Carnal Magic: The Wraith Accords, Book 1
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What if the one you wanted more than any other was the only one you couldn’t trust?
The Wraith Accords, Book 1
Two hundred years after the Tuatha de Danann and Vampires formed a fragile alliance, the Wraith Accords are unraveling. Isabel Santiago is a leader in one of the most powerful of the vampire cabals, and she agrees to join the Fae court as a gesture of goodwill—and damage control.
While Aed mac Goll’s loyalty to Fae is absolute, he’s never supported the accords which gave the Vampires sanctuary and restored the Tuatha de’s link to humanity. The very idea he could desire an undead human is unthinkable, yet he’s drawn to Isabel’s dark beauty and fierce intelligence.
Despite their mutual mistrust, they soon find themselves lost in a dangerous game of lust and power. When the treaty shatters amid calls for Isabel’s head, Aed realizes their connection is more than physical. And to save it, they’ll have to unravel a mystery that’s been a thousand years in the making.
Warning: Contains sex, violence, magic and bloodlust. You know, the good stuff.
Carnal Magic
Lila Dubois
Dedication
As always, this book is dedicated to my wonderful husband, tá mé i ngrá leat. Thank you for being my number one reader. I also owe you big for being willing to take some of the tough questions I encountered while writing to a higher authority for input. This was very brave considering said authority doesn’t know Lila exists and was probably wondering why her daughter-in-law the grant writer wanted her opinion on the most authentic spelling of Tuatha de Danaan and how to use tuath in a sentence.
To my lovely editor, who buckled in and helped me shape the mystery pieces, tirelessly slogged through some difficult terminology and dealt with my propensity to spell things phonetically instead of correctly. I’d also like to thank the cover artist, who took my sparse descriptions and grumpy attitude about covers and created something beautiful.Prologue
They met on the outskirts of Paris, where the stone streets gave way to dirt. The vampires came from the depths of the city, from their dark lairs hidden in the lost tunnels and catacombs. The Dukes of the three greatest Vampire cabals—Mexico City, Paris and the ancient seat of power, Bucharest—moved silently in the shadows as they approached the meeting point.
The Tuatha de Danaan came from the woods. Their horses and armor gleamed in the moonlight, but the few humans they passed didn’t see the Kings of Fae. The High King rode in front, the leader of the Fianna at his side, the Kings of Lir and Aran at his back. Never before had the rulers of two such different races met, but never before had the need for a treaty been so great.
It was the winter of the human year 1808 and the air was cold, the stars bright overhead. The dawn of the nineteenth century brought growing awareness and knowledge within the human race, threatening the Vampires’ need for secrecy and darkness. The Tuatha de had long been absent from the world of man that had once been their playground, but that isolation had cost them. Their power was fading. As humans forgot them and turned to new gods, the Tuatha de’s connection to the mortal world weakened. They needed to rekindle their link with the humans, and what better way to achieve that than with creatures that had once been human themselves?
High King Cormac dismounted, facing the vampires. Duke Drakul, leader of the Bucharest Cabal, stepped forward and bowed. As he straightened, his hood fell back, revealing the slim, handsome face of a man who appeared no more than forty years old, though his name was legend. King Cormac too was handsome, but his face was lined with age. His name was even older than Drakul’s, though there were few who remembered it.
“Your Highness.” Drakul spoke French, the common language they’d agreed to use.
“Your Grace.” Cormac returned the bow.
“We thank you for meeting with us.”
“Your message was…unexpected.” The Tuatha de Danaan king’s face revealed nothing. “It has been a long time since a human reached into Fae.”
Drakul smiled, showing his fangs. “I am not human.”
Cormac nodded in acknowledgement.
“You know what it is we want.” Drakul motioned to the hooded figures behind him. “We need a place where the Vampire can be safe, away from the humans.”
“But you need the humans for food.” The King of Lir did not dismount from his horse.
Drakul focused his attention there, taking a moment to study the other Fae king. “We need their blood, though the oldest among us, and those born of us, need it less.”
Silence settled between the leaders, though the night was not as silent as it might have been. Animals were drawn to the Tuatha de and the trees closest to the road were filled with birdcalls and the tiny squeaks and squeals of furred beasts.
“That you agreed to meet with us tells me you’re willing to offer us what we asked, in at least a small measure.” Drakul was impatient.
“We are willing to discuss it,” Cormac said.
Drakul’s lips twitched and his eyes narrowed. “What would you want in return for this great gift?”
For the first time emotion showed on Cormac’s face. He suddenly looked older, the corners of his eyes pinched. “We have lost our connection with this realm. We must find it again, or fade.”
“You want us to help you make that connection?”
“You are the connection. Despite what you say, you are human, more human than we.”
Drakul’s lips thinned into a tight line, but he did not argue the point.
Cormac touched the pommel of his sword. Light pulsed around him, and for a moment the hazy outline of a woman appeared at his side. The ghostly figure spoke into the High King’s ear, then looked at the other kings before melting away. The light surrounding Cormac darkened then faded into the night air.
“You are welcome in Fae.” Cormac struggled to hide his distaste for the words. “We will grant you lands and safe passage between the realms of Fae and the mortal world.” His hand swept out, gesturing to the distant lights of Paris. “But there are conditions.”
“Bien sur.”
“You, and whoever else holds power among your kind, must live in Fae, so that we may know you, and so any of your people who come to our realm will have a ruler among them.”
Drakul shook his head. “As you yourself pointed out, we need the humans. We could not live in Fae full time. Perhaps the Dukes or our courts could each spend six months of the year in this new place you grant us.”
“That is acceptable.” Cormac’s tone deepened. “You will live by our laws.”
The vampires stiffened at the note of threat in his voice.
Drakul bared his fangs. “We will live by our own laws. We are no subjects of yours.”
“You are guests in my realm.”
“And no one respects an invitation more than the Vampire.”
The leaders’ gazes met and the air hummed. It was a tipping point. Either they would stand on pride and turn away from this meeting or they would give in and give up millennia of tradition to ensure the future of their peoples.
“Let us make a list of rules, for both our peoples, so that we can live together.” Drakul hated to be the one to break the silence, but the Vampire needed this.
“A good suggestion.”
Over the next hour they crafted the laws, each doing his best to protect his people.
When it was done Drakul reached out a hand. “We are agreed?”
Cormac took a step forward and clasped Drakul’s wrist. It was an old gesture, between warriors who each remember
ed savage times. As they stood together there was a similarity between them. Not in looks, because they were as night and day to one another, but in posture. They were both strong, powerful, and yet there was an air of weariness around each of them. They were aging leaders in a time of crisis, and they’d both made the difficult decision to reach out and accept help in keeping their people alive.
“Agreed,” Cormac said.
And thus the Wraith Accords were made.
Chapter One
The vampire’s lips parted as she passed under the silver and gold arch that marked the entrance to Tara. In her long life she’d seen many things, both beautiful and horrid, but never anything so impressive as the shaped and braided metal, stretching thirty feet in the air, that guarded the heart of Fae.
“Who are you, and what business have you with the High King and Queen?”
The gatekeeper shimmered into existence in the middle of the stone road, his words spoken first in Gaelic and then in French. He wore a full-faced helmet, primitive in style compared to what Isabel remembered soldiers wearing when she was human, but its muted gleam was that of precious metal. A breastplate of silver and moonstone over a long white robe completed the ensemble. Isabel didn’t see any weapons, and yet she was sure that the Tuatha de Danaan standing before her was dangerous.
But so was she.
Isabel threw back her hood. Smiling wide, she let her fangs gleam in the starlight that drenched the landscape. “I am Isabel Santiago, Sage of the Bucharest Cabal and Counselor to Duke Drakul, leader of the Vampire.” The words were lyrical in old French, so much more beautiful than the modern dialects or the Romanian she more commonly used.
The gatekeeper’s fingers twitched and Isabel tensed, ready to fight. She was meant to be an ambassador, a way to smooth relations between the Vampires and the Tuatha de Danaan before the treaty was broken and war erupted. It would serve no good if she couldn’t even make it past the gates.
The gatekeeper bowed low. “Welcome, Lady Isabel. Your arrival is expected.”
“Thank you.” Isabel dropped into a curtsey, and for a moment she was nostalgic for a time long gone, when such manners were the norm, not the exception. She supposed time had not passed in the same way, or customs changed as much, for the Tuatha de Danaan.
“Wait here. One of the Fianna will meet you.” The gatekeeper winked out of existence.
Isabel hid her reaction to the show of magic. Over her long life she’d learned many things, but the easy magic of these non-humans was both fascinating and alarming. Those vampires who’d interacted with them since the Wraith Accords had reported back what they knew, allowing her and the other sages of the great Cabals to update their records and indexes, yet seeing it was different than hearing about it.
Every month on the night of the half moon a representative of each race would meet at the midway point between Tara and the Vampire city to exchange gifts. The Vampire usually gifted human literature, food and even paper money. The Tuatha de gave the Vampire art and plants. The meetings had taken place without incident for two hundred years, until five months ago. The Tuatha de Danaan representative hadn’t been there on the appointed night, though when the Vampire representative returned the next night they found a basket of gifts waiting. The same thing had happened the next four months and was worrying enough that Duke Drakul had reached out to the High King and arranged this visit.
“Lady Isabel.”
He came from the shadows, a massive outline of a man, darker than anything around him. It seemed the starlight didn’t touch his armor, which was a matte black that made her think of lightless prison cells deep underground. She couldn’t stop the shiver that shook her.
He removed the full helmet, revealing a face as beautiful as the armor was dark. His hair was the rich brown of the earth with streaks of gold. His skin was pale, but not so pale as hers, more cream than white, but light enough that the blue of his eyes was startlingly bright. His hair was long and pulled back from his face, leaving his strong, angular features exposed.
Isabel swallowed the saliva that pooled in her mouth. She wanted this man. She wanted to take him, fuck him, pleasure him and hurt him. She wanted to taste his blood as he fucked her, wanted to feel his hands on her flesh. He smelled like nothing she could describe, and the assault on her senses—visual, aural and olfactory—nearly brought her to her knees. It had been a very long time since she’d had such a strong reaction to a man. If this was what it would be like each time she met one of the Tuatha de Danaan, this mission would be far more challenging than she’d anticipated.
Keeping her lips carefully closed, she nodded, hoping her trembling didn’t show. “Sir.”
“I am Aed mac Goll of the Fianna.” He bowed low.
“I am honored to meet so noble a warrior.”
“You know of the Fianna?” His features hadn’t changed but the consternation was there in his voice. He held his helmet out to the side and it melted away into the darkness.
The Fianna were the legendary warriors of the Tuatha de Danaan. They guarded the royal family and when called upon were a fighting force of unparalleled skill. Most of this was known only through human legends, the stories of Ireland detailing the exploits of the Fair Folk, who were once reported to be gods, then made mere men by the monks who recorded the tales. Fact and human myth rarely resembled each other, but Isabel had found that there was usually a kernel of truth buried in the origins of such stories, and what they’d learned of the Tuatha de Danaan since the Wraith Accords had confirmed that piece of legend.
“I know only enough to be honored.” She curtsied again.
Aed bowed. “The honor is mine. Will you follow me?”
He gestured for her to precede him. Isabel let herself be guided deeper into Tara.
Aed pressed his hand against his armored leg, letting the edge of the metal bite into his skin. The pain helped distract him from his desire for the vampire.
The very word was abhorrent. The idea of undead humans was distasteful, and yet the woman standing before him called to him. There were rumors in both the court of Tara and in the Hill of Allen, the headquarters of the Fianna, that vampires smelled dead and that their beauty was only a veneer of magic over a rotting face.
Lady Isabel smelled like an exotic forest—hints of wood, flower and spice. If she wore a spell to mask her true appearance he could not see it, and as one of the Fianna he would be very hard to fool.
“This way, Lady Isabel.” He gestured to the stone road that led from the gate of Tara to the heart of Fae’s greatest city. At the moment the sides of the road were lined with brambles, some of the branches as thick around as Aed’s torso. They formed an arc that blocked out almost all the moonlight as they entered the thorny tunnel.
He let the vampire go first, not trusting her at his back. After a few paces she stopped. Aed came up next to her.
“Is there a problem, Lady Isabel?”
“Not at all, Sir Aed.” She reached out and slipped her left arm through his right. He stiffened, prepared for an attack, but she merely smiled.
Aed felt the rebuke in her eyes. It was a breach of manners not to have offered her his arm. Then again, he would hardly offer escort to a creature the Fianna deemed dangerous.
“Do I make you uncomfortable, Sir Aed?”
“No, my lady.” It was no lie—he was wary, not uncomfortable.
He started walking, shortening his stride to match hers. With her holding his sword arm, he was limited in what he could do if she attacked—as far as a physical battle. Though it was risky to use magic in Tara, a place as much alive as Aed himself was, if it came to it he would fell her with magic.
“I am not a threat to you or the Tuatha de Danaan.” Her words were smooth, her voice calm.
“Anyone not of the Tuatha de who enters our heart—” he gestured around at the brambles, “—is a threat.”
“You have a well-guarded heart.”
Aed bit back on the impulse to tell her that this was not as Tara could be. Normally this walkway was lined with the most beautiful plants, painted by every shade of green imaginable. Either Tara itself was warning her away or the High Queen had bid the entry road change to intimidate the ambassador.
“Tara’s defenses are many.” He wondered if the vampire were testing him, trying to learn about them in preparation for an attack.
“Of that I have no doubt.” She looked up at him, her black hair and rose-red lips gleaming as they passed under a beam of moonlight that found its way through the arch of vines. “I count myself fortunate that I will not see those defenses used against me.”
“I pray to Danu that you do not.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Tell me, Aed mac Goll, what do they say about my people, about the Vampire?”
“You were once human, and yet you hide from the humans.”
“That is both true and untrue. Some of us were born human but destined to be Vampire.”
“And you?”
“I was born centuries ago, in a time when Spain was part of the Ottoman Empire. Yet even when I was human I was a creature of the night. Being made Vampire was my destiny.”
Aed frowned. Vampires craved the sunlight they could no longer see, craved the humanity they’d lost…didn’t they?
“And you, Sir Aed. Were you born to be a warrior of the Fianna?”
“My father was a hero of the Fianna, many years ago.” He looked at her. “In a time when humans knew us, and feared us.”
“You were their gods.”
“Once.”
“It must have been very hard, to lose your place to Christianity.”
Aed didn’t respond.
“And even harder,” Isabel continued, “to have to turn to the Vampire for help from fading away altogether?”