The Impostor (4 page)

She forced herself to concentrate. There was no water. She was in the carriage with Sebastian, and he had conjured an illusion—
only an illusion, only an illusion
—but his Gift was a powerful one that affected all the senses, and she couldn’t see, couldn’t draw breath into her lungs.

Sebastian had never used his Gift as a weapon against her before, though she had watched him bring other men to their knees, had even watched him kill. The illusions he conjured could trick the brains as well as the bodies of his opponents into believing that not only situations were real, but also wounds and injuries.

She had watched him set wolves on men who died with blood pouring from wounds in their throats; had watched him drive men mad with visions of the impossible. Had watched him, as he lay wounded in the burning fields of Talavera, trickle water into the throats of dying British soldiers, who had breathed their last breaths easier because of the strengths of his illusions.

But she did not know how to fight him. She could only tell herself there was no water, that her senses deceived her. She forced herself to stop struggling, to breathe despite the water, breath after breath, and she soon realized, dimly, that the water passing through her nose and mouth and into her lungs was only air, after all.

The illusion faded. She lay against the floor of the carriage. Sebastian held his arm hard against her throat, and his face was still cold and emotionless.

As she had known and braced herself to expect, there was absolutely no recognition in his dark eyes as he gazed down at her.

Chapter Four

Sebastian was breathing hard as he pressed his elbow into the throat of the impostor who lay on the floor of his carriage.

Somehow, Tessa Ryder knew the water was an illusion and had managed to fight free of it. He had never before met someone who could overcome the illusions he conjured, which were so powerful that people would accept them as fact despite inconsistencies, illogicalness or improbabilities. Even Edward Ryder himself, the most powerful telepath and psychic Sebastian had ever met, had been unable to shatter the power of his illusions.

This woman was dangerous.

He focused on her small form pressed beneath him. She gasped for air—the force of his arm against her throat, after all, was not an illusion—so he eased back just enough to let her speak.

“I’m Tessa Ryder,” she choked out. “You knew my father. Please.”

His grip on her did not relax.

“Has Sevigny sent you to kill me?” he demanded.

“
Sevigny?
” she said, and he thought her tone might contain genuine surprise. “No. Is that what you were told?”

“Then who sent you? What are you doing here?”

“My father! My father sent me here! Please, I can’t breathe—”

Edward Ryder had sent her here? “Why? Where is he? I heard he was missing.”

“Please, can you let me up?”

Beneath him, she was small and slender and extremely soft. “Not until you answer my questions. Why did he send you here?”

“He wanted me to tell you”—she struggled to breathe—”he wanted me to tell you that you are in grave danger.”

“Where is Jane?”

“Safe enough, at her home,” she gasped. “I needed to see you. It was all I could think of. I had no way of finding you or gaining an audience with you.”

“You have the shape-shifter Gift?”

“Yes.”

“You can take on the form of others?”

“Yes.”

“But this is your true form.”

“Yes—please—you’re hurting me—”

He did not move. She had lied to him, of course, when she had told him she was not here to kill him for Sevigny. She had come to him with a dagger in her reticule, had disarmed him and fought off his illusion with the skill of a trained operative, and she had only failed because he was bigger and stronger than she was.

He did not make the mistake of assuming she was less lethal because of it.

He should snap her neck. Do as Francis, his oldest friend, the only person in the world he trusted completely, had told him to do. It would not be difficult. He had killed women before, during the war, French spies sent to infiltrate the Omega Group.

This would be no different. This was war like any other, though it was not fought on battlefields, but in dark alleys and in the shadows of the night. If Tessa Ryder intended to kill him and betray her father’s country, he could not let her live.

But in that moment, staring down into that fragile face, her Byzantine eyes seemed to gaze at him from out of an old dream. He hesitated.

Beneath him, she felt slender but undeniably female. To his surprise and self-disgust, his body reacted to her closeness, to the feel of her soft form beneath him.

Evidently, it had been too long since he’d had a woman.

At that moment, the carriage turned a corner so rapidly they were both thrown to one side. Sebastian lifted his head, turning his attention to the streets gliding past the open window. If, as he had directed his coachman, they were heading home, they should have arrived by now. But they were no longer in Mayfair. Instead, the carriage barreled east along the river toward the docks.

“Where are we going?” he demanded in a low voice, slamming the impostor’s head against the floor again. “Did you bribe my coachman? Where is he taking us?”

In the changing shadows her face reflected her confusion, her brows drawing together, her mouth falling open a little as she struggled to breathe. “I don’t know,” she gasped. “Truly, I don’t. It wasn’t me. I didn’t talk to your coachman at all.”

There was no time to question her further, to weigh the veracity of what she had told him. Instinct told him he must act now, and fast. Still holding her down, he unbuckled his belt.

Then, forcing her around and onto her knees, he lashed her wrists together and pressed his knee into her spine before retrieving from beneath the seats both his walking stick sword and the dagger that still protruded from the little beaded reticule.

She made a soft sound of pain as he held her against him, the knife pressed firmly to her throat.

“I’m going to make the coachman stop,” he said in her ear. “You can come with me quietly, or I’ll slit your throat now.”

His breath stirred the tendrils of soft curling hair at her nape. She nodded once to indicate she understood. Still holding her firmly, her back pressed flush against his chest, he sent an illusion upwards to the coachman as he sat in his box.

It took only a heartbeat. The coachman shouted and swore, pulling on the reins hard to keep from running into the tall stack of wine barrels Sebastian had placed in the center of the road.

Then, casting a second illusion of black shadows to cloak their movements, Sebastian kicked the door of the carriage open and shoved Tessa out ahead of him in the dark night.

She nearly stumbled on the steps, but he kept a tight grip on the belt, holding her upright. By the time the carriage had negotiated the illusion of the wine barrels and picked up speed again, he had dragged Tessa into a narrow alleyway.

The fog was so thick near the river that the darkness looked smoky and curdled. They stood in a narrow street of tall houses, and the air reeked of fish and filth. He recognized the docklands. He had visited this part of London often during the years of the war, to gather the rumors and information that flowed through the seedy underbelly of the city.

Where was the carriage heading? How long would they have before his coachman and whoever had paid the man realized the carriage was empty? He kept his grip firmly on the ends of his belt, which still held Tessa Ryder’s hand securely behind her back. Was she lying when she said she had not diverted the carriage’s route tonight?

Keeping the knife flush against her throat, he pulled her close to him and gazed back toward the street. He could still see the carriage, moving steadily down the road, and then, without warning, it burst into flames.

Tessa Ryder drew in her breath sharply.

He cursed softly. His coachman and horses screamed. The flames roared upwards, toward the sky. The unnaturally ferocious fire devoured the carriage, a great, ravening beast such as he had only seen once before in his life, when flames had consumed the men who lay dying in the dry grass of Talavera.

“Come on,” he said to his captive. “We have to keep moving. They’ll be looking for us.”

He was already dragging her into the darkness of the alley. They moved swiftly down the cobblestone street, and soon, the mouth of the next street appeared before them, illuminated by several lit windows, and then fading back into the fog.

He came to an abrupt stop, pressing the dagger into his captive’s throat. Footsteps came down the street toward them, transmitted through the fog. He reacted instantly, dragging Tessa Ryder backward into the shadows of a side alley. As he watched, something moved in the darkness at the neck of the street, and slowly took shape and form. Three men, advancing toward them. They spoke in clear American accents.

“They can’t be far,” said one of them. “They must have slipped out when the carriage stopped here. There wasn’t any other opportunity.”

“Did he take the girl with him?”

“I think so. Didn’t hear her in the carriage when the damned thing exploded.”

“Does Sevigny want her alive?”

“He doesn’t want her harmed. Kill Montague, if you can, but leave the girl.”

Sebastian glanced behind his left shoulder. In the swirling fog, he could make out the dim shape of the house that made this alley a dead end. He had only a second to make a decision.

He knew what he should do—kill the girl and move on. It would be easy enough to slit her throat while she stood within the circle of his arms, like a parody of a lover’s embrace. It would be quick. She would not suffer.

He brought the blade of her dagger down, cleanly. She shivered slightly, bracing herself for the deathblow. And then he severed her bond, freeing her.

In the darkness she turned, raising her head to look at him.

“Go to your friends,” he said harshly, giving her a slight shove as he turned on his heel and ran.

He was halfway down the street when the gunshot sounded. He turned. Tessa Ryder stood in the center of the street, her white swans down cloak like a beacon in the darkness. Her arm was raised and steady.

But she had not aimed for him. A body thudded on the other end of the alley, and one of the men pursuing them gave a shout of rage as he called to his companion. The third man ran toward the slim white figure, but Tessa fired again, and her second aim was as true as her first.

“Go!” she cried to him. “There are others!”

But he had already heard the footsteps of an additional three or four men pounding toward them. Without stopping to think, he retraced his steps, reaching out to close his hand on her arm and drawing her back into the shadows.

He forced open the door of the house at the end of the street with a single swift kick from his good leg. The great wooden door, knocked off its hinges, swung ajar, and Sebastian drew Tessa inside so forcefully she dropped her pistol. They were standing inside a workshop of some sort, but there was no time to examine their surroundings too closely. Kicking aside boxes and benches, they made their way to the other side of the building, which opened up onto the river.

They burst through the back doors. Below, a rotting wooden jetty with broken steps led down to row of small boats. He hesitated only a moment. Then, still grasping Tessa’s upper arm, he dragged her down the steps.

She had clearly expected him to be leading her to the boats, but he shoved her under the jetty instead, and from the darkness her pale face gazed up at him in confusion.

“What—” she began.

He silenced her with a raised hand. Using her dagger, he sliced through the ropes that held one of the boats and, grabbing an oar, he shoved the vessel out toward the center of the river until the current caught it. Then he crawled under the jetty as well, drawing her into his arms, and together, they crouched beneath the rotting timbers that held up the jetty.

As the footsteps drew nearer, he conjured an illusion of two people hunched over in the boat that twisted down the river with the flow of the current.

“I see them! Quickly, the boats!” one man shouted, and footsteps thudded over their heads as their pursuers made their way down the jetty. The men shouted to each other as they clambered into boats and cut the ropes that moored their vessels, and then the sound of oars dipped into water.

Silence descended.

“They’re gone,” he said.

For the first time, he realized how intimately they were pressed together in the small space beneath the jetty. He held her against his chest, and she rested her head against his shoulder, her soft fawn-colored hair spilling like a mantle over his dark cloak. She had her face pressed against his arm.

Even over the smell of the river, he could make out the light, clean scent of her.

“Come on,” he said, unfolding himself and drawing her out from under the jetty. “We have to keep moving.”

They fled into the night, hand in hand, passing swiftly through back alleys and mews, staying away from the main roads. They did not speak, focusing their attention instead on their surroundings, listening for footsteps and pursuers. The fog around them was thick, distorting sounds and shadows.