Remnants of Magic (The Sidhe Collection (Urban Fantasy))

by S. Ravynheart

  London edged toward the Scribes. “Willem, you and Quinn check the archives for other relics.” When they didn’t move, she shoved them for the door. “Go. Now!”

  Just as she hustled them out the door, Lugh blocked her from joining them. His crazed gaze fell upon her like a threat.

  She backed away from him. Back into the office.

  London caught Willem casting her a backward glance, one heavy with meaning, before Lugh closed the office door, shutting out the Scribes. The look of concern struck home even harder with the scraping sound of the lock sliding into place.

  Chapter Nine

  London backed farther away from Lugh.

  Facing the door so his back was toward her, Lugh’s head lowered. Shoulders hunched upward. His hand pressed flat to the door. Then the slow scratch of Lugh’s fingernails on the wood sent chills down her spine.

  He was struggling hard for control.

  Losing the battle inch by inch.

  The low growl from him sounded like a werewolf, menacing.

  “I know what you need.” Her voice a lot calmer than she felt. London edged closer to the shelves. To a decorative knife mounted on a wooden display stand. The blade gleamed. It looked sharp enough.

  As she reached for it, Lugh’s head tilted, not quite looking back at her, but she’d gotten his attention. “What…” His voice was deeper. Throatier. Much, much creepier. “…do you know?”

  Shifting her weight onto her right foot, she was able to reach over to the shelf. To silently grip the handle of the knife. Covering the sound of her disturbing the wooden stand, she said, “I’ve been around parahumans enough to know bloodlust when I see it.”

  Now Lugh did glare over his shoulder at her. And then at the knife in her hand, still at arm’s length near the shelf. Even as he eased around to face her, London moved just as slowly, drawing the knife close before her. “And what do you know of lust?”

  “I crave the Touch. That need is more wretched than any bloodlust a vampire has ever known.” London held the knife before her, not quite threateningly, but the stance might be open to interpretation. “You ease my need for the Touch.” She reached up with her other hand. Flicked the edge of the blade over the heel of her palm. A shallow but long cut, like the donors at the vampire club would make. One that didn’t damage the muscle underneath, but that bled plenty. “I can ease yours.”

  His dark blue eyes followed the path of the blood as it ran down her wrist.

  With a single stride he closed the distance between them. One hand closed over hers where she gripped the knife, and in the next moment he’d disarmed her. Snatching up her other wrist, Lugh covered the cut with his mouth.

  Crying out, London tried to yank back as his teeth sank in, but he wouldn’t release her.

  Instead, the Touch flowed.

  London’s heart thundered as the Touch, unlike any she’d felt before, slammed across her nerves. Desire as wicked as the crack of a whip struck across her soul. But it wasn’t her desire. Nor even Lugh’s. But some bestial thing that fought to rip through her.

  As suddenly as he’d attacked, Lugh shoved himself away from her. “Stop it!” He shouted, but it wasn’t at her.

  She’d truly no idea. Knowing that he struggled against the darkness within was one thing. To feel the power of it exploding through her was entirely different.

  London grabbed some tissues from the desk to staunch the blood, only to find she wasn’t bleeding. The wounds on her hand looked cauterized. “You can’t go back out there with this craze over you, Lugh.” It was time for her to think about more than just her own needs and desires. To be more than just a hired gun. To have a stake in something bigger and more important than herself. Even as she spoke them, the words scared the living crap out of her. “I’m your druidess, now. And I am going to see you through this in any way I can.”

  “I could kill you!” Not a threat, but the unvarnished truth.

  “If you were going to kill me, you wouldn’t have stopped. Feed the beast and get yourself under control.” London snapped back at him. “Or go back to Selena, if you think she’s better able to handle you.”

  “There isn’t time!” His voice lowered again, his control slipping.

  “Then do what you meant to do when you locked that door!”

  Lugh glared at her, animal and frantic. The knife still in his hand. His fingers flexing about the handle as he struggled within himself.

  Then he lifted the blade.

  The tip drew closer and closer, until it barely pressed into the side of her throat beneath her ear.

  Not exactly the place she’d have chosen, but she stood her ground. Which required a lot of breath control to keep from shivering against the blade.

  The metal didn’t pierce the skin, even as it dragged down her neck. Rather, it followed the chain down to where Lugh’s symbol rested against her breastbone. He lifted the pendant with the knife, considering it.

  “Druidess, I have need of a promise from you.” A bit calmer, but just a bit.

  “I am here for you.” And she meant that. She was here for him. To help him save the fey and restore their realm. To be his companion through the good times and the bad. To put him and his mission ahead of her own self-serving concerns. To get him through this corruption and see him restored to The Shining One and the Sidhe Champion he was meant to be.

  London saw the muscles of Lugh’s jaw working as his teeth clenched. “Some day, remind me who I once was.”

  Loss and longing cracked his voice. The shimmer in his eyes brought tears to hers, for she knew what darkness meant to destroy him from the inside out. To strip him of everything he held dear, even his very self.

  But then the shimmer passed from him as if it had never been there. The darkness consuming it.

  With a flick of his wrist, the knife cut high over her left breast. She gasped even before she felt the sting of it.

  Taking her into his arms, Lugh Touched her more than he should, with the threat of the Fade. For her, what passed between them was a wash of darkness and pain laced with pleasure. She couldn’t have described their love making, other than she was aware that it had happened. The dark magic he shared carried her into a passionate nightmare. It shredded him, so it shredded her with him. But at least he wasn’t alone with it. And once the storm raged and then passed, and he’d placated the beast enough to reclaim control over himself, he withdrew from her without comment.

  Just that look again.

  The one that needed to know that she would remember her promise.

  And that some day…

  She would keep it.

  ###

  Keeper of Secrets

  Chapter One

  With each of Lugh’s long strides, the footsteps that trailed him drew closer. In the pre-dawn shadows of the city, little stirred, as if the night held its breath. The darkness about Lugh aroused the darkness within— that taint of black enchantment that blended and corrupted the light of his innate magic. Like a drop of ink into a crystal clear pool, twisting and dividing, finding its own pattern and flow as it poisoned the whole in an inevitable spread. Yet only a drop. Only a hint. A flavor. A whispered suggestion that fixated with the same hypnotic coil as the ink in water.

  Far from the eclipse of the sun. A manageable urge that throbbed within, with cravings of its own. The shadow of the beast it could become. The beast he could become.

  Even in the dark denim jacket and jeans, the street lamps found Lugh in the night, casting shifting shadows that moved about him as he passed through shafts of light. Timing his backward glance, Lugh caught his pursuers in the light pool. Two of them. Large males. Not vampires. These men moved like wolf-kin. Werewolves, as they called themselves now. Heads down, following by scent as much as by sight, shoulders hunched forward with aggression.

  Across the street and not far ahead of Lugh, a man rose from a bench, his slow crossing of the street timed for an interception.

  And ahead, two more emerged from t
he alcove about a doorway.

  Lugh slowed, the werewolves encircling him.

  The shadow within him rose with the sense of danger, summoned forth with bloodlust as if by the beating of war drums. In his mind’s eye, the corruption within transformed into the sleek, muscled beauty of a black panther. Its venomous green eyes a brilliant, illuminated emerald that glowed from within. Craving violence and carnage, the beast merged seamlessly with Lugh, blending with his soul in a dark possession.

  One of the wolves growled, “Nothing smells like Sidhe.”

  “Nothing tastes like Sidhe, either.” The dark-haired man who’d been on the bench moved closer, unchallenged by the others. The alpha.

  Lugh angled himself so he faced the alpha. Two wolves penned him from either side. “Think you to sample my blood? To feast upon my flesh?” The darkness within Lugh twisted the amused hint of a smile that graced his Sidhe-handsome face. “Rather, I foresee your broken bodies sprawled at my feet. Shall we test conclusions?”

  Warrior-trained and centuries of battle-honed reflexes reacted with the onrush of attack, fueled by the wicked violence surging within his beast. The wolf to the farthest right reached Lugh first. He backed out of the path of the charge. Bringing up his right arm, Lugh hooked the man from under the jaw with his fingers, digging into the soft flesh beneath his tongue. Catching the jawbone, he jerked back and down with force enough to lift the man from his feet and spin him as he fell, snapping his neck. The falling body continued by momentum into the wolf-kin to Lugh’s left, knocking them back.

  Dropping down to a knee, Lugh struck upward at the second wolf on his right, with his fingers straight and stiff as a blade, driving his hand hard into a muscled abdomen, directing all the force into a nerve bundle just above the navel. The scream of excruciating pain proved the strike hit true on his target— no doubt killing the wolf’s appetite once he ceased doubling over and retching up bile.

  While he was down, the alpha flung himself onto Lugh’s back. His arms grappled around Lugh’s shoulders. The weight of the alpha meant to drive Lugh to the ground.

  Leaning back into the man, Lugh grabbed his pant legs near the ankle and jerked upward, unbalancing the wolf-kin. With the shifting of his body, Lugh shrugged the man forward, flipping him over his head and onto the ground before him.

  As Lugh rose, the two remaining henchmen each hooked their arms around one of Lugh’s. They yanked him up to his feet. Surely, they meant to lift him from the ground, but Lugh’s height defeated that hope. Lugh snarled, bearing his teeth as if he possessed the panther fangs of his beast. Jerking against their hold only made them grip him that much tighter.

  Exactly as Lugh intended.

  When the alpha regained his footing, Lugh kicked hard from the ground. With fey grace and feline aggression, he flipped backward, using the arms that held him as the fulcrum around which he spun. In the flip, Lugh’s foot caught the alpha in the face, knocking him back once more, with an explosively broken nose.

  Lugh’s acrobatics sent him up and over the men that had detained him. Even as he landed behind them Lugh punched out hard, hitting one of the men in the kidney. The impact to such a vulnerable organ might have killed a human. The wolf-kin weren’t so fragile. Even still, the wolf went down with an anguished scream, not to get back up again.

  The final man punched at Lugh. A blow that he deflected as if it had been a sword, using his own forearm to redirect the force by impacting with the wolf-kin’s wrist. The were’s forward motion carried him past Lugh, who used the opportunity to latch his arm around the man’s neck. The crook of his elbow looped under the man’s chin and braced his head, then Lugh kicked him in the back of his knee. As his opponent dropped, Lugh jerked upward with his arm, breaking his neck. He released the body to crumple lifelessly to the concrete.

  Backing away, Lugh glared down at the four men he’d left dead or wounded at his feet. But only four. The alpha not among them.

  Thus far, the wolf-kin had underestimated him. Within the city, they were less likely to risk exposure by shifting into their partial ‘werewolf’ or full wolf forms. Plus the shift took time, longer for the less experienced wolves. But swiftly for the alpha.

  The growl of the alpha broke the silence of the night just as he tackled Lugh from behind. Twisting even as they fell, Lugh jerked away from the snap of the canine jaws. The beast within him growled back at the werewolf with animal fury.

  The werewolf, a half-man/half-wolf amalgamation of horrifying intent, raked his two-inch claws down the back of Lugh’s denim jacket, hooking into the fabric.

  Kicking away from him, Lugh shrugged out of his jacket and the shoulder pack of supplies he carried. If not for the Fade, he’d have teleported away before now, but the expenditure of magic would certainly exceed his reserves. Even the use of Glamour was a luxury that he could ill-afford. But when the werewolf lunged for him again, his longer arm-span extended wide, those deadly claws spread menacingly, and his canine snout curled up in a bestial snarl that revealed teeth meant for rending flesh, Lugh drew upon his personal aspect of magic.

  Tapping into the power of the sun, he flared a light so intense as to blind unshielded eyes. It flicked so fast, returning the night to the depths of the darkness, no one’s vision, other than his own, could quickly recover.

  The wolf’s pained yip proved the effectiveness of the strike against his senses. The animal drove forward, nonetheless, barreling toward where Lugh had been.

  Lugh twisted away, leaving the alpha to bash headlong into the brick wall with force enough to send a spiderweb of fractures through the bricks where his face impacted.

  The flaring of the light and dodging the attack had been Lugh. But the beast within him wasn’t satisfied. Possessed of it, Lugh grabbed the unconscious werewolf and shoved him forward again, battering his head into the wall, and this time leaving blood on the impact site. With the third blow, the beast crushed in the werewolf’s skull.

  Backing away, he let the alpha fall. His werewolf’s shape slipped back to human without his conscious effort to make it otherwise.

  The beast loomed over its victims, snarling a grin. The arousal of aggression still flooding through him, making Lugh’s body ache for more.

  “Enough.” Lugh’s own voice sounded foreign to his ears. Deeper. Throatier.

  The beast, its violent desires served, skulked back into the shadows of his mind. Appeased for now, but not vanquished. It grinned with wicked amusement at Lugh, knowing its advantages. They wrestled now, but the beast won ground each time they battled. And eventually, Lugh would forget himself in its animal haze.

  It had happened to Lugh before. The eclipse, as the fey called it.

  And if he lost himself into the dark lusts, then all he’d fought for since the Collapse was lost.

  That… and that alone… strengthened Lugh to forestall the black passions of his beast.

  Lugh snatched up his torn jacket and the shoulder pack and continued on his way, leaving the wounded to recover enough to make off with their dead or be discovered by the waking city in a few hours, as fortune would have it.

  Chapter Two

  From the street, the building was not extraordinary from the others in this section of Dublin. Tall windows showed the interior hallway and the steps to the second floor landing. Lugh could see the doors to both apartments there. According to his directions, London’s was the flat on the right. Even with the curtains closed, the lights burning inside her flat cast a visible illumination. Selena informed him that London was still awake at this hour, and was expecting him. So he entered the building and made his way up to her chambers.

  Lugh rapped twice and then braced his hands on either side of the doorframe. Closing his eyes for the moments while he waited, Lugh felt his own weariness catching up to him. During the last two nights with Selena he’d not slept. Her passions matched his own, leaving him pleasantly exhausted in the wake of their embrace. She’d fed more substantially from him this past evening than the
previous one. He’d allowed the vampire to feast from the vein in his neck, which was a sign of his compromised state. As was his unintentional healing of his wounds.

  Before being poisoned with dark magic, he’d not have allowed her such generous access to his blood. Of course, the vampire craved it, and always would for its taste and addictive qualities, but he could scant afford to sacrifice his strength or his magic to feed her desires. Although, this second evening in her company had been about more than simply trading pleasure for the artifact from the first realm of fey that the vampire had recovered for him.

  Within Lugh, the beast purred like a great cat, satisfied and lazy with the indulgence of its hungers. Though in repose, the beast never slept, ever watchful and waiting for its next chance to rise. More than once before he’d been poisoned with dark magic, but never so slight that he maintained a sense of himself. In his mind, Lugh could choose to stretch out a hand to the feline and stroke its sleek black fur. It aroused and intoxicated him to give in to the temptation, to allow it to indulge its wicked desires, but once the beast slaked its need, Lugh could withdraw from it. It teased him with a sense of control that he knew to be false. Just an illusion to placate him so he might not drive the beast fully from his soul. But once the new realm was secured, and the threat of the Fade vanquished, Lugh would indeed cast away the darkness that invaded him.

  This scant amount should not require excessive intervention to shed. Unlike before. This darkness was merely sunspots upon his heart of magic. Not the true horror of the full eclipse. Like as not, Willem could recount in gruesome detail all the brutality the eclipse had wrought, although Lugh possessed only fragmented memories of the nightmare.

  In the past few months, the growing pain of the Fade had tormented him. Stoically, Lugh endured and pressed on. His quest too important to allow his personal agony to falter his step. Determined to sacrifice himself to save the fey and their magic, if need be.