Wicked Enchantment (25 page)

Gabriel was in the living room, his big body stretched out on the couch. His eyes were closed and one arm was thrown back over his head. He was still shirt- and shoeless, wearing only a pair of jeans that rode low, exposing the jut of his hip. Her gaze traced over his washboard abs and the narrow trail of dark hair that went past the waistband of his jeans to the long, wide cock she’d seen but not yet touched.

Her hands tightened on the blanket she held around her as her gaze traveled to his hands. He’d given her the most powerful climaxes of her life with only his hands and lips. What could he do with his entire body?

“Morning.” His voice came out a rasp.

Her gaze flew to his face. “So, it is morning.”

“You slept for about fourteen hours.”

“Really?”

“You needed the rest.” He sat up and rubbed a hand over his face. “Do you feel better?”

She nodded. Actually, she felt worlds better than she had the day before.

“The dark smudges are gone from underneath your eyes and your color is healthier. You’re healing well.”

“You’re so worried about me. You spent two weeks wrapped in charmed iron, longer than me.” She shifted her weight to her other foot in the slightly uncomfortable silence. “Why did you sleep on the couch?”

He looked up at her with heavy-lidded eyes and slowly blinked. “Why? Did you miss me?”

“I’m just saying”—she swallowed hard—“you’re recovering, too, and the couch is uncomfortable. You could have shared the bed with me.”

“I didn’t want to disturb you. You needed a deep, uninterrupted sleep.” He paused and his eyes seemed to get darker. “Anyway, I couldn’t stay in there and resist you. If I’d kept looking at your beautiful body while you slept, eventually I would have pulled you beneath me and teased you awake. And then, pretty Aislinn, you wouldn’t have been sleeping anymore. You’d have been otherwise . . . occupied.”

Her mouth went dry. “Oh.”

“Today we need to work. I think you’re ready for it.”

“Work?”

The slight smile he wore faded. He nodded. “Showers. Coffee.” He paused. “Souls.”

 

 

“WHAT
do you mean, you can’t find them?” Aodh Críostóir Ruadhán O’Dubhuir, the man who had been the Shadow King of the Unseelie Court since before Columbus had sailed the seas, tried to keep his voice quiet. Every ounce of him wanted to turn and kill the messenger where he stood.

His crystal-topped fighting staff whirled in the air as he jumped up and twisted in midair, slashing at an imaginary enemy even as he pretended it was the messenger. The messenger, sensing his precarious tether on life, stepped away from the training ring and cleaved to the gray stone wall that surrounded it. Sensible man.

Aodh continued to practice, his fighting staff whipping in maneuvers with the sharp sound of air being sliced. His body moved freely, muscles bunching and stretching as he rotated on the balls of his bare feet and leapt occasionally into the air.

Gabriel had managed to escape his prison and steal the woman from his dungeon in the space of a few hours. It made him, as king, look incompetent—
stupid
. No one knew exactly what had happened because everyone—even his mages—had died before they’d woken from the sleeping spell they’d been put under. There were only two men in the Black Tower who could weave a spell like that one, Ronan and Niall Quinn, and they were both missing, along with Ronan’s wife, Bella.

“We’ve got every guard to a man searching for them, my liege,” said the messenger, his voice shaking. He probably understood that the mages, guards, and everyone else unlucky enough to have been in the dungeon and unfortunate enough to fall under Ronan’s spell now wore bloody second smiles on their throats. The burning pyre had been enormous and hellishly hot that morning. He hoped that wherever Gabriel was, he smelled the burning flesh and shuddered at it.

Aodh came to a stop and stared incredulously at the messenger. Sweat poured down his face and chest, though he wasn’t at all out of breath. “It’s not like you’re searching the entire world. They didn’t fly to Australia. There are limits to Piefferburg. They can’t have gone far.” His hands tightened into fists at his sides, his knuckles going white around the fighting staff. “It shouldn’t be difficult to find five people in a fishbowl.”

He wanted Ronan, Bella, and Niall every bit as much as he wanted Gabriel and Aislinn. Bella might be the most important one. If he could get his hands on Bella, he would have the perfect leverage to use against his daughter. Aislinn was clearly a tender-hearted, sweet woman—a sucker for someone she loved. Surely she would sacrifice herself to save her dearest friend.

“The countermeasures used to thwart our tracking spells are formidable and most of your mages are dead. We have no one left who can break them.”

He went very still and imagined that the tall, blond messenger was bleeding from his eyes. Yes, he’d look much better that way. The delicate Twyleth Teg was delivering messages from the captain of the Shadow Guard. It was a smart move on the captain’s part since he was less likely to lose his temper with a messenger . . . unless that messenger dared to insult him. “Are you suggesting that I made a mistake?”

The man blinked and his mouth opened and closed a couple of times. “I would never presume to—”

“Are you saying that because I killed the mages who were in the dungeon—the ones who were supposed to keep their charge safe from all who meant to take her from me—I have somehow hindered the guards’ efforts to locate Aislinn and Gabriel?”

“No, my lord—”

“You are dismissed.”

The man practically ran out of the room. Aodh turned and exhaled slowly, trying to gain a handle on his temper. It had always been his Achilles’ heel. He’d done a very good job of keeping his explosive, violent anger in control since the time the Black Tower had been constructed, but this situation with his bastard daughter had inflamed it.

One night’s indiscretion had resulted in a child. He would never be so careless again.

Slowly, he moved the fighting staff in the air in front of him, breathing slowly in and out until his temper was better in check. Then he increased the pace of his maneuvers, the staff whipping faster and faster through the air in front of him.

Over the years he’d been careful not to father any children, though it happened from time to time. Generally, it was easy enough to take care of early on, when the babe was still in the cradle. The girl children were especially dangerous.

So Aislinn had come as a nasty surprise.

He’d met her mother in the square many years ago. It had been dark outside and the woman had been upset. She’d clearly been Seelie Sídhe and one of the purest blood, too. Irresistible to him. Forbidden fruit was so much sweeter. She’d sat there, her beautiful alabaster face turned to the moonlight, tears on her cheeks. The collar of her summer dress had dipped to show the smooth curve of her shoulder.

She’d been lovely, so pure and fragile, sitting there by the statue of Jules Piefferburg, so close to the Unseelie side of the square. It had been as though she’d been looking for trouble. Like she’d been tempting the shadows to reach out and swallow her whole.

He’d neither cared nor wondered why she’d been so upset and tempting the shadows, but she’d succeeded in the latter. He’d sat down near her and slowly seduced her with charming words, cajoling and luring her to his side of the square, just for a little while. Just for as long as it had taken to find an obliging pocket of night, to coax her skirt up and her panties down. He’d meant to come outside her, but she’d been so sweet and soft, and the loveliest, dirtiest things had fallen from her lush mouth while he fucked her.

At the time, he had worried about his slip and considered killing the woman right then and there, just to stave off possible problems in the future. But not even he could kill a woman he’d only just fucked. Not with his bare hands.

He hadn’t known about Aislinn until many years later. Not until Aislinn’s friend Bella had come to the Black Tower. She’d had no photos of her best friend, so she’d drawn some pictures instead. One day he’d caught a glimpse of these sketches and had immediately recognized his line. She didn’t look like him much at all, save for the color of her hair, the mirror of his natural silver-blond. But in the face she looked exactly like his mother, his grandmother, and even his great-grandmother.

There had been no question.

So he’d deep-searched Bella’s mind when she hadn’t been paying attention and he’d learned Aislinn’s deepest and darkest secret.

That was his magick—the kind that could kill. Sadly, murdering people with their own thoughts only worked on the weakest of minds, on babies and small children. Unfortunate, since it was a useful talent.

Aislinn hadn’t known she was a necromancer, of course. She’d only known she was Unseelie, strongly so, stuck in the Seelie Court. But he’d known she was much more than she thought—knew it because his mother had been a necromancer, and his grandmother, and his great-grandmother.

Necromancers were powerful Unseelie and she was next in line for his throne. That was when he’d realized she could not live. In fact, it became his absolute obsession to kill her and not just kill her, but obliterate her. A difficult task, considering she resided in the Rose Tower and to take her by force would mean a war with the Summer Queen.

Enter Gabriel.

Aodh passed a hand over his tired face. That had been his mistake. He’d misjudged Gabriel Cionaodh Marcus Mac Braire. He’d thought the incubus totally cold in his heart and ruthless in his seduction of women, never allowing himself to grow close to them, never falling victim to such silly emotions like love or compassion. Yet somehow Aislinn had brought both of these to the surface in the Lord of the Wild Hunt.

And then all had been lost.

But it was only a temporary loss. He wasn’t going to lose, ultimately. There was no way Aislinn and Gabriel could hide from him forever in the small bubble of Piefferburg. He would find them and destroy them both. He would flay every inch of their beings so that they couldn’t even be together after death—Aislinn because he had to, Gabriel because he could.

In hindsight, he never should have sent the Lord of the Wild Hunt to her in the first place. Gabriel and Aislinn had too much in common, could help each other too much. But he’d never anticipated—never believed—Gabriel’s icy heart could melt this way.

Never. And then it had.

He had to find them before Gabriel and Aislinn realized how powerful they were together, before they harnessed the strength within his daughter and mated it to Gabriel’s skills. He was sure the possibilities were not lost on them. Together Aislinn and Gabriel could call and control an army that would flatten his forces. If they did that, he didn’t have a prayer against them.

Aodh gave a battle cry that came from the center of his being and landed on his feet, yelling his anger to the room.

 

 

“IT’S
rude to ignore a ghost.”

Gabriel shook his head and laughed. “Like it’s rude to summon a soul from the Netherworld?” They’d been “talking shop” for the last half hour. She seemed to love to discuss this topic, probably because this was the first time she’d ever been able to talk to someone who understood. “I don’t think the ghosts care much one way or another.”

She frowned at him. “Then clearly you haven’t dealt with many ghosts.”

He gave her a look. “I’m essentially what amounts to the grim reaper of the fae, Aislinn, I see them nearly every night. Most souls go with me, though. I don’t leave many behind.”

“What about the old woman who wanders the square when the moon is waning? Why did you leave her behind?”

“I can’t make them go if they don’t want to. Her name was Greta. She died during the waning moon and lived near the square. The night we came to collect her, she refused to leave her husband, but he has since moved away. She’s searching for him.”

“Did you ever go back and try to get her to come with you later?”

He sighed patiently. “I visit her at least once every couple of weeks. She always refuses to pass over. Believe me, I’m giving her many opportunities. Eventually, when she’s ready, she’ll join the hunt. Until then, she’s not hurting anyone.”

“What about the hobgoblin boy who wanders the alleys in the
ceantar láir
? He’s so sad and confused.”

“He was murdered. It was very violent. He thinks he’s still alive and won’t listen to reason.”

She pursed her lips and folded her arms over her chest. “He wails every night. He’s miserable and always refuses to talk to me even though I’ve snuck out of the Rose several times to go to him because his pull is so strong.”

“Sometimes they need time to figure things out. Eventually he’ll come to understand that he’s dead and better off leaving this place and moving on. You can’t rush it, though. They do it in their own time. Sometimes they stay behind because they’re not ready to say good-bye to a loved one yet, or sometimes they feel like they have a job they need to do before they pass over. I don’t forget about them, Aislinn, not any of them. I can’t. They pull at me, every single soul that doesn’t cross over. It’s a part of being the Lord of the Wild Hunt.”

“Did you ever find his killer?”

The other job of the Wild Hunt was to mete out punishment to murderers. The hunt hounds sniffed out fae who had killed innocents in cold blood. The Wild Hunt swept the souls of those fae from their bodies so they wouldn’t be left to endanger others. The justice was swift, clean, and never misplaced. Because the punishment was sanctioned by Danu and the gods, murder was a rare crime in Piefferburg. The only fae exempt from the Wild Hunt were those who killed in self-defense, in legitimate euthanasia . . . and the royals.

The royals and those under their orders could literally get away with murder.