Vivienne backed out of the cell, her attention fixed on Alec Lawrence.
Except it wasn’t Alec. Not anymore.
How foolish she’d been to think the bond protected them. Maybe the daemon hadn’t taken him on the tower in Oxford because it didn’t have sufficient time. She’d interrupted it. Or maybe it was simply playing its own game. Either way, they’d made a fatal miscalculation. Now she faced something new.
A daēva with a daemon inside.
She could feel it leaking through their bond like a sickness. An ancient, evil intelligence. Vivienne’s skin crawled. If Alec was there, she couldn’t find him. But she refused to admit he was dead. If she did, she knew it would break her.
The daemon grinned with Alec’s mouth and Vivienne felt a hatred so pure, it was like freedom.
Fight filthy. There aren’t rules anymore. All that’s done now.
So Vivienne did something she’d never done in all the years they were bonded. Something she’d never even contemplated because it was so morally indefensible. She sent a white-hot lance of pain through the cuff.
Only the human of the pair had the power to do that. It was the way one administered punishment to a disobedient daēva and it should have knocked Alec to his knees. Sent him writhing on the ground in agony. But his face remained smooth. Unreadable.
Not possible.
“You can’t hurt us,” he said. Wet hair was plastered across his forehead in dark clumps. His face looked the same, yet the lines of it were alien somehow. “Well, I suppose you can hurt him. But your tricks won’t work with me.”
The sound of his voice was a knife in her heart. Still well-educated, faintly accented but with no definable nationality. A voice made for laughter and poetry and bad jokes.
“What is it you want?” she snarled, backing away to give herself room.
Alec’s eyes tracked her, a leopard stalking a mouse.
“We want our power back,” he said.
She snorted. “Do you take me for a complete idiot?”
“It’s ours.”
“No, it’s not. It’s his.”
The power belonged to Alec. It had always belonged to Alec. The cuffs themselves were a remnant of a dark period in human history when the daēvas had been forced recruits in a war with the undead. Now Vivienne was just grateful she still held his leash. Alec was stronger and faster, but at least he couldn’t tear her apart with air or make her blood boil.
She backed down the corridor, empty, locked cells to either side. The gas jets flickered fitfully. She wondered how long it would be before they failed.
Daēvas could see in the darkness like cats.
“We always loved you,” Alec said, slowly approaching as Vivienne backed away. His arms hung at his sides, deceptively loose. She knew he could strike faster than she could blink. “But you know that, don’t you?”
“There is no we,” she said. “You’re just some dead thing that won’t admit it’s dead.”
“We were your faithful hound and you kicked us in the ribs.”
“Shut the bloody hell up!”
Vivienne switched the sword to her left hand and wiped cold sweat from her palm on her dress. She switched it back to her right hand. The daemon had her over a barrel and they both knew it. Even if she miraculously found an opening, she couldn’t kill him. She’d be killing Alec. Maybe Alec was already dead, but maybe he wasn’t. Maybe there still was a way to save him. She didn’t know. And as long as there was any chance at all, she wouldn’t risk it. A hopeless situation.
“Poor crippled hound,” he said, fingers trailing along the bars.
“Alec was never a cripple.”
“That’s a matter of opinion. I feel his pain, Tijah. Or should I call you Vivienne now?”
“I don’t give a toss what you call me.”
“Oh, I think you do.” He grinned. “You hurt us. Took a piece of us and trapped it in the cuffs. What does that make you, Tijah?”
Vivienne said nothing. She was watching the daemon’s hands.
It’s an interesting thing to fight at a man’s side for centuries. You learn all his secrets. All his tells. And she knew Alec’s left ring finger would twitch just before he attacked.
“Is he alive?” she asked, to buy time. She didn’t expect an honest answer.
“Oh, he’s here somewhere.” As if Alec was a misplaced sock. “I have his memories. All the way back to the day you camped with Alexander’s army on the shores of the lake in Bactria. You ran from him. Do you remember that, Tijah?”
She did. Alec—Achaemenes then—had healed her. He’d also wanted her desperately and she’d almost lost herself in that desire. It wasn’t a memory she cared to dredge up.
“Who knew the undead could be so feckin’ tedious?” she asked.
Alec’s expression darkened. He removed his jacket and threw it to the side. Another familiar gesture she’d seen a thousand times. Vivienne kept her face smooth but her gut tightened.
She couldn’t kill Alec, but the daemon wanted her dead. Needed her dead. That was the only way to break the cuffs. To free Alec’s elemental power. And while Vivienne would never succumb to old age or disease, she could die from violence—just like her bonded.
She stopped, poised on the balls of her feet. “You know my true name, daemon. It’s only fair you tell me yours.”
Alec stopped too, leaving ten feet between them. Despite the taunting, he was wary of her.
Now he laughed softly. “Proper introductions before you die, is that what you’re after?”
The tone was wry, sardonic. Vintage Alec Lawrence. She realized with dreamy horror that it was already assuming his personality. Sifting through two thousand years of memories, learning the man inside and out. If she hadn’t seen Alec taken with her own eyes, if she didn’t feel the wrongness of him through the bond, Vivienne had no doubt this thing could have fooled her into believing he was Alec.
“You’re nothing but a parasite. A bloody great tapeworm.”
“Catherine doesn’t think so.” His lips curled in an amused smile. The cat that devoured the canary in one savage bite.
Oh, it knows where the soft bits are, Vivienne thought. The unguarded belly. Bastard.
She lunged forward, testing his defenses, hoping against hope the thing inside Alec would be even a hair slower. The sword whistled through air as he slipped easily out of reach.
“All you do is lie, daemon.”
“Am I lying when I say he’s half in love with her but won’t admit it, even to himself?”
Vivienne stayed silent.
“An intriguing woman, Catherine de Mornay. A whore, but our gallant Mr. Lawrence doesn’t care.” He stared at her. “She likes to comb his hair before she spreads her legs for him. Did you know that?”
Vivienne watched him move. The limp was still there though he tried to conceal it. Alec’s infirmity was her only advantage. She needed to hamstring him. Hurt him badly enough that he’d stay down. For a normal person, a few broken bones would put them into shock. Not Alec Lawrence. He could absorb an ocean of pain with no discernable effect. She’d seen it hundreds of times. Thousands.
“I’m looking forward to meeting our lovely Catherine.” His eyes grew flat. Reptilian. “I wonder how she’ll look with her womb on the outside.”
Alec’s ring finger twitched.
Before he moved, she was already pivoting on her right foot. Without that split second head start, Vivienne knew beyond the shadow of a doubt that she would have been dead. She spun and landed a ferocious kick to the side of his bad knee, then followed it with a punch to the ribs just as he’d done to her in the sparring room at St. James. The punch might have cracked a rib or two, but it was the blow to the knee that brought him down. His leg buckled like an unstrung puppet. The backwash of pain through the bond made her gag.
It was the first time she’d ever exploited Alec’s infirmity.
Alec screamed and she kicked him in the face. Now he lay on his back, the tip of her sword drawing a pinprick of blood at the juncture of throat and jaw. One quick thrust and she’d lay open his carotid artery. Vivienne’s heart hammered in her chest. Their eyes locked.
“Please,” Alec whispered. “Viv….”
“Shut up.” Her teeth ground so hard they creaked.
“It’s me, Vivienne. I just can’t—”
“Feck!” She increased the pressure by a fraction. A line of blood ran into his collar.
“We both know you won’t do it,” he whispered.
“Then you don’t know me.”
“Of course I do.”
He sounded so much like Alec at that moment, Vivienne couldn’t stop the tears from streaming down her cheeks. She barely noticed them. The daemon was much cleverer than she’d given it credit for. It had taken the one person on the face of the earth she couldn’t bring herself to kill, even if it meant her own life.
But there was still a way.
“Take me instead,” she said. “Take me, or I swear to the Goddess Innunu, I’ll kill you and then I’ll kill myself.” She slid a small triangular dagger into her palm and placed the tip beneath her own jaw. “You know I’m telling the truth. I’d rather die than let you have him.”
His eyes darkened. Something gathered there, in the irises.
“You give yourself to me willingly?”
“Yes.”
“His life for yours?”
“Yes.”
“I would control his power through the bond.”
She nodded.
And I hope he kills me the first chance he gets.
Alec looked up at her, considering.
“Touch me, Tijah.”
Vivienne held out a hand, biting back her revulsion. Alec took it and twined his fingers with hers. His lips parted slightly. Heat radiated from his palm, warming her frozen limbs. It slowly built in intensity and Vivienne felt a bead of sweat roll down her neck. Alec watched her, hazel eyes locked on her face. The daemon was enjoying the sensation, she realized. The powerful pleasure of two bonded touching each other. He would feel her reaction, the echo of her emotions.
It sickened her. And yet part of her couldn’t help herself.
Not Alec. Not Alec.
She bit the inside of her cheek, tasted blood.
“Just take me,” she whispered. “Please.”
He watched her for a long moment, dark lashes beaded with water. Vivienne waited for that vile consciousness to slither into her mind, to make her its puppet, but all she felt was searing pain in her hand. The skin began to blister. Vivienne smelled burning flesh and tried to pull away. He wouldn’t let go.
Betrayed.
Before she could stick him with the sword, he gave a hard yank. The breath left her lungs as she slammed onto her back. Alec knelt on her chest. He shoved her face to the side. She sputtered, dirty water filling her nose and mouth.
“Sorry, love,” he whispered. “But your daēva is already dead.”