Page 43 of Dark Seduction

“Stop!”

He finally released her hand. “Yer afraid o’ the night, an’ ye should be, ’cause evil walks openly in the night while it hides in the day. Ye need to face the truth, Claire. There be nay safe place t’ hide, ever.”

She struck him, hard, across the face.

He jerked but remained rigid. “Yer world is nay different from this one. The Deamhanain be everywhere, in every time, in every place, and they want yer death—an’ mine.”

Claire couldn’t speak. She was sick. The floor felt off kilter and it was spinning. This could not be happening. The world could not be the way Malcolm was describing it.

His tone became kind as he steadied her. “Sibylla be human, like ye. But her powers are not. Moray has possessed her. ’Tis why she be so strong, so evil.”

Claire shook her head. Tears fell. “So Sibylla is a possessed human? Now you’ll tell me Moray is the devil?”

“Long ago,” he said softly, “a great warrior goddess came to Alba an’ lay with kings. One o’ her sons was Moray. He became a great Master…until Satan stole his soul.”

She met his gaze. His features were blurred. “You believe,” she gasped, “but I don’t…I won’t!”

“In Alba, Moray be the lord o’ the darkness, Claire. His spawn be the Deamhanain.”

Claire stepped back and hit the table. The devil. Demons descended from ancient deities. Possessed humans. Pleasure crimes since time began…On some gut level it made absolute sense.

Moray, a demon who had once been a Master….

And Malcolm, a Master who had killed a maid…

Claire felt the room swim. She was in a nightmare. And she knew that, for the first time in her life, she was about to faint.

She reeled. Malcolm caught her. She whispered, “Then what does that make you?”

Malcolm lifted her into his arms just as her world went black.

CLAIRE CAME TO CONSCIOUSNESS, choking on a foul odor. She was in the bed of the chamber she had been given. Malcolm sat beside her, his face grim. In that terrible instant, the nightmare returned and began all over again.

Her head pounded, hurting like hell. Malcolm was wrong. He had to be, even if Sibylla had had the strength of ten men.

He hesitated. “Lass, I be sorry.”

“Get out,” she gasped. She could accept that some men were genetically programmed for evil and that evil was as ancient as the Bible. And she could and would accept that crimes of pleasure existed in the Middle Ages, just the way crimes of passion did. What she would not accept, not for an instant, was that those crimes were being committed by beings with supernatural powers, beings that were not really human.

Malcolm walked out.

Claire lay back against the pillows, feeling sick in her soul. Evil was human. This was a medieval myth. The devil did not exist, and she was going to repeat that litany until she went home. Moray was probably an extraordinarily ruthless, ambitious and clever man, propagating the myth that he was a master of evil. This was a primitive time and men like Malcolm were resorting to superstition and religion to explain things they could not understand!

Claire felt tears falling down her face.

But the perpetrators of pleasure crimes were never caught. Their ability to seduce their victims had never been explained. All the victims died because their hearts stopped. And it was an epidemic….

The shutter on her window suddenly swung open.

Claire leaped from the bed, shaking with fear, but Sibylla did not appear, nor did any supposed demon. She reminded herself that the window opening was too small to admit even a child—and Sibylla didn’t need a window to get inside.

Claire cursed, terrified. She ran to the window and slammed the shutter closed. As she did, black shadows danced on the ramparts above her head.

Claire reminded herself that it was the night watch. A log fell in the fire, hissing. Claire’s heart exploded and she ran from the chamber, instinctively going directly to the end of the hall. The door was wide open and she glimpsed Malcolm inside. She seized the door, breathing hard.

He turned. He’d stripped off his clothes, every single garment, and his entire body bulged with rippling muscle. He was hugely endowed. His eyes widened, but she just stood there.

Now she failed entirely to breathe, but desire wasn’t the issue. Tears crept out from her eyes. Claire swiped at them, thinking about blood and demons and Masters and Malcolm, all at once. The maid died takin’ her pleasure from me.