Rage boiled up from the corners of his soul; rage and brutality and a desire to rend his enemy limb from limb until victory was assured. Muscles tightened, and his blood ran hot and fast through his veins. As his aspect fought to break free, his vision narrowed, time stretching, pain receding, his mind aflame. Oakham became Beskin. And this time David would finish what he started. He would kill the man who’d taken his life from him with fire and sword and left him with nothing but a slow, excruciating death, exiled from his own kind.
With a savage cry ripping up through his throat and a twist and a shift of his weight, David slammed Oakham facedown in the dirt, bending his arm so far behind him that he could feel Oakham’s tendons grinding and bones creaking. “Mother of All, I’m going to enjoy killing you, Beskin, you son of a bastard.”
“There won’t be any killing this morning.” A cold blade touched David just beneath his chin. The prick of it shocked him back into himself, and the wolf fled as if it had never been, leaving him shaky and sick.
“Nan? I’ll not have you interfere,” Oakham gasped.
Oakham, David remembered . . . not Beskin. This was not the enforcer struggling against a quick snap of the neck. David had come close to committing murder, blind to all but his own vengeance. Was this what he’d come to? Is this how far he’d fallen in the years since his sentencing? The wolf was his aspect; he wore its shape and possessed its soul. But it did not control him.
He was not the monster the Other labeled him—yet.
“I’m saving your life, you stupid git,” the woman scoffed.
Oakham spat, but the woman’s blade held firm and David rose slowly to his feet, pulled back from the brink by the veriest hairsbreadth.
Callista tried to lead him away from the crowd, but he stood with his hands on his knees as he sucked in air, hoping to calm his raw nerves. The woman knelt by Oakham, her long black hair caught up in a scarf, her stomach distended in late pregnancy.
“You should thank me, Nan,” Oakham whined as she helped him to his feet. “One less girl will have her heart broken by the likes of pretty boy here.”
“That’s for Cally to decide. It’s her heart.” She focused her ire on David. “And you—I know my brother has the thick skull of a dumb bear, but you? What’s your excuse?” She didn’t wait for an answer. “Cally, you can put your things in the wagon there. We’ll share what we have in return for your help, and we can always use another strong back for the heavy lifting.”
David felt blood seeping down his collar where the girl’s blade had broken the skin.
“Thank you, Nan. I can’t tell you how grateful we are,” Callista answered.
Nan’s hand curved unconsciously around her swollen belly, her contemptuous gaze leveled on David. “I told Sam it was your business, but you take care, Cally.” She lifted her knife. “If this fellow hurts you, I just might finish what I started.”
“Hold still.”
David flinched as Callista dabbed at the cut above his eye. “It hurts, damn it.”
“That’s because you’re not holding still,” she answered impatiently.
Callista had dragged him away from the wagons, following a narrow track down a hill and into the wooded copse. They walked until the only sounds that met the ear were birdsong and the chuckle of a lazy creek. David had allowed himself to be led, but she knew he remained on edge. She felt the coiled tension in his body as he knelt, the hard set of his jaw beneath her fingers as she angled his head and pushed the hair back from his forehead to better attend to the long, ugly gash.
If Nancy Oakham hadn’t interfered, how far would the fight between the men have gone? David had come away with a few cuts and bruises, but Sam, whose mastery of knife and pistol was dwarfed only by his prowess with fists, had stumbled like a drunkard to his wagon, shaking his shaggy head as if unsure how he’d ended in the dirt at a pretty London boy’s mercy.
Callista could have told him.
She had seen the moment when David had become more than a man and less than completely human. She’d stood transfixed as the mask was peeled away to reveal the dangerous Imnada soul beneath the human exterior. Animal bloodlust burned hot and cruel in his steel gaze, his movements too quick for Sam to follow, his strength too great for Sam to withstand.
Yet when it was done and David stood, out of breath and blood dripping, there was nothing left of the feral viciousness but a grim press of white lips and fists clenched and bruised. Then he looked up, their eyes met, and his torment shone clear in his hunter’s stare. It lasted but the space of a breath before vanishing, but it was more than long enough for Callista to recognize his suave care-for-nothing attitude as a ruse. She was a necromancer. She understood ghosts.
He sucked in another breath, trying to pull away, but her fingers tightened on his chin. “If you stopped moving about, this wouldn’t hurt so much.”
He offered her an indignant stare. “If you wouldn’t keep jamming that cloth into my scalp, it wouldn’t hurt at all.”
“Are you always this whiny?”
“Are you always this tyrannical?”
“You’ll have to ask my brother.”
“I’d rather not. Our last conversation was bad for my health.”
Refusing the smile hovering at the edges of her mouth, Callista dipped the cloth back in the stream, wrung it out, and continued cleaning dirt from the bloody gash.
“I don’t know if you’ve noticed, Miss Hawthorne,” David said, “but the longer I’m with you, the longer grows the list of people who want to kill me. Where does it end? In my grave?”
“Stay away from Sam, and we’ll be fine.”
“And if he insults you again?”
“I lived for seven years at the mercy of a brother who hated me from birth. Insults mean nothing to me, but your dying will.”
“You really do care.” A smile lit his eyes.
She sighed and sat back on her haunches. “There. I think you’ll live.”
He pulled himself up on the stream bank. Stalked a few paces away before he clutched the tail of his shirt in dismay. “Brilliant. I have one shirt left and it’s covered in filth. This trip just gets better and better.”
“The mess we’re in, and you’re concerned about a soiled shirt?” He looked like such a pouty little boy, she couldn’t help herself. She laughed.
“Glad you find it so amusing,” he said, sulking.
“I find
He watched her with those piercing gray eyes that seemed to cut right through to her very thoughts. “Has it been so long, then?”
“Long?”
“Since you laughed.”
She tried shrugging off his question, though he’d cut closer to the mark than she appreciated. “I haven’t had much reason for laughter.”
“Then I’ll have to give you one, because your whole face lights up and your eyes sparkle. You’re very beautiful, Callista Hawthorne”—he grinned—“for a Fey-blood.”
Backhanded or not, butterflies swooped around her stomach at the unexpected compliment. Before she could think of a witty reply, David knocked her for a second loop by shedding his boots, tossing his shirt onto the grass, and wading into the stream up to his waist. The water lapped low against his hips and the rippled muscles of his abdomen. Even sporting an ugly collage of purple and black bruises, he managed to exude enough raw sensuality to turn her insides to warm mush.
“If you drown, I won’t come fish you out,” she called, praying he didn’t notice the scorching heat burning its way into her cheeks.
He gave her another toothy smile and dropped beneath the surface like a stone. She counted off the seconds until he emerged with a splash and a wet flick of his hair off his face. Water sluiced over his broad shoulders, trickled against his neck, skimmed down his muscled torso. Drops clung to his golden skin and slid like tears over his stubbled cheeks.
