“I was going to tell you eventually,” Kelan said. He glanced from Lily to Greyston. “After your reaction the first time I mentioned the demon word, I thought it wise to give you some time to adjust.”
“I don’t understand,” Lily repeated dully. “How is that even possible?” Her stare came to Greyston. “Demon blood?”
“My uncle found six women already with child,” Kelan said. “Women willing, for various reasons, to participate in his experiment. Women of standing in society, to ensure their children would wield a greater influence when and where it counted. I don’t know the intricacies, but his notes describe infusing the demon blood into the placenta. He must have concluded the demon essence would knit better if introduced while the babe was still in the womb.”
“All those children,” Lily murmured. “It’s like…he harvested us? From the corners of the world.”
“Demon sight is triggered by scent,” Kelan told her. “The traces of demon blood in your veins is slight enough to keep you hidden, but the concentration of two or more of you in one area would amplify the scent. Ensuring each child would be reared in a different country kept the demons off your tails.”
“Until everyone assembled at Cragloden.”
Kelan shook his head. “The protection runes mask the demon scent.”
The full realisation of what he’d done hit Greyston. “That’s how Lady Ostrich found us,” Greyston said dully. “She sniffed us out the moment I joined Lily in London.”
“It’s not your fault.” Lily sank onto the armrest at his back. “How were you to know?”
Ignorance was no excuse. If he’d stayed away, Lily would have led her life unfettered from the McAllisters, from demons, from any further tragedy.
Greyston heaved as he realised it didn’t stop there. The whiskey in his stomach shot up and scorched his throat the second time round.
His father had been a regular visitor at Cragloden, until some irreparable falling out some months before Greyston’s birth. The man hadn’t just learnt demons exist, he’d learnt his son would be born into one.
The runt of Lucifer. The babe who’d starved his own mother’s life while in her womb. The sin that had lured his brother to his death across the ocean. The madness that had sent his father leaping out the window. Greyston was all of that.
Lily’s hand came down on his shoulder. Her scent was cinnamon and apple, spice and sweet, and called to him. The memory of her taste, her lips…the feel of her body pressed to him…
A part of Greyston died with the memories he cut off dead.
His father’s raspy voice coiled and recoiled inside his head. “Ye canna be here. Ye canna be real.” The day after he’d returned to Forleough. The day after the Cragloden explosion that he wasn’t supposed to have survived. “Yer nigh impossible ta kill.”
His father had known about Duncan McAllister’s project. He’d had been a regular visitor at Cragloden; he would have known how to gain access undetected. Hell, maybe Duncan had even invited him inside. The only reason his father had harboured a demon in his home all those years was to reap the final reward. He’d known of the summons that would come when Greyston turned fifteen, the summons that would conveniently gather all the McAllister laboratory rats from around the world and hand him the opportunity to rid the earth of the demonic vermin in one swoop.
“Yer nigh impossible ta kill. I shouldha known. From vermin ta vermin and ye’ll take us all with ye.”
“The Almighty Lord ken I did my all ta rid the earth of ye and ye kind.”
His father had killed Lily’s mother, had intended to kill Lily along with his demon-infected son. That was something Greyston would never ask Lily to live with.
Kelan stood and set his untouched glass on the pedestal table beside his chair. “I have something for you. I’ll be right back.”
Lily’s fingers, warm, soft and delicate, trembling slightly, stroked the curve beneath his jaw.
Greyston closed his eyes. Breathed deep. “Don’t do that.”
Her fingers stilled, then scraped through his hair.
Greyston lurched forward. An extra dose of pain shot up his leg. He gritted his teeth and clamped his jaw on the curse. “Lily, please…don’t do that.”
“Your shoulders are bunched and a vein is throbbing at your jaw.” She moved off the armrest and came around to look at him. “I was only trying to relax you.”
“If you want to take care of me,” he said, shoving his empty glass at her, “refill this.”
She took the glass. Her brows speared as she looked at him, then she shook her head and turned to cross to the drinks counter. When she came back, the glass filled to the top, she didn’t hand it over. Instead she dropped into the chair Kelan had vacated, put the glass to her lips and took a deep sip. Her eyes bulged and she spluttered most of the whiskey right back out.
She rubbed a hand across her mouth, lifted the glass again and gulped down a quarter of the liquid.
“Slowly,” he said, “You’ll make yourself sick.”
“I’ve got demon blood inside me as well.” She drew her hand across her mouth again. “Whatever you are, I’m that too. We’re exactly the same, Greyston, and I’m not a demon.”
She was so beautiful it hurt to look at her. To look at her and know she’d never be his. “You took whatever you were born into and spun it into light. Inside me, it turned into a curse. No wonder my mother never thought me good enough to keep.”
His mother had given him up to the dark before she’d even met him. Sacrificed him to her worthy cause. Not Aragon. Not her next babe. Not someone else’s child. He was the runt she’d so easily cast aside to evil.
“What makes you think I’m any different?” Lily took another slug of whiskey. This time, she kept more down than she spluttered out. “My mother gave me away when I was still in her womb. She thought I wasn’t good enough to keep, either.”
The library door opened. Kelan stopped just inside the room, his gaze sliding from Lily to Greyston. “Your mother left this in my uncle’s keeping.” He came forward, delivering a letter sheathed inside an embossed envelope into Greyston’s hands. “As far as I can tell, it was always meant for you.”
The seal was broken. One word was written on the outside. Neco. Greyston stared at the curly handwriting, waiting to feel something. Someone had intruded on his privacy. His mother hadn’t even bothered to name him before selling his soul.
He couldn’t find it within him to give a damn. He crumpled the letter in his closed fist as his gaze went to Lily. His heart said goodbye.
She was wrong. The difference between them was as vast as the skies above.
The difference was that he knew his mother had been right.
TWENTY
Lily sifted her fingers through the fine grains and pushed her bare toes deep into the damp sand, her face turned up to the afternoon sun. At the edge of the world, heavy grey clouds banked the blue horizon.
A storm was coming, or so Kelan had said.
The tide was out and waves lapped gently onto the bay at the mouth of the Firth of Tay. To her left, just beyond the limestone outcropping, she heard the same ocean crashing violently against the cliff.
Perhaps Greyston was right.
Perhaps two things could be exactly the same, and yet vastly different.
A deep vibration strummed the Aether, rippling the waves a little more urgently onto the shore. The shadow from above passed over, deepening the colour of the water.
“He’ll be back.”
She tilted her head to gaze up at the flat underbelly of the Red Hawk. The ship drifted a moment longer, then burst into a graceful arc that cut through the sky in a flash of black and red.
Greyston had ordered Neco to help him to his ship at once. He hadn’t even waited long enough to take a sip of the poppy opiate Ian had tried to force on him.
She knew she should be furious. He’d kissed her senseless, he’d given her a place in his arms to belong, and then he’d left.
She should feel hurt, betrayed and devastated.
That might still come, she supposed, perhaps after the hurt, betrayal and devastation of what her mother had done had faded. She had so few answers. Her mother had regretted giving her soul away, had died trying to set her wrongs right. But there was one lie that hurt more than all the rest. Lord d'Bulier was not her father. Of that, Lily was finally one hundred percent certain. She felt it to her bones.
She felt it with the same gut wrenching certainty that she knew Greyston wasn’t coming back.
For now, Lily understood why he’d fled with barely a goodbye. He needed to retain absolute control until he was away from the McAllister influence and aboard the Red Hawk.
Greyston was running again, but this time he was running from himself. There’d be no place far enough. The time to stop would never come. He wasn’t running because he was scared. He was running because he believed his tainted blood made him worthless.
“You will never understand what it feels like to have demon inside you.” She brought her gaze from the skies to Kelan. He stood a few feet from her, his eyes tracking the ship’s path. “He won’t be back.”
She was staying because she was too scared not to.
She was terrified of a world overrun with demons, of losing everyone she loved, of living with demons skulking in the shadows.
She would stay and turn her tainted blood into something worthwhile.
Kelan glanced over his shoulder and met her gaze. The silence stretched. He was dressed in black from head to booted foot. His cloak swirled just below the knee. The breeze coming in from the ocean tossed thick strands of black hair across his stony jaw. From where she sat, even his eyes appeared more black than blue.
“Come here,” he said. Without looking to see if she followed, he walked across the wet sand and didn’t stop until the waves lapped his boots.
Lily pushed up, gathering her skirts in one hand, and went to him. The Red Hawk was nothing more than a dark speck against the blue horizon. The trail of steam dissipated too quickly in the heat and breeze, taking the last of Greyston from her.
When she reached his side, Kelan walked deeper into the water, mindless of his boots and trousers.
She followed, the sea icy between her toes, dragging at her skirts, cresting against her hands. The waves jostled her back and forth, drenching any residual fear with precious, soul-restoring salt water.
Kelan turned to face her. “You’re not a demon, Lily.”
“I know,” she said softly.
For a few minutes after she’d learnt the truth, she’d very nearly thought she was. Her blood had curdled, separating the demon essence from the rest of her, a foreign evil snaking through her veins and threatening to choke her.
But then she’d looked into Greyston’s eyes, filled with pain, horror and self-loathing, and she’d seen no elementary trace of demon in him. This demon blood infused into them didn’t make them demons.
“He’ll be back.”
“You don’t know Greyston.” She shook her head slowly, her gaze shooting past Kelan to the endless expanse of ocean. “You can dunk him in a hundred oceans, and he’ll still believe he is a demon.”
PROPRIETY & PARASITES
Lily has embraced her destiny and shredded her reputation. She's done with straddling two worlds and losing in both. With so much at stake, her standing in society is the least of her problems. Or so she thought.
Demons walk among us...
Demons are infiltrating the London Court and cozying up to the Queen. Too late, Lily learns the price of throwing propriety to the wind. She must return to the influential circles of London and the stiff cuff of society. But with the pious Queen Victoria on the throne, that won't be possible until she salvages her reputation and the only way to do that is to marry.
Will she choose the dashing Scottish rogue, Greyston Adair, or the arrogant and powerful Kelan McAllister? Will the choice even be hers to make?
A marriage of convenience.
A practical arrangement.
A temporary rearrangement of her personal situation.
Does her choice even matter?
ONE
It might be high summer in the rest of Scotland and England, but one would never know it, Lily thought as she stared out the carriage window. A drizzly breeze swept in from the west of Glasgow and converged with the putrid smoke billowing from foundries and forges, creating a saturated, smoggy grey blanket that hung over the entire city. To her left, the River Clyde was a murky, unpleasant green that didn’t encourage close inspection.
Lily snapped her gaze from the dismal surroundings. Her small, involuntary shudder would have gone unnoticed by most, but nothing escaped Kelan McAllister. Earl of Perth and Chieftain of the powerful McAllister clan, Kelan seemed to possess a handful of extra senses and he’d been trained since the age of four to act upon them with lightning speed.
Sitting across from her on the padded velvet bunk, he glanced up from the leather-bound journal he’d been studying.
With that dark, dark blue gaze set on her, Lily felt the inclination to shudder for an altogether different reason.
Kelan McAllister was a man who filled a room with his mere presence, and that effect increased a hundred-fold in the cramped interior of the carriage. His charcoal suit was exquisitely tailored to fit his broad shoulders, impressive height and lean torso. His hair, black as a moonless night, scraped over the sharp angles of his jaw to nestle at his collar.
In another lifetime, he might have been quite handsome. But this lifetime had carved a feral harshness into his features and hardened the hollows of his jaw with fierce shadows. He was a compelling force of nature with the attitude and bearing of an avenging angel.
“Did you see something more?” he asked.
By ‘see’, he meant inside her head. With the blood of a demon called Raimlas flowing through her veins, Lily was effectively the McAllister demon sniffer. Although not quite effective as she’d yet to exercise any measure of control over her ability.
She shook her head at him. “I’m completely useless.”
“We wouldn’t be here if not for your vision yesterday,” he reminded her in that refined drawl. Born and raised in Florence, there wasn’t a shred of Scottish burr in the Scotsman.
Which turned her thoughts to Greyston, every inch a Scotsman down to his warm honey-rumbling-over-oats burr and unruly hair. She hadn’t heard from Greyston since he’d blazed a trail through the Aether six weeks ago. He was running from both the inner demons of his past and the demon blood mingled with his own. The same demon blood pumping through her heart with a visceral identity that set her hairs on end if she thought about it for too long.
Which she tried not to.
Desperately.
“It’s been six weeks,” she said, her voice tight with frustration. “And in all that time, I’ve had only this one vision.”
The demon had taken on the guise of such a nondescript man—middle-aged, of average height, blond hair and a plain, square face—not a single distinguishing feature or mannerism to identity it. Which was why she’d had to leave the anonymity of Cragloden Castle to venture to Glasgow with Kelan.
“I recognised the building you described.” Kelan leaned forward, planting his elbows on his knees. “That’s important information.”
“It is?” she chided. “I wouldn’t know, of course, because you never actually tell me a thing.”
His brow creased. “You’ve had a lot to deal with, Lily, and it wouldn’t do to overwhelm you.”
She rolled her eyes. “I want to be overwhelmed! Can you not understand? I want to learn and know everything at once.”
Perhaps it had been naïve of her to think she’d be back in London before the end of the Season, but at this rate, she’d die an old maid stuck away at Cragloden Castle. “I’ve had another letter from Evelyn and it would appear my aunt’s suspicions are roused. She’s demanding the address of the convent I’m not clois
tered in, Kelan. I don’t know how much longer Evelyn can put her off and we’re no closer to learning how to focus my visions.”
“Training you in defence techniques is my first concern.” He leaned back in his seat again. “Impatience, you know, rarely yields a good result.”
“You have no sense of urgency! Greyston warned me. The McAllisters strategise in terms of generations, not a single life-span.” She flung her arms across her chest and took a moment to regain her composure. “I have only this one life, and I don’t intend to give the whole of it to your demon cause.”
His gaze, already so intense, hardened. “I don’t recall casting you in chains.”
“Oh, for goodness sake!” She flicked aside the black gauze scratching her forehead.
A little too vigorously, perhaps, because the entire veil ripped loose from her widow weeds disguise. Thanks to her dear friend Evelyn, London Society believed she’d been cloistered in a highland convent these last six weeks. That tale would have been rather ruined if she’d been spotted on the 10:30 Perth-Glasgow Mainline.
“I made my choice and I don’t intend to change my mind,” she said quietly. “I will not give up until the last demon has been banished and the Cairngorm Tear between our dimensions sealed.” She opened her eyes, peering at him from lowered lashes. “Is it so very selfish of me to want that sooner rather than later?”
He looked at her, a contemplative, brooding look that divulged naught of his thoughts, and then the carriage drew to a lurching halt alongside the curb and his attention turned outside.
Lily sighed. Conversations with Kelan McAllister were like tramping through a marsh bog. One could wade for hours with absolutely no progress.
When Kelan pushed open the carriage door to alight, Lily was right behind him. She was curious to see where her vision had brought them.
The packed dirt road was a congestion of carriages and cattle. Men of various ilk, all brimming with purpose, marched briskly along a paved walkway. Squat warehouses, double-volume foundries stacked with chimneys and crooked mercantile stores lined the street on both sides.
The Dark Matters Quartet Page 25