The Dark Matters Quartet

by Claire Robyns

  Greyston’s nostrils flared. “Marry you?”

  His brow hitched at the crazy notion. “I was thinking you’d be a far more suitable candidate.”

  “No.” Greyston plunged his fingers through his hair and they seemed to get stuck there. “No, I’m not.”

  Lily dropped onto the sofa in a flat, awkward motion that ended with a swoosh from her lungs. The fight had fled, leaving her cheeks a deathly pale.

  But Kelan wasn’t backing down. The Glasgow trip and the resulting fiasco cemented his mind. He needed Lily with him, actively engaged and without scandal restricting both their movements. He was a powerful man, but even he couldn’t flaunt propriety in the public eye and maintain his authority. Not with a pious queen like Victoria on the throne.

  “Constantly trying to work around Lily’s social acceptance is impractical and unnecessary,” he said. Greyston looked no closer to backing down either, so he added for his benefit, “Marriage now will secure Lily’s future, whatever happens. She’ll be in a stronger position to look out for herself, against demons and any other pitfalls, if she has a married woman’s rights and freedom.”

  “It’s not the benefits I’m arguing against,” Greyston snapped. “It’s the bridegroom.”

  Kelan glanced from Greyston’s clenched jaw to Lily’s ashen pallor and back to Greyston. He shook his head, thoroughly confused. “Are you suggesting I marry her?”

  “No, I’m bloody not.”

  “Thank God for that.”

  “Do I—” Lily gave a small cough to clear the squeak from her voice. “Do I get a say in this?”

  “You must see that marriage is the best course,” Kelan told her.

  “Yes… Yes I do.” She glanced down, at her entwined fingers resting on her lap, and her words came out with a hard edge. “But since you are both equally opposed to the prospect of me as a spouse, it would appear I have the deciding vote.”

  Greyston went to her immediately. “Lily, you’re beautiful, courageous…loyal. You’re far too good for me. Always have been, and always will be.” He separated her fingers and clasped one hand between his. “It’s the prospect of me as a spouse that’s deplorable.”

  She ripped her hand free. “Honestly, Greyston, there’s no need to go to such drastic lengths to turn me away. You are aware this is a marriage of convenience we’re discussing? A marriage in name only and to be annulled as soon as it’s served its purpose. You’d barely notice you were married.”

  Kelan swallowed a chuckle. Then his eyes landed on the sketch of the demon and his humour faded.

  “Lily, take a day or two to think about it.” He gave Greyston a pertinent look. “I’m sure we can come to an arrangement whereby everyone’s happy.”

  “We don’t have a day or two,” Lily declared. “The sooner I’m wed, the sooner we depart for London.”

  “I need at least two days to arrange a special licence.”

  “Now why did I always think those required three days?” drawled Greyston, rising to his feet.

  Kelan glanced at him. “I have a contact.”

  “Naturally.”

  “Three whole days,” Lily repeated in a daze. “I can’t do it, Kelan. I can’t sit here for three days doing nothing.”

  “Two days,” he corrected her, “and the demon has been in London for months and isn’t going anywhere.” He tore the page from the sketchpad, squaring it in half as he met her gaze.

  “It won’t do anything rash to compromise the web it’s entangled in and neither should we.”

  EIGHT

  “Are you done?”

  “Almost,” Armand muttered.

  “You said that twenty minutes ago.”

  “And you’ve asked twenty times in the last twenty minutes.”

  Greyston grunted. He was stripped to his waist, hunched over double and had a cramp in his backside from sitting still for over two hours.

  The nib of the electromagnetic coil pen was made up of the three needles, tapping the mixture of Indian ink and blood from the tiny brass barrel into the upper layers of his skin with painless precision. At this point, he was thinking a little pain would be welcome; anything to occupy the blasted thoughts that had plagued him since yesterday.

  He couldn’t marry Lily.

  He damned well didn’t want her marrying Kelan.

  One way or another, Lily was getting married.

  The jabbing on his left shoulder blade ceased.

  “Are you done?”

  “I need to swab the area with alcohol.”

  Greyston pushed to his feet and went through to the adjoining bathroom. He put his back to the mirror, twisting to get a decent look at the tattoo.

  Five tightly linked loops, each one patterned in a different series of flowing shapes, covered his shoulder blade. If he squinted hard enough, it was a stubby snake, slithering over his skin in the trick of an eye as the patterns swirled in and around each other and slid over muscle.

  Armand came in after him with a brown bottle and a swabbing cloth.

  “How long before it starts to work?” Greyston asked as the man dabbed at his back.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Until the protection takes effect and starts to ward off evil.”

  “Oh, I see… Well, it’s a rune, m’lord. It activated when I completed the last symbol.” Armand stepped out from behind him. “How are you feeling?”

  Greyston took a moment to consider. He closed his eyes, rolled his shoulders back and exhaled a long, slow breath to relax his muscles.

  “Normal,” he said, opening his eyes. “Does that mean my body isn’t rejecting the rune?”

  “I’d hazard a guess it’s too soon to tell,” came Kelan’s voice. When their eyes met in the mirror, he added, “Your bedroom door was open.”

  “Will that be all, m’lord?”

  “Thank you, Armand,” Kelan replied before Greyston could.

  “As much as I complained,” Greyston told Armand as they moved from the bathroom into the bedroom, “I appreciate your deft and skilful hand. Thank you.”

  Armand managed to look only faintly shocked at the dual compliment and gratuity. “My pleasure, m’lord.”

  Greyston shrugged into his shirt, watching Kelan thoughtfully but saying nothing until Armand had collected his tools and left. “You think Lily’s going to choose me, don’t you?”

  “Don’t you?” Kelan countered with a raised brow, then promptly changed the subject with his usual single-mindedness. “Should we put that rune to the test?”

  “I have no wish to relive any part of the last half hour of my life,” Greyston snorted.

  “Let’s pay Sannon a visit, then.”

  “This should be interesting.” Greyston gestured for him to lead the way, wishing he could relegate Lily to the back of his mind as easily as Kelan. Then again, Kelan didn’t consider himself part of this marriage equation. And I don’t want him to be.

  Lily would marry one day, of course. He wanted that for her. He just didn’t want to have to watch it happen. Lily is going to marry the day after tomorrow, he reminded himself. He grimaced at Kelan’s back as they walked and realised he was looking at his only alternative.

  Whether he liked the fact or not, it was either himself or Kelan. How opposed was he to the idea again? Enough to marry Lily himself? Enough to put them both through hell?

  A marriage in name only and to be annulled as soon as it’s served its purpose. You’d barely notice you were married.

  That would never be true for him and Lily. But maybe…and why not? The McAllister name would be a powerful anecdote to the cuff of society. Lily could live her life, both now and later, as she pleased with little fear of repercussions. He could see Lily and Kelan in a loveless business arrangement that would end amiably. After such an esteemed marriage, her prospects would be limitless.

  They’d reached the porch, were down the steps and rounding the corner. The wolfhound bounded into sight at Kelan’s whistle. She gave a few yaps
, paws up against the fence and tail wagging as Kelan approached. He slipped his hands through the metal links to grab either side her jaw and rub her ears.

  Greyston had hung back initially, but as he drew closer to stand beside Kelan, the wolfhound became more alert. Her ears perked and the tail dropped between her hind legs. The excited yapping gave way to absolute silence.

  He shared a wary stare with the dog. “Well, it’s an improvement.”

  “She doesn’t like strangers. That’s one of the reasons we don’t use her in London.” Kelan straightened and turned to him. “She hasn’t picked up any demon scent.”

  “My blood’s completely masked?”

  Kelan nodded. “We still need to establish if you’re able to sift time with that rune.”

  And if he couldn’t? Rewinding time had been an integral part of who and what he was since the age of fifteen. The choices that had formed the man, the paths he’d taken that had brought him to where he was today. Choices and paths that would have been vastly different if he hadn’t been able to rely on a second stab at most of them.

  But rewinding time was also a blazing emblem of the demon inside him and the toll that had taken. It was loss, grief and destruction.

  “Are you all right?” Kelan asked with a probing look. “Any illness, light-headedness? Anything unusual at all?”

  “No, no, and no,” Greyston drawled. “And no, I’m not about to swoon either.”

  “Good.” Kelan flashed him a semblance of a grin. “Because I’m out of smelling salts.”

  “I thought a gentleman was always prepared,” Greyston shot back absent-mindedly. He had to know. Right here. Right now.

  He looked past Kelan, to the forest of pines sweeping up the mountain, to the darkening skies above and then further, delving deep inside his mind, reaching for a quick, fresh memory….

  Kelan straightening, turning from the fence. “She hasn’t picked up any demon scent.”

  The shift inside Greyston as he absorbed those words, so slight, but a definite slide from black to grey. His blood caused death, had put the demon Flavith on their trail when he’d ignorantly sought Lily out in London. Apart, their trace scent wasn’t strong enough to alert other demons, one of the reasons Duncan McAllister had chosen his lab rats from the far-flung corners of the world, then sent them back to grow up oblivious and, apparently, safe. Together, as he and Lily had soon discovered, they were bait.

  Greyston looked at himself in the memory, at the man with caution blanking his expression and a stony hardness he didn’t recognise in the eyes. The mouth turned down, the almost imperceptible slump to the shoulders, the carefully constructed layers stripped back until not even the ghost of a couldn’t-give-a-damn grin remained. He couldn’t look at himself a second longer and he reached hastily for the memory, the prongs of his mind a tangible arm to grab hold and anchor while he dragged himself back through time…

  Kelan was nodding at him. “We still need to establish if you’re able to sift time with that rune.”

  “Done and established.”

  “Are you sure?” Kelan glanced about him, as if he’d be able to see the time waves rippling.

  When that hawkish gaze came to him, intense and probing, Greyston muttered, “No, no, and no, I don’t feel ill, light-headed or anything else.”

  “How did you—” Kelan cut off with a curse. “Don’t do that.”

  “You seemed to need proof I’m still my usual, demon-infected self.”

  “And you seem disappointed.”

  “I cannot imagine why.”

  “Greyston,” he said after a pause, “if you could no longer sift time, that would only have meant the protection rune had blocked your ability, not actually removed the demon essence from your blood.”

  “I’m well aware of that,” Greyston ground out.

  And of course he bloody well knew, but there was something to be said for the power of illusion. He pulled at the collar of his shirt, which was already loose but still too tight, backing away from Kelan slowly. The limestone wall loomed at him, encroaching with menace and stealing his breath.

  He looked to the skies again, almost desperate, but even if there’d been a chance of seeing the Red Hawk swooping in, he couldn’t sail away this time. There wasn’t enough sky to hide from Lily, from his mother’s last words, from the past, from himself. The only way out was to cast off everything; the shackle tugging down his heart, the bitterness eating at his gut, the darkness squirming inside.

  The McAllister war had just become his own. He’d never be free until he could turn his back on Scotland and her lot and he couldn’t do that until he’d made his past count for something more than wasted deaths. Until he’d restored Lily’s future to the life he’d ripped her out of.

  He wasn’t noble, he wasn’t a saint, but he damned well still had to live with himself.

  He wasn’t aware of what he was doing, where he was going, that he’d turned and increased his pace, until Kelan called after him, “Cragloden’s stable is at your disposal. Use it.”

  He ignored the offer, but did temper his stride to a manageable stroll as he left the pebbled driveway behind for the beaten-dirt road winding down the hillside to the town nestled at the base of the headlands.

  While he walked the mile or so, dusk settled, turning the ocean black-green and steadily draining the streaks of orange and pink from the horizon. He made it very nearly to the end of that mile before the ache in his thigh became more than a welcome distraction throbbing aside his thoughts. He refused to stop, walking through the pain and promising himself that each step was a step to victory. There was no one to watch him limp and if nothing else, he’d teach his damn body to raise the pain threshold another bar and ignore the rest.

  Monifeith was barely a town. More like a port-of-call with one main road running along the docks. A few narrow alleys shot through lopsided buildings that consisted of apartments stacked on top of apartments stacked on top of storefronts, each progressive level more battered than the lower.

  The market had packed up for the day, leaving the barren square strewn with barrels, crates and the stench of rotting fish guts. Greyston kicked his way through the debris toward the glow of light dampened by salt encrusted windows. A yellow lantern squeaked on a rusty arm above an ambitious sign declaring the tavern as The Kings Head.

  Inside, Greyston had his pick of rickety tables and bare-threaded velvet booths. He counted two, three… five men standing at the counter and another two seated at a table. The air was stale, mangy and squashed beneath a ceiling so low, it brushed the top of his head. The sawdust beaten into the floorboards possibly hadn’t been replaced this decade and he was fairly certain his eye caught some rats scuttling into dark corners just before he sat down at the booth closest to the door. He’d been in worse places, but it was easier to not notice when every inch was packed with raucous noise and sweating bodies.

  He raised a hand to call over the serving woman. She was neither buxom nor young, nor did she have a complete set of teeth. Making the dearth of sailors when there were three ships docked outside a little less puzzling.

  He was on his third mug of local brew when Neco found him. His man had to remove his hat to enter the tavern and keep his head bent as he approached Greyston’s table.

  “The hole you’ve chosen is impressive in its squalor,” Neco observed as he slid into the booth, propping his hat back on effectively to shade over his brows.

  At a casual glance, only his glassy eyes differentiated him as mechanical and there was a strong likelihood the sparse and remote population of Monifeith had never heard of celludrones.

  Greyston waved away the serving woman before she reached the table. “You’re implying one has a choice in this pit stop town.”

  “There’s Bertha’s Boudoir, two streets down,” Neco said. “The ambience is what might be called…enticing, to the average male.”

  “How did you find a bordello before me,” Greyston said, chuckling, “and more
importantly, where did you learn to use a word like ‘ambience’? You’ve been spending too much time with Ana.”

  “I passed straight on by this tavern my first loop around the town, deducing you had more taste.”

  Greyston lifted his glass to the man. “It doesn’t happen often, but it’s good to know even you sometimes deduce wrong.”

  “How is your leg?”

  “My damn leg’s fine.”

  “That’s inconsistent with you walking into the nearest hovel.”

  “You’re calling me a liar?” Greyston challenged, slightly irritated but mostly amused.

  Neco tipped his hat lower and turned his head in toward Greyston as the tavern door burst open to admit a couple more bedraggled souls. “I’m calling you inconsistent.”

  “So,” said Greyston, releasing the poor man from further commitment, “what’s going on with you and Ana?”

  “Armand upgraded my data this morning, did he mention that? My store of demon knowledge is vastly improved, although, I’ve concluded, not as complete as he indicated.”

  “Armand did tell me, yes, and that’s not what I mean.”

  “Well, Ana hasn’t been up to anything since she’s immobilised in the laboratory.”

  “That’s not what I meant, either,” Greyston remarked dryly.

  Neco had to think about that. “Could you clarify your question?”

  “I’m asking what’s going on between you and Ana, together.”

  “I sat with Ana for an hour to share my new demon knowledge.” There was another short silence before he added, “You may not want to say anything to Armand about that. He was quite insistent her upgrade should wait in case the data transfer interfered with his trial.”

  Greyston spluttered the sip of ale he’d just taken. “You defied a direct order?”

  “Were you aware of Lady Lily’s upcoming nuptials?”

  Not evading the question, Greyston understood. Simply seeing no need to elaborate on an already hundred percent accurate fact. But the correlation to human behaviour was uncanny and, at any other time, Greyston would have had some fun with it. Curiosity, however, won out.