Heir of Danger (28 page)

“No one’s going to happen by, Douglas. And there won’t be enough of you left for anyone to question.”

“How did I know you were going to say that?” Brendan parried a knife thrust, hammering the man a blow to the chin that should have knocked him cold, but only seemed to enrage him further—if that were possible.

With lightning speed, the
Amhas-draoi
swept out, catching Brendan a slice across his chest. A shallow, stinging gash, but enough to break his focus. Instantly, a numbing chill stole over him as the man sought to use the opportunity to bind Brendan in a web of mage energy. Already his limbs grew unresponsive, his muscles freezing over. Much longer, and he’d be unable to dodge a thrust through the heart.

Thank the gods for all those years of rote study. The counterspell swam up out of his hazy memory, released on a gasp of breath as the bonds of magic tightened across his chest. With a shout, he threw himself under the man’s clumsy swing, blood loss finally taking its toll. Another parry and roll, and Brendan was out. Nothing else stood between him and the street.

Once beyond the alley, all he would need was a moment to bend his concentration toward a cloaking spell. The invisibility of the
feth-fiada
. Anything to buy him running room.

Just as he hit the corner, a blast of battle magic pummeled him from behind, flinging him forward into the gutter, his knife spinning away.

It was like being struck by lightning. Mage energy lanced through him along fried nerves, his brain shocked into whirling confusion.

He stumbled into a stack of crates. Scraped his hands as he fell to his knees. Sweat stinging his eyes. Escape screaming in his ears.

A shout. His own or someone else’s? He didn’t stop to look. To answer.

He ran.

“Wake up,
ma puce
. You must dress quickly.”

The voice yanked her from sleep. Dropped her to earth with a dull thud.

She tried pulling the covers over her head, but the voice persisted. “Elisabeth, it is important. It is young Douglas. You must come.”

The thread of fear running beneath the words did more than the hand on her shoulder to drag her up and out of the quilts. She rubbed the sleep from her eyes, a tremor shaking her hands. The danger had finally caught them up.

“What’s happened?”

“Rogan has come with news. The
Amhas-draoi
found Douglas.”

Elisabeth forced a calm she did not feel. “Is he . . .” The words caught like glass in her throat.

“He is alive, but hurt. Helena tells me to let you sleep,
mais vous êtes son épouse
—you are his wife. It is for you to be there as well.” Madame Arana dragged her out of the quilts. “Come. We leave soon. Dress and be downstairs in ten minutes.”

And then she was gone, leaving Elisabeth shaking with cold and dread and a knowledge she wished she could wipe clear from her mind. She sat on the edge of the bed, hands braced on either side of her, staring at her toes.

She closed her eyes. The vision she’d seen in the mirror
rising in her mind’s eye as the gorge rose in her throat. Madame Arana’s admonition scraping across her heart. Her own denials pounding in her head.

Had she meant what she’d said when she’d tried to convince him of his redemption? Or had she merely been hoping to convince herself?

A thought occurred to her there in the dark with the memories thick as wraiths around her. Would this attack convince Brendan that Helena’s plan was futile? Would he decide survival meant losing himself again? Living amid strangers in a foreign land? A man with no past. And no future.

Could she let him go without a fight?

Again?

With shaking fingers, she buttoned herself into her gown. With a heart pounding unsteadily in her chest, she dressed her hair. And in nine minutes fifty-nine seconds, she was downstairs, ready to go.

He tried opening his eyes, but they seemed weighted shut, just as his arms and legs barely held the strength to move and every breath came as a struggle. Piecing together the scraps of memory, he recalled a filth-strewn alley, pain enough to fell an elephant, and a man strangely familiar to him warning him to be silent as he shoved Brendan beneath a tarpaulin.

So where the blazes was he now?

Scratchy, smelly wool beneath his cheek. A steady drip of water from somewhere nearby. The sour odors of stale alcohol and old sex.

“
Shhh,
rest easy.” A cool hand on his forehead. A woman’s voice, but not one he recognized.

He tried turning his head toward the voice, sending a sizzling twist of pain shooting down his neck into his spine, squeezing his ribs as if they might snap. He moaned and retched, the hand falling away with a tiny cry of surprise.

The curved edge of a glass was pressed to his lips, liquid running down his throat. Thick and sweet, though a medicinal bitterness lingered. A taste he recognized, though it had been long years.

“To help you sleep,” the voice comforted.

He struggled to open his eyes, to warn her about what she’d done, to heave up the viscous poison seeping into his system. Yet even as he tried to open his mouth, his weighted body seemed to cave in on itself, his breathing deepened, his guts twisted, and he knew nothing more.

“What happened?” The first words out of Helena’s mouth upon pushing open the door of the dingy dram shop. “You were supposed to be following him.”

Rogan rose from a chair, pipe clenched between his teeth, his gaze flicking over Elisabeth. “Should she be here?”

Helena’s dark eyes flashed. “My grandmother thought it best for her to be at her new husband’s deathbed.”

Elisabeth caught back a gasp, her hand tightening on Madame Arana’s.

Rogan shot her a comforting shake of his head. “Here, now, it’s not as bad as that. Lyddy’s in with him. He’s sleeping.”

“What happened, Rogan?” Helena asked.

He rubbed a tired hand over his face. “Douglas slipped his leash. I spent a half day crisscrossing this blasted city before I picked up his trail. He’d hidden his magic well. There was barely a trace to follow. I finally found him near Meath market covered in blood and out of his head with battle magic. Said he’d been set on by an
Amhas-draoi
but managed to knife him before he escaped.”

“Devil take it!” Helena muttered. “All I need is Douglas
killing one of the brotherhood for this whole scheme to unravel.”

“Let me see him,” Elisabeth interrupted, lifting her chin, squaring her shoulders.

Rogan hesitated.

“Now, please,” Elisabeth asserted with chilly authority.

“Aye, of course. He’s upstairs.”

Rogan led the way, pushing through a curtain at the back of the room, the rest of them following. Down a narrow passage, out a back door, up a rickety flight of stairs.

“How did he get away?” Helena demanded.

“He wasn’t up to much talking, but I caught the word ‘chase’ and what I thought sounded like ‘naked man,’ at which point he passed out.”

“Did you say ‘naked man’?”

“Could have been ‘baked ham,’ or mayhap ‘wicked plan.’” Rogan scratched his head as Helena sighed.

“You did well,” Madame Arana said, a gentle hand upon the harper’s shoulder.

He shook his head. “If I’d found him before the brotherhood, we’d have saved ourselves a peck of trouble.”

He tapped at a door that opened on a tiny young woman, her eyes darting from face to face, her hands wrenched into her apron.

“I’ve brought the help I promised, Lyddy.” Rogan motioned to Elisabeth. “And the man’s wife.”

Relief visible in her face, the woman opened the door, ushering them into a shabby little room. The only light coming from a tallow candle upon a battered table. Beside it, a plate held a gristly piece of fat swimming in grease and some burnt potatoes. “I tried feeding him, but he wouldn’t take nothing, so I gave him a sleeping draught. It seemed to
help for a bit, but now he’s moaning and thrashing as if he’s got the devil after him.”

Brendan lay restless upon a straw-filled mattress, a grimy blanket over him. Sweat plastered his hair to his head, his shirt to his chest where he labored to breathe as if he were running. He was awake, his staring bloodshot eyes locked on some invisible scene, neck muscles taut as he hissed, “Freddie, damn it, just do as they ask.”

Freddie?

A memory nagged at the back of Elisabeth’s brain as a shiver of apprehension licked over her skin. “It wasn’t laudanum, was it?”

“Aye, it was. I’d a little from an apothecary what . . .” Lyddy’s words trailed off as she noted Elisabeth’s troubled expression. “Was that not right to do?”

“Laudanum makes him ill,” Elisabeth explained, crossing to crouch beside Brendan, a hand upon his forehead.

Lyddy’s brows snapped low, her chin jutting forward in a belligerent frown, hand on one hip. “Well, how was I to know? Rogan shows up with a man half dead and says nurse him. I did what I could. I did my best. What do I look like? A surgeon?”

Helena studied her with a bloodless twitch of her lips. “I don’t think anyone would mistake you for that.”

Not to be outdone, Lyddy eyed Helena with a sharp, catty gaze. “At least I’ve got me a man. From what I’ve heard, you’ve naught but cobwebs between your legs since that fellow of yours up and died.”

Helena stiffened, a strange expression passing over her features, steel entering her gaze. “Charming young lady, Rogan. Wherever did you find such a pleasing creature?”

“Lyddy, I’ll be having words with you.” Rogan grabbed her by the arm. “Now.”

He hustled her out, justifications trailing behind her. “She’s no right to talk to me that way. I done the best I could. Who does she think—” A door slammed below.

Madame Arana bent beside Elisabeth.

“Can you do anything?” Elisabeth asked, taking Brendan’s hand in her own.

Madame Arana placed a freckled hand upon his chest. Closed her eyes, her seamed and wrinkled face alive with concentration. “If it is battle magic, there are ways. But if his sickness originates with the drug, it is best to let it run its course.”

Brendan’s eyes locked on Elisabeth’s, the gold of his irises a dull muddy bronze. “Not such a good bargain after all.” His laughter came tinged with bitterness. “Should have married your sheepdog.”

Freddie’s eyes haunted Brendan. Disbelief to shock to terror to sightless in death. He relived the sequence of expressions in an infinite loop. Freddie’s murder playing again and again in his fevered mind.

The confrontation turning ugly. The men in Brendan’s company growing first impatient, then violent. Threats. Ultimatums. And the murders one by one of Freddie’s family before his horrified eyes. His death coming when it finally did, almost a mercy. A heedless ride away from the scene, fire raging at Brendan’s back. Eyes red with smoke and weeping, hands gripping the reins slick with a cold sweat, sickness chattering his teeth, souring his stomach.

Freddie had trusted him. Father had trusted him. Elisabeth had trusted him.

Two out of three dead. His fault. All of it was his fault.

He heaved his guts up, throat raw, muscles jumping.

Calm words soothed the howling cries of the dead. Hands gentled him. He rolled onto his side, squeezing his eyes shut, praying for relief. He didn’t want to relive it. Not again. Not the imagined murder of his father. Not the real memory of Freddie’s butchering.

Why wouldn’t they leave him alone? What did he have to do to send them away? To live without them in his head?

As if to taunt him, a new face swarmed up out of his nightmares. A monster of fangs and talons. A creature born of smoke and brimstone and keen with malice. It hovered above him. Waiting. Watching. Knowing its time drew close.

Its mouth opened on a bloody maw, its tongue thick and forked and slithering with snaky words.
“Ana N’thashyl gorloa agasesh gelweth. A’sk beuewik perthyana, Erelth.”

Agony drove the breath from Brendan’s lungs, seared the blood in his veins. He jerked awake. The
Unseelie
vanished. Freddie gone.

But as if his old friend had pulled him aside and whispered the answer in his ear, Brendan knew what he had to do to end the nightmares. To end the threat.

Máelodor must die.

And Brendan was the only one who could do it.

Elisabeth kept vigil from a chair by the door. She’d propped it open, hoping to air out the musty room, though nothing seemed to dispel the heavy, fetid atmosphere. Smoke from cook fires mixed with the stench of latrines and animal dung from the nearby alley floated in on a sour breeze. Shouts and cries and rude laughter rose from the close-winding maze of nearby streets. A beggar snored in the
shade of a torn tarpaulin. A hollow-eyed woman picked through a refuse heap beside her child while chickens pecked among the dirt at their feet.

Elisabeth wrapped her shawl closer around her, turning her face away from the distressing sights beyond her door to the man sleeping beside her. An arm lay outside the blanket, the shoulder pink and shiny with recent scarring, the curve of the crescent-and-arrow tattoo, a dark ribbon against the gray pallor of his skin.

He rested peacefully this morning. Earlier he’d called out to the mysterious Freddie. At first begging him to surrender. Later, pleading for his forgiveness. A hazy memory nagged at the edge of her mind, but as his outbursts grew less frequent and then stopped altogether, her thoughts turned to more immediate concerns.