Claimed by Shadow

  I was about to try to access my power one more time when I heard a familiar, off-key voice from somewhere nearby. “I’ll take you home again, Kathleen, across the ocean wild and wide,” it warbled mournfully. It was faint and slurred, but unmistakable.

  “Billy!” I almost cried in relief.

  The singing stopped abruptly. “Cassie, me darlin’. I’ve got one for ya. I thought it up at the pub.”

  There once was a ghost name of Billy,

  Who got in a jam rather silly,

  He found a beautiful lass

  And quick made a pass

  Forgetting he only had mist for a willy.

  “Where are we?” I yelled. “What’s going on?” The only answer I got was a rousing chorus of “The Belle of Belfast City.” Trust Billy to make me want to strangle him when he wasn’t even in the same room. “You’re drunk!”

  “That I am,” he agreed, “but I’m conscious, which is more than I can say for my orange friend, here. Can’t hold his liquor, poor sod.”

  “Billy!”

  “All right, Cass. Hold your horses and good old Billy will tell the tale. We’ve been taken by the Dark Fey. They snatched me out of a lovely pub and threw me in this dank hole, with only himself for company, to wait on the king’s pleasure.”

  I sagged in relief. At least we weren’t going to be beheaded in the morning or something equally medieval. That bought the others some time to find us, assuming they were still free. “Where is everyone?” I hoped they were doing better than me, or we were in a lot of trouble.

  “Pritkin and Marlowe are trying to convince the captain of the guard—a nasty pixie—to let us go, but I don’t know how well they’re doing.” He paused, then asked in a different tone. “Hey, Cass. What do you think would happen to me if I got killed here? They don’t have any ghosts, have you noticed?”

  I thought of Mac, his face sagging in death, his eyes dull. If there had been a sign of a ghost, a flare or spark anywhere around him, I hadn’t noticed. A new wash of chills spread over me. My God, what had we done?

  “What if I didn’t come back?” Billy was saying, “What if that was it—I died and there was no loophole this time? What if—”

  “Billy!” I tried to keep the hysterical note out of my voice, but I wasn’t entirely successful. I swallowed and tried again. “You aren’t going to die, Billy. We’ll get out of this.” I said it as much to reassure myself as to quiet him, but I don’t think it worked for either of us.

  I heard a jangle of keys outside my cell, and the huge door swung open on ancient hinges. I was almost blinded by the lantern light that flooded the room, but blinking through my fingers, I made out who the guard was carrying. “Tomas!”

  The guard, who was only about five feet tall, carried the six-foot-something vampire as if he was weightless. He dropped his burden on the bunk and turned to me, and for the first time I noticed the boar’s tusks protruding from his wide mouth. Ogre, some part of my brain piped up as he thrust a stubby finger in my chest and grunted. His voice sounded like gravel being rolled over by a tank, and if it was supposed to contain words, I couldn’t understand them.

  “He want that you heal him,” came a voice from the doorway. Behind the bulk of the jailer stood a slim brunette wearing an elaborate green dress covered in red embroidery. It took me a second to place her.

  “Françoise?” It was bizarre. Every time I turned around, there she was. The first time we met had been in seventeenth century France, when Tomas and I had saved her from the Inquisition. Then she’d turned up again at Dante’s with the pixie, where she was about to be sold to the Fey. I’d released her, but it looked like Destiny snapped at her heels as closely as it did at mine, because here she was anyway. “What are you doing here?” I asked, bewildered.

  “You and le monsieur ’elped me once,” she answered quickly. “I ’ave come, ’ow do you say? To return the favor.”

  “What about the others?” I asked quickly, “I came with a group—”

  “Oui, je sais. The mage, ’ee make a deal with Radella. She is captain of the night guard, une grande baroudeuse, a warrior of skill.”

  “What kind of deal?”

  “The mage ’ave a rune of power. Radella has long searched for such. Above all, she want a child, but is inféconde , barren. The mage say, ’ee cast it for her, if she aid us.”

  “Jera.” Damn it if it hadn’t come in handy after all.

  "C’est ça.” She glanced at the ogre, who was looking between the two of us suspiciously. I got the impression that he didn’t speak English, at least not well enough to follow the conversation. “They do not know why le vampire will not wake. I tell them you are a great healer—that you can save ’eem.”

  “He’s in a healing trance. He’ll save himself, hopefully.”

  “Eet does not matter,” she said, smiling and nodding at the ogre. “I want only to ’ave the two of you together, near the portal. I return soon, after the guards change.”

  “The portal? But—”

  “I weel do what I can,” she said as the ogre lumbered past her, apparently deciding the conversation had lasted long enough. “But you must promise to take me with you. Please, I ’ave been here so long . . .”

  “You’ve been here a week,” I said, confused. I wanted to explain that I didn’t need the portal. I needed to find Myra, not go right back where I’d started from, especially not with the geis in place and the Senate and Circle both hunting me. Worst of all, if we turned back now, Mac had died for nothing. But the ogre, who had paused to place the lantern on the floor, was now pulling the door shut. Françoise stared at me over his shoulder, looking panicked. “Okay, I promise!” I said. Even a week would feel like an eternity here, and I’d never leave anyone to face what had almost happened to me.

  I stood in the middle of the room, hearing the ogre’s foot-steps echo down the corridor as he walked away. I wanted to check on Tomas but was afraid. What if he was no better? What if he’d never been in a healing trance at all, and we’d been lugging around a corpse?

  After a minute, I screwed up my courage and walked across to the cot. Tomas was lying on his back, highlighted by the lantern light, but I couldn’t see his chest and abdomen for all the bandages that had been wrapped around him. Someone had done a better job than my hasty efforts—he was practically a mummy from just below his nipples to the tops of his hard-muscled thighs. The bandages were all he was wearing, but I barely noticed because I caught a glimmer of dark eyes behind the slitted lids.

  “Tomas!” I bent over him and felt the chill of his skin. That wasn’t good. I don’t know where the rumor started that vampires are cold. Unless they’re starving, they run as hot as a human—after all, it’s human blood that feeds them. I stripped off the blanket and tucked it around him, trying to cover as much bare skin as possible.

  He smiled and tugged weakly at my hand, pulling me down beside him. There was barely room for the two of us on the narrow cot, but he insisted. “I finally have you naked and in bed, and I’m too tired to do anything about it,” he joked. I could have cried with relief.

  I stroked the side of his face with my wrist, but he pulled away. He knew what I was offering, and he desperately needed it. I put my wrist back against his cheek and looked at him seriously. “Feed. You won’t heal without it.”

  “You need your strength.”

  “Then don’t take much, but heal. I don’t know how much time we have.” The door to the cell was heavy, but if he’d been at his usual strength, Tomas could have ripped it from its hinges. Under the circumstances, I’d settle for him being able to run or at least walk once Françoise came back. Unlike the ogre, I couldn’t carry him.

  Tomas looked stubborn, but he must have reached the same conclusion I had, because the next minute I felt a brief pull at my power. It settled into a steady drain as his overtaxed system started to revive, and I sighed slightly in pleasure. The feeding process can be sensual, but this one wasn’t. It was warm and comforting,
like wrapping up in an old, cuddly blanket on a cold night. It felt familiar, too, and I suddenly remembered another reason I had to be angry with Tomas.

  He’d been feeding from me surreptitiously while we roomed together, taking blood through the skin without leaving any telltale marks and with enough of a suggestion to cloud my mind. He’d said it was because he needed to keep track of me—part of his job had been to guarantee my safety and the feedings created a bond—but I still viewed it as a violation. Technically, I could have brought charges against him with the Senate, although that seemed kind of redundant at the moment. They’d happily kill him if they got their hands on him, no additional allegations needed.

  He watched me, the lamplight gilding his dark lashes, and a warm languor spread through my veins. I found it increasingly difficult to be angry. After everything that had happened today, a little thing like a minor power drain seemed incredibly unimportant, and the sensation of peace and familiarity was welcome no matter what was causing it. And it wasn’t like we had another choice: if Fey blood was anything like their other fluids, I was pretty sure it wouldn’t work as vampire food. Tomas would already have fed if so, without anyone knowing.

  “You’re all right?” I asked as he released me, far too soon for a full feeding. “I didn’t know if you were in a healing trance or—”

  “I am far from all right, but thanks to you I’ll recover.” He sounded stronger already, which shouldn’t have surprised me. There were only a few hundred first-level masters in the world, and what they could do often seemed miraculous. “There is something about this place,” he said wonderingly. “It is as if every moment that passes is an hour of our time. I have never before healed so quickly.”

  The answer to a riddle that had been bugging me for two days suddenly clicked into place. I couldn’t believe I hadn’t thought of it earlier. If Myra had been hiding in Faerie, land of the radically unpredictable timeline, then instead of having a week to heal from her injuries, she could have had months, even years. No wonder she’d looked good!

  Tomas kissed the side of my head, the only thing he could reach, and looked at me somberly. “You should not have come back for me—it was a terrible risk. You must promise never to do it again.”

  “I won’t have to,” I said, brushing his hair out of his eyes. It was always so beautiful, long and black and as soft as a child’s. I picked a few leaves out of it with a slightly trembling hand. I was so glad to see him alive that I felt giddy. “We’ll find some way to hide you from the Senate.”

  Tomas was shaking his head before I even finished speaking. “Beautiful Cassie,” he murmured. “It has been a very long time since anyone was willing to risk themselves for me. Very few ever have. I will remember what you tried to do.”

  “I told you, we’ll find somewhere for you to hide. The Senate won’t find you!”

  He laughed slightly, then stopped abruptly as if it hurt. “Do you not understand? They did not find me this time. I went back to them, to him. I thought I could fight it, but I was wrong.”

  I didn’t have to ask who he meant. Louis-César, on loan to the Consul from the European Senate, was Tomas’ master. He had defeated Tomas’ original master, the hated Alejandro, in a duel a century ago and then laid claim. Tomas was a first-level master, but even they vary in strength, and Louis-César simply outmatched him. He’d never been able to break the bond between them.

  Tomas shuddered lightly. I couldn’t see it, but I could feel the slight tremor against me. “Every moment, I heard him, an endless voice, deep in my head driving me half mad! I could never relax, not for a moment. I knew as soon as I did, my will would break and I would go crawling back like a beaten dog. I told myself that soon the war would distract him and he would let me go. But tonight I awoke in the Senate’s holding cells, and a guard informed me that I had walked into the compound and surrendered myself. Yet I remember nothing of it, Cassie! Nothing!” He shook more violently, a visible shudder passing over his limbs. “He pulled me to him like a puppet. He will do it again.”

  I was confused. “You mean he’s calling you now?”

  Tomas smiled, and it was blissful. “No. There is something about Faerie—I have not heard him since we arrived. Not having to fend him off has helped me heal, now that I can use all my strength for it. I had not completely repaired lesser injuries than these in a week with his call draining me, but in this brief time my wounds are closed.”

  “You can’t hear him here?”

  “For the first time in a century, I am free of him,” he said, and his voice held awe, as if he couldn’t quite believe it. “I have no master.” He looked at me, and there was a fierce joy in his face. “For four and a half centuries, I was someone’s slave! My master’s voice controlled me completely, until I thought I would never break free!” He stared around the dank little cell in wonder. “But here, none of our rules seem to apply.”

  I felt my eyes start to burn. “Yeah, I noticed.” If our magic worked here, Mac would have wiped the floor with the Fey.

  “What is it?”

  I shook my head. I didn’t want to think about it, much less talk. But suddenly everything came pouring out of me anyway. It took me less than half an hour to bring him up to speed on what had been happening since we last met. That seemed wrong somehow, that so much pain could be summed up in so few words. Not that Tomas seemed to understand.

  "MacAdam was a warrior. He understood the risks. You all did.”

  I looked at him bleakly. “Yes, which is why he wasn’t supposed to come with us. That was never the plan.”

  Tomas shrugged. “Plans change in battle. Every warrior knows this.”

  “You didn’t know him, or you wouldn’t sound so . . . indifferent! ” I snapped.

  His eyes flashed. “I am not indifferent, Cassie. The mage helped to bring me here, to get me away from the Senate. I owe him much that I will never be able to repay. But at least I can honor the sacrifice he made without belittling him.”

  “I’m not belittling him!”

  “Aren’t you?” Tomas held my eyes without flinching. “He was an old warrior. He had experience and courage and he knew his own mind. And he died for something he believed in—you. You do him no honor by questioning his judgment now.”

  “His judgment got him killed! He should have stayed down.” And I should have searched for Myra on my own. I’d said that no one else was going to die because of me, yet here I was, adding another mark to my body count. “He shouldn’t have believed in me. No one should.”

  “And why not?” Tomas looked genuinely confused.

  I let out a half-bitter, half-hysterical laugh. “Because getting close to me is a one-way ticket to trouble. You ought to know.” Tomas had brought a lot of his problems on himself, but I had to wonder whether he would have made those same bad decisions if he had never met me.

  Tomas shook his head. “You take too much on yourself, Cassie. Not everything is your fault, not every crisis is yours to solve.”

  “I know that!” But however much I might like to think otherwise, I was to blame for what had happened to Mac. He’d been here because of me, he’d been vulnerable because of me, and ultimately, he’d died because of me.

  “Do you?” I felt Tomas’ arm slip around me. “Then you’ve changed.” Warm lips ghosted against my hair. “Perhaps I see things clearer, because I’ve been a warrior longer.”

  “I’m not a warrior at all.”

  “I thought the same once. But when the Spaniards came to our village, I fought with the rest, to save the corn that would feed us through the winter. I lost many friends then, Cassie. The man who had been like a father to me was taken, and because he would not betray where we had hidden the harvest, they fed him to their dogs, piece by piece. Then they carried off the women and burned the village to the ground.”

  He sounded so matter-of-fact about it that I stared. He smiled sadly. “I grieved for him by honoring what he fought for, by keeping our small group together and f
ree.”

  He stopped and I knew why. It was one of the few things he’d told me about his life. Alejandro had eventually finished what the conquistadors had begun, by killing Tomas’ village in some sort of game. I’d never heard the whole story, only a few small fragments, but I didn’t want to make him relive it.

  I decided to change the subject. “Louis-César said your mother was a noblewoman. How did you end up in a village?”

  “After the conquest, no one was noble, no one commoner. You were either European or nothing. My mother had been a priestess of Inti, the sun god, and had taken a vow of chastity for life, but a conquistador took her as booty after the fall of Cuzco. She had expected to be treated with honor, according to the rules of war, but he knew nothing of our customs and would not have cared if he did. He was merely a farmer’s son from Extremadura out to make a fortune, and didn’t care much how he did it. She hated him.”

  “How did she get away?”

  “No one thought she could scale a wall ten feet high when seven months pregnant, and they failed to watch her closely. She got away, but she had no money, and her defilement made her an outcast from her former calling. Not that it mattered. The temple had been plundered and the land was ravaged by disease and war. She fled the capital, where the Spaniards were fighting among themselves, but found things no better in the countryside.” Tomas smiled bitterly. “They forgot, you cannot eat gold. Most of the farmers who had not died had run away. Famine was everywhere. Grain became more valuable than the riches the conquistadors had wanted so badly.”

  “Yet your mother found a village that would take her in?”

  “She hid in her family’s chullpa—a crypt where food and offerings were left for mummified ancestors—and one of the palace servants found her. He had long loved her, but the priestesses were considered the wives of Inti. Sleeping with one of them was a terrible crime. The punishment was to be stripped and chained to a wall, and left to starve to death.”

  “So he had worshipped from afar?”