Shadowbound (The Dark Arts Book 1) (40 page)

"Then why are you here?" Drake asked in a tired voice. Hurt shone in his eyes, but Lucien turned away, refusing to see it.

Hell, he knew what it felt like. There was a gaping chasm in his chest, as if his heart had been ripped out years ago. He didn't want to see the echo of it in his sire's eyes, or he feared the carefully leashed emotions inside him would come bubbling out in a spew of vile words and anger. Would his own daughter think the same when she discovered he was her father? For that's where Ianthe was right now, breaking the news to her. He would have been there himself, but a part of him was outright terrified that Louisa would hate him.

"I am here because a dangerous relic has been placed in the hands of a madwoman," Lucien replied, nostrils flaring as he fought to contain harsher words. "I am here because at the moment, I am nothing more than a burden to Ianthe, rather than an ally." Pausing by the windows, he stared out over the city sprawl. Reticence loomed in his chest, but the truth had struck him last night, and though he'd fought with this decision all morning, he had found no other answer to his dilemma. Pride was only costing him—and Ianthe. "Last night exacerbated a problem I've been dealing with. Ever since the demon's assault, I've been... highly sensitized." Lucien swallowed hard, looking down at his curled fists. Exposing such a weakness felt like cutting out his heart all over again. "I cannot utilize my power. I cannot protect Ianthe against her enemies, and I can't do anything to protect my own child if I am like this. I–I don't know if I will ever be able to use my power again. Not fully."

His words fell into a chasm of silence.

"Then why ask me for help?"

"Ianthe said you might be able to help me. Your talent lies within wards, but it's rumored that you understand sorcery and the barriers a mind can put up against it."

Something brushed against his trouser leg, the same cat who'd been toying with Ianthe's skirts the first morning. Luc picked it up, feeling the warm purr against his chest. He still couldn't look at his father.

"The question isn't: can I help you? The question is more along the lines of: will you let me? I need to explore your aura, and that requires a great deal of trust. You need to open yourself up to a psychic probe."

Ash couldn't have tasted dryer in his mouth, but he didn't feel the Prime would ask this of him if it weren't necessary. "I'll try." He had Louisa and Ianthe to think of.

"You'll also need to describe the assault in full. I need to understand what happened so I can perhaps treat the barriers your unconscious mind has put in place. From the sounds of it, there was trauma involved, and perhaps your mind associates your power with pain. Now, every time you try to channel your power, some part of you remembers what happens. It's like forcing yourself to touch a hot frying pan after you've already burnt yourself badly. You could be subconsciously stopping yourself from performing sorcerous works. The mind is a powerful tool, and when sorcery comes from your will, your conscious mind, then it is like fighting yourself every time you try to wield it.

"It's also not the sort of thing that can be dealt with in a single afternoon either, Lucien. This will require frequent visits and meditation to reroute the way your mind thinks when it comes to sorcery. If you've subconsciously allied sorcery with pain, then it's going to take a great deal of effort to retrain yourself."

These were words he understood. It was far easier to deal with fact, rather than emotion. Emotion had beaten him bloody over the past twelve hours. "Then I'm going to be of no use this afternoon?"

"It is unlikely that you will regain your abilities within the space of a day," Drake said carefully.

There it was. The truth. "I can't sit by and watch her walk into danger."

"Then don't," Drake replied. "Let me examine you. There's a possibility you could act as someone else's wellspring, if you're not mentally scarred too badly."

"Wellspring?" A cold trickle traced his spine. Lord Rathbourne had wanted him to act as wellspring to him a year ago—to give his own power up to the man, to use as Lord Rathbourne desired. Look how well that had gone.

"I'm sure you trust Ianthe," Drake replied. "She could do it, if you allow it."

Lucien licked dry lips. Every muscle in his abdomen tightened, as though anticipating a blow. Bloody hell. Anything but this... But then, how else could he be of use?

Squeezing his eyes shut, he didn't want to accept that fact. But he trusted her, didn't he?

After all, had she not placed her own trust in his hands by giving him the truth? How easy it was, when you were the one asking for trust, not the one giving it. "How do we do this then?"

The Prime turned the weight of those silver eyes upon him. "You will need your Anchor."

I
T STARTED
with a faint tracing probe that lit along his nerves like ants marching a hot trail over his skin. Lucien's muscles locked tight, but he forced himself to remain still on the daybed, trying not to instinctively shove against that tentative touch.

"It cannot hurt you," Drake murmured, the words sounding as though they came from a distance.

A warm hand slid into his, and a familiar perfume caused him to turn his head slightly to the side. "I'm here," Ianthe murmured. "You're safe. Your father and I are both here."

Confusion reigned. He danced between both memory and the present. The words 'Your father' brought to mind Lord Rathbourne's face. Lucien shook his head. "No. No." That was the day he'd learned the truth and his entire world had split apart.

"Take me back to that day, Lucien," Drake murmured. "It cannot hurt you, not now. Take me back to that moment when I sent the demon back to its master."

Fire. Pain. Betrayal. They all lashed through him, leaving him twisting on the daybed. He relived it. Fought against the demon, throwing all of his power at it and feeling it burn him up from within...

"Begone!" he screamed, and the demon flinched as he turned his will upon it.

Then a smile stretched over its lips. “For the moment, perhapsss... But one day soon we shall have a reckoning.”

Seconds later, it vanished, and he was left lying on the floor of Rathbourne's house, panting, with his skin on fire.

Lucien sat up with a scream, pain lancing through his skull as he jolted free of the memory. There were warm hands on him, two sets of them, and the pain instantly lessened as Drake's power washed over him.

Gasping, he held onto Ianthe's shoulders. "I didn't remember it saying such a thing. It told me that one day it would be back to take its revenge upon me."

Both of them were silent.

"What's wrong?" he demanded, turning his gaze upon the Prime, who looked just as troubled.

The Prime shook his head, "Nothing's—"

"
Don't
lie to me!"

Lucien could feel the truth through the bond he shared with Ianthe. He may not know the man, but
she
did, and she knew when something was bothering the Prime.

"You said you banished the demon, but..."

"But?" His voice was tight.

"I don't think you did."

The words were a blow.
No
. No. It couldn't be free. It would have come after him, surely. No demon had ever submitted freely to the yokes of servitude. Only dark rituals and immense sacrifices could raise one, but in every story he'd ever heard, they'd all turned on their Master's the second they had a chance.

And this demon... it had had its chances.

"It's moving freely about on our plane?" Ianthe demanded, horror in her voice. "Surely we would know. We'd have heard news, or there would have been massacres, or... something. A demon cannot hide its presence for long. It would need to fuel itself with blood."

Drake hesitated. "I think you managed to force it to retreat to its plane, but I don't think you entirely shut the gates to it. There's something in your head, and it's not me or Ianthe. There's a bond there, as if
something
is tied to you. Plunging you into a trance awoke it. I could feel an alien presence, a strong, alien presence, staring back at me."

Like the day he'd been at Lady Eberhardt's and peered into her Shadows of Night. Lucien's blood went cold.

"That's not all you meant to say," Ianthe whispered. "I can see it in your face."

Fear pounded in his chest. Lucien couldn't deal with the demon again. He just couldn't. He'd barely survived the first time, and he was but a
shell
of that man.

"You're not a shell," Ianthe whispered absently, patting his hand. Her eyes never left the Prime's face, as if she didn't even realize what she'd just said, but both he and Drake shot her a hard gaze each.

Then they turned that look on each other.

"Can it hurt me? Can it... return?" Lucien demanded. "You owe me the answer to that, if nothing else."

"I don't know." Drake raked a hand through his hair. "Lucien, I think you
are
a gateway for the demon now. It hasn't quite worked out how to get back, but I fear, given enough time, that it will. I've managed to repair some of the damage its psychic assault caused, and I've warded your mind against it, so it cannot see through your eyes, or whatever it's doing in there, but there's no guarantee it cannot break free."

"Then what should I do?" he choked out. "Kill myself? Or—"

"Don't be ridiculous," his father snapped. "Who knows what your death would bring about? A summoning ritual needs some sort of sacrifice to even bring a demon through; perhaps your death would be the sacrifice it requires to manifest again? Maybe that's what it's waiting for? Then it has a nice, freshly delivered body to inhabit, already flush with power."

Lucien shoved to his feet. "I cannot live with this in my head!"

"Lucien." Ianthe stood, in a swirl of violet skirts, and caught his sleeve. He could feel her reaching out to him through the bond they shared, and that small hand stroking his sleeve was enough to settle his racing heartbeat a fraction. "You're not alone."

It all unfurled in his mind. Ianthe, standing hand in hand with him against the demon, trying to win a battle that would never be won. Ianthe, motionless on the floor in a pool of blood, cut down as easily as a child. By his own hand. The demon's hand.
Yess
, something whispered inside him, and he flinched.

This couldn't happen. He took a step away from her, even as Drake slowly rose to his feet behind her.

Make it swift. Do it
. "I release you from your bond," he told her, forcing the words through stiff lips.

Ianthe flinched back, as if struck. "What?"

"Our deal is done. I will serve out my part of it, but I release you from yours." He couldn't stand it any longer. Catching the Prime's gaze, he turned away from the flash of grief he saw there.

Long strides carried him to the door, then a swish of skirts hurried after him. "Lucien!" she called.

He ignored her. Emotion seethed within him, throbbing in his right temple. It felt like his skull was going to split open.

He knew what that feeling was now. The demon, lurking malevolently inside him.

"Lucien! Wait!"

"There's no point. I need to fetch my coat. We still have Morgana to roust. Unfortunately, I don't think I'm going to be much help." Bitterness flavored his words.

"Don't be a coward," she yelled. "Do you think I'm an idiot? You're afraid the demon will take you over and then you'll hurt either myself or Louisa."

"Yes!" he hissed, turning on his heel back toward her and bearing down on her. He flung one arm out wide. "I swore to protect you, and my daughter. I cannot do that when I'm the danger!"

"It can be managed," she began, in a more reasonable tone. "Drake knows a great deal—"

"You weren't there!" His lungs heaved with emotion, and Lucien raked a hand through his disheveled hair. Everything he'd fought so hard for in the past year... His sanity, his freedom, now this. Now her. The last sacrifice was almost too much to bear. "It nearly tore me apart, Ianthe! I couldn't stop it! I couldn't force its will to mine! And I tried." His voice broke. "I tried to stop it from killing those people, but I couldn't." He forced himself to harden. "I know better this time. I can't fight it if it chooses to try and take me."

"Then what are you going to do? Tuck tail and run? How far can you go, Lucien? Is there any place that's safe? A mountain top in the Andes? The Arctic? Where can you go that it cannot reach you?"

"I don't know, but I guess I can find out. I'll do this for you. I'll help you take down Morgana, but then we're finished."

Ianthe searched his eyes, shaking her head. "No." She reached for him, but he took a step away, and her hand curled into a fist, then dropped. "You said you would marry me."

"I'm sorry." This was the way it had to be.

They stared at each other, the clock in the hallway ticking out the seconds. A single tear slid down Ianthe's porcelain cheek, but her mouth had that defiant cast to it that he knew too well.

He couldn't stand it any longer. Taking a step back, he shoved his hands into his pockets. "I'll fetch my pistols. Send for—"

"No! I won't give in so easily! What I know is that you stood by me, regardless of my actions. You believed in me," she cried out, scurrying after him in a swish of skirts, "when I didn't even believe in myself. I cannot offer you any less, and now you know how it feels... to be afraid of yourself, to doubt yourself, and yet have someone stand here and challenge you to prevail." She stabbed a finger into his chest. "I took that step. I believed you, even when I doubted myself, because I couldn't live in fear anymore. This is your moment, Lucien.
Your
fear to conquer. And maybe it will happen, maybe we'll lose this fight. But maybe we won't..."

Maybe we won't...
The dream of it ached, bitter and sharp, for that was all it was. A dream. He shook his head, turning away from her. "This is different. This threatens you all." His boot heels rang out on the marble tiles, but not hers. She wasn't following him. It ached, like a fist around his heart, but better that it end this way.