Shadow's Curse

by Alexa Egan

  * * *

  The path wound through a deep, silent wood. Even the stream sliding beside her moved slow and sluggish and without a sound. She had never been here before; the landscape was wild and black, with upthrust boulders like grasping hands and trees climbing forever into a flat gray sky.

  Annwn’s creatures watched her. She couldn’t see them but she felt their eyes crawling over her skin and sensed their desire for the heat and the life she possessed. What would they do if freed of the realms of man? But how could she refuse when it meant David would suffer?

  She had no choice.

  Lucan would claim otherwise. “There is always a choice,” he’d told her that long-ago afternoon in the Addershiels summerhouse.

  She knew what her choice must be, no matter how it pained her.

  She continued walking, and now snow dusted her shoulders and coated the path in white. The chill bit into her face and numbed her hands; her fingers upon Blade were cramped and throbbing. The gray light dimmed and the trees became sentinels, their branches reaching for her, their roots ensnaring her feet and twisting round her ankles. She fell, the bell clanging as it rolled from her hand. The creatures receded into the murky twilight with the crash and rumble of feet upon the packed earth and the screech and yowl of voices raised in frustration.

  She drew her legs up to her chest, but the cold sapped her strength as it clawed her throat and raked her lungs. It wouldn’t take long. All she need do was remain here, and if the snow and ice didn’t claim her, something else would.

  Corey would fail. The threat would end with her death.

  She smiled, feeling the pinch of cold in her cheeks. If she died within, she would die without. She would have changed the dream. She would have outsmarted the fates.

  The screeches grew in volume. The rumble of footsteps grew in number. She struggled to her feet with a moan of pain and failure.

  Annwn’s monsters did not flee her bell.

  They raced for the door.

  * * *

  The wind stank of sulfur and sweat, the stench of sickness and rotting flesh, grave earth and wounds gone sour. Clouds rolled thick and green across the sky, spreading out across the rolling barren cliffs and crags. Magic crackled the air like a summer storm, electrifying the hair at the back of his neck, the pain in his head, and the illness churning his gut.

  No breath stirred Callista’s frozen lungs, and her flesh shone white as snow. Ice coated the three bells, and the table upon which they rested was slick and shiny. Around her, shadowy forms snaked over the stones of the parapet. Curled along the walls. Drifted up into the sky like slender wisps of smoke.

  David ignored the hard, tight knot centered in his chest and the raging inferno tearing into his muscles as the curse and the draught warred for dominance. In one fluid move, he rose from his knees. With one hand, he swept the gun from his temple. With the other, he crushed the man’s nose before snatching the cocked weapon free. A quick squeeze of the trigger, and the guard tumbled to the stones, blood pooling beneath his body.

  Corey pulled a pistol from his coat. “You might be faster than a bullet, but she’s not.” He aimed the pistol at Callista. “And you’d do anything to save her life, wouldn’t you? You’d even let me carve you into pieces as I sell you off an ounce at a time.”

  David eyed the distance. Ten yards. No more. But weakness slowed him, and Callista was an easy target. Dare he take the chance?

  “What’s a few fingers to save the woman you love? A scar or two?” Corey smiled viciously. “And you do love her, don’t you? Why else would a shifter dare show his face within the stronghold of Scathach’s brotherhood? Why else come chasing after her when you know what you’ll face? You’d have to be mad or desperately in love.”

  “Maybe I’m both,” David said, rage taking him over.

  “You must be, to fall for a penniless nobody like Callista Hawthorne when you’ve had every highborn lady in London panting for your cock like bitches in heat.”

  David’s first move caught Corey off guard. His second had the bastard pinned at the edge of the parapet, his wrist caught in David’s steel grip as he slammed the pistol away to be lost in the foam below.

  “Maybe because she’s a necromancer and I’m a dead man,” David snarled.

  Corey’s eyes grew round in fear as they flicked from David’s grim stare to the deadly crags. “Here’s a deal. You and me. Fifty-fifty. Think of the profits. You’d be wealthy beyond your dreams. Enough money to buy Scathach’s army right out from under her. The Imnada would be safe. You’d be a bloody hero to your people. Adored and revered. Just a few drops. That’s all it would take.”

  A hero. The savior of the Imnada. David could go home. Erase his family’s shame. He would no longer be emnil. No longer be alone. David’s hold loosened. “All you need is a few drops?” he asked.

  A smile curved the edge of Corey’s mouth. “Yes, of course. Eighty-twenty. I’ll do all the work, make all the contacts. All I need from you is”—Corey pulled a knife. David twisted aside as the blade slammed along his ribs—“your blood.”

  David screamed in pain and rage as he shoved Corey backward over the wall. Arms and legs flailing, the king of the stews flapped at the air before disappearing into the mist clouding the spiked and jagged rocks below.

  “The answer is no,” David said, a hand pressed to his side. He tried straightening, but his side burned where Corey’s dagger had gouged a deep score along his rib cage.

  Shadows continued to slide free of the rift between death and life, rising like a flock of crows or vultures into the air with a shriek of jubilation. The most frightening passed into Callista herself to settle beneath her skin, see the world through her eyes.

  One crow spun away from the screaming flock, diving earthward like an arrow. End it, shapechanger. End it now before the world is overrun.

  Badb stood before him, her cloak of feathers black as the figures passing like shades into the world of men, ghosts tossed on the ill wind, moving outward from the rift. “The door to Annwn stands open and unguarded. Death escapes into life.”

  David shook Callista’s shoulders. Stared deep into her eyes, which glowed yellow as the sun. “Come back to me. You must close the door. You must stop the dead from escaping.”

  “She is lost within Annwn. As long as she is trapped within the maze, she cannot pass back into life. She cannot close and seal the door. You must do it for her. You must end this now.”

  “How?” he asked, though he already knew the answer. He’d seen it happen a million times.

  Badb picked up Corey’s fallen knife.

  “I won’t kill her,” David argued. “This is not a fate I choose.”

  “Look around you. Death gapes like an open wound and through it ride nightmares you can’t hope to imagine.”

  “There has to be another way.”

  The Fey’s gaze gleamed black as midnight in a face like bone. “You would trade the world for the life of one woman? Corey was right. You are mad.”

  “And in love.”

  “If you play the craven, it is left to me.” Standing above Callista, Badb gripped the knife, lips drawn back on her pearly teeth, face carved in harsh lines. Raised her arm to strike, paused on a shuddering breath before completing the downstroke, the blade whistling as it descended.

  David winced, sweat beading against his temple. A ragged smile broke over his face. “You couldn’t kill her, either.”

  Badb swung around, the knife in her fist. “You think this will save her life? You are a fool, shifter. The woman kneeling before you is not Callista. It is her form, but the true woman is trapped within death. Without the soul, the body is naught but a shell. A shade. You have gained nothing.”

  “I’ll find her. I’ll bring her back.”

  “For this, you must go into death.”

  “How do I do that?”

  Badb smiled, her face as cold and cruel as winter. “You die.”

  * * *

  Snow
swirled to crust Callista’s shoulders and hair, dragged at her feet as drifts piled. By now the cold froze her lungs and every breath came laced with pain. Each step was an effort as her feet turned blue, then white, then black. Her gown was soaked to her waist and she wanted only to sink into the deep, soft white and close her eyes.

  Mother had tried to warn her. Don’t stray from the paths. Keep your head or you’ll lose your way. The cold and emptiness found in death are nothing compared to the frozen loneliness of heartbreak.

  She’d been right about all of it.

  Tears turned to ice against Callista’s cheeks.

  Wake up. You mustn’t sleep. You mustn’t close your eyes.

  Callista lifted her head at the shimmery voice, but all that met her eye was the endless white snow, the endless black trees, and the infinitely circling and twining paths.

  Focus. Concentrate on the path. One step at a time.

  The voice sounded like the song of the dead, but deeper, almost cutting. And very familiar. But it couldn’t be. She must be dreaming. Or hallucinating. David couldn’t be here unless . . .

  She peered through the blizzard until she glimpsed a wavery blue and silver form like frozen mist, moving toward her. Slowly the mist coalesced into the figure of a man. The sight of his body, tall and broad-shouldered, with a Greek god’s rippled abdomen and corded muscles, pricked at her heart and tightened her hands to fists. But it was his face, hard-jawed and chiseled cheeks, that dragged a sob up through her scraped and frozen throat. Corey had not been kind.

  “David,” she whispered, unable to tear her gaze from his eyes, silver as mist, and hollowed with sorrow.

  “I told you once I saw my end when I looked in your eyes, and it was not a gentle death.”

  “Corey . . .”

  “Will never hurt you again.” He reached for her, his touch like ice but the rasp of his fingers familiar enough to clench her heart. She could not bear to look at his other hand, to see the cost of her hesitation in the horrible damage. “You have to find your way back, Callista. Until you do, the door stands open. You’re the only one who can close it.”

  She shook her head. “I tried to stop Corey, but the grel and the dead flesh, all of Arawn’s creatures, ignored me in their flight toward the door. You were right. Life beckons them. Compared to the feast that awaits them on the other side, my tiny spark is a crumb. Not worth the trouble.”

  “A feast they can’t be allowed to have. Come on. A little farther. Just to the next turning.”

  David guided her along the path, but the snow continued to fall, a white, windswept torrent stinging her face and stealing her breath. Her throat ached with every breath, and she groped for orientation within the wild swirl of white and gray. Up. Turn. Turn again. Back down. Left. Right.

  “Which way?” he asked.

  Nothing looked familiar. “I don’t know,” she replied. “I can’t see. My mind . . . I’m too tired . . .”

  “Damn it, Callista. Concentrate.”

  Shadows passed her, fleeing toward the open doorway and the heat and fire they would find in life. She struggled to follow, but they moved too fast. A slithering tentacle brushed her face. Another curled around her ankle. Cold breath at the back of her neck. Claws curling around her shoulder. Glowing red and yellow eyes. She froze, but soul feeder and grel, dead flesh and the wraithlike phantasm, none did more than offer her a token stare or a grimace of sharp teeth.

  The snow piled to her ankles and her knees. “I . . . I can’t . . .”

  David shimmered silver as his eyes, his body hard as rock, cold as ice. He gripped her under her arm. “You must. Badb sent me here, but only you can bring me out.”

  The trees marched on like a twisted jungle. No way to pick the right path beneath their weighted limbs. No landmarks to bring her back to the house and the wide avenue lined with statues. And the door.

  She sank to the ground. “You can do what the creatures will not. You can close the door.”

  David’s jaw clenched in a face like stone. His hands curled to fists at his sides. “I won’t.”

  She glanced at the blade he carried at his waist before meeting his stare. “You have no choice.”

  “There’s always a choice. Isn’t that what you told me? That we could fight our fate. We could change the future we saw.”

  “I was wrong!” she cried. “Look at me. I ran with my tail between my legs from London to Skye and still I ended wed to Victor Corey. I fought to get Aunt Deirdre to lift your curse, and she refused. I even tried to thwart the death the spirits showed me, and yet here you are. Fates are fixed. And this is the only way. I’ve seen the monsters that live down here in the dark corners. They can’t be allowed to escape.”

  “I . . .”

  “Please, David.”

  “If I kill you, the door closes?”

  “It can only be opened from the outside. We’ll not stop those that have already escaped, but no more will pass through into life.”

  A grim smile quirked his mouth. “I always said the dead were the only ones who might make a difference.” He cupped her cheek with his mangled hand. His lips found hers in a kiss as warm as summer. “I would not have traded these few precious weeks for a lifetime without you in it,” he murmured, his breath soft against her temple.

  She cried, her tears freezing on her cheeks. “I’ve destroyed you just as you said I would.”

  “No, sweet Callista, you found me after I’d been lost for a long time. I love you. In life . . . and death.” His smile curved those perfect lips as he bent to take her once more in his arms.

  “Now, before it’s too late.” She knelt in the snow beneath a gray sky, her hair falling soft around her shoulders. “Before I lose my nerve.”

  She closed her eyes. He knelt to whisper in her ear, his words a murmur of Imnada and English. All of it a promise of love. She smiled even when he drew the blade across her throat, the first quick sting becoming a burn like fire and ice at once. Fog shrouded her vision, the snow falling faster until the world was a torrent with no up or down.

  Her breastbone hummed and prickled as death yawned wide. Arms folded her close. She looked into eyes as silver and empty as the world around her.

  The door closed.

  * * *

  David held Callista’s body in his arms, her gown awash in crimson, his hands sticky with her blood. The snow had vanished and with it the silence of a dark forest blanketed in white. The paths now stretched away across a seething, smoking ridgeline. Some dipped down into sunken lanes where men struggled with swords and bayonets. Other tracks rode up and over the hills toward the far orchards and a village, a church spire pointing above the trees.

  The sound of artillery rattled his ribs and pounded in his chest like a second heart. Above, the air burned hot and smoky, flames writhing up from a house into the cinder-lit sky. Twisted corpses littered the track, their faces masks of agony. Crows pecked at their wounds and ripped free their staring eyes. The wounded cried out for help, for water, for their mothers. A few merely wept or screamed or moaned. The stench made David gag, his stomach rolling, his nerves raw.

  Waterloo. The last battle. All around him, men fought, muskets rattling, bayonets and swords ringing. A boy fell to David’s left, his chest blown out. A scarred cuirassier with a bloody sleeve screamed as a bayonet skewered him to the ground. Beyond, three cavalry rode down an English soldier, crushing his body into the mud and offal near the courtyard. Out of the smoke, a wild-eyed Frenchman rose up with a cavalryman’s saber, his face a rictus of battle madness. David threw himself across Callista’s body, hoping to shield it from the descending sword, but no blade bit deep. The man passed through him as if he were a ghost or a dream, no more substantial than the pall of black, choking smoke billowing across the wood.

  Then he understood. This was his death and his path forever to walk. He would not even have the solace of finding Callista within Annwn. He might cradle her body, but her spirit moved along other dark tracks with
in the tangled web that was Arawn’s realm. With that realization, the cold overwhelmed him; a biting freeze slashed at his lungs with every breath. The aches in his body and the agony of his mutilated hand disappeared as the glow and glimmer of cinders became the pale light of a million spirits sliding in and out of the trees, over the writhing bodies, curling up from the ripped and bloody dead.

  One turned and rolled and spun until it hung in the air above him. It grew in brightness until the sight burned David’s eyes and he had to look away.

  “I’ve sent you back once. She will send you back again. A third time and you will stay forever.”

  A voice in his head and in his ears. David lifted his face to the ghostly figure of a man. Handsome. Tall. A bit stocky, with broad, beefy shoulders and a stomach just the trim side of paunch. An icy fist clutched at his heart and stole his frozen breath. “Adam?”

  The man smiled. “I am the spirit who is. Adam who was.”

  “I’ve come to join you,” David said.

  “No. This is not your time and this is not your death.”

  “Could have fooled me,” he answered, trying for cocky and failing miserably. Exhaustion weighted his limbs and even the sounds of battle seemed faded and ragged, the colors and sounds and life drifting away like smoke. He tried focusing on Adam. He’d not seen him for over a year—not living, at any rate. And their last conversation had haunted David ever since. But even Adam grew indistinct and shimmery like the shine off a river at sunrise or the dew caught within a spider’s web. “With death comes life, David. Live it well.”

  “Wait. I’m sorry, Adam. I never meant those things I said. The curse wasn’t your fault. Nor any of the tragedy that came after. We needed one another, Adam . . . I needed the three of you . . .”

  His breath felt trapped within his chest, throat burning as he struggled to draw in air, bones vibrating until he clamped his jaw against the sensation. Pressure built deep in his center as if he might fly apart at the merest touch.

  Spots danced before his eyes as his vision narrowed to a pinprick.