A Matter of Circumstance and Celludrones (32 page)

“You taught her to make the rune and never mentioned it needed
your
blood,” Greyston said, his voice just as hard. Damn the pain. Damn the nausea.
The anger coursing through him acted like a natural suppressant, coating his
weakness with sheer grit.

Armand kneeled before him, a tentative hand reaching to examine his
thigh.

Greyston knocked the hand aside. “Get away from me.”

“Cloth and dirt has been cauterised into the skin,” Armand said,
remaining on his knees. “The wound must be reopened so the skin can be cleaned
and stitched back to grow over the bone.”

Greyston glared at him. “Lay one hand on me, and I’ll set Neco on
you.”

Neco loomed forward from his position behind the sofa.

“Do you want to walk again?” Armand challenged.

“Armand,” called out Kelan, “perhaps his immediate problem would be
better served with a measure of whiskey than advice?”

“Very well, m’lord.” Armand stood, but apparently couldn’t resist
having the last word. “If infection sets in, you’ll lose the leg.”

Greyston beckoned Neco to lean a little closer. “Go to the Red Hawk
and bring Ian to me. Tell him to bring his poppy juice and to be damned quick
about it.”

Lily took Armand’s place beside the sofa. “You’re in terrible pain. I
wish there was something I could do.”

“You’re already doing it,” he said softly.
You didn’t die.

Ana entered the library with a stack of towels and a silver bowl. Lily
directed her to leave everything on the table and said to him, “I’m scared I’d
do more wrong than right. Are you able to wait for Ian?”

He nodded.

Armand brought two glasses back from the drinks counter and handed one
to him.

Greyston drained his glass of whiskey. It felt as if every nerve in
his body had been bared, not just the bone of his leg. The whiskey burned a
soothing path down his throat and dulled the peaks of the spiking agony.

His gaze went to Kelan, who’d seated himself in a nearby chair. “Lady
Ostrich—Flavith, called me Raimlas.”

He wasn’t the demon. That much he was certain of. He’d swum in the
ocean often enough. He could pass through the McAllister’s demon shield. He
wasn’t the demon. But he was
something
. Greyston tensed. The itch in his
brain he hadn’t been able to identify was suddenly right before his eyes.

Lady Ostrich wasn’t responsible for the Cragloden gas explosion. No
demon was. Kelan had said the protection runes had been woven into the
foundations of the original perimeter wall and were still in force. The shield
hadn’t been created from demon magic left behind in the ruins of the old
castle—the shield had been there from the beginning. No demon could set foot
inside Cragloden, now or back then.

Kelan exchanged a look with Armand and his man immediately ushered Ana
from the room.

“Raimlas and Gamgos were the demons my uncle kept bound in his
laboratory for months,” Kelan said. “Demons were rising faster than ever before
and we were never going to win the war. We were forced to wait years after
banishing a known demon to be sure another hadn’t slipped through before we
could attempt to seal the tear. One always did, but we never knew if we’d
missed a window of opportunity while we’d waited. My uncle believed he could
harness the essence of a demon, the powers, the most important being their
innate ability to sense each other’s presence, and use it to our advantage.”

Kelan settled back in the chair, crossed one leg over the other and
rested the glass on his knee. “The demon blood was meant for the celludrones.
During his research, however, my uncle changed his mind. Humans would bond more
effectively with the demon powers, and humans would be more efficient at
putting it to use. Especially those born into a position of power with the
right connections to make a difference.”

“I don’t understand,” Lily said, her voice barely a whisper. “I have
the ability to sense a demon’s presence. What…” She rose to her feet, her hands
fisted at her side. “What are you saying?”

“We have demon blood,” Greyston ground out, his jaw clenched in pain
and fury.
Lily? The bloody bastard did this to Lily, too?
The
McAllisters went too far, took too many liberties with other people’s lives.

“I was going to tell you eventually,” Kelan said. He glanced from Lily
to Greyston. “After your reaction the first time I mentioned the demon word, I
thought it wise to give you some time to adjust.”

“I don’t understand,” Lily repeated dully. “How is that even
possible?” Her stare came to Greyston. “Demon blood?”

“My uncle found six women already with child,” Kelan
said. “Women willing, for various reasons, to participate in his experiment.
Women of standing in society, to ensure their children would wield a greater
influence when and where it counted. I don’t know the intricacies, but his
notes describe infusing the demon blood into the placenta. He must have
concluded the demon essence would knit better if introduced while the babe was
still in the womb.”

“All those children,” Lily murmured. “It’s like…he harvested us? From
the corners of the world.”

“Demon sight is triggered by scent,” Kelan told her. “The traces of
demon blood in your veins is slight enough to keep you hidden, but the
concentration of two or more of you in one area would amplify the scent.
Ensuring each child would be reared in a different country kept the demons off
your tails.”

“Until everyone assembled at Cragloden.”

Kelan shook his head. “The protection runes mask the demon scent.”

The full realisation of what he’d done hit Greyston. “That’s how Lady
Ostrich found us,” Greyston said dully. “She sniffed us out the moment I joined
Lily in London.”

“It’s not your fault.” Lily sank onto the armrest at his back. “How
were you to know?”

Ignorance was no excuse. If he’d stayed away, Lily would have led her
life unfettered from the McAllisters, from demons, from any further tragedy.

Greyston heaved as he realised it didn’t stop there. The whiskey in
his stomach shot up and scorched his throat the second time round.

His father had been a regular visitor at Cragloden, until some
irreparable falling out some months before Greyston’s birth. The man hadn’t
just learnt demons exist, he’d learnt his son would be born into one.

The runt of Lucifer. The babe who’d starved his own mother’s life
while in her womb. The sin that had lured his brother to his death across the
ocean. The madness that had sent his father leaping out the window. Greyston
was all of that.

Lily’s hand came down on his shoulder. Her scent was cinnamon and
apple, spice and sweet, and called to him. The memory of her taste, her
lips…the feel of her body pressed to him…

A part of Greyston died with the memories he cut off dead.

His father’s raspy voice coiled and recoiled inside his head.
“Ye
canna be here. Ye canna be real.”
The day after he’d returned to Forleough.
The day after the Cragloden explosion that he wasn’t supposed to have survived.
“Yer nigh impossible ta kill.”

His father had known about Duncan McAllister’s project. He’d had been
a regular visitor at Cragloden; he would have known how to gain access
undetected. Hell, maybe Duncan had even invited him inside. The only reason his
father had harboured a demon in his home all those years was to reap the final
reward. He’d known of the summons that would come when Greyston turned fifteen,
the summons that would conveniently gather all the McAllister laboratory rats
from around the world and hand him the opportunity to rid the earth of the
demonic vermin in one swoop.

“Yer nigh impossible ta kill. I shouldha known. From vermin ta
vermin and ye’ll take us all with ye.”

“The Almighty Lord ken I did my all ta rid the earth of ye and ye
kind.”

His father had killed Lily’s mother, had intended to kill Lily along
with his demon-infected son. That was something Greyston would never ask Lily
to live with.

Kelan stood and set his untouched glass on the pedestal table beside
his chair. “I have something for you. I’ll be right back.”

Lily’s fingers, warm, soft and delicate, trembling slightly, stroked
the curve beneath his jaw.

Greyston closed his eyes. Breathed deep. “Don’t do that.”

Her fingers stilled, then scraped through his hair.

Greyston lurched forward. An extra dose of pain shot up his leg. He
gritted his teeth and clamped his jaw on the curse. “Lily, please…don’t do
that.”

“Your shoulders are bunched and a vein is throbbing at your jaw.” She
moved off the armrest and came around to look at him. “I was only trying to
relax you.”

“If you want to take care of me,” he said, shoving his empty glass at
her, “refill this.”

She took the glass. Her brows speared as she looked at him, then she
shook her head and turned to cross to the drinks counter. When she came back,
the glass filled to the top, she didn’t hand it over. Instead she dropped into
the chair Kelan had vacated, put the glass to her lips and took a deep sip. Her
eyes bulged and she spluttered most of the whiskey right back out.

She rubbed a hand across her mouth, lifted the glass again and gulped
down a quarter of the liquid.

“Slowly,” he said, “You’ll make yourself sick.”

“I’ve got demon blood inside me as well.” She drew her hand across her
mouth again. “Whatever you are, I’m that too. We’re exactly the same, Greyston,
and I’m not a demon.”

She was so beautiful it hurt to look at her. To look at her and know
she’d never be his. “You took whatever you were born into and spun it into
light. Inside me, it turned into a curse. No wonder my mother never thought me
good enough to keep.”

His mother had given him up to the dark before she’d even met him.
Sacrificed him to her worthy cause. Not Aragon. Not her next babe. Not someone
else’s child. He was the runt she’d so easily cast aside to evil.

“What makes you think I’m any different?” Lily took another slug of
whiskey. This time, she kept more down than she spluttered out. “My mother gave
me away when I was still in her womb. She thought I wasn’t good enough to keep,
either.”

The library door opened. Kelan stopped just inside the room, his gaze
sliding from Lily to Greyston. “Your mother left this in my uncle’s keeping.”
He came forward, delivering a letter sheathed inside an embossed envelope into
Greyston’s hands. “As far as I can tell, it was always meant for you.”

The seal was broken. One word was written on the outside.
Neco.
Greyston stared at the curly handwriting, waiting to feel something. Someone
had intruded on his privacy. His mother hadn’t even bothered to name him before
selling his soul.

He couldn’t find it within him to give a damn. He crumpled the letter
in his closed fist as his gaze went to Lily. His heart said goodbye.

She was wrong. The difference between them was as vast as the skies
above.

The difference was that he knew his mother had been right.

Chapter Twenty

L
ily
sifted her fingers through the fine grains and pushed her bare toes deep into
the damp sand, her face turned up to the afternoon sun. At the edge of the
world, heavy grey clouds banked the blue horizon.

A storm was coming, or so Kelan had said.

The tide was out and waves lapped gently onto the bay at the mouth of
the Firth of Tay. To her left, just beyond the limestone outcropping, she heard
the same ocean crashing violently against the cliff.

Perhaps Greyston was right.

Perhaps two things could be exactly the same, and yet vastly
different.

A deep vibration strummed the Aether, rippling the waves a little more
urgently onto the shore. The shadow from above passed over, deepening the
colour of the water.

“He’ll be back.”

She tilted her head to gaze up at the flat underbelly of the Red Hawk.
The ship drifted a moment longer, then burst into a graceful arc that cut
through the sky in a flash of black and red.

Greyston had ordered Neco to help him to his ship at once. He hadn’t
even waited long enough to take a sip of the poppy opiate Ian had tried to force
on him.

She knew she should be furious. He’d kissed her senseless, he’d given
her a place in his arms to belong, and then he’d left.

She should feel hurt, betrayed and devastated.

That might still come, she supposed, perhaps after the hurt, betrayal
and devastation of what her mother had done had faded. She had so few answers.
Her mother had regretted giving her soul away, had died trying to set her
wrongs right. But there was one lie that hurt more than all the rest. Lord
d'Bulier was not her father. Of that, Lily was finally one hundred percent
certain. She felt it to her bones.

She felt it with the same gut wrenching certainty that she knew
Greyston wasn’t coming back.

For now, Lily understood why he’d fled with barely a goodbye. He
needed to retain absolute control until he was away from the McAllister
influence and aboard the Red Hawk.

Greyston was running again, but this time he was running from himself.
There’d be no place far enough. The time to stop would never come. He wasn’t
running because he was scared. He was running because he believed his tainted
blood made him worthless.

“You will never understand what it feels like to have demon inside
you.” She brought her gaze from the skies to Kelan. He stood a few feet from
her, his eyes tracking the ship’s path. “He won’t be back.”

She was staying because she was too scared not to.

She was terrified of a world overrun with demons, of losing everyone
she loved, of living with demons skulking in the shadows.

She would stay and turn her tainted blood into something worthwhile.