Demon's Curse (Imnada Brotherhood) Read online

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  Contents

  Acknowledgments

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Glossary of the Imnada

  Shadow’s Curse Excerpt

  For the boys

  Acknowledgments

  It takes a village to raise a child and it takes a group of skilled, dedicated, and very helpful people to publish a book. It starts with my always amazing super critique duo, Do Leonard and Maggie Scheck, whose laughter, inspiration, hard work, and friendship I’ve come to rely on more than I can say. Kevan Lyon is always there with large doses of answers, suggestions, and reassurance. Emilia Pisani has championed this project from idea to finished product, and the fantastic crew at Pocket Books has been amazing in bringing my vision to life. And of course, I have to mention my wonderful family, who never fails to keep me on my toes and make life interesting. Thank you!

  Prologue

  NEAR CHARLEROI, BELGIUM

  JUNE 6, 1815

  They had not died gently. No imitation of sleep in their ripped and bloodied corpses. No quiet repose in their twisted limbs and staring eyes.

  Mac had counted three already: two in the muddy farmyard, and another by the garden fence. As he stepped onto the house’s porch, a figure threw himself out the door, knocking Mac aside in his rush to escape. He’d only time to glimpse a swarthy head of hair and shirtsleeves drenched in blood before the man hurtled into the wood at the far side of the lane.

  Inside, Mac stepped over a woman’s fallen body, her skirts sodden crimson, but for one edge that retained the original springtime yellow. Her hair was a wiry gray, her face, seamed with fine wrinkles like old parchment, now a ghastly white. Her eyes, wide and horrified in death.

  By the hearth lay a heap of homespun skirts, one plump outstretched arm lit by a spill of light across the floor from a broken window. A maidservant, perhaps.

  Bloody hell, what had happened here? Where was Adam?

  Major de Coursy’s shout from the back of the house signaled the discovery of another body. “Mother of All . . . shit . . . shit . . . shit!”

  Gray’s vocabulary had coarsened over the last five years. There remained barely a trace of the priggish lordling about him now. Some claimed war turned civilized men to savage beasts, and then there were those who were born that way.

  Like Mac. Like them all. Gray, Adam, David.

  Imnada—shapechangers and telepaths. A race of impossible origins and uncertain future.

  From Lisbon, across Spain, over the rugged Pyrenees, and finally to this out-of-the-way farm on the Belgian border, the four of them had crept and sniffed, prowled and stalked, gathering what intelligence they could for king and country. Tracking the movements of Napoleon’s army. Assessing intent. Relaying attack routes. That is, until Adam’s urgent pathing brought them here. To this . . .

  “I’ve found him!” Gray’s voice came again. “Come quickly!”

  Mac followed the shout down a short passage to a heavy wooden door partly blocked by another crumpled body.

  Within, all was shadows. Heavy drapes had been pulled across the three long windows, letting only thin bars of slanting twilight into the room. The fire in the grate had burned down to a few smoldering embers, and even the candles were little more than melted stubs, only one still flickering in its pool of wax. Books lined the walls that weren’t taken up with cabinets full of treasures and trinkets, including a macabre smiling skull. A globe sat within a mahogany stand. A map table stood spread with charts of the continents and the heavens above. On the desk, an enormous volume lay open as if someone had recently been reading.

  Mac was vaguely aware of David crowding in behind him. But his attention was all for Adam crouched naked by the hearth, his shoulders heaving with rage and panic. One hand balled into a clawed fist, the other brandishing a sword, black with blood. He bore the rough form of a human, but his hunched stance and the elongated bones of his face held traces of the lynx that was his animal aspect.

  “I had to do it. They knew.”

  That’s when Mac noticed the man sprawled dead at the base of the desk, his coat gaping open to reveal a vicious wound.

  “I couldn’t let him live.” His words echoed in Mac’s head as a pathing.

  Gray shed his scarlet coat and draped it across Adam’s bare shoulders. His voice came low and urgent. “They knew what, Adam? What did these people do to deserve death? Was it about the French? Had they learned about the emperor’s movements? About the coalition’s defenses?”

  But, struggling with the shift, Adam was unable to answer. He groaned, sinking to the floor, a shimmer of magic masking his return to human form.

  Mac crossed to the desk, callously stepping over the crumpled body on the floor. He’d seen too many corpses to be overly concerned by one more. Pulling the open book around toward him, he leafed through the fluttering pages for clues. “Not the French, Gray.” Mac met his major’s shocked stare. “Us. The man was Other.”

  Gray’s piercing blue eyes narrowed.

  Mac’s lips thinned as he continued reading. “The book’s a compendium on the Imnada.” He flipped pages, his heart sinking with every entry. “The man must have spent his entire life researching the clans.”

  “For what purpose?” Gray asked, twisting his ring round and round, the great diamond winking in the dim light.

  David spat his disgust. “There can be only one purpose where Fey-bloods are concerned.”

  The men eyed one another, their shared thoughts equally dark. Equally fearful.

  The Imnada’s continued survival depended upon keeping their race’s existence a secret. It had been thus for centuries upon centuries, ever since the Fealla Mhòr, the Great Betrayal, when the magical Fey-blood Other turned upon the Imnada with merciless ferocity, almost wiping the shapechangers from the earth. Only terrified retreat into the wild corners of the world had kept the Imnada alive. Only seclusion behind the great concealing power of the Palings guarded the few remaining pockets of their kind. All clan members knew the swift and brutal penalty befalling those careless enough to allow discovery by an out-clan.

  Death if the culprit was lucky.

  Exile if he or she was not.

  “Shit,” Gray muttered. “Just what we don’t need this close to battle.”

  “Fey-blood,” Adam murmured from his place on the floor. He was now fully human, but still incredibly weak. “Said he sensed the animal heart of me . . . forced the shift . . . no choice . . . had to kill . . . protect our secret . . . protect the clans . . .”

  David knelt beside Adam, his gaze rage-filled. “The Fey-blood forced the shift against your will?”

  Gray shrugged, but the tightness of his jaw hinted at his anger. “Must have. Lo
ok at him. He’s so drained he can barely move. He’d not have shifted during the waning crescent of Berenth on his own.”

  Mac agreed. The Imnada’s powers derived from the goddess moon, mother to all Imnada. As she grew from the slender young crescent of Piryeth to the fullness of Silmith, so did the strength and the ease in which the Imnada accomplished the shift from man to animal and back. As she aged to the waning sliver of Berenth, so did their abilities, leaving them weakened and vulnerable. On the nights of Morderoth when the goddess fled the skies completely, the Imnada’s powers to shapechange disappeared as well, leaving them as defenseless as any human.

  So had this Fey-blood Other really triggered Adam’s shift through his magic? A terrifying thought.

  Mac scanned the book, his mind churning with every new entry. “These pages are full of references to the Imnada. Somehow this Other must have discovered Adam was of the five clans. Adam did what he had to.”

  “But slaughtering the entire household?” Gray protested.

  “You know the laws,” Mac answered. “It was them or us. What would you have done?”

  Gray scanned the room once more, his gaze coming to rest on the body of the Fey-blood. “There must be another way,” he mumbled, his frustration clear.

  “What now?” David asked. “We’re due back to camp by dawn.” His face pressed into harsh weary lines. Which one of them wasn’t exhausted? Surviving on a knife edge? They’d been scouting for weeks, hoping to ascertain the disposition of French troops. It was only now, so close to Morderoth, that they’d completed their mission and begun the march toward Brussels, where Wellington’s staff remained billeted.

  Gray straightened, shoulders back, head up, as if sensing an answer on the evening breeze. But it was not the major who spoke.

  The corpse on the carpet moved in a sudden gurgling breath. “You’ll pay for your crimes.”

  Mac slammed the book closed. “He lives.”

  “Imnada . . . treacherous . . . demons . . .” the man gasped, his agonized gaze passing from soldier to soldier. “My family . . . Where . . .”

  David’s gaze flickered, his jaw clamped shut.

  “Dead . . . you killed them . . . so shall you all be punished for the crime of one . . .”

  “We murdered no one,” David cried in defense, but Gray held up a hand. As the highest-ranking officer, Major de Coursy still held sway, and David fell silent, though Mac felt resentment in the younger man’s thoughts.

  “Mest gelweth an’a noa pystrot a’gan’a mamsk hath an’a kollyesh esh a’na cronil,” the Other whispered, his body shuddering in pain.

  The gibberish meant nothing to the three of them. Not until Adam straightened, the coat sliding from his shoulders to the floor. “Stop him!” he shouted.

  But the strange language came faster and stronger now, as if all the dying Other’s remaining life were poured into the hellish words. “Imnadesh Prytsk. Owgsk mollothegh. Dydhweytsk dea. D’wosk’ an’a goedhvith. Dhiwortsk nana bya.”

  Adam fell, trembling. The rest of them remained transfixed as the Other spat his curse to the wind. The curtains billowed. The final candle was snuffed out, leaving the room in darkness. But a light burned blue and silver within the man’s dying face as if his spirit hovered beneath his skin.

  “Get out!” Mac shouted, a premonition of evil vising his chest. The air grew heavy. He couldn’t breathe. Every hair stood at attention as if he were caught within the heart of a lightning storm. “Grab Adam! Now!”

  Gray lunged for Adam. David scrambled for the door, Mac urging his friends onward, but the curse rode on swifter wings, and there was no escaping. Not the room. Not their fate.

  Blue fire engulfed them. Unearthly wails, high and shrieking, beat against Mac’s brain, breaking through every mental shield he threw up. The Other’s curse sank into his blood, into the marrow of his bones. The taint moved through him like venom.

  His limbs transformed, his body shifted, the change overtaking him even as he struggled against it. He could not control it. Could not stop it.

  His companions fared no better. As the fireball burned without heat, without smoke, it crackled over fur and feather. It rippled in silver and aquamarine over beak and claw. And as the last red rim of the sun sank below the trees, it was wolf and panther, lynx and eagle, that emerged from the farmhouse to scatter like hunted beasts into the forest.

  1

  ST. JAMES’S PICCADILLY CHURCHYARD, LONDON

  OCTOBER 1816

  Bianca paid off the hackney with the last shilling she’d tucked in her reticule that morning. She could only hope the rain that had threatened all day would hold off a few hours more. She didn’t relish a long, soggy trudge, especially since she’d stupidly worn her newest bonnet and a lovely pelisse in violet merino wool she could barely afford. She pinched her lips together. Actually, she hadn’t been able to afford it at all, but Adam insisted the color became her perfectly. Like a graceful purple Iris ensata, he’d raved. Rain or no rain, it seemed fitting to wear the outfit to say good-bye to her dearest friend.

  She regretted coming as soon as she descended onto the flagway. A mob thronged the area around St. James’s. What did they imagine? That they might catch sight of Adam’s naked, ravaged body? That he might rise from the grave to point an accusing finger? Expose his murderer to the world?

  Whispers swirled around her.

  “. . . recognize her from Covent Garden . . . Viola last spring . . . beautiful . . . no better than she should be . . . foreigner . . . actress . . . dead man’s whore . . . murderess . . .”

  A shiver raced up her spine, but as if she were preparing her entrance onstage, she firmed her shoulders, straightened her back, and lifted her chin, eyes sparking. Adam had been her friend. He hadn’t deserved to die as he had, and she owed him a final farewell. Crowds and their ugly slander be damned!

  Bianca passed through the churchyard to the grave site. Once beyond the ghoulish sightseers, she found herself almost alone in her grief. A minister presided over a trio of men standing awkwardly, their faces arranged in expressions of mourning, though she questioned their sincerity. After all, she’d never seen any of them before. Not once in all the time she’d known Adam.

  Perhaps a clue rested in the uniformed crispness of one, his hat tucked beneath his arm, a sword hanging loosely from his hip. Bianca knew that Adam had served for years in the army, selling out after the emperor’s final defeat at Waterloo the summer before last. Could these men be former brothers in arms?

  They looked up as one when she swept forward to stand unapologetically beside them. She sensed a slow-burning appraisal from the golden-haired Adonis to her left, greatcoat hanging elegantly from his wide shoulders, cravat tied in careless perfection. A gentleman with the looks and—if she read him right—the knowledge of his own power to attract.

  A regal gentleman at the foot of the grave eyed her down his straight aristocratic nose, lips pursing ever so slightly, hand tightening on the knob of his cane. It didn’t take a mind reader to interpret his disapproval.

  Only the officer spared her no more than a glance before returning his attention to the minister reading from his Bible.

  Dismissing the three men with a jerk of her chin, she focused on the reason she was here. Adam Kinloch. A true friend and gentleman when so many others of her acquaintance wanted something from her. Her talent. Her favors. Her body.

  Adam had never asked for more than her friendship. And in offering his in return. he’d reminded her of the life she’d lost when Papa died and Lawrence had swept her from the gardens and greenhouses outside Baltimore to the clogged and cluttered streets of London.

  What sort of monster would have killed him in such a horrible, shocking way? Would leave him naked and gutted, abandoned like so much refuse to be scavenged by dogs and beggars?

  Tears pricked the corners of her eyes, her stare burning to hold them back. No doubt these cold-eyed men assumed, like everyone else, that she and Adam had been lovers. S
he’d always let people believe what they wished. Better that than discovering the far more disturbing truth.

  As if sensing her thoughts, the uniformed man met her watery gaze. His strange almond-shaped eyes were a pale green-gold, long-lashed and deeply set. His lips were full and sensuous. Smiling, he would have been devastating. But he didn’t look as if he smiled often, if at all. In fact, he could have been carved from stone. From across Adam’s grave, he watched her steadily as if he could see right into her heart. She knuckled her hands together, refusing to look away first. He wanted to stare? Fine. He could stare all he liked. She was used to eyes on her.

  As the service concluded, the others drifted away, leaving her alone with the gravediggers clutching their spades.

  She dropped the small nosegay she’d purchased from a flower seller into the grave. “I’ll not forget you, my friend,” she whispered. “And never fear, as you kept my secret, so shall I keep yours. You have my promise.”

  As the first scoop of earth thudded against the coffin’s lid, the heavens opened, the autumn rain falling in a chilling drench that immediately drooped her ribbons and soaked through the expensive wool to her gown beneath.

  Shielding her head as best she could with her reticule, she turned, almost knocking into the officer, who had lingered behind.

  “Pardon,” he said, his voice a gruff rumble, his gaze doubly intense at a distance of inches. He opened his mouth as if he might say more, but she dodged past him in her haste to leave this awful, forlorn, hopeless place.

  The crowds had dispersed in the downpour. The sidewalk was empty but for a knife grinder hurrying for shelter and a man selling meat pies to a dripping-wet customer.

  She lifted a hand to hail a hackney before remembering she had no fare. Instead she hastened east down Piccadilly on foot, all the while feeling a gaze leveled at her back, tickling her shoulder blades. She would not turn around, but her steps came faster until, cowardly as it made her feel, she was almost running.