AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“So glad you could join me, sir.” The woman smiled coquettishly as she leveled a snub-nosed pistol at his chest.
Miss Helena Roseingrave strode the room like a field commander. A steel gleam in her dark eyes. A testament to the warrior goddess Scathach’s training from the breadth of her shoulders to the belligerent jut of her chin.
“Why should I believe anything you tell me?” she spat. “You’re no more than Douglas’s conjured killer.”
“Ask Lady Sabrina yourself.”
She regarded him with an intense stare that—more so than the weapon—had held him immobile through their short cab ride and the exchange that followed. “Perhaps I shall.”
“It’s Máelodor you should be hunting. Not Douglas,” Daigh growled.
“We executed Máelodor in Paris years ago. Douglas, on the other hand, is still a wanted fugitive. Gervase St. John is no rogue bounty hunter, he’s a trusted member of the brotherhood.”
“So you’ll ignore my warnings as the ravings of a madman?”
“You’re worse than a madman, aren’t you . . . Lazarus.” She smiled with glacier warmth.
The presence screamed its pleasure. Punched against the insides of Daigh’s skull with a fist like a mace. He jerked in his chair. Bit back a grunt of pain. Sweat beading his brow. He’d not let it take him over. Not let it win. It was what Máelodor wanted. Control. Domination. Damnation.
She watched his inner conflict with scientific indifference. “He lives inside you. His blood fed your creation. His madness lit the fire beneath your bones. And while you both exist, he’ll always be there, infecting your mind with his evil.”
“I’ll fight him off.”
Another sharp shrug. “You can’t hold out against his will. He’s your maker.”
“So end my misery. Kill me.”
Her eyes flew to his, the longing to do just that starkly apparent. “Much as I’d like to, I can’t. As a Domnuathi and warded by Douglas’s Unseelie spells, you’re inviolate to all but the most powerful magics. Those wielded by the Fey themselves. You’re enthralled to your master until he tires of you.”
His flesh crawled against the venom of St. John’s hissed words. His seeking hands. His sickening kiss. “I’m no man’s slave,” he snarled.
She cocked her head, gazed upon him with steel-dark eyes. “You’re the twisted sum of your creator’s ambitions.”
“As will Arthur be if what you say is true and their goal is to resurrect him.” And by the gods, what a thought.
“It won’t get that far. We’ll find Douglas before he can locate and breach the High King’s tomb.”
“And after you capture Douglas? After you realize it’s Máelodor you should fear? By then it’ll be too late.”
She remained infuriatingly placid, but all the colder for it. “A chance the brotherhood will take.”
Her words, uttered in such a calm manner, gave no hint to the crash of mage energy she unleashed.
It toppled him from his chair. He screamed, writhing like a beast caught in a trap. And gave himself to the uncoiling power of the presence. Let it pour from him in a scalding torrent of magic and strength.
Scrambling to his knees, he deflected her spell with a curse of his own that had her reeling. And left him stunned.
He could wield that much magic? Another secret lost in the unreachable depths of his forgotten memories.
But once discovered, the powers flooded his senses. Ability and then instinct controlling the mage energy surging along his bloodstream like oil burning on water.
He sucked air into his collapsed lungs as he parried the strongest of Roseingrave’s attacks while tempering his own response. Difficult to do as she pummeled him with spell after devastating spell, but he would not be goaded into retaliation. He needed her alive. Needed her willing to listen.
“Why?” he squeezed through teeth clenched against the searing pain centered at the base of his brain.
“I’m sworn to protect humanity from things like you.”
As if she’d conjured it from air and speed, she fisted a dagger. The blade’s flash caught out of the corner of his eye. The weapon’s descent barely missing him as he dodged out of its path.
