Spellbinder
Page 56

“She struck me with a Powerful magic item. She calls it Azrael’s Athame, or sometimes Death’s Knife. It’s a knife she wears on a gold chain around her waist. I don’t know where she got it, or where it’s from, but when she struck me with it, it transformed me into … well, into the creature I am now. Once, I was human like you.”
Creature, he said. And she had noted his hesitation.
He didn’t want to tell her what he was. That meant it was important, either another important piece of information that could help her identify him, or …
Or it was something so terrible, he didn’t want to share it.
But, what creature could be so terrible?
Pushing away, she sat up. What was he? Before, he was just a man with extraordinary magical abilities. Now, she didn’t know what lay beside her in the dark.
Was she really going to push him on this? Was she ready to know whatever it was he didn’t want to tell her?
Steadily, she said, “I think you’d better tell me all of it.”
He flattened a hand at the small of her back. “I don’t want to.”
Warmth from his palm spread through her muscles. Even now, his touch gave her a solid sense of comfort. “I know you don’t, but I think you’d better anyway.”
The bed creaked as he sat too. “I’m a lycanthrope, Sidonie. I’m one of the Queen’s Hounds.”
Lycanthrope. She mulled it over. Where had she heard that word before? She had read about it recently, in one of the London daily newspapers.
Tilting her head at the large shadow of the man beside her, she asked, “You’re a werewolf?”
“Yes, or at least a certain type of one.” His reply was calm, which somehow made the outlandish words easier to hear. “The Hounds don’t lose control when there’s a full moon, and when we change, we retain our intelligence. We have vastly expanded lifespans, and we don’t go into a mindless frenzy. And we can telepathize. I think that might have something to do with the fact that we’re made from the Athame—or at least I was made from the Athame. When she orders me to, I make the others.”
Without his body radiating heat against hers, the world felt cold and less vital. Shivering, she wrapped her arms around herself. “You make other lycanthropes. The other Hounds.”
“Yes.”
She heard the stress in her breathing and tried to correct it. “You make them by … how? Do you bite them?”
“When I’m in my lycanthrope form, yes,” he said again. His hand withdrew from her back.
Then it clicked. That was what she had read—the article in the newspaper had focused on treating lycanthropy the disease. A peculiarly British problem, there were other lycanthrope clans scattered throughout the world, but most of the population lived in the UK.
Like vampirism, lycanthropy was incurable. Unlike vampirism, if a person who had been bitten got treatment quickly enough, they didn’t have to turn.
She rubbed her face. “We’ve kissed?”
Rather deeply. Erotically, even.
She didn’t want to feel betrayal. She believed he would not do anything to hurt her. But still, she needed to hear the words.
“Kissing or having sex isn’t an issue, as long as there isn’t any bloodplay,” he said gently. “Childbirth is risky. Conception isn’t a problem, but often the mother passes on the disease to her baby anyway if she gives birth naturally. Most lycanthropes who want to be mothers choose in vitro fertilization and a surrogate. I would never expose you to this disease. Lycanthropy is only passed to humans through a blood wound. If you had to stab me, I would insist you wear protective gear so there was no chance of you risking infection. But make no mistake about this, Sidonie. I am a monster, not a man.”
No. No.
She had already started shaking her head before those last words had fully sunk in. “Don’t denigrate yourself like that,” she said. “The two things are not mutually exclusive. You might be a lycanthrope, but you are also a man.”
After a moment, he said softly, “Many people don’t see us that way.”
“I see you that way.”
Reaching out, she took his hand and sat cradling it in her lap. A fine, almost undetectable tremor was running through him. This was hard for him. She stroked his fingers as they sat quietly. The silence gave them both a chance to recover from what he had told her.
“Thank you for telling me,” she murmured. “I’m glad you did. Now, is this it? Is this the worst of what you’ve got to tell me?”
“No.”
“Are you going to tell me about it now?”
“No.”
He said it so calmly. How could he say that so calmly?
She wasn’t calm, at least not inside. She was rattled again, and she worked hard to hide it.
She had fully expected him to say yes. Because what could be worse than telling someone you were a werewolf? Everything else should have gone downhill at that point.
What could be that bad?
“You know we’re fucked if Isabeau chooses to interrogate me again,” she said in a conversational tone. Look at me! she thought. I sound so calm and rational. Those acting classes really paid off!
“I know,” he said. “I’ve told you enough that she can identify me from what you know.”
She gripped his fingers hard. So, the reason why he wasn’t telling her the rest wasn’t because of Isabeau. It was because of her. It was something else he didn’t want her to know. Could it possibly have something to do with why Robin was so afraid of him?
“Just when I was coping with the idea that I’d necked with a werewolf,” she muttered. “Just when I was beginning to flirt with the idea of possibly … possibly inviting sex with a werewolf. I’m trying to imagine how I would tell this story to my best friend. I think it would go something like this: See, I’ve never seen him in daylight. He’s just this werewolf guy, I don’t know his name. Damn, he’s got some really heavy-duty layers. And do you know what she would say? She would say, Run, Sid. Run very fast and far.”
Beside her, he had stiffened. Very quietly, he said, “Sex?”
Emphatically, she took his hand and deposited it in his lap. “I appreciate you, and I care about you—probably too much for my own good. I have a huge amount of sympathy for your situation, and I will gratefully take your help with one more battle spell tomorrow evening. But other than that, either show me your face and tell me your name, or get the fuck out of my room.”