Shadow's Curse

to buy a nation and the influence to rule it, though he chose to spend most of his time and attention on his vast Cornish estate.

Among the Imnada, the heavyset bear of a man with his shock of white hair and the ice-blue eyes of a hawk was known simply as the Morieux, hereditary leader of the five clans, whose word was law.

David simply called him a fucking mealymouthed cocksucker.

“Do you blame Gray?” David asked. “His grandfather could have saved him. He could have saved all of us. But if Gray wants revenge, a nice blade between dear Grandpapa’s ribs would be a hell of a lot easier than a revolution.”

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 and a dying Fey-blood’s vicious spell that had trapped them all within the prison of the curse. Nor did they talk of the cure that fast became 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 spell, they’d 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 whisky bottle.

“Your message has been delivered, Captain. Care 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 the click of a heel on the parquet. David snatched up his 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 lay low while the enforcers are close. I want you to look after him.”

“Me?”

“While Gray’s away, you’re the only one I trust. Bianca’s been through enough. I can’t place her 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 trouble when he’d bought into Gray’s mutinous rhetoric. It wasn’t David’s problem nor his cause.

“Just until things quiet down,” Mac pleaded.

“You and Gray are deluding yourselves if you believe you’ll make our lives better by defying the Os-sine. 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 delusions.

“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 clan Gather to have the sentence of emnil pronounced. And not even when they’d burned away his clan mark, leaving his back a charred wreck and making death seem like mercy. Mac did not beg. He suffered. He endured. It was 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 whisky. 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. “The Ossine on Kineally’s trail is a man by the name of Beskin.”

David’s back twitched with remembered pain, the whisky 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, David would do it gladly, but he glared at Mac for playing his trump. “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 brutality and chaos of London’s fetid alleys and dank winding passages, when finding 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 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 steelyard . . .”

“. . . 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.

“You don’t 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 boot-licking poltroon took for granted, Victor Corey, king of the stews, scrabbled to grasp. But grasp it he would. 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 might not respect him, but it feared him. An emotion that served him twice as well.

Nervousness flickered now in Hawthorne’s gaze. Corey relaxed back in his seat, taking a sip of his brandy. “Who or what are Imnada? They must be important if they kept you from our meeting.”

Hawthorne licked his lips and 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 grass on a hill 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 paid them back for their treachery—”

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