Hexbound: Book 2 of The Dark Arts Series

by Bec McMaster

  Then he licked her. It was incredibly intimate, as though he had full control over her body right now. The taste of her was faintly musky, and he swirled his tongue around that little bud she'd been playing with. Verity nearly shot out of her skin. She liked it, clearly.

  Withdrawing his fingers, Bishop pushed her thighs open wider and kissed her deeply, tasting and suckling. Verity made little incoherent sounds above him, wriggling uncontrollably. Gasping. Begging him for more.

  He wasn't satisfied until she was screaming his name, and then he smiled faintly as he kissed her thigh and crawled back up into her arms.

  I think I'm falling a little in love with you, Verity Hawkins.

  * * *

  The sky was a blaze of diamond pinprick stars, strewn across a velvet background. Sebastian stumbled into a world he didn't know with black-and-white checkerboard tiles beneath his feet.

  The pain was gone; all of the strain in his shoulders, the dehydration, the ache of hunger.... Instead, he stood alone in a world crisp with possibility.

  Boot heels echoed on the tiles. Sebastian spun around, trying to work out where he was.

  "Over here."

  He turned and there stood a man, his hands clasped behind his back and his face turned away as he examined the horizon.

  "Who are you? Where am I? What have you done to me?"

  "I have pulled you into a dream. I wish I could do more." The man turned around, the moonlight gilding his dark features—the same features Sebastian saw in the mirror every morning. "I wish that you would let me."

  Sebastian backed away, but there was nowhere to go, nowhere to run. "What do you want?" he demanded as the Prime drank in the sight of him. Stop looking at me like that....

  "To free you," his father replied.

  Sebastian breathed out a laugh. Don't believe him. He's lying. He wants something....

  But what?

  Perhaps if he played this game, he would manage to discover what it was. "Why?"

  The Prime stared at him. "What do you mean, why? I thought you dead until your wife appeared at my doorstep—"

  "Cleo's with you?" Sebastian took a half step toward the man, then forced himself to still. Of course she would be. The foolish bloody woman! "I want her kept out of this."

  "If you cannot manage it, how do you presume that I can? It is her link to you that allows me to do this—she's lying right here, beside me, in a meditative trance." Reaching out, Drake pressed his thumb to Sebastian's forehead and an image of his wife sprang to mind, peaceful as she lay on the floor beside his father's body in a gleaming circle of silver light.

  Sebastian hovered over the pair of them. There was another woman in the room, sitting outside the circle as if on guard. Ianthe Martin, if he wasn't mistaken. He'd helped kidnap her daughter a month ago, and forced her to steal the Blade of Altarrh, at his mother's request.

  "She looks... better than I'd have expected considering her loss," he said quietly, returning his gaze to Cleo. It seemed strange to see her without her ever-present blindfold. The flutter of dark lashes against her pale cheeks was new to him. And so too the way she dressed in a vibrant gown of green that dipped shockingly low—to his mind, at least—in front. All this time he'd only ever seen her gowned in virginal white lace, but that had been her father's influence, clearly. "They took her visions from her.”

  "Did they? Or is it a self-fulfilling prophecy? She believes that the moment she loses her blindfold is the moment she loses her Foresight, and so she perhaps places a block in her own mind. We will see. It is rare to lose a talent like that." A hazy image of Drake formed beside him, surrounded by a pale nimbus of light. "There's so much more to the Divination Arts than Foresight, and she has the ability to learn so perhaps it is not such a loss, after all? Tremayne was remiss in teaching her how to control her sorcery. He wanted to use her Visions, but he never explained to her that she could do so much more."

  Sebastian’s mother shared Tremayne's prejudices. "He feared her power.”

  "Yes."

  "Do you?" Sebastian demanded, and this time they were not speaking of Cleo.

  "I fear... a great many things. But not another’s power. Every man and woman should have the opportunity to stretch themselves to the extent of their abilities. Especially you."

  He wasn’t sure if he believed the words. "What is this?" Sebastian asked, staring at his transparent hands.

  "It's a form of astral projection."

  He knew so little. "I'm not the one doing it, am I?"

  "No, you needed my guidance."

  In another world he might have asked this man to teach him. He looked again at his wife. One would have thought her pure and pristine, but he'd seen the fire within her, the passion. Cleo demanded to be loved and she wanted a place in this world that was safe and welcoming. He could give her that, at least. "What will it cost me," he asked, "to see her kept safe from my mother?"

  His father frowned. "There is no cost—"

  Sebastian laughed under his breath. "There's got to be something you want."

  "Ah, my son," the man breathed, looking sad. "I hoped.... But it seems your mother has dealt you a poor hand. She hasn't been kind, has she?"

  "If she had been I would not have trusted it," Sebastian replied. "Don't pretend to know me."

  "The problem is that your mother never understood what power is. She craved it—a by-product of her own tortured adolescence—but she never truly knew what it meant to be powerful."

  "And you do?"

  "Sebastian, I have the power to bring London to its knees. But power is not about what you have the means to do, it is about what you could do, but don't. Power is responsibility to those you serve. That is what it means to be Prime to the Order of the Dawn Star. I've never been its ruler, but its servant." Drake tilted his head. "And whilst I could make London tremble, you yourself have the power to destroy it. So you must ask yourself this question: what does power mean to you?"

  Freedom. His nostrils flared. "I don't know."

  "I felt the tremor of your Expression a month ago. You were spiraling in on yourself. You should have obliterated the city, the way you were going. What stopped you?"

  A little girl crying in a room next to him.... Sebastian looked away. "I didn't want to harm anyone."

  "Ah."

  That irritated him, as though his father presumed to know the man he was from the answer to a single question. "You didn't come here to lecture me on sorcery, did you? What do you want? To show me you have my wife? Then have her, keep her safe. Just keep her away from me."

  And then he cut the connection between them, slamming a wall up that the man couldn’t breach.

  Sebastian awoke with a gasp, curled on the cold stone floors of his mother’s cellars.

  There was always a price, and he would pay it.

  * * *

  The knock at the door drew Bishop away from bed and the warm peaceful slumber he'd known wrapped in Verity's arms.

  He slid through the early dawn, tugging his night-robe's ties tight at his hips before pausing at the door. If the visitor had malevolent intentions his wards would have made them wary, but there was only one, and not a single trace of power whispered through the night. Bishop let the etheric blade form in his palm, warm and faintly pulsing, as he tugged the front door open.

  A man stood there wearing the livery of Drake's household. He flinched when he met Bishop's gaze, and there were singe marks on the collar of his coat. "My lord." The stranger nodded. "I've just come from the Prime's home. Lady Rathbourne requested your presence, if you please? There's been an attack. "

  Chapter 20

  BISHOP LEFT VERITY with Lady Eberhardt whilst he went to visit his father.

  Verity complied with his directions, as the expression on his face resembled a cell door slamming shut. Not so much a sign of a lack of emotion when it came to Bishop, but perhaps too much of it. She'd much rather be at his side to offer comfort, if nothing else, but he'd muttered something about
it not being safe with Sicarii assassins on the loose.

  And she didn't want to distract him. Not now, when his heart was in his eyes.

  Which left breakfast with Lady E, a nerve-racking proposition at the best of times.

  "Look at this," Lady E muttered to Marie, scowling down at a letter that had earned her wrath. "Lord Dinklage presumes to cast his hat in the ring for the seat of Prime, but he is concerned that the Triad Council is favorably disposed toward another candidate. And though he doesn't mention her by name it's quite clear whom he's talking about. Hmph. As if I've ever been less than partisan in my life! Besides, she hasn't even applied yet."

  "And she is?" Verity asked politely.

  "Lady Rathbourne," Lady E bit off. "I'm not quite certain whether Drake is setting those rumor mills into motion, or whether people are presuming."

  "She does have the qualifications," Marie pointed out.

  "But does she have the desire?" Lady E countered. "I've been waiting all month and still no sign of her intentions. If she intends to make her move, she's leaving it late. Ascendancy occurs this Sunday!"

  "How does one become Prime?" Verity asked. "Do they have to apply?"

  "To be quite honest, we're making it all up as we go along," Lady E admitted. "In the past, one candidate dueled the reigning Prime and whoever was left standing either ascended to the seat, or remained in it. It's the way it has always been. Until Drake decided to stir this hornets' nest." That earned a scowl. "Fool man. Could he not have waited until we've buried this demon threat to suffer this crisis of conscience, or whatever is plaguing him?"

  Verity nibbled at her coddled eggs. "So why don't you do it? Become Prime? You're powerful, and you seem to know everyone in the Order and everything about it. You're also quite adept at, ah, suggesting what people should do."

  "Bossing people around, do you mean?" Marie shared a conspiratorial smile with her.

  Lady E's wrinkled lips feathered and she flexed her left hand subconsciously. "I quite like my privacy as it is, thank you very much. And I'm too old to step up into that seat. No. I'd prefer to pull the strings in the background. Far less taxing."

  "And then you can sit back and critique whoever does get the job," Marie added with a faint smile. The secretary's gray hair was pulled back in a rather severe knot this morning, highlighting the fine bones of her face.

  "Precisely," Lady E nodded.

  There came a faint scratch at the door, and Lady E's butler cleared his throat. "This just arrived, my lady." He offered a letter to her on a silver salver, then crept out quietly.

  "One of your little pigeons by the look of it," Marie noted.

  Lady E flicked the letter open and scowled down at it. When she looked up her gaze speared Verity, who set her spoonful of coddled eggs down.

  "What is it?" Verity asked, a nervous flutter starting in her chest. Not the Prime, please no. She barely knew the man, but Bishop's heart would break if his father died, and he already carried far too much on his shoulders as it was.

  "Drake is fine," Lady E assured her, reading it on her face, and Marie patted Verity’s hand. "Driving his son halfway to Bedlam with his insistence that he doesn't need any help at the moment. Bishop is most vexed."

  Bishop's telepathic bond with his mentor made Verity feel a little left out, but at least it seemed as though he and his father had made amends.

  "This is a report from someone I know in East London. I asked him to watch the docks for me, following Bishop's little tip-off that someone there was wielding the Grave Arts."

  "And?"

  "He's spotted something he thinks I should know about. Foxby swears he saw a dead man walking last night, heading toward Dock Number Five."

  "A flesh construct?"

  "Indeed." Lady E tapped the letter against her lips. "What say you? Do you want to join me in a little exploration of the docks?"

  "What about Bishop?"

  "He's arguing with his father right now. Let's not distract him. Besides, we don't know if this is actually a sighting, or someone imagining things. You can pop in and out at whim, and I've got the magical wherewithal to back you up should push come to shove." Lady E's chair scraped back as she stood.

  The decision had clearly been made.

  Verity exchanged a glance with Marie. "Can you let Bishop know when he gets back here?"

  "Of course she will," Lady E interrupted. "Now step lively, gel. Let's go ferret out this flesh construct."

  * * *

  The coach disbursed them near the docks, and Verity helped Lady E down from the step as she looked around. Fog filled the nearby streets and the sun had long since vanished behind dark clouds. It was only midday but it felt like night in some respects. A nearby lamp had even been lit.

  "Perfect place for an ambush," Verity pointed out, her background in the Dials making her wary.

  "Perfect place to hide something you don't want others seeing," Lady E countered, brushing out her skirts as the coach turned around. John Coachman would meet them in an hour back by the Pig and Thistle pub they'd spotted up the road. "And if it is an ambush, well... this old dame has a few tricks up her sleeves yet. Come along."

  In the distance, sailors and dockhands shouted as they used cranes to haul heavy crates off a docked ship. Ships lined the docks, and they bustled with activity. Verity focused on making herself very small and unnoticeable as she trotted at Lady E's side, far too used to the rough sort of men that lived and worked in these areas. Nobody would give a damn about the crow tattooed on the back of her hand here. Most of these workers were completely non-magical, and a woman alone—or perhaps even two of them—might look like easy pickings to the wrong type of man.

  Several of the dockworkers glanced in their direction, but a single fearsome glance from Lady E served to send most of them scurrying back to their duties. "Amateurs." Lady E sniffed.

  Verity decided she'd have to learn to mimic that precise expression. It could be useful in future should men ever give her grief in the streets. "You managed that well."

  Lady E hauled out what looked like a compass as they left the main thoroughfare and wandered further along the foggy docks. The fog distorted the sound of men shouting, until it seemed as though they were miles away. "I spent a year in Cairo tracking a demon through its slums. The London docks pale in comparison."

  "What are you doing?"

  Lady E unwound the directional hands of the compass, revealing a hole inside. She poured a small handful of dirt into it from a pouch she'd been carrying. "There," Lady E said, winding the device back together. Tiny little runes gleamed golden as she breathed power words under her breath, and Verity felt the stir of sorcery as the compass hands began spinning.

  "What is it?" Most of the hexes or spells she'd seen cast in the Dials were simple things, but this looked like a knot work of spells, all combining to perform something quite complex.

  Lady E turned as the spinner came to a rest. "Grave dirt," she said, staring down the docks toward the hulking warehouse at the end as the compass jerked her toward it. "The compass is keyed to pick up trace amounts of Grave magic through the link with the dirt. The dirt has absorbed the trace amounts of power that leave a body following death. You can use anything: ground-up bone, blood from a dead man's body, chips of headstone... they all contain trace residue of the power spike preceding death. And right now, my compass is quite strongly convinced we need to go this way."

  The compass pulled Lady E toward the warehouse like iron toward a magnet. Verity scrambled along in her wake, her skirts fluttering about her boots. She'd worn Marie’s sensible charcoal cambric dress today, thank goodness, so at least any dirt wouldn't show.

  Ahead of them, a shadowed flickered.

  "There's something moving," she hissed, dragging Lady E behind a pile of crates.

  The pair of them peered over the top. Lady E's compass was still tugging at her.

  "We need to get closer," Lady E muttered, shaking out her hand as if a nerve was pinching.<
br />
  "Are you certain you're all right?" Lady E's skin had paled.

  "Right as rain." Lady E spat a couple of power words and a shiver went through Verity's bones as some sort of cloud settled over the pair of them. "It's a Veil," Lady E explained. "It will disguise us to most eyes, though if someone is looking directly at us they might pierce it. Make sure you don't move too fast. A stroll is about the most it can cloak."

  Walking out into clear view was quite nerve-racking. The pair of them strode unhurriedly, and Verity began to notice other signs that they weren't alone. There was a man in a hooded cloak standing guard at the entrance to the dock that led to the warehouse they were interested in viewing, but it wasn't until they were right upon him that she noticed him, and that was odd.

  Or perhaps not.

  Closer inspection showed he didn't move, not even a single fidget. Most people couldn't hold a still position like that for so long. Lady E's compass jerked toward him as they slipped past, and she met the older woman's eyes as she huddled in close to her.

  Lady E nodded. A flesh construct, standing guard. They were definitely in the right place.

  Verity swallowed. This was outside her realm of experience. And though she could simply punch out of there, Lady E couldn't.

  This way, the older woman mouthed.

  All of the hairs along Verity’s arms began to stand on end. Inside the warehouse there seemed to be some sort of green glow. Another construct stood on duty at the other end, and she and Lady E tiptoed past. The compass was pulling quite steadily on Lady E now, jerking toward the green glow inside the warehouse.

  Lady E ground her teeth together and then the compass simply jerked out of her grasp, sailing through the air and straight through one of the windows up high.

  Glass shattered. A pair of doves suddenly broke from nowhere, their wings thundering in the still silence of the fog.

  Verity drove Lady E sideways, behind an old crate. "Jaysus," she swore, pressing her back against the crate.