Cursed Kiss (Paranormal Romance) (19 page)

All morning he'd worn an air of cool detachment that she hoped was due to nerves about the visit to Taldom and not due to anything she'd done. He did seem to blow hot and cold. She could never quite work him out.

Luka cleared his throat. "It's not too late to change your mind and let me go alone. There's bound to be a confrontation with Monique." He addressed his comment to Pablo, but she knew it was meant for her as well. He hoped to change her mind by using Pablo's fear to make him stay behind. Luka would then try to persuade her to stay and keep Pablo company.

He wanted to protect her, but Monique was her problem as much as his.

Clare laid a supportive hand on Pablo's arm. She understood Luka's concern over Pablo, and she shared it. But Pablo had made it clear he wouldn't stay here on his own. "It's too late to start changing our plans. We need to focus on what's to come."

"Very well. Let me pass through first." He patted the hilt of his sword. "I'm the only one who's armed to defend myself, and I can speak the language."

Clare narrowed her eyes. His points made sense but she didn't like it. "I'm not sure. It might be best for me to go through first in case Monique is in her bedroom."

Luka shook his head. "Once you pass through you'll not be able to hold the window open for us."

"Okay. I didn't think of that. You go first, then, but be careful." She longed to touch him. It was getting more difficult to remember she mustn't.

He gave her a brief, tight smile.

She drew in a breath and faced the wall that had opened for them last time. "Here goes nothing."

Clare closed her eyes and concentrated on the mental image she had of Monique's bedroom: the heavy four-poster bed and dark red drapes, the metal rings set in the wall, the old oak door with an arched top.

"There," Pablo said.

She opened her eyes. The wall had started to shimmer. She concentrated on maintaining her mental image as the haze cleared to reveal the familiar view of Monique's room through the mirror. "That was easy."
Too easy
.

"Well done," Luka said softly. His gaze met hers and pain flared in the depths of his eyes. "I love you, Clare." Luka clasped Pablo's arm. "I love you too, my friend."

He stepped into the misty opening of the portal and a horrible feeling of loss coursed through her. Something was wrong. She couldn't let him go. With all her focus, she willed the portal to close and reject Luka. Instead it allowed him to pass and the shimmering image took him.

"I didn't send him," Clare shouted at Pablo, lurching forward to try to follow. But now the portal did close and propelled her back into the room, as though she'd bounced off it. "Monique must have fixed it somehow."

Although the portal refused to let them pass, the image of Monique's room was still visible on the wall and Luka was there.

He turned to face them and she beckoned furiously. "Come back. It's a setup."

Luka pulled his sword from its scabbard and held it up.

"He's going to smash the mirror," Pablo burst out. The sword swung down and a moment later the image disappeared.

"He must have planned this." Clare seethed. No doubt he was trying to protect her and Pablo, but she wanted to make her own choices. She would not leave him alone to face Monique. "We'll have to go to Scotland and use the portal there."

"We don't need to go all that way. Luka owns other properties in Europe that have portals. I'll show you the map."

They ran up the steps and headed along the hallway to the main staircase. Pablo led her to Luka's office, unrolled a map, and spread it on the desk. Colored dots marked various historic properties scattered across Europe.

Clare pointed at a dot on the French border with Germany, but Pablo shook his head. "That one's still bricked up. There's one we could use near Geneva in Switzerland."

Smoothing the map, Clare considered the distance between dots. "You know, the nearest portal is the one at the Moray production facility near Amsterdam."

The last person she wanted to see was Edward, but she knew the Dutch portal was regularly used to access Monique's castle, and right now her top priority was reaching Luka.

***

After smashing the mirror portal, Luka wiped the specks of glass off his sword. He hated betraying Clare and Pablo's trust and leaving them behind, but he did not want them hurt in the fallout from Monique's vendetta against him. She wasn't used to people standing up to her and fighting back. She didn't take kindly to it as he'd discovered to his cost.

He glanced around Monique's bedroom. The sight of metal rings set in the wall sent a chill through him. Dark stains on the stone beneath the rings confirmed that Monique still indulged her perverted desires. This reinforced his belief that he'd been right to come alone.

Luka strode to the door and listened. If he could get out of this castle and steal a horse, he had friends who would help him. All was quiet, but his instincts warned him to be careful. He slipped out the door into the empty corridor, chose a direction, and proceeded cautiously. At the top of some tower steps, he glanced out a window to see forest stretching away as far as he could see.

He guessed this place was on the eastern edge of Vlad lands, in Jaska's territory. That made sense from what Clare had told him about Monique's arrangement with his cousin. If it benefitted Jaska, he'd always been ready to knife people in the back, even when he was a boy.

Cautiously, Luka descended the stairs, his armor clanking with each step. So far he hadn't seen a soul. It was quiet. Too quiet. Warning prickled down his spine. He had a bad feeling about this. At the base of the stairs, he had the choice of a corridor leading into the depths of the castle or a small door to the outside.

He wrenched on the metal handle and peered into the stable yard. Monique stood there, clothed in an emerald gown, her long dark hair blowing in the wind. A company of foot soldiers flanked her, swords drawn and ready.

A sound at his back alerted him he was boxed in. Two men stood on the stairs and others approached along the corridor. He had no escape.

Luka snatched a breath and pulled the door wide. Striding out, he held his head high. He was damned if he'd give the witch the satisfaction of seeing him cowed.

"Well, well. Finally. I was growing weary of waiting for you." Monique came forward, a small smile of satisfaction tugging at her red lips. Clare was right, the woman looked even younger than before. Her resemblance to Clare was unsettling, but it took only a few moments to see the similarity was purely physical.

While Clare's beauty was enhanced by her ready smile and the kindness in her eyes, the hard, cruel set of Monique's features detracted from her looks.

Every nerve in Luka's body fired on high alert, his senses primed for battle. Although he held his sword loose at his side, he was ready to fight, even if he didn't want to. "Step aside and let me pass. I have family matters to deal with."

Monique laughed and gestured to her men to attack. They came at him in waves, five at a time. He raised his sword, slashed, thrust, sidestepped, and turned, using all the moves he had practiced day after day with Pablo. Some of the soldiers fell, but there were too many of them.

Blades clashed against his chain mail and glanced off his breastplate, shooting pain along his limbs and knocking the breath from his lungs. He went down, his knees thumping against the cobbles. Still he tried to defend himself, but he was lost and he knew it. Perhaps Pablo had been right. Perhaps he should have stayed on Earth.

"Hold!" Monique bellowed in the Taldomian tongue. The soldiers pulled back, swords still pointing at him. Beaten, bleeding, and gasping for breath, Luka blinked sweat from his eyes and watched the witch approach.

He found the strength to duck his head away from her hand when she reached to touch him. Her lips pressed into a hard line. "You never did know when you were beaten, did you." She pulled something from the folds of her skirt and jabbed it at his arm. A piercing pain took him by surprise. A hypodermic syringe was stuck through a gap in his chain mail. The needle must have penetrated the metal links.

"What's in that?" he said. But even as the words passed between his lips, the world around him swam and started to spin. Then everything went black.

***

Edward Gregore sat at the desk in the old Amsterdam office and stared at the sheet of figures in front of him. He didn't remember finishing them, but that was happening a lot lately. His consciousness kept drifting away only to return a short while later, leaving him with blank moments. He preferred this disused office. It was quiet with no people around to look at him strangely.

The door burst open. Clare Moray marched in wearing jeans and a tight pink shirt that molded her figure. The Spaniard walked in behind her and closed the door. They shouldn't be here now, or he didn't think they should. It was hard to remember.

The image of a fair-haired woman formed in his mind and for a moment he forgot where he was. A dark pain pressed in on him, a sense of loss that swirled and sucked like a black hole. Who was this woman who called to him, who cared for him?

"Edward, can you hear me?"

He jolted back to the room at Clare's words.

"Is there something wrong with you?" she demanded.

He shrugged in the way he'd observed humans shrug many times. He'd had human gestures and tones of voice down pat years ago.

"When are you going to see Monique again?"

He shouldn't tell her. Monique would be angry. He smiled. "I'm going through tomorrow at ten."

Clare straightened and looked at the Spaniard. "We're coming too."

Monique wasn't expecting them. "As you like."

Clare frowned at him. "You're not going to try to stop us?"

"No."

"Were you expecting us?"

He caught the hint of suspicion in her voice. Why should he be expecting them? He chased the thought around but couldn't catch it. "I don't think so."

Clare narrowed her eyes on him. Even when she was suspicious, her lips curved at the corners as though she was about to smile. Monique's lips were hard, a red slash on her face like a wound. A sensation fluttered around him and made him blink. Why had he hurt Clare when it was Monique he wanted to damage? He let the thought slide away into the dark pit of uncertainties.

Edward swiveled his chair and looked out the window. Dusk was falling outside, the light fading. He checked his watch. "I'll pass through the window in thirteen hours, three minutes, and forty-two seconds." He liked to be precise.

"We'll find a hotel for the night," Clare said. "Where do you stay, Edward?"

"I stay here."

"Don't you need to sleep?"

"I do puzzles."

"What?"

He stood. The Spaniard moved in front of Clare protectively. Edward ignored them and pulled open the door on his games cupboard. He held up the sheaf of papers bearing complex mathematical brainteasers he'd downloaded from the Internet. He picked up the Rubik's Cube from the back of the shelf and turned it in his hand. "I used to do this but it bores me."

"You sit here and do puzzles all night?" Clare asked.

He nodded and smiled in the way he knew people liked.

"Edward, do you know what you are?"

"I'm the chief financial officer of the Moray Corporation."

"No. Not your job. What kind of being you are."

He let the sheaf of papers fall to the floor and sat at his desk. "Monique created me to run Moray." Monique had told him that so many times he repeated it without thinking.

He looked down at his hands spread on the table before him, hands that appeared to be like everyone else's hands, but had no feeling. He remembered the shell of the man hanging in Monique's room. "I'm not made of flesh. I feel no pain." He lifted the small sword-shaped letter opener out of the desk organizer, placed the point on the back of his hand, and pushed. It slid through with little resistance.

"Agh!" Clare turned away and covered her face.

He withdrew the blade, and the hole in his hand closed up.

Edward didn't understand Clare's reaction. Monique laughed when he did that.

Clare glanced at him. Her initial hostility had faded. She almost looked…sorry for him. She dropped into the chair opposite. "Have you never felt pain?"