Awaken the Curse Read online

She turned away in disgust. So close they’d come. So close to finding them all. And Alonzo had bungled it. Allowing the man time to conceal. Time to run. Though they’d caught him in the end. His time finally ran out.

  “I will have the men who slaughtered my father. I will have them on their knees and at my mercy. A mercy I shall not give.”

  “All’s not lost. I went to the funeral. Watched to see who attended.”

  Her eyes flashed up to meet Alonzo’s hungry gaze within the mirror. “And?”

  “There were three men there, though no way to know who or what they are.”

  She rose from her chair, catching up a silk robe to cover her nakedness. “You risk coming to my rooms to tell me this? That you may or may not have learned something? That you may or may not have found the treacherous Imnada vermin?”

  “Are you so certain these men are Imnada? That race is naught but dust and stories. The Other saw to that centuries ago.”

  “We’ve had this argument before. My father’s servant swears the chevalier trapped one of them. Forced the monster to shift. All those years my father’s theories were correct. Somehow the Imnada survived when we all thought them extinct. The beasts live among us still and remain as treacherous as ever.”

  “Then let us tell what we know. Go to the warriors of Scathach or the priestesses of High Danu; those with the power to root them out and destroy them once and for all.”

  “No!”

  Rage bubbled up through her and, unthinking, she grabbed Alonzo’s empty hand. Immediately the depthless black sea stretched out before her, ribbons of smoke twining about her, pulling her out of her own body and into his. For a moment she saw herself through his eyes. The long, rippling flow of black hair parted to hang on either side of shoulders pale as milk. Small, firm breasts, the dusky rose of her nipples visible beneath the diaphanous silk of her robe. The perfectly formed oval of a face; long, narrow cheekbones, lips parted, eyes shimmering gold with excitement.

  “Renata,” Alonzo groaned, making a small raspy sound deep in his throat. He shifted uncomfortably, and she was back. Hands at her sides. Alonzo’s mind closed to her.

  A whistling, grunty snore and a squeak of mattress ropes drew the two of them close in the dark.

  “Trust me, Alonzo. I will reveal all in the end, but my own vengeance comes first. I have waited too long and sacrificed too much.”

  “As you will it.” He nodded. “There was another at the churchyard. That actress everyone is talking about. Madame Parrino.”

  “Kinloch’s slut? Interesting,” she purred, tapping a finger to her lips. “I wonder . . .” She closed her eyes, turning thoughts over to see what might lie beneath before once more facing Alonzo, brisk and commanding. “Follow her. Watch her house. See if any of those men come or go.”

  “Already done.”

  “I am relying on you. Do not fail me, old friend,” she said, her voice pitched low, words slippery as the silk of her bed hangings.

  He nodded once more before falling back into the shadows. Leaving her alone in the room with her thoughts—and her husband.

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  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2012 by Alexa Egan

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  First Pocket Star Books ebook edition November 2012

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  ISBN 978-1-4516-9531-1