Shadow's Curse

by Alexa Egan

  Magic seeped up from the ground like mist. It crackled the air and tingled along her skin as it wrapped itself around the wolf’s body. Then the drifting swirl of magic retreated, and David lay sprawled on his side, legs drawn up, one arm bent underneath him, another flung out, fingers dug into the soil. His ribs expanded ever so slowly, each breath dragged free of him in a painful sucking wet wheeze.

  The door to Annwn cracked open and a bitter cold rushed to meet the hot wind, the violent mixture lifting leaves and bending branches. The pressure beneath her breastbone increased as if her ribs might crack wide, and she pressed a hand to her chest, unable to breathe.

  A figure came up behind her. “I’d say good riddance and may he burn in hell, but Corey’ll have my head if he dies.”

  She flinched but was too numb to care and too tired to run. She could hardly work up the energy to turn and face him.

  “Here”—he tossed her a flask—“scoop up what blood you can. There’s enough leaking out of him, should be easy. If we’re lucky, Corey will be happy enough at having his bride returned that he’ll overlook the shifter’s death. And I’ll still get my fifty pounds.”

  She gripped the flask, disgust rolling her belly. A crow circled, alighting on a nearby branch. A scavenger waiting its chance to feast.

  “He’s dying,” she sobbed. “Just leave him to pass through the doorway in peace.”

  He struck her a hard blow to the side of the head, leaving her ears ringing, jaw sore. “The creature killed three of my men. As long as Corey wants the thing’s blood to sell and so long as it’s my skin if he don’t get what he wants, you’ll do as I say. Now, get busy.”

  Sell his blood? David had accused Corey of madness. Perhaps he was right. She could think of no other reason for such a gruesome desire. She bent closer to David, gently rolling him over, in the hope that his injuries would not be as bad as they appeared.

  She closed her eyes

  They were so much worse. She turned aside long enough to retch, wiping her mouth on her greatcoat, smelling the spicy musky scent of him in the heavy wool. “I can’t. I won’t.”

  The man dragged her to her feet by her arm. “Fine. Leave him. I’ll tell Corey I got here too late. He was already dead. Half pay is better than none.”

  She dug her heels in, fighting him with all her strength as he tried to drag her away, but he struck her again. And again, until her teeth felt loose in her skull and her jaw throbbed. “He said he wants you. He didn’t say in what shape.”

  “David!” she cried, though she knew it was useless.

  “You think the shifter will save you? He couldn’t even save himself.”

  She looked back over her shoulder, straining to see through the dark. Was that a hand moving? Did he lift his head?

  She couldn’t be certain, and then the trees closed around him and he was lost from view.

  You claim friendship? Help her.

  The thought burst in her brain. She frowned in confusion. What did he mean? Who was he speaking to?

  “That shifter can’t save her.” A towering black shape stepped into the path ahead of them, head scraping the sky, arms folded over his chest, face hard as stone. “But this one can.”

  * * *

  He needed to remember. It was vitally important. He grappled with his scrambled thoughts, but they slid like sand through a sieve. He tried speaking, but his throat was raw and his tongue wouldn’t respond.

  He swam through a red haze of pain before the black swallowed him once more, every sense jumbled up inside his head and then amplified a thousand-fold. He smelled the putrid musk of a battlefield, the charred burn of torn muscles, and the powdery snap of broken ribs with every shallow breath he inhaled. He saw the scarlet shock of blood behind his eyes with every rapid thud of his heart as, back arched, he bit down on the inside of his cheek to stop from screaming. He tasted the bitter tang of iron from a kiss laid upon his lips amid a swirl of soft black feathers and a narrow, pointed face. He heard the Fey magic as it coiled around him, passed through him, slid within the darkest parts of his soul, and burst out of his hair and fingertips, a song like a million voices twining and rippling in infinite shades of sapphire and plum, emerald and crimson, topaz and opal.

  And, last, an endless series of bells ringing. Over and over. Pounding against his skull. Vibrating along his bones.

  He sought to close his mind to the battering of sensations, but they followed him down into the dark, where hands reached for him and Adam’s face swam up out of the gloom. His features blurred in David’s memory until Adam smiled and reached out a hand. Not yet, old friend.

  He woke.

  Then he screamed.

  * * *

  Callista’s hands shook. Her knees trembled. And bile rose into her throat at the memory of the . . . she could not call it a fight. The man had merely been alive one minute and dead the next, his head toppling from his neck after a single deadly blow from a blade she’d only seen as a blur of steel.

  But where there was one dog, a pack was sure to follow.

  There was no time to lose. They must flee before more followed the trail laid by Sam and his jealous plotting.

  Lights shone throughout the fairground, cookfires and bonfires, the steady glow of lanterns and the flickering flash of rush dips. Shouts and calls interspersed with an occasional scream while fiddles, drums and the bellowing wheeze of a squeeze-box acted as orchestration to the more primal rhythmic grunting and moaning from a nearby tent that had Callista blushing.

  She hoped the confusion would mask her movements, and that the night’s amusements had drawn the players away from the wagons. She crossed the trampled dirt of the clearing at a half run, set a foot upon the wagon step and prayed none had even noticed her absence. Hoped they assumed that she was resting in Nancy’s wagon.

  As she opened the door, Sally emerged from a pavilion strung between the last caravan and a tree, dropping her skirts into place as she pecked a greasy-looking chap in a striped waistcoat on the cheek. He murmured something in her ear and she gave a girlish giggle, taking his arm to lead him back in for another round. Before she disappeared, she met Callista’s stare, her expression gloatingly hostile before she dropped the flap back in place. Another few moments and the grunts began anew.

  Callista swallowed back her repugnance. Who was she to condemn Sally’s profession? Was she any better with her velvet draperies and flickering candles?

  They both sold a dream.

  Gripping the latch with slippery fingers, she opened the door. All was as she’d left it. Just as if the last hours had never occurred. She dropped to her knees to rummage in the cupboard for David’s saddlebag and the book he carried north.

  Callista had agreed to fetch it. She was the only one with a reason to be among the wagons. The only one who wouldn’t arouse suspicion if challenged. And the least needed while David hovered between life and death. With her breastbone vibrating as the door to Annwn swung wide, she’d fled, heart slamming in her ears, breath short and sharp. The toppling head, gushing blood, and sprawled body had replayed themselves over and over in her mind while she hurried through the wood toward the fairground.

  Moving Big Knox’s plates and batons, sticks and hoops, she pulled the saddlebag out, smiling at her success.

  Now, to leave as unobtrusively as she arrived.

  Slinging the bag over her shoulder, she rose to dust off her skirts. Cracked the door, peering into the night. The way was clear. No one to stop her or ask questions. With a hasty prayer and a held breath, she stepped outside. Went three paces and froze.

  “Where do you think you’re going?”

  Sally had emerged once more from the canvas pavilion, lips pursed in an ugly frown, eyes hard as flint. Her blouse gaped open to reveal the swell of her breasts, and her hair hung in a wild tangle down her back.

  “I’m leaving,” Callista said, tightening her grip on the saddlebag.

  “If you think to run off looking for St. Leger, I wouldn�
��t bother.” Sally raked Callista with a dismissive glare.

  “You’re the one who told Sam?”

  “ Course I did. You should thank me. St. Leger didn’t care about you. He was just using you, same as he used all of us.”

  “Or maybe you told because David wasn’t using you? That’s closer to the truth, isn’t it? You’ve been making sheep’s eyes at him for a hundred miles and he’s barely glanced in your direction. So you got even by turning him over to the men hunting him.”

  “They’re Runners.”

  “They’re killers.”

  Sally sniffed, her disdain obvious. “What do you care? St. Leger’s like all the rest. He wants what’s between your legs and nothing else. He’ll toss you aside as quick as that fancy bloke who abandoned Nancy. You’ll come crawling back fat with his bastard, and you think Sam will have you then? You’ll be spreading your legs for any man with pennies to buy you and not so high and mighty.”

  Callista thought of the night she and David had shared. She had wanted him so badly. Had cast propriety to the spring-scented breeze, had done all but beg him for his touch. Could she . . . She lay a hand upon her stomach. Shook off the worry with a shudder. Clutching the saddlebag to her shoulder, she ran for the wood, Sally’s voice following her like a caution.

  “You’re a fool, Cally. Neither man nor beast ever changes his nature.”

  A shiver raced up Callista’s spine. But what if they were one and the same?

  * * *

  The knife shook in his hand. Every shuddering breath he took burned his ice-encrusted lungs, yet sweat damped his skin. Blood steamed in the frigid air as it poured in a crimson wash over her throat, over her gown, over the snow. Afterward, he cradled her in his arms, her hair trailing over his chest, eyes closed as if in sleep and her fingers linked with his . . .

  He jerked and gasped and came awake to naught but the scrape of branches and the quiet hoot of an owl. He lay back, blinking up into the darkness, letting the nightmare fade back into the corners of his mind. Harder to do the longer he remained with Callista. As hard as resisting the urge to claim her as his own, or ignoring the need to mark her body and soul now.

  “The Fey-blood woman is a courageous and capable soul. Any man would be proud to claim her as his mate.” The man from the wood spoke, his ancient gaze dark and impenetrable. “Yet you hold back. Perhaps had I done the same in your place . . . but that is over an age past. My blood is colder now and I understand caution.”

  David’s gaze narrowed and another queasy oath singed his brain.

  The man smiled, though no light reached his eyes and sorrow still etched itself into the bones of his face. “Try not to throw yourself in front of a bullet for a few weeks.”

  David tested his strength. Raised an arm. Made a fist. Easy enough. Then he drew a deep breath and nearly passed out from the ache torching his lungs. Fuck all, that bloody hurt.

  “By rights, you should be dead. Annwn was open. Your soul ready to flee.”

  “Who are you?” David whispered.

  “I’m called Lucan.”

  The teasing half-remembered thought clung. Lucan of the Lythene; a clan extinct ages ago. A man with eyes vast and deep as centuries. A leader who commanded true Fey as if they were baseborn peasants. David’s grandmother had told him the stories often enough. She’d passed along her love for such tales of passion and treachery. But it couldn’t be. This man looked no cruel traitor or brutal monster who would condemn a race. Just sorrowful and stern and hard as the rock they’d lifted above his tomb.

  “Not a tomb—a prison,” Lucan said quietly.

  “You can read my mind?”

  “If I concentrate,” Lucan answered. “Once upon a time, it was a common talent among our kind.”

  “Where’s Callista?”

  “She is well. The man who threatened her? Dead.”

  “You saved her as I asked.”

  “I helped a friend.”

  Adam had been a friend but Adam was dead. His face had been one of those looming up from the dark of shadowed paths. Not yet, he’d warned as he sent David back into life. But it wouldn’t be long before he joined him there. He’d seen the end. Witnessed its form. Felt its horror. It still shuddered along his bones like winter. Callista was a friend. More than a friend, but he would betray her. The way of her death changed with every dreaming. The outcome never did.

  “You saved her—this time. But what of the next?” David answered. “I should never . . . I’ll only . . . fucking hell, I’ve cocked things up.” His voice broke. He was closer to the edge than he thought, teetering as the nightmare swam once more before his eyes as the pain crushed his lungs and seized his muscles with every shift of his body.

  “Is something amiss?” Lucan asked.

  “Callista trusts me.”

  “Is that wrong?”

  “She shouldn’t trust me. She should run like hell.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I’m going to kill her.”

  14

  Callista stepped down from the coach with a nervous glance, her damp hands gripping her satchel. A man and woman stood upon the front steps of an enormous house, elegant wings of tawny stone spread to either side of a tall, columned main block. Light spilled onto the gravel from rows of tall windows, and from somewhere within the house, the haunting song of a violin played. The woman had wild ginger hair twisted up in a loose bun at the nape of her neck. The man was handsome, with straight dark brows and a strong chin, a pale slash of scar near his left eye. They both regarded her with the gold-flecked eyes of the Other.

  “Welcome to Addershiels, Miss Hawthorne. I’m Lord Duncallan. This is my wife. We’ve been expecting you.”

  “I thought this was the home of Gray de Coursy.”

  “The Earl of Halvossa is”—he seemed to search for the proper word—“indisposed this evening. He’ll meet you tomorrow.”

  “Earl of . . . do you mean the Ghost Earl?” Callista had heard the stories in London. The estranged heir to a dukedom, a mysterious battlefield hero who’d barely shown his face since returning home from war. He was the most sought-after guest at every party and the bachelor every unmarried woman desired. She wondered how those same matchmaking mamas and social-climbing hostesses would react if they discovered he was an Imnada shapechanger.

  That he was cursed.

  That he was dying.

  * * *

  The dinner was lavish and the wine flowed freely, but Callista picked at her plate and barely tasted what she swallowed. Her thoughts remained on David, who had been bundled upstairs as soon as they’d arrived, Lady Duncallan shouting orders to maidservants and footmen as she followed after. Callista had sought to attend him, but Lucan restrained her.

  “He is Imnada, my lady. And the shapechangers have always been stronger and more able to withstand injury than normal humans, but it will not be easy or pretty to watch. Best leave him to Badb and Lady Duncallan for now.”

  Her Ladyship had soon returned to assure her of David’s comfort, but the hours dragged and Callista’s thoughts remained scattered and afraid.

  “Faster. More agile. Quicker to respond to danger. Quicker to heal,” David had boasted.

  She prayed he’d not been wrong.

  By rights, she should have been the one lying blooded and feverish upstairs. She had tripped the wire. The bullet had been meant for her. Only David’s speed and animal instincts had saved her from the poacher’s trap. He’d saved her life. She prayed it was not at the cost of his own.

  As footmen offered and removed courses, she tried to listen as Lady Duncallan chatted and tried to answer when Lord Duncallan asked her questions, but mostly she choked down food she never tasted and sipped from a wineglass that seemed never to empty. By the time the last footman cleared the last plate and closed the door behind him, leaving the three of them alone, she was exhausted, dizzy with drink, and her stomach was more full of knots than of dinner.

  “We’re traveling to Sky
e,” she said in answer to His Lordship’s latest question. “My aunt is a priestess there.”

  “Mr. St. Leger is taking you?” he asked. He watched Callista from the head of the table, spinning his cane idly between ink-stained fingers. “He agreed to accompany you to Dunsgathaic?”

  “I would have promised you a trip to the bloody moon,” David had confessed. He had never meant to take her to Skye. Those had been empty words. A promise built on air. “We made a deal. He vowed he would see it through to the end.”

  “If only he offered us such devotion, eh, Katie love?” Lord Duncallan smiled, his eyes softening whenever they turned to his wife.

  “Poor Gray,” she answered. “He’s been certain all it would take was the right sort of nudge and David would be won over to the cause.”

  “Are you the right sort of nudge, Miss Hawthorne?” Duncallan asked, turning his gold-flecked brown eyes to her.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about. And I doubt I’m the right sort of anything,” she replied, fatigue and disillusion taking her over.

  Lady Duncallan sipped at her wine while His Lordship leaned back in his chair, left leg stretched awkwardly in front of him. Unlike Corey, who used his walking stick as a gentlemanly affectation, the baron seemed to truly need it. He favored his right leg, and from time to time as he walked, his face would blanch with pain. Callista had not dared to ask, but he’d seen her noticing.

  “An accident a few years ago left me crippled. Lucan saved my life,” he explained.

  “Mr. St. Leger must love you very much,” Lady Duncallan broke in, her smile friendly, though there was a decided twinkle in her eyes.

  “What?” Callista nearly choked on her wine. “No, it isn’t like that. We have a business arrangement. That’s all. We only pretended to be lovers fleeing north to explain why we traveled together.”

  “Truly?” Lady Duncallan’s smile faded, a small downturn at the corners of her mouth, a crease between her brows. “From all I know of the shapechangers, it would take more than a handshake to persuade one to walk into Scathach’s fortress, the heart of Amhas-draoi power.”