, and with a final painful smash of the cane upon David’s stomach, the two of them departed.

  The scrape of the key in the lock grated against his nerves. The thump of their boots on the stairs echoed in the pounding of his heart. Alone, he fought like a wild man, writhing against his bonds. Back and forth he sawed until blood oozed hot over his fingers and his breath came broken and ragged, but the silver drained his strength even as it held him fast in his human form. He could not shift. He could not escape.

  He was fucking trapped.

  David St. Leger was still very, very angry. But he definitely wasn’t bored.

  3

  “Come along to the dining room, Mr. and Mrs. Hopewell. Some tea will help you gather yourselves together.” The grieving couple followed Branston out, she dabbing at her nose, he pale but collected.

  Branston closed the door behind him, leaving Callista alone to recover from her journey into death. A few deep breaths to steady the fluttering of her heart. A shot of brandy to warm her chilled and stiffened limbs. A long, unblinking stare into the heart of a candle’s bright flame to break her free of the horizon-less shadowy landscape that was Annwn. These were the techniques Mother had shown her to ensure her spirit’s full return.

  A missed step, and who knew what part of her soul might remain lost within the maze of paths that led always downward into the realm of Lord Arawn, ruler of the underworld. Even Branston respected the ancient rituals enough to leave her in peace as she collected herself.

  “Fools and their money, eh, Callie?”

  Unfortunately Mr. Corey proved less considerate. He swaggered from behind the heavy velvet curtains drawn on rods all the way around the small room they set aside for appointments. The thick blue fabric muffled sound and light, making for better spectacle as well as simplifying her search for the border into death.

  “Good trick. Giving them a song and dance about dear little Joe and his dear little pony. Almost made me want to blubber—or puke.”

  She swallowed the lump in her throat. This was the third time in a week she’d been asked to find a child. She hated these requests the most. Not only were children difficult to summon but they were notoriously hard to bind long enough for conversation. And they were such delicate fluttery bright little things. She always felt as if she’d captured a firefly in a jar, its tiny body flinging itself against the glass, desperate to escape. Little Joe Hopewell had been no exception, bar
ely offering his bereft parents a spark of comfort before he slid from her grip, to be lost within the tangle of roads leading to deeper reaches where she dared not trespass.

  But it had been enough. She’d seen that as soon as she passed back through the door and into her body to find Mrs. Hopewell snuffling into her handkerchief, Mr. Hopewell’s eyes suspiciously bright.

  “You shouldn’t be here,” she said, picking up the first and largest of the three bells to polish it. Key had an ebony handle engraved with the sword and cauldron of Arawn. Its deep, solemn tone paired with her tracing of the proper symbols freed her powers to unlock the door between the realms of the living and the dead. Allowed her to pass through into the vast frozen tangle of paths where cold sapped the strength from her body and deadened her aching limbs. Mother had warned her never to stop moving once she entered death and never to tarry lest the demons and dark spirits find her and take advantage of her weakened state.

  Unfortunately, she’d never told Callista how to avoid the monsters within her own house.

  Corey came up behind her and put his hands upon her shoulders, fingers digging into her skin. “I like to watch you do your hocus-pocus act.” He leaned down to whisper in her ear, his breath hot against her cheek. “Better than a night at Vauxhall. You’ve the gift of the actress. A real showman, you are. Had them eating out of your hands.”

  “Well, the show’s over.”

  Doing her best to ignore him, she placed the bell in its case and picked up Summoner, the next in size and the one whose higher strident ring called and bound the spirits to her so that she might speak with them. With the pad of her thumb, she caressed the four faces carved into the ash wood handle: the maiden, the warrior, the innocent, and the priest. Ran the cloth over the aged sheen of the silver before placing it, too, in the case.

  Lastly, she wiped clean Blade, the smallest of the bells but the most deadly, and her only weapon against those creatures that made the underworld their home. Its hawthorn handle was always warm to the touch, its call sharp as a soldier’s sword. If only its power to banish and disrupt worked on the living.