Demon's Curse (Imnada Brotherhood)

by Egan, Alexa

  Mac gritted his teeth against Gray’s dispassionate reserve, the man’s placid gaze boring into him like the point of a dagger until Mac’s fury erupted. “You want to know how easy it is? It’s like I’ve taken a bullet to the gut, every damned second an agony. Does that make you happy? Is that what you wanted to hear?” He brought his fist down hard on the desk, the pain jolting up through his arm driving away the despair, but only for a moment before it roared back.

  “No, it’s not what I wanted to hear.” Once more, Gray rubbed the eagle’s head decorating the head of his cane. “Does she know this?”

  “After yesterday, she thinks me the biggest son of a bastard to ever walk the earth, and I can’t blame her. I missed my chance.”

  “Did you want the chance?”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  Gray shrugged as he flicked a nonexistent speck from his breeches. “It’s none of my business—”

  “You’re right. It’s not.”

  “—but it seems to me if you cared for the woman as much as you claim, you’d tell her so.”

  “It’s complicated.”

  Gray continued to eye him with the same bland expression that made Mac want to grind his teeth to nubs. “Can we talk about something else? Mayhap the betrayal of the clans by the heir to the leader of us all? The threat of an attack by the Ossine? Or how about the treachery of your Fey-blood conspirators?”

  Gray remained unfazed. “I’m aware of the difficulties.”

  “That’s the understatement of the century.”

  “Did you ever think our accursedness was meant to be, Mac? That perhaps the mother goddess set these events in motion to compel us out of the well-worn paths of our forefathers? To make us chart a different future from the one we’d always imagined?”

  “Destiny?” Mac snarled. “That’s your argument?”

  “We need fighters like you. Men who’ve stood in the ranks. Who don’t run when the firing starts. Who can inspire loyalty among our friends and fear in our enemies.” Gone was the even-tempered stoicism, replaced by a zealot’s enthusiasm.

  “Enemies? You’re speaking about your own kind. Does that make the Fey-bloods your friends? No, this is your war. Mine ended on the field at Quatre Bras. I’m through fighting. Just ask the army. I’m a battle-sick liability these days, good for nothing more than shuffling papers.”

  Gray crossed one booted foot over the other, the gleam of his diamond ring winking as he turned it this way and that. “I’d hoped to sway you without mentioning this, but Bianca told me about Jory Wallace.” He paused, his normally supercilious blue gaze even smugger than usual. “About his younglings.”

  Mac’s fingers tightened on his pen.

  “What will happen to them? Unmarked by any clan, they’re vulnerable to the first enforcer who stumbles upon them.”

  “They’re just children. Leave them out of it.”

  “Children the Imnada need if we are to endure beyond a few failing generations,” Gray said without flinching. The once-timid fledgling had found his wings and become a merciless hunter.

  Mac threw himself to his feet, pacing the office, hands clasped behind his back. “The clans will never accept the marking of half-breeds. Just as they’ll never accept a clan member taking a mate outside the bloodlines.”

  “Not as things stand now, no. The Ossine are too strong, their sway too great over the Gather. But if we were to make inroads into their power, then there is a chance.”

  “How does throwing your lot in with the Fey-bloods accomplish that?”

  “They understand what it is to be different, to stand apart from the humans while being of their world. They are our natural allies, Mac. You know that as well as I do.”

  “And the Fealla Mhòr means nothing? The purges? The treatment of the Imnada as demons to scare their children? That counts for nothing?”

  “We have to start somewhere to rebuild the trust between us. I choose to do it now, before it’s too late.”

  “And the Fey-blood who’s tracking us down?”

  “Here’s your answer.” Gray reached into his coat pocket, pulling out a slim wafered letter that he handed over.

  Immediately a familiar orange-cinnamon scent wrapped round Mac and his fingers tightened on the swoop of feminine writing with an unwelcome thrill.

  Bianca.

  Had Lady Deane done what she’d said and talked Bianca round? Mac’s heart gave a humiliating jump as he broke the wafer and unfolded the thin sheets, Bianca’s perfume filling his head. Instead, a few dashed lines was all that met his eyes. His hand crushed the paper, his mind racing ahead. “Renata Froissart?”

  “You were wrong, Mac,” Gray said quietly. “This Fey-blood isn’t after the Imnada. She’s after the four of us. Vengeance for the killings at Charleroi.”

  “Adam left none alive.”

  “So we thought, but obviously someone knew we’d been there and what we were. The question now becomes: How do we stop her?”

  Mac smiled, ideas clicking into place, plans forming. “You let me worry about that. I’m tired of playing her game. It’s time she learned the most dangerous animal is the one with nothing left to lose.”

  * * *

  Bianca laid the book aside, rubbing her temples. Not even the two cups of coffee she’d had after dinner could keep her weary shoulders from slumping or stave off the dismal nauseated feeling in the pit of her stomach. An entire day with no word from Mac. Nothing to let her know whether he’d received her note. Nothing to let her know whether he still lived.

  She straightened her shoulders. No. She would not think that way. Mac was safe. Silence did not necessarily mean something sinister. And he’d made it clear their alliance was at an end.

  Pulling free the last volume in her pile, she opened it to the index and ran her finger down the column, knowing almost before she began what she’d not find.

  Aphyllon.

  Apios.

  Apocynum.

  But no mention of Aquameniustis anywhere.

  She slammed the book closed. Scanned the shelves on every wall without leaving her seat, knowing she’d exhausted her last resource. Lord Deane’s extensive collection held infinite wonders, but it was definitely thin on botanical resources.

  It shouldn’t be so blasted difficult. It hadn’t been once.

  In years past, the knowledge had been there. As she worked and studied alongside her father, she’d been adept at identification, had the sharp thinking and analytical skills to understand the botanical mysteries her father brought her. But now? Now she was fooling herself by thinking she could again be that clever girl she’d once been, the one with her life ahead of her and the world at her feet. She’d traveled too far and experienced too much to return to those bygone elysian days when her biggest worry had been making sure her father changed out of his wet socks and taken his powdered rhubarb for digestion.

  In the end, necessity and survival had won the day.

  She’d become an actress.

  A pretty face with a sharp wit and a chilling demeanor. Loved by thousands yet understood by no one. She was the role she’d created, the stereotype of the leading lady, and there was nothing left of the real Bianca but a few botanical meetings and a ridiculous excuse for a garden.

  “You’re up late.” Sebastian stood just inside the library door, dressed as if he’d just come home, though a look at the clock showed the hour to be almost four in the morning. “Or perhaps you’ve risen early.”

  “You had it right the first time.” Bianca shoved a plate of wilted sandwiches across the table toward him. “Hungry?”

  He accepted with a tired smile, dropping his gloves on the table, falling into a chair. “Famished.”

  “An enjoyable evening?”

  “If you count meeting with three ministers, four government secretaries, a half dozen functionaries, and the prime minster enjoyable.”

  She grimaced. “Not even close.”

  “At least I only had to
bite my tongue a half dozen times tonight. Sarah must be growing on them.”

  Now that he’d come closer, Bianca saw the gray cast to his skin, the dark smudges below his eyes, and the tired lines biting into the sides of his mouth. Did he still think his unpopular marriage worth the complications it had brought him? “Sarah has a way,” she said. “You wait and see. She’s got more charm in one finger than most women have in their entire bodies. They’ll be eating out of her hand by this time next year.”

  “For her sake, I hope so.” He glanced at the stack of books. “A little light bedtime reading?”

  “Research, but it’s hopeless. I’ve been away from the field too long.”

  “Why bother, then?”

  “What?”

  “I mean, it’s not your problem, is it? It’s Flannery’s. Let him work through the night searching for the answer. You’ve done more than enough.”

  She winced at the harshness of his statement, though she couldn’t fault his argument. After all, it was the same one that had been rolling around in her head all evening.

  Why?

  Why hunt through endless volumes?

  Why keep up the search for an impossible plant for an impossible man that she loved with an impossible love?

  She wanted to tell him that the search for the missing plant had become a search for her own lost identity. That a busy mind was a mind unable to dwell on what-ifs and useless regrets. That the clatter and chaos of the city kept her awake after the peaceful nights of Line Farm.

  She wanted to, but she couldn’t.

  Because Mac was the real reason she worked. He may have hurt her, but he’d also forced her to remember who she’d been before Lawrence had twisted her into someone else: a stranger who kept the world at bay for fear of being hurt again. And in doing this he’d offered her indescribable wonders and a fantastic world both more beautiful and more frightening than she’d ever imagined.

  Of course, there was no way to convey her reasoning in any way that would make sense to someone who’d never felt the slow grinding away of his spirit like grain through a millrace.

  A hand covered her own, and she looked up to meet Sebastian’s eyes. “He hurt you, Bianca, and were I not an emissary for peace between our races, I’d rip his poxy head off and shove it up his—”

  “Seb!”

  “He doesn’t deserve you. That’s all I’m saying.”

  She tossed off a tired smile. “If someone told you, in order to marry Sarah, you would have to give up all this”—she gestured around her—“your wealth, your family, your connections, everything about you that made you special, could you do it? If it came down to giving up a piece of your very soul to possess her, could you?”

  He sat back, his gold-brown eyes thoughtful, his craggy features set in stern lines despite his exhaustion. “I don’t know about the wealth and the power,” he answered with a wry curl to his mouth, “but the soul bit? Now, that much I’ve done.”

  “Were Mac to choose me, he would lose everything all over again. He would never see his family. Never be able to go home. I can’t ask him to do that, Seb. I won’t ask him to do that.”

  “What if you didn’t have to ask?”

  She stared at the words on the page in front of her but saw none of them. Instead, memories she’d fought to push aside rose up like ghosts: waking with Mac’s warm body spooned against hers, his strong arms holding her close, the scent of his skin, the shadows in his eyes, the scarred and puckered flesh of his back where his clan mark had been burned away, the softness of his dark hair . . .

  The clock chimed the half hour.

  She lifted her head from the page. “It’s late. Sarah will wonder where you are.”

  He rose with a yawn, dusting sandwich crumbs from his breeches. “I know when I’ve been dismissed, but let me say this: Don’t let pride keep you from telling Flannery how you feel. He’s not a stock character in a play and you haven’t read the ending. He might surprise you.”

  “I’ve weathered surprises enough from him, don’t you think?”

  He shrugged. “Just some stale advice from an old married man, but one who knows we males are extremely dense when it comes to intangibles like love. Sometimes it takes a good clubbing over the head before we see what’s right in front of our noses.”

  “Is that what Sarah did?”

  A smile hovered over his mouth and lit his bright eyes. “I’ve the scars to prove it.” Then he sobered. “One more thing before I slink off to bed. If Madame Froissart is the woman seeking vengeance on Flannery and the others, be careful. She’s not a woman to be trifled with, and I would never forgive myself if you were hurt and I could have prevented it.”

  “I didn’t come to London to hide. I came to help Mac.”

  “Which brings us back to my original question: Why bother?”

  “Because I can’t just give up. What if Mac never finds the answer? What if he never breaks the curse? To be so close and fail would destroy him.”

  “Unless Froissart gets to him first.”

  “That’s not even close to funny.”

  “No, Bianca, but it wasn’t meant to be.”

  * * *

  The thin crescent shell of Berenth—the waning quarter moon—rose above the house across the street. Tonight’s shift had come at a price. His joints ached and a feverish stiffness infected his bones as the concentration needed to harness the moon’s power drained away as fast as he could focus it. Normally, the Imnada avoided shifting during the dangerous period between Berenth and Morderoth, the night of no moon. It took too much energy and left them too vulnerable. But normal had held little sway over Mac’s life for years, and none at all in the last eighteen months.

  Normal Imnada rarely ventured beyond the warded mists of the Palings, preferring to remain close to their safeguarded holdings and among their own kind.

  Normal Imnada did not go against their clan leaders and fathers to join the army. And they did not, could not—were forbidden to—take a mate outside of the bloodlines.

  Gray claimed he sought to change this. He sought to pull down the wards and protections that had safeguarded the Imnada for generations and thrust the sheltered clans back into a hostile world. He struggled to give the Imnada a future.

  But would he?

  Or would he and his followers be slaughtered by the Ossine’s enforcers or betrayed by the Fey-bloods?

  They needed fighters if they hoped to gain anything more than a painful death. Men who’d seen battle and knew war.

  Men like Mac.

  His gut twisted, his heart beating painfully under his ribs at the choice he faced: join with Gray or betray him.

  To join the fight would mean a permanent exile. No hope of returning to the clans. No way to reclaim that life. But did he even want to anymore? That life seemed as tattered and broken as a fallen battle standard. Shot through with new ideas and new imaginings and a face as pale and perfect as the goddess herself.

  Round and round, his mind whirled like a Catherine wheel. A constant buzz like the whine of a million bees vibrated through his skull, muddling his already confused thoughts. He shook his head, seeking to stop the endless dizzying spin of possible outcomes, but it only made his temples throb and his stomach lurch uncomfortably as if he’d drunk too much.

  Why was he here? What had brought him to this street on this night? He couldn’t remember. Couldn’t focus. He closed his eyes, laying his head upon his paws, seeking a calm amid the storm as he struggled to concentrate.

  One . . . two . . . three . . .

  He counted the beats of his heart while Berenth’s sideways grin seemed to laugh at his attempt to pull himself together.

  Three . . . four . . . five . . .

  Froissart. The name swam up out of his fogged brain. Renata Froissart. Daughter of the murdered chevalier. She was the reason for his patient waiting. She was the enemy that sought to destroy him.

  Snatches of memory burst against Mac’s mind—the yellow edge of
the woman’s blood-soaked skirts, the globe on its mahogany stand, the sun streaming through the top of the far trees . . .

  So much misery spun off from that one bloody day outside Charleroi. So much death and sorrow and violence.

  He scanned the windows of the Froissart town house. A light shone in a second-floor window. Shadows moved back and forth behind a heavy curtain. He’d seen no sign of Madame Froissart, but she was there. He sensed her presence like the bitter tang of blood lying on his tongue and in his throat. Fey-blood magic hanging thick in the air like smoke over a battlefield.

  He would end this. He must. And soon. For there wasn’t much time left before Morderoth, a night, when not even the evil magic of the curse could overpower the will of the goddess. A night when shifting became impossible and the Imnada were at their most vulnerable. During the purges, the Fey-bloods had struck when the darkness of Morderoth stretched over the land.

  Renata was the daughter of the chevalier.

  She would know this.

  She would use this.

  Mac would be ready.

  21

  “I’m looking for Aquameniustis. A-Q-U-A-M-E-N . . . Have you heard of it?”

  The nurseryman scrubbed a hand through his thinning hair before slapping his hat back on his head. “Naw, none of that, but we’ve got some fine hedgehogs.” He motioned toward a wicker cage where three of the bristly balls of fur appeared to be sleeping. “Good for beetles, they is. A right good price.”

  “I don’t want hedgehogs,” Mac explained slowly. “I want bloody Aquameniustis, whatever the hell it is.”

  The man shook his head. “Try the fellow at the end. He might have what you’re looking for.”

  Since Mac had already spoken to the fellow at the end, as well as with ten other vendors, he merely nodded and turned away to pass among the market’s bustling crowds thronging the courses between wooden stalls heaped with fall vegetables, tottering crates, and barrels stacked man-high. Bands of frustration tightened his shoulders.