Duncallan said, “but it should buy you the time you’ll need to escape . . . if that’s your plan.”
“Damn Corey to hell.” David closed his eyes, but there was no blotting out the horrors imprinted upon his mind: Callista kneeling before him as he lifted his blade high. Her body limp in his arms as her life drained away. No matter how he’d run from it, this was the future awaiting him. Perhaps it was time to stop running and start fighting.
“You will go after her, won’t you?” Duncallan asked.
David took a deep breath. Then another. But the wolf would not be denied. It boiled to the surface, every heartbeat twisting him into a creature of Fey-blood nightmare. Every breath torching his body with the savagery and skill of the predator.
Corey had searched for David from one end of Great Britain to the other. Today he would find him.
Then the bastard would die.
That was the future David would focus on. That was the vision burned on his heart.
He opened his eyes to meet the Duncallans’ gold-flecked, inquiring gaze. “Of course. What are friends for?”
She paced the room where they’d locked her, a bedchamber as ostentatious as it was uncomfortable: furniture polished to a mirror shine, a chimneypiece of rose marble veined in cream, enough bric-a-brac to keep maids dusting for years, and, in the middle of the spectacle, an enormous bed decked in purple damask and crimson tassels.
Corey watched her from a seat by the fire, his smile as twisted and harsh as his mind. “Anxious for your wedding night? I am, too, sweetling, but a few hours more and I’m all yours. Even better, you’re all mine.”
“You’re mad.”
“
“Branston was a fool to entangle himself with you.”
“I’ll agree the man had the business acumen of a brainless slug. It’s best he’s dead. You should be pleased I killed him. Left under his care, you’d never have amounted to anything more than a third-rate fortune-teller in a fourth-rate circus, but with me . . .” He rose from his chair to cross to her side. Lifted his hand to touch her hair, her cheek. “With me, you’ll rise to the rank of queen.”
She refused to flinch. Instead she raked him with every ounce of dripping contempt she could muster. “Queen of the stews,” she spat. “I don’t care how you pretty yourself up, you’re still naught more than the stunted offspring of a hedge whore and a rat catcher.”
The slap knocked her to the floor, her cheek on fire. He stood above her, his scar white against the red of his face. “Your brother wasn’t wrong about one thing. He said you needed a strong whip hand.” He grabbed her by the arm, wrenching her to her feet, his breath hot on her face. “What’s a few words when we’ve a lifetime ahead of us?” He dragged her toward the bed. “I’ve a mind to shove myself between those sweet thighs. By the time I’m done, you’ll be begging for my touch.”
She dug in her heels, but he slapped her again before he shoved her down on the bed. Panic skittered cold across her skin. She couldn’t swallow. Couldn’t breathe. Her gaze locked on his white-lipped mouth, the hunger in his eyes.
“Take the gown off or I’ll cut it off you,” he hissed, pulling a blade from his waist.
She fumbled with clumsy fingers at the buttons and tapes. Slid free of the muslin, chin up and unashamed. Time, she needed time. If she closed her eyes and lay very still, perhaps he would finish with her quickly and leave. She would think of the friendly glow of a cookfire and laughter over a shared jest, quiet conversations and delicious kisses. Corey might have her body. He could not steal her memories.
He knelt over her to fondle a breast. Pinched her cruelly. Held her chin tight as he forced his tongue into her mouth, his breath sour. “Did St. Leger take you as man or beast? Did he mount you like a dog? Did he fuck you hard and fast like I will?” His face grew flushed with arousal as he shucked off his jacket and loosed his breeches. A rigid cock sprang purple from a thick bush of hair. “You do what I want when I want it or I’ll make you hurt, Callista. If I can’t have your respect, I’ll have your fear.”
Callista’s expression hardened to marble, her blood as cold as ice water.
A knock at the door slammed her heart into her throat. “Corey, sir,” a voice called through the crack. “All’s ready.”
“Right.” Corey rolled away from her and out of bed. He fastened his breeches and pulled his coat back onto his shoulders. “Our pleasure will have to wait. Duty calls.”
“You won’t win, Victor. David will find me.”
Corey’s leer became a smile of wild-eyed triumph. “I’m counting on it.”
He slipped free of the concealing shadows in a flash of speed, slaver dripping from his jaws, muscles wired taut as they ate the distance to his prey. A man guarded the main door armed with knife and musket, but his attention was all for the gathering storm clouds, their bellies slashed with green lightning.
It was an easy thing to take him unawares. A crouch, a leap, and the man dropped with a spine-snapping blow to his chest, his neck ripped wide. The wolf lifted his head to the wind, blood sliding hot down his throat. The doors opened, men tumbling like spillikins onto the gravel. They stank of sour wine and stale sweat. A silver dagger swiped down to tear into his shoulder. Another slashed at him with a blade of steel, its bite twice as sharp. It took David in the haunch. He yelped and danced away, leaving a blood trail behind.
He heard the cocking of the pistol before it exploded with smoke and flame, avoided the crush of a bullet into his skull with a wild leap that nearly pulled his shoulder from its socket. The man with the dagger was quick and cunning. He ducked beneath David’s reach, the knife falling again. David twisted away before it could slice his stomach open, but all the time he felt his strength failing. Withdrawal from the draught had left him weak and feverish, and the curse’s reemergence meant a slowing of his mind, a sickening of his body. Blue and silver flames rippled at the edges of his vision. The curse rose from the same well as the wolf. And every moment he delayed was a moment lost.
David growled, his fangs dripping with blood as he shook off the illness and surrendered himself completely to instinct and bloodlust and a savage brutality. Ignoring the jagged rake of the blade and the silver burning his flesh, he sprang. Felt the crunch of bones as he bit down, the screams and useless flailing as the man scrabbled to free himself, and the final wrench that left him armless and bleeding his life away. The wolf lunged again, his claws tearing into another man’s stomach, spilling his entrails, shredding the man’s face and then his chest. Corey’s third hireling sought to run, but the wolf brought him down, snapping his neck, smashing his skull.
Were these all the protection Corey boasted, or did the house hold more of the same, the wretched refuse of every stew and thievers’ den from London to Fort William?
David’s stomach rolled while his head pounded as if a spike had been slammed between his eyes. Blue and silver flames leapt, crackled, torched him from the inside out. He took a step and then another, but the wolf’s strength left him.
He fell to the gravel, the pain as intense as the ripping free of his signum, the curse infecting his mind, burning away his powers like acid on steel. A hot wind curled around him, the air beating like wings against his muzzle, his paws. He couldn’t breathe lest it singe his lungs. He squeezed his eyes shut. And waited.
“Here’s the little mouse now. Just in time for my big day,” a voice sneered.
Rough hands gripped David. A heavy knobbed cane descended in a blur. A white light exploded behind his eyes.
She was wed.
A ring and a few mumbled words by a bought priest, and she’d chained herself to Corey forever. Anything to stop his men from hurting David. She’d been brought a lock of his guinea-gold hair first. Then a bloody fingernail.
