Masked Desire

  * * * *

  “Come on, you son of a bitch.” Cormac heaved over the dead weight that Stephan had become so he could get a better look at the wound that crossed high on his chest. “Minh. Get over here. Give me a hand.”

  The human scrambled up, eyes wide as he stared at Frieda’s still body. “What the fuck happened?”

  “Your leaders are working with a masquerada Ancient who now seems to have gone totally off the rails,” mumbled Cormac as he ripped Stephan’s shirt off. The wound was long and deep, but he breathed a sigh of relief. Frieda hadn’t managed to go deep enough to hit any organs. Blood loss was the main problem. Luckily masquerada healed quickly. “Hold this against him.”

  “Okay.” Still looking stunned, Minh reached out his hand for the shirt and Cormac passed it over.

  “Stay here.” He glamoured himself and did a brief check of the yacht. No Madden or Yangzei. What guards there were seemed to have either gone overboard—he saw a motorboat speeding off in the distance—or had come to answer Frieda’s summons and were now dead.

  He went back into the cabin, where Stephan’s breath was shallow but steady. “Where are we?”

  “Where do you want to go?”

  Michaela. He needed to get to her before the demon could. “The Hierarch’s base.”

  “We’re almost there.” Minh looked at him narrowly. “What are you going to do with me?”

  Cormac laughed. “Get us to Eric and I’ll throw you a fucking party. Unless you want to stay with your side.”

  “I don’t want to be here at all. I made a mistake.” Minh shuddered. “I’ll get us there.”

  “Good man.” Cormac took over holding the pressure steady. “Can we communicate with them?”

  Minh cast his long dark eyes around the room. “You did a pretty good job trashing our stuff here.”

  “Sorry.”

  Minh shrugged, already on his way out. “Best bet is to try this guy’s communicator. It was working before.”

  Cormac rummaged through Stephan’s clothes with one hand. It took less than a minute before he fished out a cracked and battered case. He shook it, but it remained dark.

  Under his knees, the floor hummed.

  He was on his way back to Michaela.

  Chapter 45

  Michaela rose from her seat blind to everything except that slender laughing figure standing in the forest. Yangzei took a careful step to the right and nudged Isindle with his toe.

  “A fey,” he said in Chinese. He bent down and lifted her up with a single hand. Isindle’s head lolled to the side. “She is related to the other one,” he said, staring at her curiously. The voice, with its terrifying echo, boomed through the forest.

  Then he started to laugh.

  Michaela didn’t realize she was already at the door until Eric grabbed her arm to hold her back.

  “I forbid you to go out there,” he said.

  “Sire. I must.” She grabbed a gun that was set near the door and left as he bellowed her name and shouted for the others to cover her. Yangzei regarded her as she stepped into the forest surrounding the compound. By now Eric and the others would be targeting Yangzei, but they wouldn’t be able to fire without fear of hurting Isindle. She kept her gun behind her back.

  “Put her down.” She didn’t take on a masque but boosted her voice so that it rolled through the forest in Yuri’s rough baritone.

  Yangzei rattled the unconscious Isindle like a rag doll. “They all want to keep me. This one’s relative was different. She will be different.” To Michaela’s intense relief he spoke in his own voice and not Ivy’s.

  Keep him talking. Find out what he wants. Find out about Ivy. Michaela smiled as best as she could. “Keep you? Who kept you?”

  Yangzei looked at her with pity. “Do you hope to keep me talking in some misguided attempt to understand me? To stop me? I was summoned here by one of my own, promised all I desired and then tricked. They tricked me.” The voice rose to a wail.

  “What did you want?” She took a cautious step forward. If Stephan’s theory that she had witnessed the multitude was correct, perhaps she could connect with Yangzei with a touch, even without Cormac’s magic.

  “I wanted nothing but sleep for a long time. Then I was pulled out.” Yangzei gave Isindle another shake. “The world has changed and it appeals to me. Now I want to live again, as I did before.”

  Not good.

  His eyes narrowed. “They lied to me. Put the collar on. I couldn’t keep a masque. It hurt. They bled me. Weakened me.”

  For the new troops. “Madden? Frieda?”

  “Of course.” Madden stepped out from the dense forest. “Yangzei was going to help us put the arcana in our rightful place, until he began disobeying.” Michaela didn’t hesitate, but brought her gun up and pulled the trigger. As she did, an accompanying barrage of bullets rang out from hidden spots around her. The vampire hit the ground and rolled to safety in the trees.

  Jackass. As if she would be here without cover. Trusting the others to keep Madden occupied, she turned her attention back to Yangzei. “Give me Ivy.”

  “No.”

  “Please.” The word stuck in her throat.

  “No. Ivy is mine. Soon all will be mine.” Yangzei flickered in the same way he had during his original attack, with multiple faces appearing as he grew in size.

  Isindle’s feet lifted off the ground.

  * * * *

  Cormac checked the knots carefully. “Sorry about this,” he said. They were at the island, but he couldn’t leave Minh without making sure he couldn’t make trouble.

  “I get it.” Minh wriggled slightly and winced. “Don’t scuttle the damn boat with me in it.”

  “No promises.”

  “What about him?” Minh thrust his chin in Stephan’s direction. The big masquerada hadn’t regained consciousness but he seemed to be breathing. It would have to do. Cormac couldn’t go dragging dead weight all over the island.

  Also, Stephan’s chances of survival were better here than where Cormac was going.

  “He’s staying with you.” Cormac turned to leave.

  “Do you know what that thing is?”

  Cormac nodded. “I do.”

  “You’re still going out there.” Minh regarded him skeptically, as though wondering if Cormac would take the opportunity to run.

  “My mate’s there.”

  His expression altered. “Shit, man. Go.”

  As if Cormac needed his captive’s urging. The moment he stepped onto the beach the land sang to him. He could feel the traces of the fey, blown back to the Queendom by Yangzei’s incomprehensible power. Only two remained.

  His sister, diminished in his mind.

  And…Rendell? Why was he here?

  Then there was Yangzei, hanging over them like a malevolent god. It was ridiculous to think that he would be unnoticed by the Ancient, but there might be other threats lingering on the island. He took each step agonizingly slow.

  Michaela.

  Still no answer.

  * * * *

  Michaela hesitated, unsure if she should shift and not willing to antagonize Yangzei before she got Ivy. Cormac. She could almost hear him calling for her. She beat down the pain.

  Yangzei’s voice was now the same multi-toned horror she remembered. “All but the fey. I will rid the world of them. They hurt me.”

  “No.” Behind Yangzei appeared another fey, dark where Isindle was light. “Drop her.”

  It was Rendell, fully armed and pointing what looked like a silver firearm at the demon masquerada’s back.

  He fired and Yangzei flickered swiftly to the side.

  At first Michaela was conscious of nothing but the strange booming chime the fey weapon made as it discharged. Then she noticed a strange trickling sensation in her leg.

&n
bsp; The pain hit a moment later.

  Michaela collapsed as Yangzei laughed. Through eyes blinded with tears, she saw him toss Isindle’s limp body to the side as he turned on Rendell, who fired again and again. Each hit caused Yangzei to diminish slightly, as though the fey magic was feeding on him.

  Ivy. What was it doing to Ivy? Michaela clawed at her gun, but her legs were too weak to stand or kneel. Rendell had to stop before he did something to harm the girl.

  Cormac.

  Her last hope. At least he might come for his unconscious sister, if not for her.

  She slid her blood-slick hand to what was left of the sigil and threw her voice into the darkness around her heart. Cormac. I need you. Isindle is here. Help us.

  Nothing.

  She pressed down hard on the wound in her thigh and forced herself to shift to Taili. She no longer had the strength for Yuri, but at least as Tai she was slightly stronger.

  She tried again. Cormac.

  Still nothing.

  A final inspiration hit. She slid one hand deep into the soil and kept the other on her sigil. This time the power stirred through her and she threw herself into her call, wavering as she did. The light was going dim.

  Cormac. Please. We need you.

  This time the response came like a caress.

  Miaoling. I’m coming. For you.

  * * * *

  No answer came except a flash of pain from his sigil. She was hurt.

  Enough with this. Cormac broke into a sprint, desperate to reach her. A fey blunderbuss fired, a deadly chime that triggered memories of agony and destruction.

  At the edge of a clearing, he paused. A concrete compound loomed to the south, Eric’s headquarters. As if in a vision, he saw Yangzei, huge and daunting, with Isindle’s motionless body at his feet. Rendell stood behind a tree, his blunderbuss now trained on a sneering Madden.

  He cast the thought into the air. Miaoling. Answer me.

  There was only the faintest whisper, hazed with pain, but it was enough for him. She was hiding, huddled behind a rock that protected her from Rendell and the others.

  He didn’t even pause. Yanking a glamour over him, he sprinted across the clearing and leapfrogged over the rock to get to his mate.

  When he saw her, he couldn’t even speak. Blood covered her, smearing her pale face and white lips and caking her long black hair. She was so still. The wound, where was the fucking wound? She moaned as he moved closer beside her. There. Her hands were pressed hard against her leg. He stripped off his shirt and pried her hands off long enough to slide the cloth underneath.

  “I’m here, Miaoling.”

  “We know you are.” Yangzei’s voice was mocking, but in the smallest of mercies, it was not Ivy’s agonized tones. “No one cares. You can do nothing.”

  This was not the weakened being Frieda had kept. He would worry about that later. First Michaela.

  Always first.

  Her eyes flew open and she shifted back to her natural self. “I’m fine.”

  “You’ve been shot.”

  “Not badly. Cormac. Ivy. We need to help Ivy.”

  “I love you.” Before anything else, he had to tell her.

  She gaped at him. “Now? Now is the time for this?”

  “Since there is a very good possibility one or both of us will be dead soon, yes.”

  The blunderbuss fired again and Cormac slid around the rock. “Rendell and Madden,” he reported. “What is Rendell doing here?”

  “He tried to kill Yangzei when he attacked your sister.”

  “Did he shoot you?”

  “It was an accident.”

  His lips tightened. “I’ll deal with him later.”

  “Eric and the others are in the compound. Armed but probably hesitant to strike against Yangzei because of Ivy and Isindle.”

  Yangzei screamed in Ivy’s voice, a keen of total agony that made Michaela jerk and raise horrified eyes to his.

  “Stop, stop. You’re hurting me.” Ivy’s screams were tortured. The blunderbuss fired again.

  “We need to get her before Rendell gets her killed,” Michaela said urgently.

  “Do you have a plan?”

  She shook her head.

  Incredible. “I do.” He peered over the boulder. “Try distracting him. Get his attention on you.”

  “What are you going to do?

  Cormac touched her beautiful face. “I’m going to get Ivy.”

  * * * *

  That was it? All he was going to tell her? Michaela couldn’t even call after him, because he had already disappeared. She squinted at the place he had been and saw a wavy impression of the glamoured Cormac bent low and moving around the periphery of the clearing.

  Distraction. Michaela wracked her brain for something good. She could throw a rock.

  There were no rocks. She had no rocks, no weapons, and a bum leg.

  Fine. She hauled herself to her feet and waved.

  That was enough to get Yangzei’s attention. She refused to look where she thought Cormac might be—broadcasting his location would not be in the spirit of distraction—and instead forced herself to look straight in Yangzei’s face. It shifted and shimmered, dancing through masques. Yet even as she stared at him, she could see a small fragment of his natural self, his true core. It was chilling.

  She needed to keep his attention. She dragged herself around the rock, praying that Rendell wouldn’t shoot her again.

  “Yangzei, let her go.”

  “Who, this one?” With a snap of his fingers, the demon summoned a ghostly-looking version of Ivy on the ground in front of him, small and terrified. “You’re welcome to her. All she does is cry.”

  “Such a bore,” she said tightly. Her Ivy.

  “Ah, you are a woman after my own heart. You know, perhaps I will keep her.” His eyes moved over her face. “You’re tethered by that fey. Interesting. You trust him with your lives.”

  She remained silent.

  Yangzei regarded her curiously. “You know, of course, that he was lying to you. How ridiculous that he was on loan and simply happened to reappear when you needed him. This is their plan. They want to use us.”

  “Who does?”

  “The vampires. Frieda was in their pay, as were my resurrectors. They wanted to practice calling an Ancient to this earth before they summoned their own.”

  “Liar.” An uncomfortable feeling scratched at her: Estelle’s admission that the vamps had their Ancients under lock and key.

  “What can you know of any other race but yours? Madden. Cormac. Which of the men in your life have been true to you, mei mei?”

  Involuntarily, she glanced down at her sigil.

  “Which men tried to control you?”

  She shook her head. “No.”

  “Tricked you? Lied to your face?”

  Cormac had. Madden. Stephan, Eric, Tom? Never.

  “So join with me and get your Ivy back. Nothing will hurt us again.”

  The ghost-Ivy reached out her hand pleadingly, then flickered and disappeared as Yangzei reeled to the side.

  When he turned back, there were two Cormacs. Michaela’s heart skipped a beat as her injured leg gave out beneath her. She grabbed the boulder for balance.

  “Shit.” Estelle appeared beside her and flipped her a gun. “Who do I shoot?”

  Michaela shook her head as the two grappled. Unlike the other masquerada, Yangzei was able to take on Cormac’s clothes as part of his masque. They were completely identical. She watched the two carefully. No. In Cormac’s masque, Yangzei seemed to be absorbing the fey magic much better than he had before. The two were moving lightning fast, Cormac’s fey grace and speed more than matched by Yangzei.

  Cormac was losing, badly.

  Chapter 46

  He was
losing, badly.

  Yangzei had shifted into a masque that looked like him—Cormac had not realized how difficult it was to put full strength in a punch when the fist was aiming at your own face—but fighting the masquerada was like fighting a swarm. It wasn’t one of Yangzei’s punches that landed, but twenty, thirty.

  It took only two more endless minutes to know he was going to lose, and in losing, fail his mate.

  Again.

  Yangzei threw him to the ground with a single hand and Cormac heard his ribs snap. He thrust his right hand into the ground. This time there were no slow tingles, no gradual reconnection. He threw his mind open to the grasping claws of the dolma.

  For Michaela.

  It had been waiting for him, a wild power heaving at the edges of his sanity. A slicing pain ripped through his chest and a trickle of blood ran down his flesh. A mournful sigh filled his mind as his tree acknowledged the broken covenant.

  There was no time to grieve for his tree’s pain or pause to think of the waves he was sending through the dolma. No fey alive would miss that a caintir had survived and was now, abruptly, unexpectedly, in full possession of his power and at one with the dolma.

  Tismelda would never give back Yetting Hill.

  He didn’t care. He’d sacrifice a thousand forests to save Michaela right now.

  The dolma reached out and he threw himself into its embrace. It hurt, and he wondered if the pain was related to loss of his forest. It felt different as well. The song was more distant, and he needed to reach out to hear properly. Each note rang with a sadness and desolation he had not felt before but was achingly familiar. For a moment, he gave himself to the song, letting it swirl around him and push aside the bleakness that had been part of him for so long that he’d assumed it would be there forever.

  That is, the song took up residence in the areas that hadn’t yet been filled by Michaela. She was part of him.

  He opened his eyes. The forest shivered overhead, the leaves trembling in the quiet air, but their song continued. Kiana had told him of this once, and warned him of the danger of becoming too connected to the world. It wants you, she’d said that day they’d sat out in the meadow. Her hands had played with a long vine and it had wrapped itself, almost lovingly, around her wrist. The caintir are part of nature, and the goal of nature is to take over what lies in its path. She tugged at the vine, which tightened around her arm. You need to remain strong within yourself and not let it too far, no matter how tempting.