Shadow's End (Elder Races, #9)(35)

His lean, handsome face was blank, while dark purple shadows like bruises ringed his eyes.

As soon as Bel’s gaze fell on her son, renewed rage and worry swept common sense aside. She tried to rush forward, but Graydon still gripped her arm. His fingers tightened, halting her in midstep.

“Look who has come to visit this morning,” said Malphas. “The adulterers have arrived. Ferion, did you realize your mother has been unfaithful to your father? Faithful . . . unfaithful . . . Those words don’t mean anything to me, but I know they matter a great deal to some people.”

“You have no idea what you’re talking about,” Ferion whispered. His dull gaze met hers. “Mother, I am so sorry—”

“Shut up,” Malphas ordered.

Ferion’s words cut off, as abruptly as if Malphas had stuffed a gag in his mouth.

“You lied,” Graydon growled. “There was no exclusive game here. Nobody’s here except for you and Ferion.”

What did he mean? She glanced around the room again. This time, she noticed other details.

Cobwebs draped in corners of the ceiling. The armchair in which the Djinn sat looked bright and fresh, but the other furniture was dull with dust. On the floor, footsteps clearly showed on the worn, faded carpet.

“Don’t mistake me,” Malphas said. “I can and do lie when it suits me, but I didn’t lie about this. There was an exclusive game. It was with me. Yes, we could have played it in London, or anywhere else, for that matter. I just like to see how hard people will work for it.” He shrugged. “Of course the only people I invite here are the ones who can’t resist the game.”

She gave the Djinn a look filled with loathing, and then dismissed him to concentrate on her son.

“Ferion, never mind what has happened,” she said, struggling to keep the anger from her voice. “We need to leave. We also need to talk, but we can do that away from here.”

“I don’t believe you understand yet why you need to beg,” Malphas said. “So, I’ll show you. Ferion, go to your mother.”

Graydon said telepathically, Bel, be careful. I don’t know what he’s doing.

His words didn’t hold any real meaning for her. They fell far outside the urgency in her mind. As Ferion pushed to his feet and approached, she pulled her arm from Graydon’s grasp and rushed forward.

Malphas said, “Put your hands around her neck and squeeze.”

She had already moved to throw her arms around Ferion when she heard those words. Before she could recoil, Ferion’s hands snaked around her neck. He began to choke her.

Suddenly, she couldn’t breathe. Pressure pounded in her eyes.

Instinct took over. She tried to yank back, but Ferion was extremely strong, and she couldn’t dislodge his hard fingers.

Even as she arched away and attempted to twist out of his hold, snarling filled her ears. A powerful blow slammed into her chest. Graydon drove his big body between them like a battering ram, and through sheer force, he shoved them apart.

Gasping for air, she stumbled back, fell over one end of the sofa and sprawled on the floor. Ferion slammed into the nearby wall.

Two booted feet planted themselves on either side of her head, as Graydon straddled her prone body.

Coughing, she rubbed her throat as she stared up at his towering figure. The angles of his face and hands seemed strange and wrong, his fingers tipped with talons and his mouth distorted with fangs.

She had heard of such a thing, but she had only witnessed it from a distance. When they were under extreme duress, sometimes Wyr shapeshifted partially.

Even as she stared, he bared his fangs at Malphas and roared. The sound blasted through the house and shook the floorboards. She felt it vibrate in her chest.

It sounded like a lion’s roar, but it was more than mere physical sound. As he roared, his Power boiled out from him in a raw blast toward the Djinn sitting in the armchair. Malphas’s figure dissipated under the force of it.

This confrontation had dissolved into catastrophe so fast, it sent her reeling. Flipping over to her hands and knees, she pulled into a crouch at Graydon’s feet. Across the room, she saw Ferion do the same.

His expression was filled with the same look of horror she felt twist across her own face. He said telepathically, I would never—I could never—

I know, she told him.

The Djinn’s energy coalesced in the doorway leading to the front hall.

“Now you begin to understand,” Malphas said. “But not, I think, fully enough. Ferion, stop breathing.”

Slumping back against the wall, Ferion’s gaze met hers. His shoulders hunched and his face darkened, as his body struggled.

In a complete panic, she sprang across the room. He clawed at his own neck. She flung her arms around him as she frantically searched for some way to help him. She could find nothing, nothing.

Nothing except an odd frisson buried deep in his body. To her mind’s eye, it felt like a darkened smear across the brightness of his soul.

Graydon roared at Malphas, “Release your hold on him!”

I love you, Ferion said in her head. His eyes reddened as blood vessels burst in the whites.

If she could strike a blow at the Djinn, she would, with all the terrified fury raging in her heart. But while she could fight very well in a physical battle, at his essence, Malphas was not a physical creature. She was considered one of the most Powerful of her kind, but most often, Elven Power was connected to the elements of the earth.