Master of Shadows Read online

  Pleasure hit him, fierce, burning, pulsing through his cock from tip to balls. She rolled her eyes up at him, and they glittered, wild and triumphant.

  Suddenly Belle pulled her mouth off him and rose to her feet, graceful as a hunting cat. She stepped backward, one hand still wrapped around his cock, pulling him gently away from the rock face. Dazzled, helplessly aroused, he let her guide him around by his shaft, until his thighs hit the side of the pool.

  “Up,” she ordered, her eyes sparking in challenge. “On your back.”

  Unease stirred in him, but it was a faint whisper in the roar of his arousal. He hoisted himself out of the pool and let himself fall back on the stone lip.

  Belle vaulted out of the water with a Maja’s supernatural strength and straddled him, knees on either side of his ribs, one hand pressing his shoulder as the other reached between their bodies to seize his cock.

  She took him into her hot depths in one delicious rush. Her head fell back, the soaked tips of her honey hair tickling his hot thighs. She began to jog, up and down, faster and faster, a fierce little trot that sped into a breath-stealing gallop, each rise and fall of her body slick and tight, a feral pressure.

  Leaning over him, Belle slapped both hands down on his shoulders, bracing herself as she rode, her angry eyes bright. “You can go to Sabryn, but you’re not going to forget me.”

  She had said once she was always on top the last time she rode her men. I’m good with a knife. She looked angry enough to use one on him.

  As she had in the dream. The dream where she’d been not Belle, but Isolde.

  Reality seemed to warp, dumping him into a searing vision. His wife rode him, her face twisted in lust and rage. From the corner of his eye, he thought he saw steel flash . . .

  The blade.

  Remembered fury rolled over him, drowning him without a gurgle. Grabbing Belle’s shoulders, Tristan rolled with her and pinned her beneath him. He snarled as his fangs filled his mouth, and he lunged for her throbbing pulse as he’d done those long centuries ago.

  Belle gasped in startled shock as Tristan struck—there was no other word for it—right for her throat, his fangs sinking into her skin as he began to drive in long, merciless thrusts.

  It should have hurt. It felt glorious.

  His hips circled as he drove, screwing her hard in a fierce and delicious possession that shook her and made her breasts dance. Her orgasm thundered out of nowhere in long, rolling pulses that shook her until she screamed, “Tristan!”

  Belle went limp, her arms dropping away from his shoulders. He’d come as he drank, and his big body crouched over hers like a predator’s, heavy and warm. She blinked in sleepy pleasure, enjoying the dazed aftermath.

  Tristan jerked and froze, his mouth going still against her throat. Suddenly a vision lanced through her brain, bloody, violent.

  He’d come out of his frenzy to find Isolde cooling under him, her throat torn, blood streaking her pale, pretty breasts. The knife she’d buried in his chest was buried now in hers . . .

  He jerked away and pushed himself onto his elbows. “Belle?” Panic rang in his voice. “Belle?”

  Jesu, that horrific vision had somehow leaped directly from his mind. “Tristan? Are you all . . .”

  “Did I hurt you?” His eyes examined her, dwelling on her throat, sweeping down her body.

  She stroked his hair and felt the fine tremble of his body against hers. “I’m fine, Tristan. All you gave me was a howling orgasm.”

  He said something Gaelic again as his head dropped against her shoulder in a gesture of sheer relief.

  She hesitated a moment before she added cautiously, “Tristan, you did not hurt me.” Belle threaded one hand through the gold silk of his hair. “I saw something there at the end. A vision. You and a woman. And blood.”

  “Yeah. Flashback. Bad flashback.” He wrapped his arms around her and held on. “When you were riding me with such anger, I saw Isolde. And I . . .” He broke off with a groan of despair.

  Being told a lover had thought of another woman while making love to her would normally piss Belle off. But this was a very different situation.

  “What did she do to you, Tristan?”

  His racking quivers had yet to subside, speaking of the depth of his trauma.

  The term “post-traumatic stress” was a very recent one, but the Magekind had known of its effects for centuries. When people go into combat again and again, facing death in a variety of ugly ways, they’re going to end up with personal demons that plunge them into hell without warning.

  He still hadn’t answered her. “Tristan?”

  “She was on top. The last time.”

  Belle went cold. “You were making love when she tried to kill you?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Nobody told me that.”

  “I never told anyone.”

  Belle had heard Isolde had turned traitor after she failed Merlin’s test to become a Maja. Tristan had not failed, yet he’d chosen to drink from Merlin’s Grail rather than remain mortal with his wife. She’d been furious, and she’d joined the rebellion led by Mordred, the bastard son of Arthur and Morgana.

  The pair hadn’t known they were half siblings when Morgana got pregnant. Merlin revealed their true relationship when he and Nimue appeared to test the inhabitants of Camelot.

  Brilliant, proud nineteen-year-old Mordred had been one of those to fail Merlin’s tests. Having been raised as Arthur’s heir, he hadn’t appreciated being denied the power and immortality the Grail conferred. He’d led other disaffected nobles against his father in a rebellion that left the kingdom in ruins. Arthur finally killed him at the Battle of Camlann, after a fight that nearly cost the king his life.

  “Just before Camlann, Isolde sent a secret note saying she wanted to reconcile,” Tristan said. “She hinted that if I met her, she’d spy on Mordred for Arthur.”

  “It was a trick.”

  “Yes.” He said nothing for a long moment, breathing against her throat. “I still loved her. Despite everything, I remembered the girl she’d been when we fell in love as teenagers. We’d been married for twenty years by the time Merlin tested us, and she couldn’t understand why I chose to accept the Grail when I knew she’d remain mortal. I tried to make her see it was a matter of duty. I was one of Arthur’s knights and he needed me, but . . .” He lifted his head and met her gaze, silently begging her for the understanding his wife had denied him. “Some of our best fighters had failed Merlin’s test, Belle. I couldn’t let him go into combat alone against Mordred. We were too badly outnumbered.”

  “She seduced you.” Belle’s chest ached, a hard, deep throb that shot from her heart to her fingertips.

  “Yes. She was on top, like you were a few minutes ago. I didn’t know about the dagger under the pillow. I’d closed my eyes, coming, and she slipped it out. I looked up just as she buried the blade in my chest.”

  “She didn’t know it takes an enchanted weapon to kill one of us.”

  “No.” His green eyes took on a tormented gleam. “I dragged the knife out, and I . . . It was instinct.”

  He didn’t have to finish. They clung to each other for a long, shaking moment.

  Belle felt sick. “Did you think I was going to kill you?”

  Tristan’s eyes flashed wide. “No! No, I just . . . saw her. It was a flashback. I saw her face. So many centuries gone, and I saw her face.” He gritted his teeth. “Will I never be free of that bitch?”

  NINE

  Belle felt numb. The kind of numbness that follows a fatal blow, when you feel nothing but cold.

  “I’ve never hurt a woman in bed since then, Belle. I swear it. I never would. But for a moment there, I was afraid I’d injured you with my bite.” His green gaze searched hers, smoky with anxiety. “Are you sure I . . . ?”

  “No. I’m fine.”

  Tristan looked at her for a long moment, and she stared back, feeling more helpless than she’d felt since she’d watched her da
ughter die.

  “I’d better go.” He drew away from her. With a start, she realized his softened sex had still been inside her.

  A wave of her hand cleaned and dressed them both in jeans and T-shirts. Belle scrambled to her bare feet as he rose, every line of his body shouting of weariness. “Tristan, you don’t have to leave. I want to talk . . .”

  “I don’t.”

  That stopped her dead. She stared at him for a sickly moment. “Oh.”

  “I’ve got too many devils, Belle. I thought I’d forgotten, but I haven’t.”

  “You’re going with Sabryn.”

  His gaze met hers. “I don’t give a shit about Sabryn. And she’ll never care about me. It’s safer that way.”

  “Safe can kill the soul, Tristan.”

  “And sometimes you can’t afford to care.” He hesitated, slipping his hands into the back pockets of his jeans, his eyes on his toes. “You’re a hell of a partner, Belle. There’s nobody I’d rather have at my back.”

  “But not on top.” The words emerged with a bitterness she hadn’t intended.

  “Demons just aren’t that easy to kill.” Tristan started out between the mounds of honeysuckle. Then he stopped and spoke without looking back at her. “I wish it were different.”

  “Tristan, dammit . . .”

  He walked out of the garden.

  “Well, Belle,” she muttered to the fragrant night, “you really fucked that one up.”

  He’d hurt her. Physically, it could have been worse; Tristan had managed to arrest his dive at her throat like a man pulling back on a collared wolf.

  Emotionally . . . the fear in her eyes when he’d told her about Isolde raked at Tristan like claws. It wasn’t the first time he’d had a woman fear him; he’d had a very bad reputation after Isolde. Women had actively avoided him.

  But then, he hadn’t sought any out either. Bottles were enough for him then. It had been safer all the way around.

  Until the minstrels had started in. Tristan guessed some Magekind’s mortal child had whispered something in a bard’s ear. The silly poet had woven so many lies around that kernel of fact, there was no recognizing it.

  Isolde became his lady fair, and they were star-crossed adulterous lovers. Apparently somebody had conflated the story with the mess between Arthur, Gwen, and Lancelot.

  And Christ, what bad poetry was born.

  Soon the new Magekind no longer feared him, for the true story was something the older ones considered too painful to repeat. So he was redeemed by minstrel lies. Women began approaching him again, and his dick decided it had had quite enough of celibacy, thank you.

  Now here he was.

  Tristan paused his long stride over the footbridge that arced across the River Nimue. He walked toward the stone handrail and leaned against it, looking down on the water. It rolled along, black as a stream of ink, with the white reflection of the moon dancing spectral-pale on its surface. The current looked almost lazy, as if a man could wade across.

  In reality, it could snatch up a vampire and sweep him away between one breath and the next.

  Like time. Like love. Tempting and treacherous.

  Damn Isolde. She clung to him like a ghost, draining the pleasure from his life with icy, jealous fingers, making him a menace to the first woman he’d loved in fifteen centuries.

  Tristan enjoyed nothing more than taunting death, but he’d finally found a risk he wouldn’t take.

  He wouldn’t risk Belle.

  She paced the garden, swiping angrily at her cheeks. Damned if I’ll cry for that bastard.

  Her tears felt cold, a slick, wet stream. Revolting.

  In retrospect, Belle saw that she was the worst possible partner for Tristan. She killed her blood-mad partners in exactly the same way that Isolde had tried to slay him.

  Not that she had a choice. When a vampire went blood-mad, he could rip your throat out before you even saw him move. Belle had learned that the only way to survive that third and final ride was to get on top, ready to pin her lover if he lost his wits. None of her Latent partners ever knew she fucked them all with a conjured blade in her hand.

  So she adopted those that survived, treated them more like sons than ex-lovers as she guided them through the process of becoming veteran warriors. She celebrated their triumphs and comforted them after their failures, since not even the Magekind can learn without mistakes.

  They never had any idea that she cherished them out of gratitude: they hadn’t made her kill them.

  She’d thought Tristan was safe. He would never turn on her. He was her equal, not a protégé to be carefully taught survival. Yet he’d turned out to be more vulnerable than any of them. Belle felt vaguely betrayed.

  Morgana and Arthur had been right, dammit. Which should have been no surprise. Arthur was Tristan’s best friend, had known him longer and better than anyone. When he said cracks ran through his friend’s granite façade, she should have listened to him.

  Something chirped. It took Belle a dazed moment to recognize the sound. Her cell. Probably Morgana.

  But when she pulled the iPhone out of her pocket, Justice’s deep voice spoke. “Hi, Belle. Listen, the Council of Clans wants you and Tristan to testify about Jimmy Sheridan’s death tomorrow night.”

  “So they can call everything we say lies and declare war anyway? No thanks, Justice.” Besides, she had no desire to see Tristan again for at least another century.

  “Look, I’ve found out we’ve got the chairman of the Council of Clans on our side. He says he doesn’t want war, and he wants to find a way out of this mess. If you testify, there’s a chance we’ll be able to talk sense into the council. Otherwise, war is certain. And a lot of people are going to pay with their lives.”

  When he put it that way, she didn’t have much choice. “All right. I’ll talk to Arthur and Tristan, see how we want to handle this.”

  “Nine P.M. tomorrow night, at Livingston Corporate Center. I’ll message you from there to let you set up a gate.”

  “Fine. We’ll be there.” Assuming she could talk Tristan into tolerating her presence that long.

  Hunger gnawed at Dice like maddening rat teeth chewing on his guts. He’d woken up that night healed of the countless cuts as if they’d never been. Ever since then, Warlock had been driving him, teaching him how to fight with his huge new body by stalking deer deep in the mountain woods. How to wheel and leap, bringing prey down with his size, his jaws, his quick, ripping claws. But no matter how much he ate of his prey, the tormenting hunger wasn’t sated.

  Weakness had set in as they worked, but he’d tried to ignore it. He’d wanted to make sure that the next time they fought, Warlock wouldn’t take him apart.

  But there was no ignoring the relentless gnaw now. Dice’s legs shook under him like a weary old man’s. “I’m sick, Warlock,” he said, sinking onto his belly in the leaves. The wizard could fry him or not; he was done. “I gotta lay down.”

  Warlock cocked his head, orange eyes studying him. Clawed fingers flicked, sending a spell rolling across his furry flesh. The feel of the magic made his body go on point like a birddog catching sight of a grouse. “You’re starving. Go hunt.”

  Dice stared up at his master. “Hunt what? Another deer?” He didn’t have the strength.

  “Magic. You need to kill something that has magic. I’d suggest one of Arthur’s witches.”

  “Witches? What witches?” Dice stared at Warlock as he managed to reel to his feet. “Where the fuck am I supposed to find a witch?”

  Warlock glanced at him appraisingly. “I’ll give you the first one, since you’ve burned through all your magic. After that, you’ll have to do your own hunting.”

  His furred fingers sketched a shape, and a glowing point appeared, expanding into a hole in midair. “Through there. Wait. They’ll be home in a couple of hours, and you can feed then.”

  Dice licked his dry, cracked lips. His tongue felt swollen. “How do you feed on magic?”

&nbs
p; Warlock grinned, the expression chilling even to Dice. “You’ll figure it out.”

  All in all, sitting next to a pissed-off Belle while surrounded by three hundred furious werewolves wasn’t an experience Tristan would recommend. Even as she testified in that clear, ringing voice, she radiated cold at him like a dry-ice machine. Meanwhile wolves growled and rumbled all around them as if it was feeding time at the zoo. Tris was starting to feel like frozen Alpo.

  “You set us up, Justice,” Tristan muttered to his friend. “Thanks a lot.”

  “Not necessarily,” Justice whispered back. “Carl Rosen—he’s the chairman—is from an old family with a hell of a lot of pull. And Rosen doesn’t want war. He can calm this bunch down if anyone can.”

  “You’d better be right, or things are going to get ugly.” Having the job he did, it was hardly the first time Tristan had attended a meeting with a bunch of angry people. Generally, if you had a witch along, she could make sure the situation didn’t spin out of control. But since werewolves were immune to magic, Belle couldn’t cast a spell to calm everybody down. To make matters worse, there were one or two fuzzy bastards in the crowd who were actively trying to whip everyone else into a lynching, just for shits and giggles. His vampire hearing kept detecting incendiary comments, not that anyone exactly whispered.

  Plus, there was plenty of room for a really good mob. The Livingston Corporate Center was a sprawling four-story cream building that occupied five wooded acres on the outskirts of Greenville, South Carolina. Livingston was one of the few remaining textile firms in the South that still operated manufacturing plants in the U.S., and the company used the center for its research and development. More than a thousand people worked in the building, so its auditorium was spacious, with comfortable theater-style seating facing a large stage. He, Belle and Bill Justice sat up there under the hot lights, at a table facing the longer one where the thirteen council members sat.

  Twelve of them looked constipated, worried, or bloodthirsty, depending on their political leanings. Chairman Carl Rosen was simply expressionless.