Surrender to Darkness Page 31

  Not because that claim had saved her life.

  But because the Jamie Murdoch she had glimpsed at the moment of her transcendence was finally a contented man. A whole and united man.

  She moaned.

  A man who was doing his utmost to prove himself capable of taking her to the stars. With his mouth. On her breast. Oh, my. She threaded her fingers into his hair and dragged him even closer.

  “Jamie,” she whispered hoarsely, encouragingly.

  He halted and lifted his head. “What did you call me?”

  “Jamie. Isn’t that your given name?”

  He smiled. A slow, intimate smile. “Aye. But no one calls me that.”

  “Dika does.”

  “Does she? I never noticed.”

  “Would you prefer me to call you Murdoch?”

  He kissed her chin. Little nibbles that made her belly quiver. “No. I like the sound of my given name on your lips. Particularly when you say it in that sexy, breathless way. Say it again.”

  Because she was feeling magnanimous, she did.

  Then she wrapped an arm around his neck and drew his lips to hers. It was the first kiss she had ever offered to a man that included commitment. With other men, all she could offer was an interlude, a brief stop on the path to her destiny. With Murdoch, she could open the gate to her heart.

  “I love you,” she said against his lips.

  “I love you, too,” he answered. This time without hesitation, without a trace of doubt. And her heart fluttered.

  “In case you doubt my sincerity, I plan to spend an eternity proving it to you.” His hand slipped beneath the waistband of her pajamas and down to the wetness that waited for him. “Starting right here.”

  She arched into his hand, seeking a deeper thrill, inviting a deeper touch, and he groaned.

  Surrender could be sweet.

  GLOSSARY

  dōgi—Uniform of “the way.” This is the plain white training outfit that Kiyoko often wears.

  dojo—The area in which a “way” (specific art or skill set) is taught and practiced. The way of the onmyōji is taught in Kiyoko Ashida’s dojo.

  futon—Japanese bedding consisting of a padded mattress and covers which can be folded and then stored away. Since the rooms of a traditional Japanese house often serve multiple purposes, the ability to store bedding is useful.

  hakama—Traditional Japanese clothing, belted at the waist and pleated.

  kata—Choreographed patterns of movements like those used to practice martial arts.

  katana—A single-edged, slightly curved steel sword.

  kendo—A modern sword-fighting martial art based on the ancient sword art kenjitsu.

  kendōgi—Uniform worn by the practitioners of kendo.

  ki—Spirit, feeling, or flow of energy.

  kimono—Formal Japanese wrapped garment worn by both men and women with an obi around the waist.

  koto—A traditional thirteen-string musical instrument which is the national instrument of Japan.

  niou—A pair of stone guardians that stand on either side of a gate.

  nitōjutsu—The art of using two blades in combat.

  obi—Sash or belt.

  oni—A large red demon from Japanese folklore.

  onimusha—A warrior with an internal demon.

  onmyōdō—An ancient Japanese mystical practice involving divination and other forms of occultism including calendar arts and healing.

  onmyōji—An onmyōdō specialist, highly skilled in magic and divination.

  samurai—A military noble of ancient Japanese highly skilled in combat.

  sashimi—Thinly sliced raw seafood, often served with a sauce for dipping.

  sensei—A Japanese title of respect, often used for teachers.

  senshi—Warrior, or soldier.

  shikigami—A spirit summoned by a practitioner of onmyōdō.

  shoji—A sliding door or room divider consisting of a frame covered with thin translucent material.

  tabi—Japanese socks with a split for the large toe to permit wearing with thonged sandals.

  tatami—Mats covered with woven straw which serve as flooring in a traditional Japanese home.

  torii—A traditional Japanese gate.

  yin and yang—The philosophy that equal and opposite forces exist within everything and are interconnected.

  zazen—A meditation method that involves sitting in the lotus position with hands cupped.

  Don’t miss the first book in the Soul Gatherers series,

  DRAWN INTO DARKNESS

  Available now from Signet Eclipse.

  Early Sunday morning, Lachlan decided he was ready to confront Drusus.

  Three a.m. seemed a natural time to find a lure demon intent on perverting weak souls, and a dark, foul-smelling alley behind a graffiti-decorated apartment building seemed the perfect place to perform a locator spell.

  He carefully intoned the words of the spell, ensuring his pronunciation was clear, and then scattered the necessary handful of scorched rat bones. A misty circlet formed in the air above the bones, glowing faintly. In the center of the circle, images began to appear, drop by drop, like paint splatters on a canvas. Each image showed a location around the city. Some he recognized; some he did not. As new drops wiped out old, the images came faster and faster, until his eyes could no longer keep up.

  Then they suddenly stopped.

  But not in a helpful spot. Instead of the usual pin-pointed landmark, all he got was a four-block radius in which to search, just west of here.

  With a heavy sigh, he waved the damp mist away and crouched beside his latest gathering assignment.

  A gut-shot punk in a black silk jacket lay sprawled amid the rubbish, a small bag of white powder floating in the blood next to him. He placed his hand on the dead man’s throat. A drug dealer. How apropos.

  The familiar feathery tendrils danced up his arm, but this time there was no balmy warmth, no gentle tranquillity—only the slimy ooze of a rancid soul snaking around his heart. As usual, the sensation evoked a low wave of nausea.

  No more than an instant after the ooze leached into his blood, the air around him crackled and dried like mud under the desert sun. It was not unexpected, of course. Unlike angels, Satan’s henchmen were never late picking up a soul.

  Pop.

  Still squatted next to the body, Lachlan glanced up … just as a ball of brilliant orange fire plowed into his right shoulder. He reacted instinctively, rolling back and drawing his claidheamh mòr as he regained his feet. But the severity of a fireball hitting him full on, without the mitigation of a shield spell, brought tears to his eyes and blood to his lip as he bit down to defuse the pain.

  “Hello, MacGregor.”

  A wave of undiluted agony shuddered through Lachlan, and his voice broke. “Dru-sus.”

  “Those hurt like hell, don’t they?” the lean, blond demon said, pointing to the writhing blackened flesh of Lachlan’s shoulder and smiling at his own joke. “I don’t normally lower myself to collect souls, but I thought since you were looking for me, I’d oblige.”

  “Nice of you,” Lachlan gasped as he wove a belated shield charm. He blinked until his opponent came into focus.

  Drusus walked around him in slow, measured steps, his sharply angled face a study of youthful arrogance.

  “I see you’re sticking with the tried and true. Nothing modern man has created quite surpasses an excellent blade, does it?” A soft whoosh, and then he, too, held a sword in his hands: a gladius, shorter than Lachlan’s sword and engraved up the length with his name in Roman script. “I’d forgotten what it feels like to hold one.”

  Deep in the shadowy gap of the demon’s zippered jacket, a thick gold chain shimmered, a chain strong enough to support a heavy glass reliquary. Lachlan’s gut twisted.

  “Perhaps you’ve also forgotten how to use it.”

  Drusus swung the gladius loosely in front of his body. “You could hope for that, baro. But if you recall, i
t was I who taught you everything you know about fine swordsmanship.”

  “No’ everything.”

  “I can still picture your face the first time I disarmed you. You, a mighty clan chieftain, and I, nothing but a spindling lad. You were galled.”

  “I’m less vexed now that I know you cheated.”

  “Cheated?”

  “Demon versus human is hardly a fair fight.”

  The demon’s eyes hardened into shiny beads of jade. “Immortal versus immortal would seem to be a battle of equals, though. What do you say? Shall we engage in a contest?”

  “Aye, let’s duel. The point of my sword is eager to meet your belly.”

  Drusus snorted. “I admire your confidence, MacGregor. But perhaps we should get our business out of the way first, on the off chance it’s you who perishes and not I. Where’s the Linen?”

  “I destroyed it.”

  “Nice try. Unfortunately, destroying a relic of such consequence would leave a mystical residue of mushroom cloud proportions.” He glanced up at the sky. “I don’t see one. Do you?”

  That would have been nice to know. Yesterday. “You don’t really expect me to tell you where it is, do you?”

  “Of course I do. You owe it to me.” The demon’s eyes glittered. “We had a bargain. You were to let me in the back gate so I could steal the Linen. Hiding it was never part of the arrangement.”

  “Any bargain we struck was voided the moment you invited the Campbells into my home. The deal did no’ include the slaughter of my family.”

  “Actually, it did. I just never told you that part.”

  Lachlan stiffened. Even though he knew Drusus was a demon, he found it was surprisingly hard to accept that the young man who’d once carried an adoring young Cormac on his shoulders had watched dispassionately as Tormad sliced the boy’s throat.

  “Apparently, there were words left unspoken on both sides,” Lachlan said. “Had you bothered to speak to me before running my brother through, you’d possess the Linen today. Despite the promise I made to protect it, I intended to give the cloth to you.”

  The demon’s face darkened. “You lie.”

  “Nay, I was your puppet, properly enthralled. But watching my wife’s throat cut before my very eyes and listening to Tormod Campbell crow about slaying my bairns shook me free of your clutches, hellspawn. I vowed then you’d never touch it, and I happily did the unthinkable simply to see you thwarted.”

  Drusus grimaced. “Indeed, I never expected you to entrust it to the very clan that wiped out your family. I could have saved myself several hundred years of searching had I considered that possibility.”

  “There you have it—the Linen eludes you because of your own mistakes.”

  “Not mistakes. Just the one. My only error was with you.”

  Silence fell between them as Lachlan absorbed the significance of that. Irrational or not, being the only one in two thousand years to hoodwink Drusus induced a twinge of pride. Perhaps it boded well for this encounter, too.

  “And tonight,” Drusus added, “I get the chance to redeem myself. We’ll battle. You’ll put up a good fight, but I’ll win. I’ll get the whereabouts of the Linen, and you’ll finally get a respectable warrior’s death. It’ll all end well.”

  “I’m already dead.”

  Humor softened the harsh lines of the other man’s face. “Yes, well, you know what I mean.”

  And then, without warning, he lunged. The point of his sword drove accurately at Lachlan’s heart, his attack swift and sure—only to be deflected by the claidheamh mòr.

  “Oh, bravo,” Drusus said, unfazed. “I would have hated this to be a one-sided affair.”

  Lachlan had been about to toss a blinding spell, so it would hardly have been a one-sided affair, with or without his excellent reflexes. But he didn’t bother to debate that. He was too busy executing a fierce downward slice toward the lure demon’s neck.

  Drusus parried it. At the same time, he brought his own flavor of magic to the fight. A dustbowl of swirling red miasma rose up from the damp pavement, encircling the two of them as they dueled. Spinning madly, the crimson tornado lifted higher and higher, until it obliterated every star in the night sky. Then white-hot fireballs began to rain down on Lachlan.

  His shield charm took a heavy beating. In a disquietingly short time, the hellish fury pitted the protection spell to rice-paper density. But Lachlan had little time to spare for repairs.

  He was battling an expert swordsman.

  Had he been the same rough soldier Drusus had manipulated all those years ago, his defeat would have been quick and brutal. The demon held nothing back, hitting his blade with powerful, bone-rattling blows, the kind of blows one avoids in practice sessions for fear of irreparably damaging a blade.

  Fortunately, though, Lachlan was no longer a backward Scottish knight who only hacked and thrust. With the help of Italian and Spanish masters, at whose feet he had studied for a hundred years after his death, he’d honed his talents to a lethal edge. Talents that now served him well.

  He cut and thrust with smooth, almost effortless technique. He broke through the demon’s defenses twice, slicing through the leather jacket and biting deep into flesh. His new sword glowed green with the taste of demon blood.

  But victory eluded him.

  The sword was not enough. Not only did his opponent’s wounds heal with incredible speed, allowing Drusus to continue fighting without respite, but moments after Lachlan scored his second successful slice, the beleaguered shield charm collapsed, leaving him dreadfully barren of protection. He swiftly called forth another, but it was whisked away before it was fully formed, with no more exertion than a horse swatting a fly.

  The swirling red vapor dissolved, carried away in wisps on the night breeze. Drusus paused, staring curiously at Lachlan’s heaving chest and sweat-drenched brow.

  “You Gatherers are little better than humans,” he observed, sounding disappointed. “This is hardly the challenging duel I’d hoped it would be.”

  Lachlan responded by whipping a restraining spell at him, roping the demon in thick white cords and pinning his arms to his sides.

  Drusus broke the binds with a single indrawn breath. “Very rudimentary stuff, that. There’s a much better spell in the Book of Gnills. Where’s the Linen?”

  As the tattered remnants of the binds fell away, the gap in the demon’s leather jacket widened, and Lachlan caught a glimpse of a faint golden glow about his neck—the reliquary. A bitter dose of failure poured into his throat, choking him. Drusus could crush him, right here and right now, if that was his desire. Not without a fight, of course, but slowly, inevitably, courtesy of the indefatigable power the bastard had borrowed from Satan. And when he fell, the souls of his family would be cast into hell, never to be recovered.

  No. He could not let them down. Not again. He drew deep on his powers and straightened to his full height.

  “Fuck you.”

  His nemesis smiled coldly. “Don’t be foolish, MacGregor. Put down the sword, or I’ll be forced to wring the location of the Linen from you. Bit by agonizing bit.”

  “Go ahead. Try.”

  “That confidence is born of ignorance. You can’t begin to imagine the pain I can inflict.” He paused, eyeing Lachlan’s firm stance and grip. “Tell me where the Linen is.”

  “No.”

  “Tell me where it is, or I’ll be forced to take my anger out on Emily.”

  Unease crept into Lachlan’s muscles, numbing the pain of his exertions and slowing his breathing to a barely discernible flow. The demon could jump to Emily’s room in an instant. “You won’t harm her.”

  “Are you certain? Are you willing to watch her suffer just to spite me?”

  “You’ve spent a lot of time setting up this lure,” Lachlan said. “You won’t risk the end result by allowing her to see the real you now.” Not when the corruption of a pure soul offered Satan twice the power of an ordinary soul.

  “Fine.
You’re right.” Drusus shrugged. “But that still leaves me with the lovely Rachel to play with. And don’t bother to deny she means something special. I know you.”

  Her name upon the lure demon’s lips was an abomination. It ate away at his insides like acid, but Lachlan successfully reined in his bitterness.

  “The man you once knew is dead, inside and out,” he said. The words rang with quiet honesty—not too surprising, as he’d endured four hundred years of that truth before waking to Rachel’s siren call. “I feel nothing.”

  “Come now, MacGregor. Death is not a fool. She does not lock a Gatherer’s feelings away with his soul. She’d end up with an army of passionless drones, were that the case.”

  “Death didn’t rob me,” Lachlan agreed. “I believe that honor is yours.”

  There was a short pause, then a deep rumble of laughter. “By Satan’s glory, are you pandering to my ego? Trying to manipulate me?”

  “Believe what you want.”

  The flatness of Lachlan’s comment tugged the demon’s heavy brows together. “Shall I fetch Rachel and see?”

  “It won’t matter. I still won’t tell you where the Linen is.”

  “She’s a fine woman, your Rachel. Beautiful and strong. The sort who quickens your pulse the moment you spy her. Admit it, baro. You care for her.”

  And give the demon a reason to harm her? No. Lachlan drained every speck of emotion from his voice and buried his feelings for Rachel in the deepest vaults of his mind. “I will no’ admit what I do no’ feel.”

  “Then I take it you won’t mind if I cut in? I have a sense she’ll be even more enjoyable than Elspeth was. Did I ever tell you your lovely wife gave herself to me in a desperate bid to save your life?”

  Lachlan closed his eyes. The image of Elspeth’s torn and sullied gown returned to him in painful clarity, along with the tears on her face and the pallor of her cheeks. His inability to save her shuddered through him once more.

  “Bastard.”

  He dove at the demon, sword swinging.

  ALSO BY ANNETTE McCLEAVE