Lord of Shadows

by Alix Rickloff

  “That’s exactly what I was thinking of. Or rather the destruction of it. It would have worked. Aunt Delia would have been sure to tell Aidan. And Aidan would have been suitably horrified. Enough to send me back to Glenlorgan with the speed of a cannon shot.”

  “That was your plan? A scandal with Daigh MacLir?”

  “It would have worked if . . .”

  “If what?”

  “Never mind.” She rubbed her temples.

  “You two were gone quite a while. Did he . . . and you . . .”

  “Jane!”

  “He is my brother,” she answered smugly. “I have a right to know.”

  “You want to know what happened? The whole ugly, sordid episode? I’ll tell you. I threw myself at him. Did everything but stake myself out for his pleasure. Do you know what he did?”

  “By the sounds of it—”

  “Nothing! Not a thing. He was—more or less—a perfect gentleman. Drat him.”

  “Is it the more or the less you have a problem with?”

  Sabrina closed her eyes. Saw once more the hard, arrogant beauty of the man as he’d caressed her. Experienced again the persuasiveness of his kisses. And remembered the complete contentment she found in his arms. As if she could live her life within that powerful embrace.

  “It doesn’t matter. It was a stupid idea.”

  Daigh paid off the hackney. Still four or five blocks from the room he’d taken in Wood Street, but he needed the air. The time. The space to think.

  He’d held a dream when he held Sabrina. Insubstantial as cobwebs. Fragile as foam upon the waves. It didn’t matter how certain he was of her place in his previous life, she was as out of reach as his half-forgotten past.

  A blast of wind curled down his collar. Rattled shutters. Trash skipped and swirled down the street. But beneath the normal night sounds came a faint rattle. A slide of a broken footstep. A held breath.

  He sensed it all between one heartbeat and the next. Battle intensity reining him to a quivering tension of muscles in anticipation. Passing an alley shrouded in wraith-like shadows, he glanced within. Someone watched. Someone followed. His hand fell to the dagger at his waist, but he kept his pace even and unhurried.

  A carriage clattered to a stop at the next corner, and a man stepped down into the light of the pavement lamp. The coachman slapped his reins, the carriage barreling off.

  Bile chewed its way through Daigh’s gut. A horrible, crawling, humiliating disgust, but he faltered for only a moment before resuming his long, easy stride.

  “Did you see our little sparrow home?” St. John’s smile beckoned with angel innocence. Only his pale eyes, reflected in the glow from the lamp, chilled with their malice. “How chivalrous of you.”

  Daigh collared him. “Come near Lady Sabrina again and I’ll take you apart piece by bloody piece.”

  “Don’t tell me you have feelings for the girl. Fascinating. The monster in love. Does she know what you are, Lazarus? Can she smell the reek of the grave you give off? Or is she smitten by that sensual animal beauty of yours and doesn’t care?” He raked Daigh with a gaze that held the leering sexuality of Cork, leaving Daigh nauseous and shaking with rage and embarrassment. He released him on a muttered oath. “Easy to lose one’s perspective when confronted with six and half feet of pure animal magnetism. I should know.”

  Daigh snorted his lack of concern. Began walking, but St. John wouldn’t allow his escape. Kept apace with him.

  “Does she know where Douglas is hiding?”

  “Leave her alone, St. John,” he growled.

  “Perhaps I will. Perhaps I won’t. It all depends on you. You’ve maneuvered your way into the little sparrow’s confidence. So, you can find out what she knows. Lead me right to Brendan Douglas.”

  “You’re the bounty hunter. Find him yourself.”

  St. John opened his arms in a surrender gesture. Sighed. “He proves more elusive than expected. But with Lady Sabrina’s assistance—willing or . . . unwilling. And perhaps unwilling might be more fun—I shall capture him.”

  Daigh grabbed his shoulder. Spun him around. Pulled him close. “Touch her, and you’re dead as I was. And no Máelodor to bring you back.”

  St. John’s mage energy crackled along Daigh’s nerves like acid. Burst at the base of his brain like a hammer blow. He saw nothing but a crimson haze. Heard nothing but St. John’s hissed curses. Felt the glide of a cold hand upon a chest that only minutes earlier had burned with Sabrina’s tender touch. Cold lips pressed to his mouth, making choking vomit rise into his throat.

  He fought back. Broke the binding restraining him. Tore himself free of the hands gliding over him with a sexual insistence. He doubled over, retching into the gutter. Heaving. Sick. Furious.

  “See? You do care.” His hand rested possessively upon Daigh’s back. “My sweet deathless beast, you forget what you’ve so recently learned. That I can bring you a pleasure no woman ever could. Or I can break you.” Again the cool fondling hand, but this time it hardened. A weapon appeared. A dagger. It punched into Daigh’s gut. He arched away from the explosion of pain. But it came again. This time to the small of his back as he fell. And again to his ribs.

  He dropped to the ground. Blood running in rivers from his wounds, the hurled curse slowing his healing. Pushing him toward shocky numbness.

  St. John bent over him. Stabbed him between the ribs.

  Nowhere for Daigh to escape. To recover.

  Blood filled his mouth. His vision closing in on him until all he saw was St. John’s pale soulless eyes. His gleaming angelic demon smile. “Lady Sabrina will find me Douglas one way or another.”

  “Whoreson,” Daigh mouthed.

  The kick that followed brought a scream to his lips. He reared up against the inferno of agony. His lungs starved for air. His nerves shriveling against the next attack.

  “You search for Douglas?”

  A deep voice sounded from somewhere to Daigh’s right. St. John’s attention shifting immediately to a nearby alley.

  “Then you’ve found him. But finding and catching are two different things.” The words taunted their challenge yet held an unyielding strength. Whoever this was, he was well able to take care of himself.

  Daigh tried moving his head. Couldn’t even breathe without whimpering. Mage energy infected his blood. Coursed its black power along his veins. He was trapped in a web of pain until it subsided.

  St. John vanished from his side. Power throbbed the air. Shot in ribbons of light from street to street. A shout. A curse. And silence as the antagonists receded.

  The dark alley. The quiet steps. Douglas had followed. Douglas had watched. And he’d interceded to save Daigh. But not before he’d heard the whole. Knew Sabrina’s danger. St. John’s evil. And Daigh’s ultimatum.

  He lay alone on the pavement. Stared up into the coal-thick night. Felt the torture of healing as his body—now free of the Amhas-draoi’s interference—knit itself together. Tendons. Muscles. Arteries. Bone.

  St. John’s threat the only wound that would never heal.

  Máelodor heaved himself into the carriage. Allowed the hovering manservant to settle him comfortably under half a dozen traveling rugs. Place heated bricks on the floor. Still the icy air cramped his joints and settled in his bones until he had to grit his teeth against the ache.

  Bloom’s failure had spurred this trip. Bloom’s body scattered to the dogs.

  He’d not fail Máelodor again.

  “You should be at the coast by nightfall, sir.” The unctuous groom piled on an extra rug. “And in Dublin within a day or two if the weather holds.”

  Máelodor waved off the annoying little toad. “And word’s been sent to St. John of my arrival?”

  “Aye, sir. We’ve ordered him to meet you.”

  “And Lazarus?”

  “Nothing yet, sir.”

  He closed his fist around the head of his cane.

  Máelodor’s wards kept the creature whole. His magics kept him
subservient. So where was he? Why hadn’t he sent word?

  He’d already shown the Domnuathi in graphic and violent detail what happened to those in his service who showed a disappointing lack of obedience. He smiled. How much more exciting and gratifying when the pain could be strung out forever. No inconvenient death to mar the perfection of the suffering. It would be a fool who tempted a repeat of the process. And whatever Lazarus’s flaws, fool was not among them.

  Máelodor’s raising of a soldier of Domnu had started as an experiment. But it had paid out with so much unexpected new knowledge. The second summoning would be all the greater a success for what he’d learned.

  Arthur would be tied to Máelodor just as Lazarus was. Inviolate against death. Enthralled to his creator. A perfect tool to create a perfect world.

  Daigh opened his eyes, not on the woman who haunted his fevered dreams, leaving him drenched with sweat and heart racing. But on the hard-bitten beauty of Miss Roseingrave, who regarded him with a mixture of revulsion and ridicule.

  “How did you get in here?” he growled.

  “Your landlady let me in.” Her critical gaze wandered the barren, dusty garret. “You left the Halliwells’ suspiciously early last evening. I assume you’ve something to show for it besides Lady Sabrina Douglas’s deflowering.”

  “Jealous?” he sneered, tired of Roseingrave’s hostility. Swinging out of bed, he drew his shirt over his head. Combed an agitated hand through his hair.

  She flushed, lips pursed, eyes flashing violence. “Hardly.”

  “Then aim your vitriol at me. Not her. She’s done nothing to warrant your claws.”

  “Hasn’t she? The Douglases lie at the center of a violent whirlwind. Their father began it with his demented ideas of Other supremacy. And the heirs of Kilronan follow in his steps like lemmings. Brendan Douglas threatens our world with exposure and destruction. And if it weren’t for Lord Kilronan’s stubborn stupidity, the Amhas-draoi would have his father’s diary, and his cousin would still be alive.” She sucked in a ragged breath. Her eyes burning with tears, her face twisted into paroxysms of rage and grief.

  He put a hand out in an awkward attempt at comfort, but she whirled away from him.

  “Don’t ever touch me,” she warned in a cold, ringing voice. “I’m not some untried virgin dazzled by your Hercules looks. And no doubt, if Lady Sabrina knew the truth, she’d be as horrified by you as I am.” She drew herself up, tall and athletic and radiating violence.

  “She does know the truth.”

  “Does she?”

  “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

  “It means I don’t care how you do it, but find me Brendan Douglas.”

  “And St. John?”

  “He arrived in Dublin last spring.”

  “That’s it? I knew that much already. What of his movements before last spring? What of the brand on his arm?”

  “I’ve seen no brand and I can’t exactly ask him to strip for me. As for his movements, bring me news of Douglas and we’ll talk.”

  As much to keep his hands from around her neck as anything else, he plunged them into the icy water of his washbasin. Splashed himself awake. Cooled his growing temper.

  “Do you want Scathach’s help or not?” she demanded.

  When he turned back, she’d gone.

  Both hands braced against the edge of the nightstand, he stared into the speckled, cracked mirror. Looked for some vestige of the man he’d once been in the stern angle of his jaw, the cruel set of his mouth, the empty hell-black of his eyes.

  Dragging back his sleeve, he glared at the brand on his forearm. The crescent pierced by a broken arrow. Máelodor’s signature. His mark of ownership. As binding as any slave collar.

  His mind made up, he turned the mirror inward. Rolled his sleeve back down.

  Helena Roseingrave was right. Sabrina didn’t know anything about him.

  Nothing at all.

  Sabrina left the Ogilvie townhouse on St. Stephens Green with the same stunned exhaustion experienced by battle-sick soldiers. A sort of heavy torpor and a feeling as if her very brain had shaken loose from its moorings. The incessant questions. The hidden pitfalls. The constant search for imperfections. In her dress. Her speech. Her manners.

  “That went well,” Aunt Delia chirped as they were shepherded into a closed carriage for the few short blocks to home. She huffed into her seat, wrapping a pink striped shawl over her shoulders. Fiddling with the string of pearls choking her double chin. “The Misses Ogilvie are always so pleasant. Though they have to be, don’t they? Miss Ogilvie with that horrible flat nose that makes her look like a toad. Miss Henrietta with that sallow skin and those dark circles. Their mother’s at her wit’s end, trying to secure proper marriages for them.”

  “I thought their mother was your especial friend.”

  “She is, darling. Letty Ogilvie and I were at school together. Had our come-out the same year. But really, she could have done so much better for herself.”

  “And you told me you wanted me to take my cue from the Ogilvie girls.”

  “Well, of course. They may have little in the looks department, but they’re well regarded. And it wouldn’t do your countenance any harm if you were seen in their company. You’d shine like a diamond between two coals, darling.”

  What on earth did her aunt say about people she didn’t like? Sabrina shuddered to think.

  Her shoulders quivering in silent laughter, Jane took a sudden unwavering interest in the doings of a man selling hot spiced gingerbread.

  At least this trip to Dublin had achieved one thing: Jane no longer carried a haunted air, nor did she jump at shadows. Sabrina would cling to that positive. With white knuckles.

  Arriving back at Upper Mount Street, Sabrina shed her pelisse and bonnet onto the waiting footman, frantic to escape Aunt Delia’s barbed comments and incessant pettiness.

  The man gave a subtle clearing of his throat. “Excuse me, Lady Sabrina, but there’s a gentleman to see you. He’s waiting in the upstairs parlor.”

  Daigh. Had to be. A wild fizz spread up from her belly until she buzzed with stupid excitement. Made more stupid by his embarrassing rebuff.

  “Thank you. I’ll see him right away.”

  Lifting her skirts, she took the stairs slowly, gathering herself together. She’d be dignified. Distant. Show him she didn’t care.

  At the closed door, she drew up. Smoothed her skirts. Checked her hair. And grasping the knob firmly, opened the door.

  To an empty room. An open window. And a card upon a table.

  Had to run. Back when I can.

  B.

  “You again.” The little man glared, but his heart wasn’t in it. Perhaps persistence had begun to wear him down. “Haven’t I told you to clear off? His Lordship’s not home. Mrs. Norris is out, and I’ll not—”

  “Tell Miss Fletcher her brother is here.” He shrugged himself deeper into the doorway and out of the misty drizzle.

  The man must have thought Daigh was planning on storming the castle. He threw himself into the breech, his height in no way detracting from his bulk or his strength. “Brother? Thought you said your name was MacLir.”

  “Half sister.”

  “Mm-hm,” the man grunted, clearly unconvinced but allowing him to step out of the weather and into the entry hall. “Wait here. I’ll see if she’s home to”—he raked him with another fearsome glare—“half brothers.”

  Daigh would be quick and clear. Ask Sabrina about Brendan. Pass on the information to Roseingrave. Stop St. John before he could carry out his threats. Get Scathach to send him back to the grave.

  He would not put forward explanations or apologies for last night. He would not imagine Sabrina as she’d been, glassy-eyed with desire, her flesh like silk, her curves perfect in his hands. Nor dwell on the hazy mirage of an impossible past where he’d enjoyed all that and more.

  Didn’t matter. Didn’t happen.

  There’d be no regrets to worry
over in the grave.

  Sabrina read the note over though she knew the few words by heart. Examined for the hundredth time the front and back as if somehow an invisible message might be hidden there.

  Obviously Brendan and Aidan had taken the same course in letter-writing. Be brief and ambiguous as possible. But why now? Why after seven years with no word?

  “My lady?”

  Mr. Dixon stood at the drawing room door, looking grouchy and flustered. “There’s a gentleman below.”

  Brendan had returned. She shoved the note into her apron pocket.

  “Says he’s Miss Fletcher’s half brother.”

  Daigh.

  She flushed crimson. What on earth could he want?

  “But she’s out with Mrs. Norris. Should I be sending him on his way?”

  “No. Yes. No,” Sabrina stammered. “That is to say, I’ll see him.”

  Mr. Dixon’s lips thinned to a disapproving line, but he nodded.

  Sabrina had moments to compose herself and then he was there. His giant’s frame filling the door. His dark head ducking beneath the lintel. His face pale and sullen in the gray afternoon twilight.

  Her excitement hadn’t subsided. Instead it had increased tenfold alongside her mortification, and she rose to greet him, hoping she didn’t look as discombobulated as she felt.

  “I didn’t expect to see you again.” She forced herself to meet his gaze, though her cheeks burned. “Or did you catch sight of St. John skulking at the corner?”

  Her attempt at blasé fell flat. His hands curled to fists and, if possible, his features darkened.

  Her throat constricted, nerves making her insides squirm. How did she ever think she could get through this encounter without feeling a fool? She’d begged him—and wasn’t that humiliating enough?—but no, it got worse. He turned her down. What normal male turned down easy sex? None according to what little she knew of the male species. Which said what about her charms? It was a good thing she was destined for a life devoted to the bandraoi. If she couldn’t attract a man by throwing herself at him, how was she ever supposed to attract one with nothing but small talk and coy smiles? Perhaps she was safer from Aidan and Aunt Delia than she thought.