Shadow Keepers: Midnight (2 page)

“This is far from over, Baloch,” Tiberius said, speaking only to the leader. “You should have left the boy alone, and you could have lived out your days in peace. Now there is only fear to fill them, and the knowledge that I will return; and when I do, you will come to a bloody, painful end.”

“You are a fool, Tiberius,” Baloch said. “And you
spin a clever tale. But there is no fear in my heart. I am the victor here, and you are the one who is retreating.”

And so he was, Tiberius thought. But as he lifted his arms and transformed into the sentient mist that would carry him to the
conte
’s nearby palazzo, he saw fear crease Baloch’s stalwart features, and right then, that was enough.

Carissa de Soranzo tightened her knees and gave Valiant a light kick, urging the horse faster and faster. She wanted to fly across the field. To flee her father’s house, to race from Velletri, from Rome, from her very life. She wanted to soar as far as the horse would carry her. By the Virgin, she wanted to race all the way to the sea and never stop until she lost herself in some far-off land where she could throw off the mantle of her life and hide from her family—and from her fears.

Antonio
.

She tugged at the reins, pulling her horse to a stop, then bent over and pressed her face against the beast’s neck, already damp with exertion and now doubly so with her tears. She was living in a world gone mad, and her father forbade her to even speak of it. Her brother—the baby of the family—kidnapped. Her father gathering his men, not to rescue his own flesh and blood, but to join the papal forces fighting against the Spanish encroachment. Her famous anger rose hot within her, and she heard the echo of her nurse’s voice telling her to calm herself. That such fits of temper were not becoming a lady of her station. The books she read, the rapiers she secretly trained with, even the horses she rode astride the way her two older brothers had taught her. None reflected the woman she was supposed to be, and most of the time she bowed her head in modest
agreement and retired to her needlework. Not this time. This time she wanted the anger to boil over. The anger and the fear.

It was the fear that fueled her. That made her spur her horse and turn it around. It was the fear that made her race, not away from her home, but toward it. Toward home and toward her father. And toward the slim, faint hope that he wouldn’t abandon Antonio to fate. Or, worse, to the whim of Baloch de Fioro, a terrifying nobleman about whom nobody spoke outright but everyone whispered. Dark words, spoken in shadows. About how Baloch called upon demons. About how he spilled blood not just in battle but for pleasure and for nourishment. About how he placed the heads of his enemies on pikes, how he communed with demons, and how he called upon the power of dark forces to keep the walls surrounding his palazzo impenetrable. She knew not which whispers were rumors and which were true, but she didn’t care. He’d taken her brother—and that was sufficient to fuel her hate, and her fear.

She paid little attention as her stallion carried her toward home. She’d been so lost in her worries that she hadn’t realized just how far she had traveled—and that alone was enough to incur the wrath of her father. Night was falling as she approached the western gate of Velletri, and she sat up straighter, pushing her worries aside as she took stock of her surroundings, one hand resting on the hilt of the dagger she had hidden within the folds of her skirt. She’d stitched the garment herself, the folds carefully designed to allow sufficient room to permit her to sit astride her beast, and with enough pockets and pouches to hide any number of weapons. She might have ventured farther outside the gates than
was wise, but in the main she was no fool. And despite her father’s disapproval, she knew how to protect herself.

“Child!” Agnes cried as Carissa dismounted, then tossed the reins to a stable boy.

“I’m not a child,” Carissa retorted automatically.

“As to that, you are much mistaken,” her nurse said, her expression formidable.

“I am three-and-twenty, twice betrothed, twice widowed before my wedding day, and I’ll not be treated as if I were still a babe in the nursery.” She neglected to mention that she was once again betrothed, this time to an elderly Roman nobleman who walked with a stick and smelled of dead fish. That was a fact that she tried to think upon as little as possible. But with two fiancés dead, young men would no longer vie for her, and her father had arranged the marriage despite her objections. Giancarlo, he’d said, was the only man for a hundred miles who didn’t believe that betrothal to her was a heinous curse.

“Riding off outside the city gates and telling no one where you’ve gone! I’ve been frantic, fearing you were taken just the same as your brother.”

Carissa closed her eyes. “Forgive me,” she said with genuine regret. “I never meant for you to worry.”

“You never mean it, girl. And yet I worry anyway.”

The weight of guilt settled upon her, and she crossed to Agnes’s side, then pressed her head against the older woman’s shoulder. “I am truly sorry,” she said. “I understand now the fear that must plague you whenever I do something foolhardy.” The tears threatened again, and she squeezed her eyes shut.

“Courage. You will see your brother again.”

She pulled away enough to peer into Agnes’s face. “Do you truly believe that?”

“Of course I do,” Agnes said, but Carissa saw the lie in her nurse’s eyes.

She swallowed, then forced a smile. “I must speak to Father.”

Something close to fear flashed across Agnes’s face. “You mustn’t disturb your father. Does he not have enough worry with the Pope demanding more men, and his youngest-born taken?”

Carissa lifted her chin high, her most innocent expression painted on her face. “You think his only daughter cannot bring him comfort? I shall not disturb him. I only wish to bid him good night.”

“You think me a fool, child,” Agnes said, her stern expression ruined slightly by the small twitch at the corner of her mouth. “Go if you must, but be wary. A guest has just arrived and speaks to your father in the salon. Pray you don’t interrupt their counsel.”

A guest?
Carissa tilted her head in acknowledgment, then hurried from the room, her curiosity speeding her pace. Had he taken her pleas to heart? Had he engaged a mercenary to find Antonio—and to bring him back?

She crossed the courtyard, her mind whirling, and as she climbed the stairs to her father’s apartments, her heart was beating so loudly it drowned out the sound of her own thoughts. All she could feel was hope. All she wanted was for her father to hold her in his arms and tell her that everything was not lost. That her fourteen-year-old brother—the light of the family—would soon be restored.
A mercenary
. That had to be it. His own troops were committed to fighting on behalf of the papacy, but he had taken matters into his own hands.
He wouldn’t sacrifice Antonio to fate, and she felt ashamed that she had ever feared as much.

“You will do no such thing!” Her father’s voice boomed from behind the solid oak door. Carissa froze, then edged along the wall until she stood just beside it. The door hung slightly open, and she eased closer, afraid of being caught while her father was in a temper, and yet too wound up by her own hopes to back away and wait for the morrow.

“I ask only for your assistance in that endeavor. Baloch’s walls are well-fortified, particularly against my kind. Let me leave here with ten able men, and your son will soon be returned to you.”

Carissa’s heart swelled—he
was
a mercenary. And he was going to rescue Antonio!

But her joy dried up at her father’s sharp “Never.”

“You are a fool, Albertus.” The voice was low and steady and full of assured authority. Carissa’s jaw dropped in wonder. In all her years she had never heard her father spoken to thus.

“You dare,” her father snarled. “You dare to walk into my home and insult me?”

“I dare much, sir, but today I speak only the truth. I have come to you on my own, with no ulterior motive, bearing an offer to bring your child home.”

“No ulterior motive? Your kind?”

“I go in payment of a debt, sir, not out of any affection I feel toward you.”

“You owe me no debt,” Albertus growled. Carissa frowned, confused. This man was offering to help; why the devil was her father insulting him?

“It is an obligation owed to your family,” the stranger continued, still in that calm, forceful voice.
“And I will fulfill my bond. If not for you, then for the boy.”

“And in doing so, you will incur Baloch’s wrath. I will never be safe. My family will never be safe.”

“You think that I will let him live?”

“I think that you are as much a devil as he is. We don’t need your help—” And here her father’s voice trembled, not with the shame of abandoning his son, but with fear. “I’ll have nothing to do with the likes of your kind.”

“You know what Baloch intends when the moon is full. You would stand here now and condemn your son to such a horror?”

“And you offer something better?”

“I offer life. I offer to return him to you.”

“You think I trust you—you who are as vile as the creature that stole my son?”

There was a scuffle, and then a thud accompanied by her father’s muffled cry, so filled with terror that Carissa couldn’t help herself. She pressed herself against the door and peered around its edge, only to clap her hand tightly over her mouth to stifle her own startled cry. Her father was flat against the wall, his eyes wide with terror, his feet dangling inches above the wooden floor. He was held there by the stranger’s hand at his throat, and Carissa could see her father’s face in the candlelight, glowing even more red as he tried to catch his breath.

“I should kill you now for comparing me to a beast such as that.” The stranger whispered the words, his broad, cloak-covered back to Carissa. She had no trouble hearing, though. The words fell hot and heavy, carried by the force of the speaker’s anger and disgust.

“I meant no disrespect,” her father croaked, yet even
from across the room, she could see by his face that it was a lie. He feared the stranger, but he hated him more, and Carissa didn’t understand why. The man was offering to rescue Antonio! Was he an occultist? As dark as Baloch himself? Was that what her father meant when he called the man a devil? And even if he was, did such heresy matter when balanced against the life of her brother?

“I should kill you right now,” the stranger repeated, his voice low and rough and full of honest disgust. “But we are bound, you and I, and I respect that even if you don’t.” He released his hold, and her father dropped like a sack of grain to the floor. Carissa gasped, but his fall muffled the sound. Even so, the stranger cocked his head. Only slightly, but she couldn’t shake the feeling that he knew she was there.

“I free you from your obligation.” Her father’s voice came out raspy, and he gasped in deep lungfuls of air as he spoke. His words were bold now that he knew he wouldn’t perish at the stranger’s hand, and when he angled his head up to look at the man, Carissa saw the familiar fire of authority burn in his eyes. “Begone, fiend.”

“Nothing would give me greater pleasure than to extricate myself from your service. There are those in your line I respect, and I hope that fate will bring more in the future. With you, however, I have neither sympathy nor patience, and nothing would give me greater pleasure than to break your neck and leave you to rot on this floor, worth nothing more than food for the rats. Be glad that my obligation is not yours to withdraw or my face would be the last you ever gazed upon.”

Albertus cringed back against the wall, and Carissa realized that what she was seeing was fear. Even though
this stranger had sworn not to hurt him, still her father cowered. “Go,” he said, his voice trembling.

The stranger looked down at the old man on the floor, and even from her perspective behind him, Carissa knew that his expression was colored by disgust. “You are not worthy of the bond once made on your behalf.”

He turned then, and Carissa saw his face, bold and ferociously beautiful in the firelight. It was a warrior’s face. A politician’s face. This was a man who not only could move mountains, but build them.