One more murderous gang of cutthroats to spread the word of the mysterious monster prowling the midnight streets. One more victim saved by the ghostly beast of the night.
He turned his head for his first real look at the woman when a sudden burst of pain ripped through his skull and his brain exploded with a dazzle of fireworks. His gaze narrowed on the upraised plank gripped in the woman’s shaking hands. The plank swung down, the fireworks became a bomb blast, and darkness rose up like a wave to swallow him whole.
“Wake up. Please wake up,” Callista whispered as she shook the man by his shoulder.
He groaned, blinking bleary, unfocused eyes. “Go ’way, Mac. Head’s splitting. Whisky . . . too much . . .” Then he slumped back against the wooden post he’d been lashed to, wrists taut behind him.
She pulled her shawl tighter around her shoulders against the attic’s chill and shook him again. “I’m not Mac, but please, you have to wake up.”
Even though long familiar with the otherworldly, what she’d seen back in the alley still seemed unbelievable. The strange blurring of air around his prone body as a swirling wind burned against her face, the prick and sting of unfamiliar magic up and down her arms as wolf gave way to naked man. Her shock lasted mere seconds, but it had been enough time for Corey’s men to return. She struggled as they grabbed her, but it was no use. She and the unconscious stranger had been brought back to the house.
She’d been locked in her bedchamber. She’d not seen what they’d done with their prisoner. Not until a jimmied lock and a quiet search had ended here in the attic among dusty trunks and broken furniture.
She shook him once more, trying very hard to keep her eyes on his face and off the rest of him, which remained as he’d been found—very, very naked. Not that it was difficult to keep her stare fixed above his shoulders. He was the most exquisite man she’d ever seen. A face like a fallen angel, all chiseled angles and stern lines, a stubborn chin, a straight nose, and a sinfully full mouth. His blond hair curled against his neck, slightly longer than fashion allowed, but obviously cut by a very good barber. In fact, even without clothes to label class or rank, it was easy to perceive he was no Whitechapel thatch-gallows. From the impossibly broad shoulders to the well-defined, muscular body, the man oozed elegance and the confidence that comes with wealth. Hard to manage being nude and trussed like a Christmas goose awaiting the farmer, but the gentleman did it in spades. The only incongruity was his back, which bore horrible scars as if he’d been through a war—or two. Still, that only added to the raw physicality of the man. If that were possible.
Her gaze snapped back to his face and off his . . . “Can you hear me? Please say something.” Who knew how much time she had before Branston checked on her—or the prisoner. She needed to speak with the man first. She needed to find out who he was.
She needed to find out what he was.
He opened his eyes, the vacancy now replaced with a razor-keen stare. He jerked, coming up hard against his bonds, his gaze flicking down over the silver chain interlacing the thin cord at his ankles. “Fucking bollocks,” he grunted. “Damned bastard Fey-blood.”
He might look aristocratic Mayfair, but his vocabulary came straight from the St. Giles stews. “Can you hear me?” she asked again. “Do you know who you are? Do you remember anything?”
“Of course I bloody well hear you.” For the first time, he seemed to take her in, that frightening, steel-edged gaze raking her like a sword point. “You’re the minx that clobbered me over the head.”
She slumped, her breath heaving out in a sigh. “I’d hoped you might not remember that part.”
“Do you always bash in the heads of your rescuers?” He worked at his wrists before leaving off with a small moan that might have been frustration or pain. He looked pale, great shadows pooling beneath his eyes, his chest heaving in short gasps. “Fuck all,” he muttered. “Bloody silver. No wonder I feel like shit on a stick.” His gaze flicked back to her. “Here to smash another great piece of wood down on my skull, Fey-blood?”
She frowned. “Why do you keep calling me that?”
“It’s what you are, isn’t it?” He snorted, once more working at his wrists. “Caught by a damned Other,” he muttered under his breath.
“You were coming to my rescue?”
He paused to scowl at her. “That was the idea. Seems you weren’t in as desperate straits as I thought. Maybe those bastards had a perfectly legitimate reason for cornering you. If I were untied, I might throttle you myself.”
She shuffled another arm’s length away. The knots held for now, but who knew—he might be strong enough to free himself or turn back into a wolf and gnaw his way out.
“Where am I, Fey-blood?” the man asked, glancing about the sparse attic.
She didn’t like his tone, but then, she couldn’t fault him for being angry if he had in fact been trying to rescue her from Corey’s villainous crew. “You’re in a house just off Queen Street in Soho—for now.”
A corner of his mouth curled up in a grimace, dimple flashing. “Wondering what to do with me?”
She sat back on her knees, arms folded in her lap. “If I know my brother, he’ll know exactly what to do with you.”
“Why is that not a comfort?” He closed his eyes, sagging back against the beam. By now, his skin had gone clammy, and shudders ran through his body. Was he ill? Had she hit him harder than she thought?
“May I ask you a question?” she ventured.
“Turnabout’s fair play,” he answered without opening his eyes. “Go ahead.”
“Who are you?”
“The name’s David. Anything else?”
“What are you?”
This time a dry snort of laughter broke from his chapped lips, and she was once more subjected to a stare that could melt steel. “Didn’t take long to get round to that. I assumed you’d know exactly what I was—hence the bash over the head and the silver chains.” He shot a look at his ankles, which by now had swollen and turned an ugly shade of purple.
“What has silver to do with it? Or you?”
“You really don’t know?” He laughed again, though it no longer held the angry edge of earlier. Instead it was almost with pride that he said, “Just my thrice-damned luck. Clubbed over the head and lashed to a post by a Fey-blood who’s never heard of the Imnada.”
“But shifters died out ages ago. How have you managed to hide from the world without anyone finding out?”
Interesting. Fey magic fairly shimmered off her, yet she gazed on him with wonder rather than revulsion. In fact, her power seemed to shine right through her skin and gilded her dark brown hair with strands of butter yellow, auburn, and burnished copper. David had always enjoyed beautiful women, and this one, while not his typical style—her chin was a little too narrow, her mouth a little too generous, and her eyes a muddy hazel without even the flecks of gold that typically signified one with the blood and magic of the Fey—still possessed a certain quality that held his eye and piqued his interest.
That or he was still reeling from the effects of a blow to the head.
Perhaps this was all part of an extremely elaborate dream in which he chatted with a lovely young woman about the Imnada clans while chained nude to a post. Not actually the strangest dream he’d ever had, but certainly the most vivid. Though he supposed if he were dreaming, her gaze would not be locked on his face as if her life depended on it, and her hands would not be white-knuckled in her lap. Instead, she’d be . . . He smiled. And her hands would be . . . His groin tightened.
“Why would you hide?” she asked earnestly, tearing through the shreds of his fantasy.
He sighed while envisioning glaciers, icebergs, his housekeeper’s warty bulldog features, all in the hope of reducing his burgeoning erection. This situation was awkward enough without humiliating himself.
“Hiding is easy. The human race tends to ignore what they can’t explain. The Imnada don’t fit into their neat and tidy view of the world, so we don’t exist.”
She cocked her head and continued to eye him the way he imagined a botanist might look at a particularly odd new species of fungus. A change from the usual practiced flirtations and seductive half-smiles offered by the typical females of his acquaintance. He knew how to behave around those women. This one didn’t play by the rules. Instead, she stared at him as if she wanted to understand him, not undress him. Not that she needed to. He
