Demon's Curse (Imnada Brotherhood) (42 page)

David closed his eyes on a string of profanity. Dropped his arm and his blade.

Captain Mac Flannery.

“Is this how you greet all your guests or am I special?” Mac snarled, his cat-slanted green eyes narrowed in fury.

“You’ll always be special to me,” David quipped with a smile despite his shaking knees and the renewed rush of dizziness spinning his head. He tossed the knife with a clatter onto a nearby table. “But if you lurk around doorways in the middle of the night, you can’t complain about the less than friendly welcome.”

“I knocked, but I expect your housekeeper’s retired for the night.”

David cast a glance at the mantel clock. “It’s two in the morning. Of course she’s retired.” He poured himself a drink. On an afterthought, he poured one for Mac, who was rubbing at his waistcoat. “What the hell are you doing here at this godforsaken time of night anyway? Shouldn’t you be home making mad, passionate love to your new bride?”

“I wish. I came to let you know there’s an enforcer skulking around London.”

“Let him skulk. I’ve done nothing wrong, unlike some people who are up to their necks in traitorous revolution.” David settled into a chair. It felt good after the busy night he’d had. He tossed back the whiskey, feeling the burn all the way to his toes. “Much as I appreciate the warning, couldn’t it have waited until morning?”

“You’ve always been more of a night owl. I see things haven’t changed.”

“Darkness suits me,” David said with a sly curve of his lips. “Does Gray know about this meddlesome Ossine?”

“Gray’s gone north to Radcliffe. I haven’t heard from him in weeks. I’m starting to worry.”

“And so you should. If the enforcers ever discover his involvement with the rebel Imnada and their Fey-blood conspirators, he’ll end in pieces and us right alongside him.”

Mac rubbed his temples as if his head pained him. “I know, but Gray doesn’t listen. Personally, I think this whole rebellion is his way of getting back at his grandfather.”

“Do you blame him? The old man could have saved him. He could have saved all of us. Personally, I think a nice blade between dear Grandpapa’s ribs would be much easier, but to each his own.”

A tense silence sprang up, though neither strove to break it. The three friends had reached a tacit agreement. They never spoke of the last chaotic days of war when a dying Fey-blood had set his vicious spell upon the three of them. Nor did they talk of the cure they had discovered that had fast become a deadly addiction. They could not stop. They could not continue. Either choice brought sickness and, finally, death. In their struggle to free themselves of the enchantment, they had ended trapped and tainted by the magic of the Fey—again.

Mac found solace from his pain in love, Gray in revenge.

David found it at the bottom of a whiskey bottle.

“So, now that your message has been delivered, care to stay for a drink—or three?” He started to rise.

“There’s another . . . small matter.”

David sighed, dropping back into his chair. “There always is.”

A shuffling step sounded from just outside the door followed by a click of a heel on the parquet. David snatched up his silver blade and was halfway to the door before Mac grabbed him. “Wait.”

David swung around, eyes wild. “What the hell—”

“Caleb!” Mac called. “Show yourself. It’s all right.”

A thin man with a long, pockmarked face and dingy brown hair stepped into the study. His eyes darted around the room as if gauging safety.

“St. Leger won’t harm you. Will you, David?”

“That depends on who the devil he is.” He turned once more to the sideboard. Mother of All, but he needed another drink.

“This is Caleb Kineally,” Mac began. “He’s—”

“Imnada.” David finished Mac’s sentence at the first mental brush of shapechanger magic against his mind. “I take it he’s one of Gray’s rebels.”

Mac ran a hand over his haggard face, and for the first time David noticed the waxen pallor of his friend’s features, the smudges hollowing his eyes. “Aye. He needs to lie low while that enforcer’s on the loose.”

“Is there a reason you’re telling me all this?”

“I want you to look after him.”

“Me?”

“While Gray’s gone, you’re the only one I trust to keep him safe. Bianca’s been through enough already. I can’t ask her to place herself in danger again. Not with a baby on the way.”

David’s resolve wavered at mention of Mac’s out-clan bride, but he shoved his better nature aside. Mac had asked for the trouble when he’d bought into Gray’s mutinous rhetoric. It wasn’t David’s problem nor his cause.

“It’s just until things quiet down,” Mac pleaded.

“No. It’s too dangerous. You and Gray can delude yourselves into thinking you’ll make our lives better by defying the Ossine. I know the truth. You’ll end up dead. But you won’t take me with you.”

“We’re dead either way though, aren’t we?” Mac answered. The simple truth of those words hit David like a kick to the stomach.

So much for tacit agreements.

“Please, David.”

He’d never heard Mac beg. Not in Charleroi with battle looming and the Fey-blood’s spell singeing their veins like acid. Not when he’d been brought in chains before the stern-faced Gather to have the sentence of
emnil
pronounced. And not even when his back had been a charred wreck and death seemed a mercy. Mac did not beg. He suffered. He endured. It’s part of what David had always admired about his friend.

“You once told me the dead were the only ones who might make a difference,” Mac said. “You once believed in the cause as much as any of us.”

“Did I? Must have been drunk at the time.” David tossed back his whiskey. Was this his third or his fourth? He’d lost count.

Mac eyed him over the glass with a last-throw-of-the-dice look on his face. “What if I told you the name of the Ossine on Kineally’s trail is a man by the name of Beskin?”

David’s back twitched with remembered pain, the whiskey turning sour in his gut. Eudo Beskin remained in his head as a brutal nightmare from which there was no waking. If keeping Kineally safe thwarted the dead-hearted
bastard, he would do it gladly. “Very well. He can stay. But that doesn’t make me one of you.”

Mac smiled his success as he placed his glass upon a sideboard. “Scoff all you like, St. Leger.” He tossed a newspaper on the sofa open to the headline
MONSTER OF THE MEWS PREVENTS MALICIOUS MURDER
. “But you’re one of us whether you admit it or not.”

*   *   *

The man sat at his usual corner table, his plate emptied of dinner, a brandy before him. Those in the crowded chophouse who noticed him at all dismissed him without a second glance. Just as he’d planned it when he set the spell in motion that repelled eyes and minds, allowing him to disappear while remaining in plain sight. A useful gift. In his early days on the street, it had kept him alive in the chaos of London’s slums when food had been his primary goal. But as his skills grew so did his ambitions. After all, why be given such a talent if it wasn’t to be used?

“. . . big as a bear with teeth like a lion’s and claws like the barber’s razor. Seen it myself . . .”

“. . . this before or after you’d spent your week’s pay on blue ruin . . .”

“. . . found old Moseby last week, gutted like a mackerel in an alley near the steel yard . . .”

“. . . wager his old woman did him in rather than some slavering monster . . .”

The nearby conversation grated on his already strained temper. He’d not come to hear gossip from two red-nosed drunken knaves with less in their heads than they had in their pockets. He checked his watch, sipped sparingly at his drink. Half his success came as a result of keeping a clear head among a rabble of half-soused alley scum.

The door opened and Branston Hawthorne scrambled in as if he had a constable on his tail. Out of breath,
he darted his suspicious eyes round the room before sidling over to slide into the seat opposite. “So sorry,” he wheezed. “A group of us were meeting to discuss these rumors about the Imnada. Hope you weren’t waiting long.”

“
What
are Imnada?” Victor Corey sipped unconcernedly at his brandy. It wouldn’t do to show too much interest. Keep them guessing. Keep them off their stride. Never show your hand. That had always been his way.

“Don’t you know about the shapechangers?” Hawthorne asked, disbelief creeping into his voice.

“Damn your eyes! Would I ask the question if I knew?”

Corey hated that he must rely on fools like Branston Hawthorne to instruct him in a magical world that should have been his birthright. He hated that the knowledge this bootlicking poltroon took for granted, Victor Corey, king of the stews, scrabbled to grasp. But grasp it he had. It had taken years to fully understand his power, both its limits and its possibilities. The results had gained him wealth and influence, if not admiration. No matter. The world may not respect him, but it feared him. An emotion that served him twice as well.

It flickered now in Hawthorne’s gaze. Corey relaxed back in his seat, swigging his brandy as if it were the gin he craved. “Who or what are Imnada? They must be important if they kept you from our meeting.”

Hawthorne licked his lips, rubbed the side of his nose with one pudgy finger. “Yes . . . I mean no . . . I mean of course. I’m happy to explain. The Imnada are shapechangers. Used to be plentiful as the coins in your pocket until they betrayed Arthur at the last battle. Their war chief cut the king down where he stood”—he snapped his fingers—“just like that. But the Other showed them. For their treachery they—”

Corey scowled. “
King
Arthur? Is that the Arthur we’re talking about?”

“Aye, last great king of our kind, old Arthur was. Said to be more Fey than human. But it didn’t stop the Imnada from doing him in. He bled same as anyone with a sword stuck through his gut. Afterward, the shifters were hunted down, the whole monstrous lot of them. Killed in droves like vermin until none were left . . . or so we thought, the sneaky buggers. It’s said they’ve returned bold as brass and twice as dangerous.”

Corey leaned back in his chair. “They change shape? Into what exactly?”

Hawthorne sighed as one might when confronted with a small child’s incessant questions, his long exhale choked off at a single cold stare from his host. “They shift from man to ruthless wild beast. As soon as kill you as look at you. The Other are organizing. We’ll not be taken unawares by a bunch of dirty shifters.”

“Pitchforks and torches?” Corey said smoothly. “I’d love to see a mob like that parading down Bond Street amid the hoity-toities. Give them a good scare.” He held Hawthorne’s gaze long enough for the man to shift uneasily in his seat, before glancing away with a lift of a shoulder and a wave to the barman. “Enough about your bogeymen in the night. I invited you here to find out what you plan on doing about your sister’s defiance. I don’t appreciate being made a fool of, and I’m sure you don’t want me to change my mind about our arrangement.”

He regarded Hawthorne’s unease with satisfaction. “No, of course not, Mr. Corey. You’ve been more than generous with your offer and I’m indebted to you for your patience in the matter.”

“You’re indebted to me for far more than that, Hawthorne. And I expect payment in full. The girl or the coin. Which will it be?” Though, he already knew the answer. He’d made sure Hawthorne was up to his neck in debt with no hope of repayment. Not that it had been
difficult. The man had the business acumen of a babe in the cradle.

Hawthorne straightened in his chair, his chubby face breaking into a smile. “You’ll have Callista, Mr. Corey. No worry on that score. I’ve given her a good talking-to. There won’t be any more of her foolishness.” He took a long greedy swallow of his wine, dabbing at his mouth with a napkin, unaware of the red drops flecking his neckcloth. “She can be a handful at times, but a stern husband should settle her down right quick.”

Corey smiled. Oh, he’d settle Miss Callista Hawthorne down all right. Once tamed, she’d make good bedsport. The woman was ripe for a man’s attentions. All she needed was the right man to show her the way.

But while he would enjoy introducing her to the pleasures of the flesh, it was Callista’s gift of necromancy he truly desired. She was his key into death. And when one possesses the key, one controls the door; both who goes in and, more importantly, what comes out.

Annwn was full of dark spirits bound to the deepest paths of the underworld. Dark spirits who only needed a guide to lead them up to and through the door between realms. Once that door was breached, Branston Hawthorne with his round little body and unctuous pandering would be the first to die. And from there, who knew . . .

With an army of the underworld at Corey’s command, his grip on London would tighten like a noose. They called him a gang lord.

Soon, they’d call him mayor.

Perhaps in time they’d hail him as king—or better. Arthur might have been the last great king of the Other. Victor Corey could be the next.

Some thought him mad to take a dowerless nobody as his wife, but he knew better. Callista Hawthorne would bring him the world as her marriage portion.