After twenty minutes, sweat was dripping in Blaize’s eyes. He found the time to back off without leaving himself vulnerable and shook his head like a dog, getting rid of the moisture threatening to blur his vision. The brief second he took gave Lyndhurst the advantage, but Blaize was expecting it. In automatic response he swept his sword before him, forcing Lyndhurst’s aim aside and then brought his dagger forward and centre. Only to hear the ring of metal as Lyndhurst deflected it. For an instant they were nose-to-nose, their breathing misting the heavy morning air, gazes sparking, aggression lighting their vicinity.
Loath though I am to put an end to such a magnificent display, d’Argento said, I think you should finish it.
You don’t think I’ve been trying? At least the exchange had given him the opportunity to spread his senses and slip into Lyndhurst’s mind. A furious rebuff had met him, but not before he’d discovered a few things. The man was an immortal, an Ancient, which was how they referred to the gods of Olympus and the Titans. From his mental patterns, he was more likely an Olympian.
As Lyndhurst brought his dagger up, Blaize moved to one side, but the man knew his style by now and followed him, slicing cleanly through white linen and down his arm, opening flesh, drawing blood.
But at the same time Blaize had his sword out and ready, and he thrust through Lyndhurst’s side, just below his rib cage. Lyndhurst wouldn’t have expected that, as at close quarters, the dagger was Blaize’s weapon of choice. Blaize had just proved it by pulling one arm right back and delivering a stabbing thrust instead of the more expected slash.
Blood, there was blood. Instantly, Blaize sprang back and turned his mental abilities to turning his blood red. Only to see the flood of clear liquid staining the front of his opponent’s shirt. It flushed red before his eyes. This man wasn’t as experienced as he was, then.
His gaze moved up, into the wide, astonished gaze of Lyndhurst.
“What are you?” said the duke. Not “Who?” but “What?”
The game was up for both of them. Blaize was done fighting. “Perhaps your worst enemy,” he said through gritted teeth, as pain pierced his arm, the delayed response a reaction to the shock of a hit.
“I doubt it,” Lyndhurst said dryly, but could say no more as the surgeon hurried forward to attend them.
Both men shook him off and d’Argento helped to keep him away. “What made you bring a damned surgeon?” Blaize demanded.
“I didn’t. He came on his own. Probably doubles as an undertaker.”
D’Argento took his uninjured arm. “Let’s get you both to a house. Then we can talk.”
Gossip and jovial exchanges were filtering through to them, growing steadily stronger. Men approached them to clap them on the back and congratulate them on a “Splendid fight, the best we’ve seen for a long time.”
Blaize stepped back and flourished a bow, more to keep them off than for any other reason. “Please, allow us some space, gentlemen. I’m gratified to have provided you with entertainment on this dreary morning. But I’m short of sleep, and while I don’t object to bleeding to death for a good cause, I’d like to have this attended to by my own surgeon.”
More pain lanced him but this time a different kind. The dull ache was followed by the prickle of a wound healing. Too fast for anyone to believe. Some might have stood close enough to see how deeply Lyndhurst had gone. The last thing he needed was for them to realize Lyndhurst had in fact delivered a fast-bleeding killing blow. He’d done the same to his opponent, driven in extremity to defending himself in the most vicious way open to him.
D’Argento hurried them to the coach standing a short distance away and they climbed in. Blaize slumped into a corner and allowed d’Argento to rip his shirtsleeve open, grumbling quietly. Although he didn’t want to admit it, he was feeling light-headed from blood loss. “Is the blood all gone from the scene?” he managed. Their blood, or ichor, was poisonous to humans.
“Yes. It soaked into the ground,” d’Argento said tersely.
“What happened to the accent?” Lyndhurst said. He was holding his arm close to his side, but he didn’t show the discomfort a man so badly wounded should. No doubling up in agony, just a resigned face and signs of sluggish bleeding.
“It comes and goes,” d’Argento told him. “The ichor will be harmless soon. It’s only dangerous when it’s fresh.”
“You don’t say.” Lyndhurst perked up. “I thought it was always dangerous.”
“How did you know it would kill at a touch?” Blaize asked him.
Lyndhurst shot him a perceptive glance. “My mother told me. She’s collected snippets of information over the years.”
“Wait until we get some privacy.” Blaize needed to collect his senses.
Back at his house, he ordered wine and privacy, leading Lyndhurst, who showed no sign of wanting to leave, into the front parlour, where, divested of their shirts, sitting before a crackling fire, they regarded each other with a frankness neither had been granted until today.
“You’re an immortal,” Blaize said.
D’Argento snorted. “Nothing like stating the obvious.”
“You are too.” Lyndhurst’s lazy gaze went from one to the other. “Both of you. That was something I hadn’t guessed. And not Titans, something else I was prepared for.”
That one ingress into Lyndhurst’s mind had given Blaize a pattern, for a second, at the point of pain, unshielded. He’d seen no evidence of the Titans there. The Titans had a pattern, a set of signals Blaize was well used to spotting. No acceptance of natural superiority, for a start.
Blaize took a brimming glass of wine from d’Argento. “Many thanks.” He gulped it down greedily and took another.
Lyndhurst’s eyes narrowed. “Can it be that I was nearly bested by a drunk?”
“Not just any drunk.” Blaize smiled, more at ease now. “Bacchus. The drunk, one might say.”
With satisfaction he watched Lyndhurst’s chagrin. His lips twisted and frown lines creased his forehead. “Bacchus?” He swore, loud and long. “Where did you learn to fight like that?”
“Practice.” Blaize allowed himself a smile. “I’m not a new creation, which I take it you are. Was your predecessor killed in the explosion of thirty years ago?”
Lyndhurst sighed. “Yes.”
“Let me guess.” D’Argento had been watching carefully. “Vulcan, perhaps.”
“Not that damned blacksmith,” Lyndhurst growled.
D’Argento gave him a blissful smile. “I knew mention of that name would draw you out.”
Blaize covered his eyes with his good hand and groaned. “Mars. I should have guessed. We even called you martial at one point.”
“Ares, Mars, yes,” Lyndhurst said. “My mother christened me Marcus.”
“Was she one of the women Boscobel gathered around him that night?” The night of the massacre, when he’d collected the souls of those fleeing the disaster.
“She was.” Lyndhurst let his hand fall away from his side. The wound was almost completely healed, only a small red mark remaining.
His torso was roped with muscle, tight bands marking his frame even in repose. When he moved, the muscles in his shoulders and upper arms flexed effortlessly and he had that extra band connecting his neck to his shoulders. Extravagantly powerful, unlike Blaize’s own lean, sleekly built form.
Blaize finished his wine.
“I thought you were merely a heavy drinker,” Lyndhurst said, accepting a glass for himself.
“The more I drink, the more sober I get.” Blaize put down his empty glass. “It’s water to me.”
“So if you don’t drink you go mad?”
“And take others with me, so be warned.” Blaize raised a brow. “In case you were wondering. To cut a long story short, I survived the explosion, although I took the opportunity to fictionalize my death. So in the mortal world, I’m thirty years old. D’Argento was there. I take it you’ve guessed his identity?”
Frowning, Lyndhurst s
hook his head.
“Hermes, Mercury. Quicksilver.” D’Argento got to his feet and swept an exaggerated bow. “At your service. I’ve been abroad, collecting information, hunting people. Which is why I have the Italian title.” He grinned. “I invented it for myself and then persuaded a king to give it to me.”
“I was searching too, while I was in the army.” With a heavy sigh, Lyndhurst shook his head. “I found none. They seemed to evade me.”
“Because you didn’t reveal yourself. We can teach you how to do that without broadcasting to the populace at large.”
“Have you met any others?”
“We had a breakthrough last year,” Blaize told him. “We found Jupiter. We suspected for a long time, but because of my foolish decision to reinvent myself, I had to go to ground for a while. It prevented me from moving as freely as I would have liked. I lived as an ordinary citizen for a number of years, while my new creation came to adulthood.”
He’d hidden away to give his reborn self time to mature. It had been a frustrating period. The aristocratic title opened doors closed to him as an ordinary subject of the crown, and he could hardly reveal himself too widely. Badly managed. A mistake he could admit to, now. “He’s the son of the Duke of Boscobel. Currently he’s in the country, with his wife. Boscobel did his best to cripple the man. I trust your family didn’t use you in the same fashion?”
Lyndhurst stared at them for half a minute before he shook his head. Something in that question disturbed him. “My mother gave birth to me that night. From the start it was obvious that she’d birthed an immortal. My father took us to his house. He was an intimate of Boscobel but not an immortal, or at least I think not, because he died shortly after my birth.”
That was it. Blaize noted the spark in Lyndhurst’s eyes. Something about his birth and his father’s death had caused it. “My mother kept me well-guarded and away from others.” He related his story in a matter-of-fact tone.
“Is your mother an immortal?”
“I have always considered her so.” The way he carefully phrased that answer gave Blaize thought. His eyes narrowed.
“Have you never resented it?” Blaize said abruptly. “You were conceived mortal. You were meant to be something else, someone else. The attributes warped you from what you should have been.” The notion haunted him, that he’d displaced a soul, or that he was not the person he was meant to be.
Lyndhurst shrugged. “I am what I am. I was born that way, so no. It never occurred to me to think any other way.” Blaize had asked the question that kept him awake some nights, but perhaps it was part of his nature to wonder and remind himself of the fragments that went into making one complete human being. Except, perhaps, for the centaurs.
The wound to Lyndhurst’s side had completely healed, no mark remaining. Similarly, Blaize felt no further discomfort. If he watched, the scar would disappear. He’d have to keep the site bandaged for a while, but by claiming it was a mere scratch, he wouldn’t have to keep it covered for long. “Who had first blood?”
Lyndhurst shrugged. “I did, of course.”
“I’m not so sure,” d’Argento said. “But I had a good amount riding on Blaize being the first. He’s quicker.”
“But you offset it,” Blaize suggested, knowing his friend too well.
D’Argento shrugged. “Somewhat. What fool wouldn’t?”
“This fool,” said Marcus. “I rarely wager and when I do it’s for amusement.”
D’Argento grinned. “I made a fortune gambling. I don’t intend to lose one doing the same thing. So which is it to be?”
Blaize grinned. “I concede the point. You may have it, sir. If you agree to help us in our quest.” Marcus said nothing, but Blaize felt a mind pressing at his. “You forget. I’m older than you and more practiced. Don’t try. In fact, guard that ability extremely carefully.”
“Very well.” Marcus nodded his apology and Blaize accepted with an equally brief nod. “Tell me your quest. If it’s what I think, then we’re agreed in any case.”
Blaize leaned back and picked up his glass, which d’Argento had thoughtfully refilled for him. He stretched his arm, feeling the muscles flex, unimpeded by any injury. “What were you doing in Scotland? Were you truly courting Lady Aurelia?”
“Yes. I became aware of them when I went to Edinburgh on business, after I inherited the title. They made no effort to hide their mental abilities. Both controlled Edinburgh society, shamelessly forcing their will. I knew if I took them on without understanding more about their vulnerabilities and attributes they could destroy me, so I decided to court the younger.”
“You decided?” Blaize raised a brow.
Marcus glanced down. “Ah, yes, in a way. I fell in love, but I sensed it wasn’t an entirely voluntary act. It was too sudden, too violent. I almost decided to leave, but I’d been hunting for my kind for so long that I took the risk of staying. I recognised enchantment, but I had no idea where it had come from.”
Blaize allowed d’Argento to continue the questioning, afraid he might reveal too much about the lovely lady. “They both demonstrated abilities?”
Marcus confirmed it with a brief nod.
“And their brother?”
“He’s abroad. But he’s the right age, and they could have been at the house when the explosion took place. I don’t know and my mother doesn’t remember.”
“My God,” Blaize murmured briefly. “It hardly bears thinking about. How could they do such a thing?”
“The women who gave birth or showed signs of possession were married off to acolytes of Boscobel. Quite ruthless.” D’Argento’s soft voice hardened. “Only a Titan would use people as if they were worthless objects.”
Blaize shook his head, memories flooding his brain. “I’ve known mortals who would do such a thing. Mortals were there, ready to participate in Boscobel’s scheme. The hell of it is that we don’t know who they all were.” Weariness infused Blaize when he recalled what he’d sworn to do. Lately his task had seemed less hopeless, with the emergence of a woman he could learn to love. Until his recent suspicion. Time to admit his part in the tale. But not the depth of his feeling, merely its strength. “You are aware of my feelings for Lady Aurelia?”
“Yes.”
“Leave her alone. Her mother is the instigator.”
Marcus threw him a look of utter contempt. “And that is exactly the reason for the duel. I wanted to keep you away. Of course I had no idea you were an immortal.”
“You want her that much?” d’Argento asked before Blaize could.
Lyndhurst grunted. “I don’t want her at all. But with me standing between her and the rest of her suitors, she can’t enthral others.”
Blaize stared at Lyndhurst, a smile curling his lips. “Why?”
“Because she’s enchanting them. She may not be an Ancient, but she’s a witch just the same.” He utilized the name the gods sometimes used to describe themselves. So he knew that much.
Blaize’s spluttered laughter shocked the other two occupants of the room. “So you have been wasting your time trying to fight it? Don’t you know anything?”
He got to his feet, his heart and spirits lighter. “The best way to combat an enchantment is to get into it. Have you ever tried to gain access to a house bolted from the inside? But getting outside the same house is simple. Merely a matter of drawing the bolts.” He spun around and faced Lyndhurst, who was staring at him in wide-eyed astonishment. “Do you see?”
Lyndhurst blinked and stared at him. Blaize could almost see the cogs in his brain clicking into action. “So you let yourself be bespelled?”
D’Argento raised a brow. “Breaking out could be difficult. We don’t know what we’re dealing with. Mother and daughter sorceresses?”
Blaize bit back his instinctive response. Aurelia wasn’t a sorceress. Every part of his highly enhanced instinct screamed that. When he’d felt the spell surround him, luring him in, he didn’t resist. He’d entered the web smiling. �
�The mother is the threat.”
“You would say that if you’re under an enchantment,” d’Argento said gently.
“I’ve read Aurelia. From the inside, and no, that isn’t some distasteful innuendo. But it doesn’t matter, does it? I can break the spell whenever I wish.”
D’Argento chuckled low, and reached for the decanter. “I think that deserves a toast. So you can.” He poured a glass of wine and raised it, smiling. “To madness. The one thing that can destroy man’s well-laid plans.” He drank deeply. Blaize joined him, and with a reluctant smile, Lyndhurst raised his glass.
“I go mad,” Blaize said coolly. “I stop drinking alcohol. In a day, two at the most, I enter into my true self. Nothing can hold me then, and nothing can stop me. Least of all civilisation. No spell binds me, no woman and no man.”
The condition terrified him. Not that he would dream of telling anyone that. The power came from outside him.
He could drive others to madness, lead people to do insane things. So he kept drinking. “Leave Aurelia alone. She’s mine.”
Lyndhurst raised a brow. “You’ll forgive me if I don’t discard her completely.”
Blaize inclined his head in a nod. It would appear odd if Lyndhurst abandoned the field immediately.
Aurelia was not in league with her mother. His stomach churned even to consider such a thing. However, she might be under the same thrall that occupied him. In which case he’d free her and they would see what remained. But nobody would take her from him. He’d fight like a wounded dog for its offspring, maddened by pain and loss.
“Bespelled or not, I can see what is needed. We need to concentrate on the dowager, first.”
Lyndhurst took a turn about the room, as if unable to remain in one place for long. He pivoted on his heel and strode toward the fire, then toward the window and back again. Blaize exchanged a telling glance with d’Argento. The man was quick-tempered, prone to rash anger.
“The dowager uses Aurelia to hook the fish. It seems to me she’s been singularly successful in that regard. Mars and Bacchus on one hook is a remarkable haul.” Blaize spread his hands. “Is she a Titan, then?” He could believe it. They’d had no luck tracing the major female Titans. Most remained at large, unhindered.
Mad for Love: Even Gods Fall in Love, Book 2 Page 6