“We need your assistance,” Eliza said. “I know it appears odd, my being here with Adam. We…” Eliza shook her head. “Mab is not the beneficent aunt I believed her to be.”
Thorne let out a crack of laughter. “Understatement of the day.”
Miss Evernight frowned. “I ought to have taken you in with me. For that I am sorry.”
“What did she do to you?” Eliza asked. Her discomfort in the subject was clear, but she forged on. “I know it was some foul mischief, but it would help to understand her.”
Holly sat back, and almost as though she did not realize it, her hand reached across the space between her and Thorne. His hand was there to catch hers, and their fingers linked. “I was dying, my powers turning on me because I’d been using them too much to help William.” Their fingers visibly squeezed before relaxing. “Mab was the only one to offer help. Which she would do in exchange for a price.”
Thorne’s gaze locked on Adam. “To save Holly, I agreed to take Eliza from you, and forfeit both my immortality and Holly.”
A strange sorrow punched into Adam’s chest. Despite what the world thought of him, Adam’s respect for love was only second to yearning for a love of his own. Tender-hearted sap that he was, he’d often created a GIM simply to spare that spirit the loss of love. He’d certainly done so for Sin’s sister, Daisy Ranulf.
“It was hell,” Thorne whispered.
Eliza made a sound of distress, which in turn distressed Adam. Yet the tight rage he’d held on to in regards to Thorne eased. He could not hate Thorne anymore.
“This was all because of me?” Eliza whispered before lurching to her feet. All the color washed out of her pretty face.
“Not you,” Adam cut in before Thorne could answer. “Because of me.” When she shot him a look of irritated disbelief, he wanted to smile, but could not. “She was after me. To take you away from me meant that she’d win my soul.”
Thorne leaned in, his chair creaking under him, and fixed his silver stare on Adam. “Look, mate, this isn’t our business, but you’re here, asking for help and knowing far too much of Mab for my comfort. So I’ll ask you directly, what is this curse you’re under and how did it happen?”
Eliza perked up with such obvious anticipation that he could barely restrain a smile. He did not care about Thorne or his concerns, but Eliza deserved the truth. And Adam knew he’d no cause to fear that his secret would go farther than this room. He could read that in Thorne’s eyes quite well.
“Long ago,” Adam started, “I was a Knight of the Templars. After returning from my pilgrimage to Jerusalem, I was sent to explore Ireland under the express orders to gather heathen relics and bring them back to the church.” Adam gave a wry smile. “The idea being that they would destroy them, though I knew full well they merely wanted to possess these items because they feared the power within them.”
Adam waved a hand. “I thought it ridiculous superstition but did my duty. I’d plundered half of Ireland when I came upon a low hill. The locals called it sídhe, a fairy mound.”
Thorne snorted. “Let me guess, you did not believe in wee fairies either?”
“No,” Adam said with equal humor. “I’d soon learn otherwise, for I’d attracted the attention and the ire of their Queen Mab.”
Even all these centuries later, Adam could perfectly recall the visceral shock as the beautiful, red-headed woman with strange purple eyes simply appeared from out of a thick, green fog. “Mab, you must know, loves men. She loves to bed them, but particularly the reluctant ones.” Adam kept his gaze away from his audience. “I was most reluctant. She was beautiful, yes, but I’d taken a vow, and there was an inherent evil about her that made my innards recoil.”
“So then you offended Mab’s pride,” Miss Evernight murmured, her tone knowing.
“That,” Adam acknowledged, “and I’d stolen from her. Those were her objects, after all. Admittedly I was an arrogant arse, not caring one whit about what I’d taken from the unnatural woman.”
Eliza’s muffled snort had him sliding her a sidelong look. She met it with a pointed raising of her brows, as if to say Am I wrong? No, she was not wrong to laugh. He still had his arrogance and was not likely to be losing it anytime soon.
He thought of his old self. He’d carried many titles back then, Aodh, Son of Niall of Moray, Knight of the Templars, and upon roaming Ireland, Cù-Sìth the harbinger of death. Yet there was one title he’d coveted was never to be his: husband. Aye, he’d killed countless men in the name of God, he’d lived the austere life of a monk, traveled from the verdant mists of Scotland to the acrid deserts surrounding Byzantium, and yet all he’d ever wanted was a wife. A family. A home.
“She held me for seven days,” he said in a low voice, recalling when Mab had taken everything from him. “Always trying to get me to submit, to want her. And on the seventh day, her patience ran out.”
He’d been chained to a massive stone in a glen, his arms stretched wide, his chest bared to the cold air. Aodh had thought his life was at an end when the fae bitch lifted a stone dagger to his throat. But she merely grinned, her little black fangs glinting in the morning light.
“You are mine, Aodh. I claim your soul, and you shall belong to me.” The tip of the dagger punctured the skin at the base of his throat, and hot blood welled up. Mab’s cloying scent choked him as she leaned forward and licked. Aodh strained against the bonds, cursing her to hell and back, but she merely laughed and pressed her hand over his heart.
Green light poured from her palm and into him, making Aodh scream in rage and pain.
“Never to die,” she chanted, “never to age. Young and mine forevermore.”
He felt his soul slipping into her grasp, as if she were siphoning it from his flesh. And yet he fought it with all that he was. He would not go like this. He would not lose his dream, his hope.
But his vision began to fade, only to be brought back when a flash of white light flooded the glen.
Mab turned, a snarl of impatience tearing from her lips. And there, standing calm and straight, was a man made not of flesh but of crystal. Or so it seemed to Aodh. Wings of translucent silver, and wide as tree limbs, arched from the man’s back. An angel.
The man glanced at him. Yes, human. Though you may call me Augustus. The words rang clear in Aodh’s head. Augustus turned back to a seething Mab.
“Aodh’s soul is not yours to take, Mabella of the Fae.”
“Odd, as I was doing so with great ease.” As if to stake her claim, she dug her claws into Aodh’s chest.
“And yet he does not bend to your will. Thus you have resorted to theft. Nay, Mab, he is one of the divided. One half of a soul torn in two.”
Mab’s claws sank deeper into Aodh’s chest. “You jest. Be gone, foul angel. This affair is not yours to attend.”
The angel merely gazed back. “Can you not sense the emptiness that consumes him? Nor see that dark spot from which his other half was rent?”
Mab glanced at Aodh and then away, her nose wrinkling as though smelling something foul. “If this be so, pray, where is his other half?”
“I know not. Nor does it matter. That she exists is enough.”
Aodh did not believe in soul mates, nor love. Not the sort that bound one to another for eternity. Granted, until this morn, he’d not truly believed in the fae or angels, yet here they were before him, fighting over his very soul.
“This human stole from me and my kin,” Mab snapped. “Restitution is mine to claim.”
“Very well,” the angel said placidly. “Claim it.”
Aodh wanted to protest, to spit in Mab’s face, to call her every foul word he knew. Yet he held his tongue. Instinct told him that he could very well lose it, and he wasn’t about to earn more of her wrath. Not when she was grinning like a she-devil and dread crawled over his body.
“Aodh MacNiall, henceforth you are living-death, unable to age, grow ill, or suffer mortal wounding. No longer will you feel the joy of the living. You
r male beauty, which you so vainly wield, shall draw both women and men like flies to honey, and yet you will never know the heated flush of desire. The dead shall be your sole companions.”
If he could talk, he’d blister the earth with his curses to the foul fae bitch. As it was, he could only hang there and feel his body grow oddly numb, feel the hope leach out of him even as his wounds knitted themselves closed.
The fae’s carmine lips curled with clear satisfaction. “Enjoy your immortality, love.”
She stepped away from him, and he sagged against the chains that held him, a sob crawling up his throat, despite his resolve to hide it. Already he’d lost his sense of touch. The breeze making the trees dance did not soothe his skin, nor did the light of the sun warm it.
Despair wracked him, and he looked up to find the angel Augustus before him. Silver eyes locked onto him. “Aodh MacNiall, while I cannot spare you from the curse that Mab has spun, I can grant you this. As you have been cursed to live amongst the dead, so shall you be soulbound to them. Death shall be the source of your greatest power and your salvation. Look to the dead to lead you to your soul’s mate. She will dwell amongst them. When you find her, you shall feel once more, and you shall love.”
“You cannot,” screeched Mab.
“And yet I have.” Augustus stared at Mab, and it seemed his wings stretched wider, his chest lifting higher. “Do you wish to challenge me in this?”
The fae broke the stare first, her cheeks flushed with rage. “Interfering pest.” Mab gave a huff but then glanced at Aodh, her dark gaze calculating. “And if he fails to find his soul mate or she rejects him?”
“Then he remains as he is.”
No! The denial screamed in Aodh’s mind.
Augustus regarded him with an expression as smooth a still waters. “You have seven hundred years to complete your quest, Aodh, or Mab’s curse remains.” Kind eyes surveyed him. “Worry not. ’Tis but a drop in the bucket of time.”
To immortal beings perhaps, but to Aodh, it was nearly unfathomable. Centuries of hell stretched forth, a bleak, empty road.
The angel held his gaze. “One more gift, to help you on your way.” Ignoring Mab’s squawks of protest, Augustus pressed the tips of his fingers against Aodh’s forehead. “I grant you the ability to create life out of what was once dead.”
Light, so much light. Blinding brilliance. It shimmered around him, took his breath, filled him up until it seemed to pour from his mouth, out of his eyes, ears, and nose. Until Aodh became light. Power, a dizzy rush akin to that which he felt in the heat of battle, took hold and settled into his very bones.
When the angel stepped away, his body appeared limned in a silver light that was as pure as any Aodh had seen. His soul. I see his very soul. Nay, it could not be.
“But it is,” said the angel as though Aodh had voiced his fear. “You shall see the light of every being’s soul. Even your own. Your soul’s true mate shall have a light that mirrors yours.”
Unable to help himself, Aodh glanced down at himself. Golden light, pale as new butter and tinged with glimmers of diamond brightness, swirled about him, and yet, right over where his heart dwelled, there was darkness. His soul, torn and waiting to be filled. The mere idea terrified Aodh. Enough that he found his voice, raw and untested though it was. “And you, angel? What shall you require for this gift you place upon me?”
The angel smiled, fond and amused. “Brave knight, that you be true to honor. Soulbound to death as you are, let them be your army and fight for what is good and true. Pick your children well, Aodh.”
Aodh glanced at the fae bitch. Her eyes gleamed with unholy green light, wee fangs sliding down over black lips.
“Aye,” he rasped, rage filling his throat. “That I shall do.”
Finishing his tale, Adam cleared his throat and glanced about. He’d almost forgotten where he was. Holly and Thorne looked thoughtful. As for Eliza, her face was pale and her expression drawn. He could not fathom what she thought.
But then she glanced at him, and her velvety eyes were moist. “All that suffering for refusing Mab?”
“And for stealing,” he admitted. “I cannot deny that.”
“Even so,” she said, “it hardly seems fair.”
“Fair? What does Mab care for fairness? If you are to survive,” he went on in a harder tone, “what you must understand about the fae is that they view life as a chess match. Every move they make is measured by how it will affect the final outcome, not the here or now.”
He traced the carved whorl in the arm of the chair, watching his finger move instead of facing all of them. “Something I myself forgot. I thought more of what I wanted than of what lengths Mab would go to in order to get what she wanted. I thought like a human, not an immortal.”
Silence was a ticking clock, the weight of their collective judgment bearing down upon him.
“We are all pawns,” Thorne said softly.
“Yes.” Adam glanced up. “But you are not human now. And clearly with Miss Evernight once more.”
Holly gave a tight smile. “William remembered me. Mab and I had a little chat, in which I destroyed her mortal body and sent her back to the fae lands.” She leaned in a little, bracing her arm upon her knees. “And yet she has returned.”
It was Eliza who answered. “She disappeared for a few weeks in May. Then returned one night, saying she’d been in the country. I’m afraid I never sought to question it. Nor any of her actions.”
“She returned rather quickly,” Holly said. “I was under the impression that she would need more time to regain her strength.”
Adam leaned closer to Eliza. “You see, Mab’s mortal body is of this realm. One might destroy that body and yet she lives still. However, she must gather the power to create a new body and return here.”
“How did she do it, then?” Eliza asked.
“She leached my powers,” Adam answered, then turned to Thorne and Miss Evernight. “She is searching for us and has put a price upon our heads. The demons appear up for the challenge.”
Thorne glanced at the chains Adam wore. “Sorry to say, mate, but you’re easy pickings trapped in those fae laces.”
Not so easy, Adam wanted to protest. But Thorne was correct; while Adam had been able to slow down two low-level demons, he would not survive a fight with a more powerful one.
Eliza fists bunched upon her lap. “We need to get onto Lucien’s barge, only it is surely being watched.”
“What is it that you had in mind?” Thorne asked. “We have quite a bit of effective weaponry.”
Eliza’s eyes took on an interested light, but Miss Evernight shook her head, her nose wrinkling as though the idea were horrid. “I’ve an excellent way to get you onto Lucien’s barge undetected.”
Chapter Sixteen
Holly had put them in a tomb. A damned underwater tomb. That was, at least, how Eliza saw it. She’d nearly turned tail and run when Holly had guided them down into her dungeon – her cellar laboratory – and then along a dank and cramped tunnel that led directly to the banks of the Thames. Hidden in an abnormally large boathouse was a strange sort of vessel that looked like an overgrown cigar.
Adam had taken one look at it and grinned so wide and pleased that he appeared to be no more than a boy. “A submariner boat. Bloody brilliant.”
Though it was Adam who appeared brilliant just then, his dark, sinful handsomeness juxtaposed against his bright smile. Even Holly appeared disconcerted for a moment. She blinked at him, then seemed to shake herself out of her fog. “Yes. I’ve been conducting test runs. She’s seaworthy and sound.”
“So this… boat,” Eliza got out, “goes underwater?”
Holly gave her a cool look. “You Yanks used such vessels during your civil war.”
“Oh, we did.” Eliza’s breakfast curdled in her belly. “Most famously the H. L. Hunley, which sank off the coast of Charleston.” Eliza shivered just thinking on it.
“Now, now, Miss May, where is your
sense of nautical adventure?” Adam grinned at her. “Surely little girls fantasize about being pirates as well?”
“I’d rather be a highwayman and keep my feet dry,” she muttered.
Next to her, Thorne nodded sagely. “My mate is a brilliant bird, but I quite agree. It’s far too much like a coffin for my liking.”
“I thought you loved coffins, dearest,” Holly quipped.
Thorne grinned. He was a handsome devil, with a sharp beauty. Not Eliza’s particular brand of liquor, as her grandfather Aiden used to say, but striking to be sure. He caught her gaze and leaned in a bit. “Tell me true, Miss May, are you well?” He glanced at Adam, who was wrapped up in gazing longingly at Holly’s nightmarish craft. “If you need assistance —”
“I am well,” Holly assured Thorne in a low voice. “And under no duress. But thank you. It is kind of you to ask.”
“Of course.”
Adam’s gaze snapped back to her just then. “Hurry along, Miss May.”
As though he could hardly wait to get in the death trap, he all but dragged her to the pier.
For a boat that was supposed to remain underwater, the thing was far too small, perhaps twenty feet in length, and made of iron plate. Eliza’s trepidation grew as Holly opened a small, circular hatch and descended down a ladder. Eliza had no choice but to follow. Inside was as expected, narrow and suffocating. The only source of light came from a row of portal windows no bigger than dinner plates and, at the front, a curved window made of glass so thick that Eliza decided it would only be good for seeing what lay directly in their path. Not particularly comforting.