Heir of Danger

by Alix Rickloff

  “. . . Is go dté tú mo mhúirnín slán.”

  It took him a moment to realize her siren song had ended. Silence roared in his ears as he crossed the floor in two angry strides, grabbing her by the elbow, dragging her to a corner away from the others. “Am I wrong or did I order you to stay out of sight until I returned?”

  She lifted her chin, face flushed, eyes shining and dark. “Killer escaped.”

  He drew up short. “What has that bloody dog to do with you singing to a bunch of drunken peasants as if you were on the damned stage at Crow Street?”

  “When I went after him, they took me for a serving girl. I tried explaining, but it only made them more insistent.” She flushed, dropping her gaze to her clasped hands.

  Unexpected fury reddened his vision. “They didn’t hurt you, did they?”

  “No. Rogan”—she pointed to the harper—“stepped in before it came to that. He asked if I could sing, though whether he hoped I’d succeed and distract them or fail and make them more enraged, I’m not sure.”

  “If you’d stayed put instead of running after that blasted dog—”

  “Well, if you’d been here—”

  “I was trying to secure you a carriage. Onwen can’t continue to carry both of us. Forgive me for chivalry,” he said, glaring at her.

  “Chivalry?” Hands on hips, she glared right back. Why couldn’t he have been forced to abduct a nice biddable woman instead of this harridan? It would have made his life so much easier. “Is that what you call kidnapping me in the middle of the night, forcing me to wear putrid clothes, dragging me about the countryside, and making me sleep in a closet?”

  “Let’s not forget saving your ungrateful skin.”

  She flung herself away with a frustrated groan. “No, we can’t forget that. Though I’ve yet to see hide nor hair of these villainous murderers you seem so convinced are after me.”

  The door opened. Three men shouldered their way into the room.

  Furious, Brendan gestured toward them. “Elisabeth Fitzgerald? Let me introduce you to said murderers. Satisfied?”

  Elisabeth’s shoulder ached, a stitch cramped her ribs, and her heart pounded in fear.

  Brendan remained oblivious to her labored breathing. Each time she stumbled, he yanked her to her feet. Never slowing. Unheeding of her pleas to rest. A moment only for her to get her wind back.

  The men had barreled through the tavern, sending tables and tankards flying, hampered by the cramped room and the shoving and cursing of those they knocked over in the chase.

  Grabbing her hand, Brendan had dragged her through the kitchen to the screams of serving maids and a cleaver-brandishing cook. Out the back door into the yard, careening through the mud and filth. Into the safety of dark alleys. Ducking in and out of empty lanes. Emerging near the lake, where the darkness gathered against the shoreline and every fish jump or ripple of wind-pushed water against the rocks seeming loud as a cannon blast.

  Her legs throbbed and her chest was on fire. She couldn’t seem to pull enough air into her lungs. She stumbled, her ankle twisting beneath her. Brendan’s hold almost wrenched her arm from her socket as she fell.

  “Just a little farther,” he urged.

  “To where?” she pleaded, hobbling and wincing. “I can’t run anymore.”

  Bent double, hands on his knees, Brendan sucked in great deep breaths while casting a desperate look around. The lake on one side. High hedges opposite and a stone wall. He jerked his chin toward an iron gate. “Through there.”

  “And then what? On foot, we’ll never escape them. We can’t walk to Dublin. It would take weeks.”

  Weeks more time she’d be trapped with Brendan. Weeks longer she’d be unable to send word of where she was and what had happened. Weeks when Gordon would be assuming she’d run off with another lover.

  The pain in her chest expanded.

  Two men rounded the bend, slowing to a trot. The third stepped from the hedgerow farther ahead. Effectively trapping her and Brendan between.

  Three on one. And they were a big three. Meaty. Broad-shouldered. Flat-nosed and squinty-eyed. Brendan didn’t stand a chance by himself.

  He shoved Elisabeth behind him. Slid a knife from his waist, holding it as if he actually might know how to use it. A reminder that the changes wrought by his years away weren’t all visible. Brendan might act the joker, but it was only an act. Anyone who trusted too much in his nimble charm would regret it.

  “Look, he’s got himself a little knife.”

  “Oooh, I’m scared.”

  “Are ye thinking you can be stopping us all, Douglas?”

  The men jeered, their faces empty of any emotion save contempt and brutality.

  Brendan’s response came too low to hear, but a flick of his fingers and the closest man went down in a heap of twitching limbs, eyes rolling in his head, a horrible gargling moan the only sound as he writhed upon the ground.

  “Battle magic!” shouted one.

  The two still on their feet rushed Brendan, causing him to spin out of the way, his concentration broken. One raised his arm, the night shattered by the crack of a gunshot.

  Brendan went stiff before slumping, a hand clamped to his right shoulder.

  Elisabeth opened her mouth to scream, but the best she managed was a strangled whimper. Her limbs went dead. She couldn’t move. Couldn’t cry. She could only stare, mesmerized, at the blood seeping slow and black from the ugly hole in Brendan’s shoulder. Her stomach slammed into her throat, cold washing through her as if she’d been plunged into ice water. “They shot you,” she gasped. “Brendan, they shot you.”

  “Did they?” he grunted through clenched teeth. “Hadn’t noticed.”

  Then they were there. Rough hands grabbing her. Hateful words whispered in her ear.

  Brendan spun at the final moment, his knife a flash of silver. A scarlet bib splashed across the shirtfront of one attacker as he dropped to his knees.

  Still gripping her hard by the shoulder, the last man knocked the knife away. Slammed his fist into Brendan’s jaw. Hammered a knee into his stomach. Punched his wounded shoulder.

  Brendan toppled to the mud. Groans from a tight jaw, eyes squeezed shut.

  “Damned bastard,” the man snarled. “That’s fer Keg and Perry.” He kicked Brendan hard in the ribs. “Think ye be hurtin’ now. Wait ’til the Great One’s gotten his hands on ye.”

  The rattle of harness and a low whistle startled them all alert.

  Around the bend, a canvas-covered wagon bumped and rattled, a pair of bony, short-backed ponies in the shafts, a tall, leggy chestnut tied at the back. Elisabeth recognized the tavern’s harper at the traces.

  “Here now, ladies,” he spoke quietly to the ponies. “Looks as if we’ve stumbled on what you might call a gang of Mohocks bent on mischief.” He pulled up, staring at the gruesome scene before him, his eyes seeming to glow in his thin face. “Let the girl go now, friend.”

  “Fuck yerself, old man,” the man snarled.

  Rogan merely chuckled, laying his whip across his knees, a strange, focused expression upon his face. “I don’t think that’s humanly possible.” He motioned toward Elisabeth. “Let her go, and be off with you. The sergeant and his men will be here soon.” His voice came slow and even. No trace of fear or anxiety, just a rich endless sea of sound. “You don’t want to explain yourself to them, do you?”

  The man spit on the ground, his face drawn in stark lines, mouth a thin angry slit. “I’ve my orders.”

  “So you do,” Rogan conceded, still in the melodious, fluid tones that warmed Elisabeth’s whole body, relaxed muscles, and slowed her galloping heart. She wanted to wrap herself in his voice, where she would be protected and the fear wouldn’t touch her. “But your orders didn’t say anything about getting arrested by a Duinedon soldier and spending the next few nights in jail. Move along. Let them be.”

  The gentle persuasion seemed to be having the same effect on her captor. His grip loosened bef
ore falling away completely. His gaze confused as if he didn’t understand why he was agreeing, but couldn’t stop himself.

  “Climb up, miss.” The harper held out a hand. “Easy now. No sudden moves or you’ll rouse him. The magic of the leveryas will bend him to our will, but its hold is fragile and easily shattered by a strong mind.”

  Her gaze fell upon Brendan’s huddled, battered form. One pale hand flung out, the fingers long and beautiful. A musician’s fingers. She remembered them upon her skin, the heady, quivery heat bubbling up through her at his touch. And the strength in them as he’d shoved her behind him, shielding her with his own body.

  “I can’t leave. Not without Brendan.”

  “Nor will you,” Rogan agreed.

  Just then, a streak of bristling, snarling fur and teeth broke from the trees. Tore across the road, needle fangs sinking into the villain’s ankle.

  He roared, eyes wide and round, face twisted in rage.

  “Killer!” Elisabeth shouted. “Stop it!”

  But the little dog hung on, his jaw clamped viciously upon the man’s leg. Cursing, he drew his pistol.

  “No!” Elisabeth leapt to grab his arm, but she was caught back by the harper.

  Brendan took that moment to lurch forward, gather his lost blade, roll onto his feet, momentum carrying the knife up and into the man’s throat.

  Blood gushed. Elisabeth screamed. The man toppled soundlessly into the mud, clutching the hilt protruding from his neck.

  Brendan fell back, panting through his teeth. Blood from his shoulder soaking his sleeve, his arm, dripping off his fingers. Gore streaked his face and chest like a savage’s war paint.

  Killer sniffed at him, his stump of a tail wagging with joy.

  “Arrah, now,” Rogan muttered, climbing off the box. “Helena! A little help, if you please?”

  A woman appeared from the back of the wagon dressed in a short jacket and leather breeches, emphasizing a combination of lean strength and feminine curves. Dark hair pulled off a narrow face, firm jaw, lips pressed white. She sprang from the box, her gaze traveling over the bodies with barely a flicker of an eyelid.

  “Is he dead?” she asked, nudging Brendan with the toe of her boot.

  “Not . . . yet,” came the raspy, painful answer as Brendan rolled over, staring up at the woman. His face broke into a cutting smile. “Out of the frying pan. Into the fire,” he muttered just before he passed out.

  The clack of beggars’ cups in the square below the cathedral. Monsoon rains against a leaky roof in Algiers. A clatter of muted gunfire.

  As he drifted awake, the noises coalesced to a steady creaking rattle, every jolt of the noisy, bouncing torture device sending pain scything its way from his neck to his fingers, flashes of it spearing his vision with streaks of brilliant light.

  For a heart-stopping moment he was in the dilapidated cottage south of Glenlorgan where the traitorous St. John had held him for four excruciating days last winter, humiliation and degradation taking on many varied sadistic forms.

  A hand touched his forehead. Without thinking, he lashed out, connecting blindly with the nearest body, his mind already plotting escapes, revenge, anything to keep the man away from him before . . .

  “Ow!”

  “He’s awake!”

  Voices. More than one. St. John’s brutes? Did they come for him? He wouldn’t go willingly. Not again. Never again. He lurched up, fists flailing. Pain arced through him, his shoulder burning, nerves raw and throbbing.

  “Hold him before he hurts himself.”

  “Rogan!”

  “He’s torn the stitches. Be careful.”

  “Gods, that was a clean jacket.”

  Hands held him down. A knee across his chest. He couldn’t breathe.

  “Brendan, it’s me. Elisabeth. You’re safe. You’ve been hurt, but you’ll be all right if you just hold still.”

  Was it a trick? Was he hallucinating? He surrendered, the price of fighting too high.

  The dreams seeped out of him, first the panic and humiliation, then more slowly the despair, the boiling frustration when he knew Sabrina was in danger because of him, when he knew his sister would die because she’d cared enough for him to answer his summons.

  She couldn’t die. Not another corpse. Not another ghost. There were too many already. Their voices deafened him. Their eyes followed him in his sleep. “Can’t . . . breathe . . . can’t . . . talk . . .”

  “You can get off him now, Rogan.” A woman’s voice. Confident. Cool.

  The crushing weight on his chest was lifted, leaving him gasping and retching. He rolled onto his side, fresh needles of pain lancing from his shoulder into his brain.

  Hands gentled him. A damp cloth wiped his face. “The bullet’s out, but you lost a lot of blood. You need to rest quietly.”

  “Elisabeth?” The memories rushed in like water. The men in the tavern. The fight on the road. Being manhandled into the wagon where someone held him down while someone else dug into his flesh over and over and over until unconsciousness had claimed him.

  “He’s burning up.”

  “He’ll survive. His kind always do.”

  He moved his head. So far, so good. No horrible, gut-wrenching agony. He was in a wagon, a canvas roof above him stretched over wooden ribs. Trunks, cases, blanket rolls, traveling valises packed neatly along the sides.

  Elisabeth’s face hovered above him, wearing a fearful, stoic expression, her hair pulled into a hasty chignon at the back of her head, though wisps of curls framed her gray, tired face.

  At his foot, a second woman knelt, her mouth pursed in a disapproving line, her dark brows arched over eyes sparkling with triumph.

  Jack’s description hadn’t been nearly as exaggerated as he’d thought. Miss Roseingrave was beautiful in a panther-esque sort of way. Lean, dark, graceful, deadly. She’d eat poor Jack alive and spit out his bones.

  A laugh boiled up through his chest. Why not? The situation reeked of farce. Club-over-the-head, dangle-from-a-cliff-edge comedy in its most unsophisticated form. They both looked at him as if he’d lost his mind. Perhaps he had. He’d escaped Máelodor only to fall into the Amhas-draoi’s hands.

  Poetic. Ludicrous. Just his typical rotten luck.

  nine

  Upon opening his eyes, Brendan’s hand immediately flew to his throat. Not there. The chain. The stone. Gone. “Son of a . . . !” He clamped his mouth shut, feeling around in the blanket. It would be here. Had to be.

  Elisabeth looked up, a small line between her brows. “The usual salutation is ‘Good morning, hope you slept well, lovely weather for a drive.’”

  “Try having a blasted great hole in your shoulder and see how you greet the day,” he said while riffling through the folds. Checking under the trunk by his head.

  “There’s laudanum.” She started to rummage through a bag.

  “No.”

  “But if your shoulder is bothering—”

  “I said no, damn it!”

  She flushed, her gaze uncertain. “I was only trying to help.”

  He glanced away, embarrassed at his outburst. His weakness wasn’t her fault. “Laudanum makes me ill. I stay away from it.”

  They were alone in the wagon. Who knew when they’d get another such chance to speak without fear of eavesdroppers?

  “Where is it, Elisabeth?”

  She gazed upon him, expression inscrutable but for a flicker deep in her dark eyes. “Helena says your wound is clean and no sign of infection.”

  She was going to play it that way, was she? Fine. He’d allow it. To a point. Whatever it took to get that bloody stone back in his possession. “Helena, is it?”

  “It seems silly after all we’ve been through to stand on such proper terms. Who are they, Brendan? What do they want with us?”

  “Remember when I said there were people angry with me? Roseingrave is one of them. She’s Amhas-draoi.”

  Elisabeth frowned, shaking her head.

  “The
y guard the divide between the Fey realm and the mortal world. Act as protectors. Warriors and mages of the highest caliber, they’re both feared and respected by the race of Other.”

  Her lips pressed to a thin disapproving line. “You can’t make normal enemies. Oh no. You have to fall afoul of cold-blooded murderers and a magic-wielding sorcerer army.”

  “I strive to excel,” he joked before growing somber. “The stone, Lissa. Tell me you have it. Tell me Roseingrave didn’t find it. That stone is the key to everything.”

  She looked away, fiddling with the buckle on one of the traveling cases.

  “Do you want me to say I’m sorry? I will. I’m sorry. A thousand times sorry. You don’t know how sorry I am. I never thought it would come to this point, but you don’t know what it was like back then. The chaos of those days. I needed to hide the stone. Just until things calmed down. Until I could figure out my next move.”

  She kept silent, her fingers worrying at the metal clasp.

  “If Roseingrave took it—”

  Her head shot up, an angry burn in her eyes, chin trembling with emotion, but no sign of crying. “I have the damned thing.”

  “You?”

  “I kept it safe for seven years, didn’t I?”

  “Lissa—”

  “Don’t call me that. And don’t look at me as if I’m some sort of simpleton who can’t understand words of more than two syllables. I wept all over you like a watering pot long enough to slip it from your neck before Helena noticed. No doubt she thinks I’m a blubbering crybaby, but it worked. If the stone was so damned special, my life’s destruction counted as nothing, then I knew it must be important. And I didn’t trust them. Not completely. Not then.”

  “You do now?”

  “Do I have a choice?”

  A silence fraught with recrimination and regret on both sides blanketed the wagon. Gods, he hated this helplessness. Being at the mercy of others. He’d spent too long trusting no one to so easily put his faith in another’s hands.

  She reached beneath her gown, pulling free the simple chain. The stone hanging dark and lifeless. Unclasping it, she handed it to Brendan. “Here. If I never see it again, I shall count myself fortunate.”