Page 51 of Shadow Master
Fight, I willed them. Lash out and fight. Kill the fir bolg.
The shadows swirled around me, aimless and confused, before slipping away into the night.
What the fuck? No time to figure it out now.
Old school it was, then.
Hyde leaped into the fray to my right as I ran for my blade. A peripheral part of me was aware of whoops of triumph, of the clatter of hooves as more figures poured into the clearing. The hilt of my blade sat snug in my palm just as a fir bolg hurtled toward me. I brought the blade up, reveling in the jarring sensation as it struck home and lodged in flesh.
The fir bolg grunted, and blood spurted from his mouth. I yanked my blade out of his crotch, and he hit the ground with his knees. I swung hard, severing his head from his torso.
His body swayed for a second as if unsure what the fuck it was meant to do now. My boot in its chest helped it decide. It hit the ground with a soft thud, and then the silence registered.
Deathly and eerie.
The side of my face pricked in awareness, and I turned my head to see several fir bolg silent and bloody on the ground and our camp surrounded by new fomorians.
Hooded and cloaked, they stood silent and waiting. My gaze snagged on the reason why. He stood a head above them all, his body clad in leather armor, his dark eyes filled with stars as they remained locked on me.
My breath whooshed out of my lungs. Brady? I took a step forward. “Brady?” And then I was running across the camp, bridging the distance between us to wrap my arms around his neck and claim his mouth.
His lips parted beneath mine, his arms wound around my waist, and he kissed me back, deep and hungry.
Warning bells went off in my head as a wrongness stabbed me in the chest. I knew my mate. I knew the taste and the smell of him, and this man … This man tasted different. He smelled … wrong—pines and woodland.
Not Brady.
I broke the kiss and tried to pull out of his embrace.
Athos’s low, menacing growl reinforced my gut instinct, but Brady held fast, and an amused smile flirted with his lips. “That was an interesting thank you for rescuing your life. Although from the manner in which you beheaded your assailant, I can only deduce you would have succeeded in making an escape even if my party hadn’t come upon your camp.”
Not Brady, my mind screamed. Not my mate. My body agreed, tensing, ready to fight.
“Who the fuck are you, and why the fuck are you wearing my mate’s body?”
Seventeen
“Answer me!” I slammed a fist against the Brady lookalike’s shoulder. “Who the hell are you?”
His mouth parted, and his gaze softened as if he was looking inward. “Oh, you belong tohim.” He released me. “He told me you would come for him. I didn’t believe him.”
“Where is he? What have you done to him?”
“I haven’t done anything. I merely borrowed his body, with his permission, of course.”
“Liar,” Hyde said. “Brady wouldn’t give you his body.”
Not-Brady’s eyes narrowed. “You must be thewanker,Hyde.”
He said it in a way that revealed he had no idea what the word meant.
Hyde’s lip curled.
Not-Brady shrugged. “I get the odd impression from his psyche now and then.”
He studied me as if he were dissecting me. It was an expression that didn’t belong on Brady’s face, and icicles formed in my blood.
“Give him back.” I raised my blade in warning.
