Hexbound: Book 2 of The Dark Arts Series

by Bec McMaster

  Verity's nails dug into the green baize as he finally found the wet heat of her through all of that silk. "Is there?" she gasped as his fingers slid wetly through those delicate folds.

  "Mmm." He slid her skirts up and tugged her drawers down, revealing the smooth white globe of her bottom. "I studied it most assiduously as a young man. There were some quite detailed drawings about what a man can do to a woman. I always wondered what this... would feel like."

  Parting her thighs with his knee, he returned to his task, teasing lightly at her clitoris even as he pressed his cock against her opening. "I think—" He breathed heavily as he thrust slowly back inside her. "—that I would like to study it again, now that an English translation has been made by Sir Richard Burton."

  "I think"—Verity arched her hips becomingly—"that I would like to see this naughty book too."

  "Would you?" He felt her tighten as he swirled a small circle over that little bud. The angle of this position drove him deep inside her. Both the depth and the tight fist of her sheath were doing terrible things to his self-control. Sweat dampened his temples.

  "Y-yes," she gasped. "Yes, oh, my goodness."

  Bishop ground his teeth together, and thrust a little harder. He felt her tremble, her fingers forming small claws in the green baize of his billiards table. That's it. Come on, darling.

  "More," Verity gasped. "Harder."

  Another thrust set off the quake inside her. Verity cried out, and he felt her come, felt every exquisite tremor, and it terrified him.

  Yes, he was scared. Of losing this, losing her. Of never getting the chance to try for anything more. And maybe that was why he'd turned her away from him, so she wouldn't see it on his face.

  He wanted a chance with her more than anything, but that was foolish. Adrian Bishop had never asked for anything in his life. All he'd ever wanted was to stop hurting others. To stop wanting to hurt them. To burn this thrice-cursed haunting ache out of his blood.

  But he wanted her.

  Small moments. Day to day. That's all I ask for; the here and now.... That's what he wanted too. If he couldn't fix everything else, then at least he could have this. One small moment of pure happiness.

  He lost himself in her, lost himself to the world around him, fucking and thrusting inside her. Tuning everything else out but the feel of her melting beneath him. And it was bliss.

  He looked at her beneath him, at the way her spine bowed in submission, her hand flung out across the baize as though reaching for a lifeline, something to hold on to as he poured himself within her. Her chignon was a mess again, and as she tilted her face to the side, the breath exploding out of her, he saw the expression on her face. Saw that precious profile tilted toward the light, lips parted as though she'd throw herself quite happily off a cliff, content, as long as she was with him.

  His heart couldn't take it anymore. Neither could his body.

  They were both falling, and damn him, as he caught her hand in his and gripped it tight as he came, a part of him couldn't let her go.

  * * *

  "You've quite ruined billiards for me," Bishop admitted as he straightened her skirts and brushed himself down.

  "Oh?" Verity looked entirely too innocent as she glanced up at him from beneath her dark lashes. Her cheeks were flushed, and he could see the devil in her eyes.

  "I don't think I'm ever going to be able to concentrate on the game again," he growled, "without thinking of you and getting a bloody erection."

  Verity smiled, toying with his waistcoat. "Good. I promise by the time we're through, Adrian Bishop, you won't be able to think of anything other than me ever again."

  Far too late for that. He was already wrapped around her bloody finger.

  And a part of him liked it far too much.

  Chapter 25

  "I am Death. But if that is all I can be, then damned if I won't be the best at it."

  * * *

  –Adrian Bishop

  * * *

  AFTER VERITY FELL asleep, Bishop went hunting.

  Verity wasn't the only one who could find people. And while she might have had misgivings about him going off alone, she was asleep now. She wouldn't know.

  And despite the fact that tonight had been the best night of his life, the itch had started again sometime after midnight. Lying in her arms, half dozing, half-awake, he'd tried to dismiss it at first. Why couldn't it leave him alone, especially tonight of all nights? But the maladroise didn't work like that. The second things stopped moving and the stillness of night crept over the world, it came to pay him a visit like some jealous mistress he could never escape.

  Verity's heartbeat began to radiate through his ears, and Bishop had slid from the bed before his mind could turn to darker things.

  Like just how long he could escape his destiny.

  Bishop paused by the corner of St. Michael's cemetery, feeling the tracking spell tug him toward the middle. He'd finally gotten that blasted map table working, and pinpointed toward where Horroway was hiding. If he was going to be awake half the night, he might as bloody well do something. And now that he'd found Verity, he wasn't going to allow anything to threaten her. Not Tremayne. Not Morgana. And certainly not the necromancer who'd seen her face when she stole the chalice back from him.

  Grunting sounds drew him to the left. Bishop crept through a tangle of ivy and vines that snaked over the ground. Fog whispered between the gravestones. There was no breeze tonight. Just silence and moonlight, preferred themes for an assassination.

  A lean figure materialized out of the shadows. Kicking at something, the man straightened, then sighed and cast aside his shovel. From the pile of dirt, it appeared he was robbing a grave, though Bishop didn't know what he wanted. Necromancy might be a talent he was capable of, but he'd never dabbled enough to know more than the basics.

  Bishop sucked shadows around himself with his power, sliding from tree to tree. Horroway froze, resting against the headstone, and Bishop waited patiently, his heartbeat ticking along loudly in his ears as he waited for his prey to relax again.

  "Wondered when you'd come for me." Horroway spat into the dirt of the grave he'd been digging.

  Bishop paused as Horroway reached inside his haggard coat and withdrew a flask. Inside it, no doubt, was some type of liquor that helped anchor Horroway's soul to the flesh he'd robbed.

  "You gonna just stand there watchin', or you gonna come out and face me like a man?" Horroway upended the flask, making a horrid gurgling sound in his throat.

  Which presented Bishop with a chance. It would be incredibly easy to throw his etheric blade into Horroway's back, cutting the ties of soul to flesh. Instead, he vanished it. There were questions to be asked and Horroway sounded as though he wanted to talk. "How did you know?"

  "Felt you comin'." Horroway looked up, one of his eyes beginning to rot in his face. He screwed the lid of his flask back in place. "Same way you tracked me, I'll bet."

  They faced each other. Bishop found himself in somewhat of a quandary. He'd meant this to be a quiet assassination, a removal of one of Morgana's threads, but the scene didn't feel right. Horroway looked neither afraid, nor cunning. Just quietly resigned.

  Prepared for anything, Bishop let himself relax, his power dissolving. One couldn't hold it indefinitely, though the second it was gone he felt the ache of the maladroise upon him again, sinking its hungry claws into his chest. It would take but an instant to re-form the blade.

  "Look at you," Horroway whispered. "Fightin' that itch, ain't you?"

  He tensed. "What itch?"

  Sinking down onto a nearby headstone, Horroway scratched at his jaw. "Boy, give me some credit. I spent thirty years with that bitch at my heels. I know what it looks like. I know what it feels like."

  No point in hiding it. Bishop glanced away. "It's our cross to bear, thanks to our calling. Nobody escapes it."

  "There's one way," Horroway suggested, and Bishop's head jerked up.

  How? He realized what
Horroway meant. "This?" he said incredulously, gesturing toward the mottled body Horroway wore. "You did this to escape the maladroise?"

  Horroway's fleshy lips thinned. "Seemed a good idea at the time, and I were desperate." Sorrow filled his eyes. "You're the only one who can understand that. There's a point... where you can't take it anymore, and you know you're going to give in to it, and take what shouldn't be taken." Holloway studied him quietly, a sense of connection seeming to form between them. "We've all got someone we don't want to take," he said. "Even me. My little girl might be a bastard, but she's all I've ever had. Couldn't do it. Couldn't stay there anymore, watching over her and feeling like a vulture for the life force that filled her. This were the only way I could see, to slip from flesh to flesh so that the maladroise couldn't gain hold anymore."

  "Did it work?" He couldn't hide the hunger in his voice.

  Horroway laughed, a dry, rasping sound. "Aye. When I woke that first time in a new body, that crushing weight was finally gone. It worked. Maladroise don't have time to build before I've got to skip to the next body." The humor faded from his face. "But you don't ever forget that feeling."

  "Is that what you're doing now? Preparing to skip bodies?" Bishop circled the half-empty grave at their feet. The scent hit his nostrils like a fist.

  "Fresh three days ago." Horroway smiled bitterly. "This one's half worn out. Got to get meself a fresh body every month or two."

  It was horrible in a way that Bishop had never thought of before. Horroway was legendary within the Order. A menace, a sniveling coward, a traitor, a necromantic wretch.... But Bishop alone knew what the man had gone through. Or part of it.

  He couldn't do this. It disgusted him on every level but he could understand the desperation that could drive a man to these lengths. He himself searched for that freedom, just not like this.

  "The question you need to ask yourself is: was it worth it?" Horroway continued, as though Bishop saw it as the answer to his own illness. "To have those you love turn away from you in horror? To never have a woman look you in the eye with longing ever again? To find yourself with but one friend left, a friend who could sell you out for a rare copy of a book."

  Guilt tasted bitter in his mouth. "Marius didn't want to sell you out. I threatened him and threw in the book as a deal."

  Horroway shrugged. "All the same from this end of the spectrum." He looked weary as he surveyed the night. "I didn't want to die," he whispered. "I didn't want to kill meself, but Becky.... I couldn't do that to her. I just wanted to be free of it."

  "I cannot let you walk away," Bishop told him.

  Horroway unscrewed his flask again. "I know." He took another mouthful, his eyes watering. "I don't want to die. I still don't... but...." His knuckles flared white around the flask. "There ain't nothing left for me but this. I'm so fucking tired, boy. And alone. The betrayals just don't ever stop, do they?"

  Bishop stared at the grave. "You'll barely feel it," he whispered.

  "What?" Horroway started.

  "I can give you what you crave," he said. "Freedom."

  Horroway's face twisted in fear but he forced himself to sit still. The pulse in his throat was racing, a beckoning lure that Bishop looked away from. "In exchange for?"

  "In exchange for the hope that someday there will be someone to guide me into the long, lonely dark."

  "I'm afraid," Horroway whispered. "What if there's nothing there? What if the Christians' beliefs are true, and I wake up in hell? Or the Egyptians.... What if...."

  "We cannot know," Bishop replied, clasping his hands behind his back. "None of us really do, not until we face such a challenge ourselves. But you will have peace. I promise you that. And I can make sure it doesn't hurt."

  Horroway looked down at his flask, a look of determination crossing his face. "Me little girl, her name's Becky Whitshaw. Married to some tanner in Bethlem Green. She's got the gift, but I didn't dare bring her into this world."

  "I'll see that she's taken care of."

  "You know, I almost believe you." Horroway shook his head. "You. My killer."

  "I keep my word."

  Upending the flask, Horroway poured its green bubbling liquid onto the mound of grave dirt. Hissing and bubbling continued as the liquid ate away at the stone and pebbles. "Then do it. Do it fast." His voice broke. "Before I change me mind."

  Bishop moved before Horroway could blink, the etheric blade forming in his fist and sinking into Horroway's back, angled up under the ribs.

  Horroway gasped, catching at his sleeve, but Bishop held him through the first spasm. Distilling his power through the man, he forced the body to shut down quietly, each organ going to "sleep" as his sorcery worked through Horroway's veins. "You're not alone," he told the man, for that was the one thing he feared himself. "I don't know what comes next, but you're not alone now."

  "Thank you," Horroway whispered, clutching his coat. His chest gave a wracking heave. "You ought to know.... There might be a way to avoid it.... The Chalice... is the key. And there's... a book. Almay's Theory on the Grave Arts. Got the info you need to work... Chalice. Won't be easy... Takes a sacrifice of some sort." He coughed and looked down at the blackened ichor weeping from his chest. "Irony is... it takes... l-life to be able to use it.... That's one thing that bitch lied... to me about."

  "Morgana?" He didn't dare hope but it stole through his veins, a tingly warmth that rushed straight to his head.

  "Never should've trusted... her again. But she promised... me the Chalice. Promised me... an end to this." Horroway's strength was fading, his grip on Bishop's collar loosening. "Morgana has the Blade of Altarrh. It weren't... destroyed... last month like she claimed. Has all three... relics. Or had 'em. Don't know... where the Chalice... is now. I were meant to give it back to her, but some bitch stole it, and then Morgana tole me I didn't have... no more use... for her."

  Why was he telling Bishop this? Bishop lowered him to the ground.

  "Kill that bitch," Horroway rasped, his skin paling and the light fading in his eyes. "Kill 'er... for me. And burn this... body."

  And then his soul extinguished from the body, floating like a hot white spark above the rotten flesh. Bishop reached out and closed his fist around it, setting Horroway free.

  It wasn't the supernova that he'd been expecting. Bishop still felt power flame through his veins and clenched his eyes shut to hold on to the feeling. So quickly burned out... it left him gasping, but there was nothing else. Horroway had been more dead than alive and so his death was but a trickle of what Bishop craved.

  He stayed there for long minutes, trying to fight the hunger. More. He needed more. It made his hands ache and his jaw clench as he fought through it. Every little death was but a step in the wrong direction, and the more he took the less it satisfied him.

  No. No more.

  Kneeling in the grave dirt, he slowly lifted his head, panting. There were years of this ahead of him. And he suddenly couldn't stand it anymore. He wanted more than this hollow ache that gripped him so fiercely that he could barely think of anything else. He wanted what Verity offered; her warm smile, the feel of her hand in his, the taste of her mouth.... He wanted a future where he no longer stood alone, locked in his house at night for fear that he'd inadvertently reach to snuff a life in his sleep.

  If what Horroway told him was true, then there might be a way to save himself.

  If he could just work out how to use the Chalice.

  Chapter 26

  A WARM BODY slid into bed beside her and Verity froze, then relaxed when she smelled the familiar lemon verbena of Bishop's soap.

  "Adrian?" she whispered, blinking sleepy eyes as she turned into his embrace. "Where have you been?"

  He kissed her, his skin wet from the bath, and the towel he wore around his waist the only barrier between their bodies. A deep, hungry kiss that had her melting beneath him, her arms sliding around his broad shoulders as he rolled her onto her back. There was something wild about him tonight, almost
as if emotion roiled through him.

  No chance to give voice to her thoughts. No chance to do anything other than kiss him back, her body warming beneath his as he slid into the welcoming vee of her thighs. He ate at her mouth. Pure dominance. Pushing and taking what she wanted to give, and so hungry that though she'd been asleep mere seconds before, now she felt vibrantly awake.

  She'd dreamed sometimes, of being taken like this by him.

  Every last line of hesitance vanished from his body and he became someone else. An Adrian Bishop who knew exactly what he wanted and was determined to have it.

  Verity's hands slid up his quivering flanks. There hadn't been a great deal of time to explore before. The hunger and eagerness they'd both felt had obliterated any chance at taking their time. But now she had all the time in the world.

  "Ver," he whispered, breaking the kiss and rasping his stubbled cheeks against her throat. The way he said her name made her heart catch fire in her chest, but she was too busy trying to catch her breath. A shudder racked through him. "Ver, there might be a chance for me."

  As her eyes grew accustomed to the dim light, she saw the earnestness in his face. An expression she'd never have thought to see there: hope. Her heart started to beat a little faster. "A chance?"

  It made him look so much younger, sloughing off the weight she realized that he'd been carrying with him ever since she'd known him. "Horroway said that there's a way to burn away the grip of the maladroise. All I need is the Chalice, and the means to do so. He said there's some kind of book. And I'd have to make some sort of sacrifice."

  "Horroway?"

  "I went hunting."

  It froze her. She'd been trying not to dream of the future. Trying to leave what lay between them as it was, but her heart swelled with joy at the thought of it. "What type of sacrifice?"

  Bishop shrugged. "I don't know." He saw the expression on her face. "Nothing like that," he assured her. "That's black magic, sacrificing a being's life. It's used in demon summoning, that type of thing. No, maybe I have to... make some sort of sacrifice myself?"