Me and My Shadow (23 page)

Magoth's expression turned to one of ecstasy for a moment; then his eyes rolled back and his body slumped to the ground.

“Now he's going to want you to do that every night,” I told the dragon named Renaldo as he and the other man picked up Magoth.

Fiat poked me in the side with the gun. “You will come with me now.”

“Looks like I have no choice,” I said calmly, and went down the passage he indicated, Magoth hauled behind us.

Chapter Eleven

The only thing that surprised me about the house was that it was so remarkably normal-looking.

“Normal if you're used to gorgeous Tudor redbrick mansions, that is,” I murmured to myself as we drove through the security gates and up a mile-long drive. The house sat on the crest of a gentle hill, framed by a semicircle of stately willow and lime trees along the sides and back of the house, beyond which I could see the glint of water—probably a large pond or a small lake.

“What are you talking about?” Cyrene asked.

“Nothing. What did you ask me to do?”

“Uh-oh. You're not hearing voices, are you? Ash started doing that, and it turned out really bad,” Jim said, covertly wiping its mouth on Fiat's shoes.

Cyrene shot a glance toward Fiat, moodily looking out the window, before she leaned in close to whisper into my ear, “Don't leave me alone with him.”

I let my gaze feast on the house. It truly was superb: a lovely example of Tudor architecture at its finest, all stone quoins, parapets, and a solid, sturdy square center that rose three stories. I'd seen some lovely houses during the last few months with the dragons, but this one made my mouth water. The parkland rolled away from it like green velvet pouring down toward us, the right side ending in what looked to be a yew maze, while the left was a formal garden, right now abloom in a riot of bronze and orange and pink flowers. I fell madly in love with the garden, the grounds, and the house at that very moment.“It's so perfect. So exquisite. I wonder if Gabriel would like it. It's very earthy, don't you think? He likes earthy. I'm willing to bet he likes velvety green lawns, and lovely flowers, and hedges and trees, as well.”

I caught a glimpse of the look Cyrene was giving me just as Jim said, “Great. May's mind has snapped. Gotta be the voices.”

Fiat continued to ignore us, so I addressed Cyrene and Jim as I gazed with wonder out of the window as we approached the house. “My mind is perfectly sound, thank you. Merciful deities, is that a folly in the distance? Could this property be any more perfect?”

“Mayling!” Cyrene nudged me hard in the ribs. I dragged my gaze off the white iron filigreed structure in the distance, beyond the flower gardens.

“What?”

She glanced significantly toward Fiat. I looked at him. He stared out of the window as if we bored him to death. My gaze slid past him to the sight of a silvery stream that curled around the yew hedges and disappeared around the back of it. “A stream. Of course. Not too deep, but deep enough to splash around in on a long, hot summer afternoon. Just before you stroll behind the yew maze and take a refreshing dip in the lake.”

“Stream? Lake?” Cyrene was momentarily distracted enough by the thought of freshwater sources to shove me backwards so she could peer out of the window. “It does look like a very pure stream. It probably feeds into the lake. I bet the water isn't too cold to swim in. . . .” She paused and gave me a dirty look. “You did that deliberately. Stop trying to divert me.”

I sighed and made sure Fiat was still ignoring us before I answered in a low voice, “I told you that it's me Fiat wants to use as a bargaining chip. I'm sure he has some evil plan under way that requires the use of me as hostage to get Gabriel to do whatever it is he wants done. OK? Happy now? Good. Are those mullioned windows? Oh, my, they really are outstanding. Fiat's taste certainly has improved from that house in Italy. I wonder if he'd consider selling?”

“He wants to steal me for his mate,” Cyrene whispered as we pulled up outside the front doors. I whimpered softly to myself at the sight of the fluted white columns and cut-glass panels on either side of the doors. I wanted this house with an overwhelming need that was almost alien to me, and yet was so familiar I wondered why I'd never felt it before with anything but Gabriel.

Fiat's two blond bodyguards leaped out of the front to open the car door.

“May!”

The worry in her voice filtered through the house lust that held me in its grip. I shook images of myself strolling through the house from my head, and focused on my distressed twin. “Cy, we've been over this several times already—you're not a wyvern's mate.”

“I am mate lite. I told you that! And besides, if I wasn't, why would Fiat want to steal me away from Kostya?”

“Gotta pee. Back in a mo. Don't go completely wacko until I'm back to see it,” Jim said, leaping out of the car and heading for a shrubbery.

Fiat exited the car. Magoth, still unconscious, rolled off the seat and onto the limo floor, his head thumping like a ripe melon on the floor.

“I can just about guarantee you that Fiat isn't going to try to steal you for his mate,” I said, patting her on the arm. She was truly worried about such a possibility, I knew, which didn't ease my exasperation with her, but it did let me temper my voice so it wasn't quite so obvious.

“That's what you say,” she said with a dark look at me. “But you haven't seen the way he watches me! He
wants
me!”

“Of course he does. You're very pretty—a lot of men want you.”

“Not that way,” she said, watching him narrowly through the opened car door as he spoke to his bodyguards. “He wants me for his mate so he can take over the dragons.”

I wasn't quite sure how her reasoning went from stealing another wyvern's mate to control of the weyr, but I didn't have time to indulge my curiosity. Instead I simply said, “Stop worrying. I won't let him take you.”

“Come,” Fiat said, turning toward us and holding out a hand. Impatience was evident in his voice, so evident I half expected him to snap his fingers at us. It was on the tip of my tongue to say something that I was sure I would regret, but I remembered in time that the house was his, and if I wanted any chance at all of calling it mine, politeness would be the order of the day.

I pushed aside the question of why I was suddenly possessed with the desire to own the house. No, “desire” wasn't the right word—I had a deep, buried need to have the house. “It had once been a home, and it will be one again,” I said on a breath.

Cyrene gave me another odd look, but it was nothing to the confusion I felt over my statement. What on earth had I meant?

“Come!” Fiat said more forcefully, and this time he did snap his fingers.

Cyrene bristled at the gesture, but I grabbed her arm and hauled her out of the car after me, determined to be polite and persuasive. “This is an absolutely stunning house,” I told Fiat, allowing him to assist me out of the car, my eyes drinking in the glorious sight of the front of the house. The afternoon sun caressed the warm red stone, slid along the freshly painted white trim, and settled itself to glitter on the numerous leaded windows, winking little flashes that mesmerized me.

Fiat looked over the house with a critical eye and shrugged. “It is tolerable.”

Tolerable? My mind shrieked at the word, so profane was it when applied to the house.

“I prefer something more modern, but I suppose it is in a pleasant setting. Please remember that your twin will be at my mercy should you try anything.” A smile lit his eyes, but it wasn't at all friendly. “And mercy is a quality that I particularly lack.”

We entered through the doors, and passed through a reception hall. I breathed deeply the heady scent of furniture polish and lemons, closing my eyes for a moment to enjoy it before feasting on what I knew would be an outstanding interior.

The staircase was a work of art, all dark wood with Corinthian newel posts, an elaborate balustrade, and matching dark paneling on the walls. Tapestries covered much of the walls, some vibrant, but most faded with the passing of time. I stopped before one that looked vaguely familiar, gawking when I recognized a name. “Is that . . . that isn't William the Conqueror, is it?”

“It is,” Fiat answered.

I squinted closer at the tapestry. It was protected by a wall-mounted conservation case, the kind with special lighting that would not fade the treasure within. “It looks just like something out of the Bayeux Tapestry.”

“It is the Bayeux Tapestry.”

I spun around both at the words and the voice. It wasn't Fiat who had answered me, as I had thought—the man who stood next to him with his arms crossed had dark brown hair, not blond, with a pronounced widow's peak, and ebony eyes that glittered like the windows. “Hello again, Baltic. What are you doing with the Bayeux Tapestry?”

He strolled past me to admire it. “It's only part of the tapestry: William's coronation. It pleases me to display it, since it reminds me of a happy time.”

“You were there?” I asked.

“Not at the coronation, no, but I did help the mortals fight many times.”

“I was there. It was nothing exciting,” Cyrene said, giving Fiat a hostile glare. He frowned at her in response. “London was very dirty then, and the people were very rude, always throwing rotten vegetables. I much preferred Paris.”

“Why would you want to help the mortals fight?” I asked Baltic, momentarily distracted by the idea of a dragon interfering with human issues.

He smiled. “Have you never beheld the sight of a battlefield, a sword gripped tightly in one hand, your shield in the other, a blood-enraged destrier between your legs? Have you not breathed deeply of the scent of blood and bowels and earth as mortals slaughtered each other? Have you never felt the battle lust grip your being, your heart pounding so loud it almost drowns out the screams of men, your arm burning with the strain of hacking and hewing, slashing first to the left to take down a pikeman, then to the right to cut the legs out from under an attacking infantryman?”

“No,” I said, feeling faintly sick at the picture that rose in my mind.

He shrugged. “Then you would not understand. Fiat, you may leave.”

The penny dropped then. “This is
your
house?” I asked, feeling slightly sick at the thought of such a magnificent structure in his possession. It should be mine, a little voice in my head demanded.

“Yes.” He flicked a glance my way. “I had it built as a gift for my mate.”

“Ysolde?” The thought that the house was Ysolde's made me feel a smidgen better, although I couldn't quite decide why. For all I knew, she could have been just as destructive as Baltic, although I suspected not.

His gaze shifted from me to the paneled wall, but I doubted he was really seeing it. For a moment, for a tiny little moment in time, Baltic's expression softened, his eyes going from a hard, glittering obsidian to something with shadows, like a shaft of sunlight piercing a deep pond. His voice changed, as well, losing some of its clipped cadence, the words striking a richer tone, more Slavic in flavor. “She helped me design the house, but she would have no other hand working on the gardens, so she laid them out herself. She loved flowers, wanted them blooming year-round. I told her this wasn't the climate for that, but she had been born here, and would not hear of living anywhere else.”

“What I saw of them looked exquisite,” I said, meaning every word. I was filled with a strange sense of kinship, of sharing a great love with this man, but that was insane. It didn't make sense. I shook my head, trying to disperse the odd feeling.

“She wanted to have the acceptance ceremony in the garden, surrounded by honeysuckle and lime trees,” he said, still looking inward at the memories. “She said it was fitting that she should formally become my mate here, in the house I built for her.”

“You did an outstanding job with the house. It's almost beyond description; it's so perfect. I don't know why, but it seems almost to speak to me. It's as if . . . I don't know. It's hard to put into words. It's just . . . perfect.”

“Yes, it is.” He turned back to me with a half smile on his lips, and suddenly, I was in his arms, caught up in the memories he had shared, in the emotions that the house stirred within me.

“You loved her,” I said, my breath on his lips.

“More than life itself,” he answered, his mouth brushing mine.

“Whoa! I didn't see that one coming!” I heard Jim say just as Baltic's arms tightened around me. The sense of kinship grew, accompanied by a rightness that filled me with vague shadow memories, images that danced on the edge of my awareness.

“May? Goodness—May?” Cyrene's voice drifted through a red haze of fierce need in me, but I could no more attend to it than I could stop the rush of emotion inside me.

Until Baltic kissed me.

The second his lips possessed mine, a cold wave of dislike squelched the fires the dragon shard wanted so desperately to fan.

“Ysolde,” he murmured against my mouth.

I put both hands on his chest and shoved him back hard, catching the fleeting expression of surprise in his eyes before it turned to calculating anger.

“I am not Ysolde,” I said simply.

“May, what are you doing?” Cyrene tugged at my arm, giving Baltic a wary look. “I know you are jealous of all the women who are no doubt trying to seduce Gabriel, but this is not the answer! You must trust me on this—I have much more experience with men than you do, and I can assure you that trying to make a man jealous by toying with another one is not the way to go. It just ends up very poorly, usually with one man dead.”