Soul Kissed

Book 2: Shadow Kissed

by Erin Kellison

Genres: Historical Romance; Paranormal Romance; Romantic Suspense; Dark Fantasy

Synopsis

A dark and scrumptious treat. --Alexandra Ivy "FIVE STARS! Unforgettable. . .don't forget to breathe." --Huntress Reviews on Shadow Bound While the world slumbers in Shadow, a fatal plague has swept through magekind. No one is immune to its ravages, and now that her father is dead, Cari Dolan must wield the fearful magic of her House to save innocent lives. "The sexual tension is palpable. A stand-out page turner." -- RT Book Reviews on Fire Kissed At the mage Council's bidding, dangerous outsider Mason Stray joins forces with Cari to hunt down the fiend responsible. But can he trust the daughter of wealth and privilege, especially when his own son is at risk? "If dark adult fairy tales appeal to you, you should definitely check this series out" --Fiction Vixen on Shadowman The princess will always welcome to her bed the warrior, even if one must pay the ultimate price. . . .

Release date: September 1, 2013

Publisher: Zebra Books

Print pages: 353

Sample

Cari Dolan sat on a hard straight back chair in the servants’ access hallway to the study, where her stepmother and stepsisters wouldn’t think to look. Her gaze was fixed on the white wall before her. Her eyes were hot and gritty, but she wasn’t going to cry. If she breathed shallowly, the smell of smoke from her father’s funeral pyre grew faint, almost absent. The rest of her was in a cold grip, arms folded for heat, her body painfully tense, which made moving an unthinkable effort.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw a maid peek down the hallway, then dart back out of sight.

This chair was for Allison, the housekeeper, who was supposed to wait outside the study until called upon by a member of the grieving family. Like when Cari was four and her mom had died; her father had summoned Allison to take her from the room with the instructions to tuck her in bed and read a nice story and to stay by her side until her father could come himself.

Now the Dolan heir was hiding there instead of standing tall next to her stepmother and silently vowing reprisal. Part of her mage brain knew this was a time for heat and curses and dark plots, but . . .

Cari rocked forward, foundering in a wave of loss. She hadn’t been ready to lose him. To become him. She wanted her father back to protect her from the storm of everything that was to come. His loss made her feel so unready. So scared.

For several weeks now, starting with the Stanton May Fair Massacre, unexplained attacks on magekind had taken place. Shadow, the strength of magekind, had been poisoned, and the death it brought was a catching kind, a plague.

A quiet had settled over the Houses, a hush of abject terror. Some caught the plague from direct contact, falling where they stood in a fester of hot wounds. Others carried it unknowing with them back to their Houses. A touch here. A kiss. And the poison worked more slowly, but nevertheless, claimed its victims. It had riddled families and left heartache in its wake.

And yet some Houses the death passed over, when a member of that family had clearly been touched, but had never fallen ill. Suspicions were aroused—Why my House and not yours?—and blood oaths taken. More lives were claimed, this time by violence.

Until each House was closed to outsiders, and the spread of the plague was halted.

Cari looked down at a welt now healing on the inside of her elbow—so ugly. The mage plague had taken her father, and it had almost taken her. She remembered too well the burn inside her. Remembered screams ripping up her throat—but she had somehow lived through it. If this smothering quiet was living, that is.

Even whispers of staff and family were banked by half breaths, so they sounded more like the sighs and hisses of the fae who watched from the other side of the veil.

The common conclusion: Some ruthless House was orchestrating a takeover, Shadow against Shadow. They meant to cripple magekind, their own people, with fear and death, and usher in the Dark Age themselves as Lords of a fallen land.

She should be striving to find out who was doing this, who had killed her father, and almost her. But somehow she was trapped in yesterday, so tired, so heartsick, and she was just now discovering that the past turned frigid as time pushed relentlessly forward.

And yet, there were so many things to take care of now that her father was in ashes. So much work. She’d always thought of him simply as her father, but to everyone else he was Caspar Dolan, and that meant something. She had no idea where to start beyond trying to remember to breathe and blink.

Her father answered voicelessly inside her: Secure the succession.

Right. But the acknowledgment came bitterly.

The House guards had done that by dragging her away when her father had fallen to one knee, midstride, in the courtyard of their family’s business compound, his skin mottling with gray eruptions. Murdered. By then every mage House knew it was a contagious kind of attack, so she couldn’t even hold her father’s hand. The strain of bucking to get free of the guards still racked her body. All sound had been drawn out of the memory, but she could still see her father collapsing in front of her.

How ironic that she’d caught the mage plague anyway. And both guards had died as well.

She closed her eyes and pressed the heels of her hands to her lids.

But yes, technically she’d survived the attack, so the Dolan succession was secure. Now she had an unfathomable amount of work before her but no heart to begin. Father?

Protect the House.

She nodded to his memory, which had a bit of his warmth. Yes.

House meant family, and she had a lot of it. Her stepmother Scarlet, and her stepsisters Stacia and Zel. And her uncle on her birth mother’s side, and cousins, their spouses, children, indentured mages, assorted dependents, who’d taken shelter within the wards. Dolan House was full to bursting, and she had to provide for them all.

Cari felt lightheaded with the load of work ahead.

She’d have to look into the Dolan finances immediately. Get a grip on the money.

Pitch, Cari swore to herself, thinking of Zella’s betrothal and the political dancing that it required.

And then there was DolanCo, the family business, which she must now run. The special project that her father had thought would sustain the House through the advent of the Dark Age could not be ignored. The fact hadn’t changed—it had actually grown more imperative—that they would need a highly valuable source of revenue or trade when the human markets collapsed, and DolanCo’s more mundane products wouldn’t provide for the House. Now that was up to her, too.

She broke in a half laugh-half cry at the absurdity of it all, took a shuddering breath, got a nose full of her father’s smoke, and wheezed into a sob, tears spilling over swollen banks.

No, no, no. She wiped at her face. Tears accomplished nothing. She was the Head of the House now.

Maybe she ought to start with a list. Yes, that’s what she’d do.

Her father would have paper and a pen in his desk.

She was wiping her nose when she pushed into the study. She expected to find Stacia or Zel, who’d shadowed her every step since yesterday afternoon, watching and worrying and trying to feed her.

But seated in front of the desk was a strange woman. Her deep red hair was impeccably coiffed. She’d dressed in sleek black slacks and a vibrant blue silk blouse. Her ankles were crossed, legs angled to the side. The room positively simmered with her presence. She had to be greatmage Kaye Brand, High Seat of the Council, the one who’d started this civil war in the first place.

Cari’s heartbeat tripped.

How had Brand gotten through the Dolan wards? Was she infected? Had she brought more death here?

Brand slanted her gaze Cari’s way. “Are you done feeling sorry for yourself?”

Cari’s attention narrowed, yesterday and today colliding in a silent cataclysm, and with an inner burst of heat, she finally felt her sluggish blood rush.

Kaye Brand was going to die. If not for her, none of this would have happened. Cari’s father would still be alive.

“Please, sit.” Kaye gestured to the chair at Cari’s hip. She didn’t seem the least bit worried for her safety, even here within the House of an enemy. “We have a lot to talk about.”

“How did you get inside?” Cari demanded. Then, to the closed study door she barked, “Zella!”

“I have a vassal, Marcell Lakatos,” she said, “who has an aptitude for crossing boundaries. He assisted me.”

Very handy person to have on hand. And too dangerous to live. Lakatos should be killed.

But Brand seemed healthy enough, in spite of her transport. How dare she come here at a time like this? Anger felt good. Felt strong.

The door opened and Cari’s eldest stepsister leaned partway inside, her white-blond hair sliding over her shoulder. She held a plate with a sandwich. The hopeful look in her eyes turned to alarm when she spotted Brand.

“I need a weapon,” Cari said. When Zel didn’t move, she added, “Now, please.”

Mages killed their enemies.

Kaye Brand examined her manicure. “I’ve done nothing to harm you or your House.”

Zel had left the door open and was summoning the guards, what few they had left. Rapid footsteps sounded down the hallway.

Cari sputtered. Nothing to harm her? If not for Brand . . . “You divided magekind, set House against House.” She’d started the conflict that had just taken the life of her father.

Which would be enough to kill Kaye here and now, and yet there was more. Kaye had also betrayed magekind to the Order of angels. The Order, who’d again and again throughout history struck Shadow down, trying to wipe the soulless mages from the world. The Order would not allow magic to rise. But Kaye had taken an angel for a lover—his prick a key in the lock of their Council, opening their ranks to intrusion.

The bloodshed had started soon after, Houses turning on each other, each climbing over another to topple Brand from the High Seat. And now this latest assassin, slowly working his way through magekind with his plague . . . Everyone would know the killer when he claimed the High Seat for himself.

Guards burst into the room, guns drawn and aimed at Brand. A commotion sounded in the great hall as other family gathered for this new crisis. Her uncle’s voice rose. One of the kids started crying again. Staff murmuring. Her stepmother demanded to know what was going on.

Cari stepped back out of the guards’ line of fire, satisfied. Kaye might’ve gotten inside Dolan House, but she was not leaving it alive. Her father had wanted the High Seat of the Council for Dolan; well, this was Cari’s chance.

Kaye glanced impassively over her shoulder at the guards, then back to Cari. “I could have killed you when you were crying in the hallway.”

Cari saw Zel’s gaze flick to the service entrance. No more hiding there. No more hiding anywhere.

Cari shrugged at Kaye. “Too bad for you.”

“And”—Kaye opened her hands—“I am unarmed.”

“You’re never unarmed.” Brand was a fire mage.

“I came to help,” Kaye said. “I don’t want to hurt anyone.”

“You should’ve thought of that before you spread your legs.” Dolan had never been allied with Brand, but still Cari’s father had respected the House, at least until it was clear how Kaye had risen so quickly in power and who her protectors were. Vicious angels.

Dolan House did not support the Council, would not, with Brand in the seat. Lines had been drawn.

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Kaye said. “Point is, you’ve been targeted.”

“We know who our enemies are.”

Protect the House. Her father’s voice again.

Cari looked to Zel, who was peeking back in the office. “Get out, get everyone away from here, but stay inside the Dolan wards.”

Zel shook her head. “I’m not leaving you.”

“It wasn’t a request,” Cari shot back. She had a duty to her family. “Get everyone out.” Brand might not be contagious, but she was deadly.

With a long, desperate look, Zel fled the study. The guards stood their ground. Dolan only employed the loyal. The voices in the great hall rose for a moment, then broke into disparate pieces of quiet as her family fled to the sub-houses or shelters on the property.

Now it was just Dolan against Brand, and by the pitch of Shadow, Dolan would prevail. Cari would not disappoint the memory of her father. She would be enough for this. She’d make his memory proud.

Kaye shook her head. “No one knows which House is responsible for the recent deaths. There is no faction among us that has been left untouched.”

“Then whoever is doing this is simply covering their tracks.” Didn’t take a seat on the Council to be able to figure that out. “Kill someone from their own side to avoid reprisal.”

Kaye looked thoughtful. “Excellent point. And what if your father was murdered, your House challenged, not because of his own power and clout, but as a decoy in a larger plot?”

Took a second for the word “decoy” to attach to “father” in her mind.

No.

Couldn’t be. Her father was too great a man to die as a mere decoy.

Brand smiled. “And the killer left an inexperienced young woman in possession of Dolan House.”

“I’m only a year younger than you.” She could handle herself. She could be her father’s daughter. A gale of emotion was battering her like a cruel wind, but she turned her face into it. She wouldn’t fail him.

“I was not inexperienced when it came time for me to act.”

“I don’t want your kind of experience.”

The insult seemed to sail right past Kaye. “Nevertheless, it is still time for you to act.”

“I’ll do what I have to.” Cari was done crying at least. She could thank Brand for that much.

“I know,” Kaye said, “which is why I’ve come to help you.”

Cari shook her head no. Brand help Dolan? What a crock. Brand would take advantage of the turmoil in Dolan House to get Cari to do what she wanted.

Cari would fight her instead. Dolan Shadow was old and powerful. Brand fire against Dolan’s umbra.

“How about some incontrovertible facts?” Kaye winked. “Jack Bastian, my . . . significant other . . . works very hard to see that I am safe.”

Cari snorted. Significant other. Maybe it was her angel lover that was picking off mages one by one.

“But eventually whoever killed your father will attempt to kill me. Perhaps he or she already has tried, and Bastian’s angel light has kept the killer at bay.”

Cari smiled. “Or maybe the killer thinks you’ll be the instrument of your own destruction.”

“I admit, I am my own worst enemy.” Kaye smiled back. “But I don’t want to die. And I want this killer found before he can get to me. There is one House, and only one House, I know of that can identify the person responsible.”

Cari’s belly twisted. Something had been nagging at the back of her mind, something she’d refused to think about.

Kaye continued, “I was wondering if you got a sense of the killer when he attacked your father.”

“The sickness came out of nowhere.”

“But surely you searched for the antumbra before it dissipated into Shadow?” Kaye was direct, all business now. “You’d be able to recognize the mage from whom the tainted Shadow originated if you were to meet him or her again.”

By the time her father had fallen, Cari had already been feeling the effects of the poisoned Shadow. She hadn’t thought to search for the antumbra, the unique trail of magic a mage leaves behind. The ability was a Dolan property of magic—to see into the shadow souls of mages, past and present. To name them, to know them. The guards had dragged her away. And even if they hadn’t, she’d been too overcome to think . . . to act. She’d been caught in one extended, silent scream. Father!

She could’ve named his killer.

Kaye dropped her gaze to her hands, obviously waiting for Cari’s horrible realization to pass. “I’ve made some very painful mistakes myself.”

Cari burned; Kaye was right. She should’ve fought harder, thought harder. Her father would’ve still died, but she would have his murderer.

“But your mistake,” Kaye continued, “can be undone. You have only to investigate the scene, perhaps the next death, to discover the information you missed the first time. And in so doing, you could show magekind that Dolan House is still strong, still able, and is out for blood.”

That’s right.

She could try again.

She had to try again.

“And as you survived the plague, it stands to reason that you are immune. Very few have survived this.”

Cari put a hand to a welt on her neck, still so sore. She’d survived, was stronger than the plague. It suddenly occurred to her that the scars she would bear would show everyone that Dolan Shadow had been stronger.

“I propose a temporary alliance.”

Cari frowned at Brand. Fire wanting to ally with umbra?

“For the sole purpose of combining our talents and information to destroy the House responsible for the plague ripping through our people. We can’t afford to be weakened now; there are too many threats, from too many directions, to suffer this plague from one of our own kind.”

Kaye was talking like Cari’s father had, making sense. Yes, there was too much to worry about to let a mage destroy them from the inside.

Kaye cocked her head, surprise flexing her expression. “I’m glad you agree.”

“This mage needs to be stopped, his House broken.”

“We agree again.”

Cari couldn’t believe she was about to cooperate with Kaye Brand of all people. “I presume you have a plan as to how I would go about finding the next victim before the killer’s trail is lost.”

“Not a plan. More like a partner, another survivor,” Kaye answered. “He’s loyal to the Council, so that should appease those who won’t trust Dolan alone with this task. The pairing will keep everyone, or most everyone, cooperative.”

Kaye was deluding herself on that point, but Cari pressed on. “Who is it?”

“Mason Stray will be assisting you”—Kaye delicately cleared her throat—“once he agrees.”

Cari’s anger surged. That lowlife? For her father? “You’ve got to be kidding.”

Mason stood in the open doorway of his refuge cabin. He lifted his shotgun the moment he caught the sun glinting off the black of a Lexus LX SUV through the spare desert trees on the windy drive up his mountain.

He knew who it had to be. And he didn’t care.

Didn’t matter that the High Seat herself had traveled cross country and had hauled herself up his mountain. She wasn’t getting anywhere near him or his son. No mage was until this scourge had passed. The May Fair Massacre had claimed seventeen lives, and many more had fallen in the weeks since. He and Fletcher were lucky to have survived, but Mason wouldn’t count on luck again. He never counted on anything. Not where Fletcher was concerned.

A lizard skittered up the weather-bowed trunk of a mesquite tree. The high desert of New Mexico smelled dust dead, heat-stricken, a scorched bone of the world. It was why he’d chosen this place over his other refuge in the east.

The car slowed to a stop, dust hovering in a cloud around its wheels. The driver’s side door opened and Jack Bastian, Kaye Brand’s angel consort, got out. Tall, well built, the man had a backbone like an arrow—and his mind was just as sharp, just as deadly.

Mason cocked his rifle, hating the blare of the sun overhead. “Don’t come any closer!”

How many times did he have to hang up his phone on Brand to make her understand?

Jack Bastian looked over at him as he rounded the front of the car, a wry expression on his face, but his eyes hard. He didn’t stop to open the front passenger door, as Mason expected, but approached the house directly.

“I’ll allow no mages here, Jack,” Mason called out. He’d shoot; they knew he’d shoot. “Not even her.”

Jack stalked right up to the barrel of the gun. The angel had balls of steel. “You’ve made your point. It’s just me today.”

Mason glared back at the car, but no matter how hard he tried, he could not sense any Shadow within it. He swallowed to ease the fist of his heart, then lifted the shotgun so the barrel pointed to the sky.

Jack inclined his head in thanks as he bumped by Mason’s shoulder on his way into the cabin.

Mason slammed the door shut behind him, forcing himself not to look at the false wall behind which Fletcher hid. Mason was glad he’d long ago sound-proofed the hidden room, a precaution taken when his son was a baby.

“How’d you find me anyhow?” He’d chosen this remote spot on this scrub and scorpion-infested hill for a reason.

Jack looked at him over his shoulder. “I’m an angel.”

“Angels track souls, not Shadow.” It was how mages had hidden from the Order throughout the centuries. If angels could track mages, the war between them would have been long over, in favor of Order. “I ask again, how did you find me?”

Because if Jack Bastian could locate him, then others might as well. Which meant this place wasn’t safe. Mason adjusted his grip on the shotgun, his mind racing through alternatives.

“No one else knows.” Jack took a seat in the center of the old plaid couch that had come with the cabin. He winged his arms out to the side to rest on the back cushions, making himself very much at home. “Not even Kaye knows.”

Mason felt his sarcasm rising. “You don’t share everything? No pillow talk?”

The angel still hadn’t answered his question. How in Shadow’s pitch had he found him?

“Have a seat, Mason.” Now Jack sounded tired. “It’s about to get worse, so save your anger for where it counts.”

Mason cursed. “What has our High Seat done now?”

Kaye Brand lived on the wick of danger. One scratch, and she and everything in her path would go up in flames.

Jack closed his eyes for a moment. When he opened them, his gaze was even harder. “She’s done you a favor.”

“She does nothing for free.”

“No, she doesn’t,” Jack agreed without humor, “but this time I think you’ll thank her just the same.”

“Surprise me then.”

Jack went very still, too still for Mason’s liking. This had to be bad if she’d sent her angel all this way to tell him, leaving herself vulnerable. “She’s arranged a place for Fletcher.”

“I’m sorry, what?” Mason had heard his son’s name, but hearing it in this context made his brain flash cold. If Brand dared to meddle with Fletcher, she was effectively ending their uneasy friendship. She shouldn’t even speak Fletcher’s name. Not her business. Not her pawn.

“Fletcher needs wards, does he not?”

Since the May Fair all the Houses were hiding behind their wards. And those that dared to leave their safety did so at their peril. Jack had to be referring to Kaye’s newly built castle, Brand House, protected by the Brand ward stones lodged into its foundation.

“No, thank you.” Mason waved away the offer. “Kaye has more enemies than I can count. No matter what protection she employs, Brand House is still the single most treacherous place on this planet. My son and I will not be sheltered there. Might as well put targets on our foreheads.”

Jack opened his mouth, probably to argue, but Mason beat him to it.

“And I’m not going to the Segue Institute either. No matter how much I like Adam and his people, they are at war with Martin and have no wards at all. We’re better off here.”

“You finished?”

The ideal place, of course, would be Walker House, where Fletcher’s mother Liv was. Mason had tried to contact her many times over the years, but each silence was like Liv abandoning them again.

Mason looked the angel squarely in the eyes to be absolutely clear. “No one makes arrangements on our behalf.”

“She has negotiated the fosterage of your son to Riordan Webb.”

Mason blinked with irritation. He seemed to be having trouble keeping up.

Fosterage?

His mind churned through the idea. “You mean until this mage plague blows over?” The possibility lifted his spirits. He was suddenly heady and high. This could be the answer. Yes. Fletcher could be safe, much safer than here.

But Jack shook his head. “Webb is not volunteering to babysit. He requires the traditional fosterage agreement: A formal contract through Fletcher’s adolescence to strengthen the ties to Brand, and therefore the mage Council.”

Political in nature and common among aristocratic families in ages past, fosterage was alive and well within modern-day magekind. It meant Webb would raise Fletcher in return for favors from the High Seat of the Council, Kaye Brand. It meant power.

Stunned, Mason’s arguments hovered in the air around him, but he found the right one. “She can’t take my son away from me.”

The words came out like a threat, just as he intended.

“She’s not,” Jack said. “You’d have to agree to the contracts.”

“Then no.” Jack had been right. This was much worse than he’d thought. “She has wasted her time, and you are wasting mine. Get out of my house.”

“I thought you liked Webb.”

Not the point. Mason had hoped to do work for Webb, earn a place for them both, perhaps become one of Webb’s vassals. Safety for Fletcher, a home, in return for work. But fosterage was tantamount to giving up his son, giving him away to be raised by someone else. It was a formal arrangement, bound by contract, enforceable by mage law.

They could continue to hide out just fine.

Mason pointed to the door. Brand had no business, no right, to screw with him and his family. He felt sick, angry, and betrayed at the same time.

“Fosterage will protect Fletcher behind Webb’s wards.”

The angel was missing the point: Mason was not letting his son go. He would not abandon Fletcher, as his own father had abandoned him. Brand had overstepped.

When Jack didn’t move, Mason lifted the shotgun and aimed it at Jack’s head. Angels could heal superhumanly fast, but they could also die. Decapitation would do the job nicely.

“And he’ll have the company of Bran, as well as the luxuries of a strong mage House.”

Mason felt his concentration narrowing as he aimed down the barrel. He knew soldier Jack had seen a lot of action in his thousand years of toil on earth, so he should be able to recognize an impasse when he saw one.

The hard gaze didn’t waver. “You cannot protect Fletcher. Webb can.”

I’ve protected him thus far.

The mere thought of life without Fletcher hollowed Mason, a sharp pain whistling around his empty ribcage.

They’d managed eight years. Through all sorts of upheaval and danger. And a mage toddler is just about the most fearsome kind of mage ever. They might be strays, but they were getting by just fine.

But you are not a stray, Mason. You are human.

The angel’s voice in Mason’s head sent him staggering back.

Jack looked sad and tired. And I was able to find your hideout on this hellish mountain because you have a soul. Any angel could find you.

Mason laughed and refocused his aim. Jack Bastian was full of surprises. “Wicked trick. You have three seconds to leave, and then I’ll fire.”

And the reason why you and Fletcher survived the May Fair Massacre is because the plague doesn’t kill humans, and your soul shielded him.

They’d survived because they were lucky.

Webb and Bran were lucky. You had a soul.

“Stop that! Get out of my head!”

Jack leaned forward. “You are a parent, and to be a parent is to bear all sorts of excruciating pain and fear. If magekind discovers you have a soul, that you are human, Fletcher, who is a full mage via his mother, will never be accepted. He will be a pariah at best during this, the advent of the Dark Age.”

Mason’s aim faltered; the room went hazy. “I’m not human. I use Shadow every day.”

“All humans use Shadow—in dreams, nightmares, inspiration, art.”

“No, but I use Shadow.” All the things he’d done . . .

“You craft with Shadow. You animate with Shadow. It’s not so different from how other humans use Shadow. Your mage . . .