The Cursed (League of the Black Swan) Read online

  PRAISE FOR THE WARRIORS OF ATLANTIS

  “The perfect blend of fabulous world-building and sexy romantic adventure.”

  —Jayne Castle, New York Times bestselling author

  “A phenomenal new series.”

  —Fresh Fiction

  “Alyssa Day works her own brand of sexy sorcery in this fabulous new paranormal series. Warriors and witches have never been so hot!”

  —Teresa Medeiros, New York Times bestselling author

  VAMPIRE IN ATLANTIS

  “The relationships between Day’s cast of characters are layered and enduring and they make this series unforgettable. Day aces another one!”

  —RT Book Reviews

  ATLANTIS BETRAYED

  “Day serves up her best book to date with this exhilarating, funny adventure.”

  —RT Book Reviews

  “Action [and] hot sex . . . So hold on to your fan, you may need it.”

  —Bitten By Paranormal Romance

  ATLANTIS REDEEMED

  “Day blends action, suspense, and fiery hot sensuality.”

  —The Romance Dish

  “Day places her latest romantic pair in unique circumstances as they face both technological horror and an ancient curse . . . Day continues to deliver consistent quality and sizzling adventure!”

  —RT Book Reviews

  ATLANTIS UNMASKED

  “Action packed and hot and spicy.”

  —TwoLips Reviews

  “Day utilizes a nice blend of action, character building, and sexy sensuality in all her books. A terrific escape from reality.”

  —RT Book Reviews

  “As always, I loved this book. Each time I settle down to read about one of the warriors, I know I’m going to want more.”

  —Naughty Edition Reviews

  ATLANTIS UNLEASHED

  “This character-driven tale will grab the reader’s imagination from page one . . . An epic thrill ride that should not be missed.”

  —Romance Reviews Today

  “A terrific romantic fantasy thriller.”

  —Midwest Book Review

  “Day is back and better than ever . . . She doesn’t skimp on the action, but this story also delves into the psychological, giving the characters real depth. Power and passion unleashed make for outstanding reading!”

  —RT Book Reviews

  “Action-packed adventure filled with magic and romance . . . Superb job of world-building that will leave you stunned with the richness of detail. The characters of Atlantis are sexy, intelligent, and fascinating. I absolutely loved it and cannot wait for more!”

  —Romance Junkies

  ATLANTIS AWAKENING

  “Fascinating, thrilling, and deeply romantic.”

  —Jayne Castle, New York Times bestselling author

  “Alyssa Day’s Atlantis is flat-out amazing—her sexy and heroic characters make me want to beg for more! I love the complex world she’s created!”

  —Alexis Morgan, national bestselling author

  ATLANTIS RISING

  “Atlantis Rising is romantic, sexy, and utterly compelling. I loved it!”

  —Christine Feehan, #1 New York Times bestselling author

  “The Poseidon Warriors are HOT!! Can I have one?”

  —Kerrelyn Sparks, New York Times bestselling author

  “Alyssa Day’s characters grab you and take you on a whirlwind adventure. I haven’t been so captivated by characters or story in a long time. Enjoy the ride!”

  —Susan Squires, New York Times bestselling author

  “Alyssa Day has penned a white-hot winner!”

  —Gena Showalter, New York Times bestselling author

  “Inventive and electrifying.”

  —RT Book Reviews

  “Alyssa Day roars onto the paranormal scene with this tense and magnetic read.”

  —Romance Junkies

  Titles by Alyssa Day

  The Warriors of Poseidon

  ATLANTIS RISING

  High Prince Conlan’s Story

  ATLANTIS AWAKENING

  Lord Vengeance’s Story

  ATLANTIS UNLEASHED

  Lord Justice’s Story

  ATLANTIS UNMASKED

  Alexios’s Story

  ATLANTIS REDEEMED

  Brennan’s Story

  ATLANTIS BETRAYED

  Christophe’s Story

  VAMPIRE IN ATLANTIS

  Daniel’s Story

  HEART OF ATLANTIS

  High Priest Alaric’s Story

  Specials

  WILD HEARTS IN ATLANTIS

  Bastien’s Story

  SHIFTER’S LADY

  Ethan’s Story

  The League of the Black Swan

  THE CURSED

  The Cursed

  THE LEAGUE OF THE BLACK SWAN

  ALYSSA DAY

  THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA

  USA | Canada | UK | Ireland | Australia | New Zealand | India | South Africa | China

  Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  For more information about the Penguin Group, visit penguin.com

  THE CURSED

  A Berkley Sensation Book / published by arrangement with the author

  Copyright © 2013 by Alesia Holliday.

  Excerpt from “The Curse of the Black Swan” by

  Alyssa Day copyright © 2013 by Alesia Holliday.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  Berkley Sensation Books are published by The Berkley Publishing Group.

  BERKLEY SENSATION is a registered trademark of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  The “B” design is a trademark of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  For information, address: The Berkley Publishing Group,

  a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  eBook ISBN 978-1-101-62226-1

  ISBN: 978-0-425-25577-3

  PUBLISHING HISTORY

  Berkley Sensation mass-market paperback edition / May 2013

  Cover art by Craig White.

  Cover design by George Long.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  This book is for Jim McCarthy, my funny, brilliant, patient agent, who signed me when I was in Sedona, encouraged me when I was in Japan, laughed with me when I came back to Florida, and gave me good news when he was in Germany. Ours is a marvelous and international relationship.

  And for the always delightful Cindy Hwang, my editor, who said yes when I wanted to take Luke and Rio on continuing adventures.

  And, especially, for Mom, who always said, “My daughter can do anything!”

  And so I did.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Thanks to everyone at Berkley who gets my books out to the world—and especially to George Long and Craig White for the amazing cover, which is exactly what I wanted!

  Thanks to the always wonderful Sarah Wendell, who gave me the idea to use the High Li
ne park for the border of Bordertown. The park, created from an abandoned railroad line, is a terrific example of how a community can come together to create beauty from ruin.

  Thanks to the fabulous Morgan Doremus for her photographs and suggestions about places in the park for Luke, Rio, and my other characters to play.

  Thanks to my Werearmadillos—Eileen Rendahl, Cindy Holby, Marianne Mancusi, Barb Ferrer, Serena Robar, and Michelle Cunnah—for nearly a decade of laughing with me about the insanity of the publishing business and sharing encouragement, support, and a kick in the pants when I need it.

  Thanks to my new writers’ group, the Fire-breathing Flamingos—Ava Milone, Lena Diaz, Madeline Martin, Sheila Athens, and Valerie Bowman—for monthly dinners, wine-fueled laughter, insightful feedback, and face-to-face writer time.

  Thanks, always, to my children—Connor, for choreographing fight scenes with his friends and for researching supernatural creatures, and Lauren, for character name inspiration and playlist song suggestions. And to both of you for eating too much pizza when it’s deadline.

  And, always, to Judd. You know why. (And the fact that you’re totally hot in your Navy dress blues doesn’t hurt.)

  CONTENTS

  Praise for Alyssa Day

  Also by Alyssa Day

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  CHAPTER 28

  CHAPTER 29

  CHAPTER 30

  Excerpt from The Curse Of The Black Swan

  CHAPTER 1

  2 A.M.

  CENTRAL PARK, NEW YORK, ON TOP OF THE RAMBLE STONE ARCH

  Getting stabbed is hell on the dry-cleaning bill.

  Luke Oliver looked down at the silver blade stuck between his ribs and then up at the only person still alive who’d known him back when his name was Lucian Olivieri. “I’d kill anyone else for that, Maestro.”

  He pulled out the knife, wincing as it scraped a rib, wiped it on his jeans, and then put it in his pocket. “You didn’t want it back, did you?”

  The other man, his face hidden by the shadows cast by his fedora, laughed. His laugh sounded like rock being crushed beneath a giant’s boots and was just as appealing. Luke suspected the maestro knew it, too, and used it as one of a lifetime’s worth of weapons.

  “Consider it a gift. And I was just checking,” the maestro said. “When silver starts burning you like acid—”

  “I know the terms of my own curse,” Luke said, cutting off the reminder. Beating back the past. “What do you want? I have a job to get back to.”

  “Still doing those jobs? Trying to save the world from your hideaway in the dank, dingy corners of Bordertown?”

  It was Luke’s turn to laugh. “No hideaway. A crappy office. And I’m only trying to save one person. The world can go to hell for all I care, but right now I’m too busy to reminisce about old times.”

  “We didn’t have any old times. We were on opposite sides. Your mother was a thug.”

  “Even enemies have old times. And my mother was an aristocratic thug. Never let it be said that Lucrezia Borgia didn’t do her murdering with class,” Luke countered, as he silently watched a trio of gangbangers, smelling of cheap booze and acrid smoke, saunter underneath the arch while trading raucous and profane insults. Secure in their mistaken belief that they were apex predators in the darkest hours of the night. He wondered briefly what they’d do if he dropped down among them and showed them the face and power of a true predator.

  Wet their pants and run screaming for Mommy, no doubt.

  “Do you still do it? Hunt the criminals?” The maestro’s voice held only a calm curiosity, as if he were asking about the weather. “Do you feel the pull to stalk them as prey and crush them? Burn them to cinders?”

  Yes.

  Always.

  No.

  Never.

  Never again, at least.

  Luke settled on a nonanswer. “You have one minute to say something relevant.”

  The other man pulled an envelope out of his coat pocket and held it out to Luke, and then he said the two words Luke had never wanted to hear again.

  “Black Swan.”

  Shock knocked Luke back like a crossbow aimed at his heart and he fell off the arch, but recovered in time to land with his characteristic grace on the path thirteen feet below.

  The maestro laughed once more and tossed the envelope down through the night air before he disappeared. Luke caught the envelope as it fell, almost in spite of himself. The glossy black-and-red logo was embossed on one corner, as he’d expected—the sinuous arch of the black swan’s neck stark against the Templar cross and mocking him with its elegance.

  He needed to get back to Bordertown; back to his office. His client’s missing niece was far more important than anything that could be inside this envelope. He’d burn it. Destroy any evidence that the League had ever reached out its slimy tentacles and move on with what was passing for his life these days. He told himself all of that, even as he tore open the envelope right there on the path and pulled out its entire contents: a single photograph.

  The moonlight seemed to caress the woman in the photo, highlighting her perfect bone structure, the curve of her cheek, and her wary expression with vivid clarity. The world tilted on its axis, and the edges of Luke’s fingers shimmered with blue flame, nearly incinerating the photo before he extinguished the fire. He stared at the picture—still perfect but for the charred edges—and another kind of fire flashed to an inferno inside him. He knew this woman. Her name was Rio Jones and she worked for the bike messenger service. He’d limited his contact with her when she’d dropped packages at his office. Admired her from afar, but made it a point never to speak more than a few words to her.

  She was too beautiful. Too vibrant. Too dangerous to his limited amount of self-control. The last thing he needed was a complication like her in his life. But now the League of the Black Swan was back, and it wanted him to get involved with Rio Jones.

  An immortal just couldn’t catch a break.

  CHAPTER 2

  BORDERTOWN

  Rio Jones knew she had maybe an hour, tops, before somebody found her. She had that kind of luck: the kind that trips over cracks in sidewalks, falls off her bike in the middle of rush-hour traffic in the middle of Bordertown, and sees a major supernatural heavyweight kidnapping a kid in broad daylight.

  A major magical heavyweight. She’d heard a flash of something so wrong—so other—in his thoughts that she’d nearly wrecked her bike when she’d turned to look at who or what was making that horrible noise. The taxi hadn’t even clipped her that hard; she’d had far worse working as a bike messenger for Siren Deliveries.

  Not that most of the fancy companies she delivered to would believe they’d hired a company owned by an actual siren. They just knew they got their packages on time. Ophelia liked to hire humans as messengers. She said they were slower but harder to distract. More reliable. Gave her the chance to focus on her budding opera career, instead of dealing with Fae and demon hatreds, feuds, and failures to deliver on time. Punctuality was king in the cutthroat bike messenger wars, and Rio was human enough to pass muster.

  Rio nearly growled at the thought of Ophelia and her damned rules. If Rio hadn’t
been so focused on making it to her next delivery on time, she wouldn’t have taken that shortcut through the alley, and so she never would have rounded the corner in time to see the tall, dark-haired man step out of a limousine and snatch a small girl right off the street.

  The girl had screamed, Rio had slammed on the brakes of her bike and gone over the handlebars, and the kidnapper had met her gaze with eyes that blazed a surge of dark power across the distance between them. Black eyes, almost all pupil, had tried to bore into Rio’s mind until the struggling child had screamed again and the man had thrown the girl into the limo and slammed the door. He’d given Rio one last dismissive glance as she knelt, bleeding, on the filthy pavement, and then he’d angled his tall body into the front seat next to the driver. By the time he’d changed his mind and the brake lights had flashed on the limo, she’d seen them over her shoulder as she glanced back while racing away. She’d used her throwaway cell phone to call in an anonymous report to the sheriff’s office, complete with license plate number, for all the good it would do.

  Bordertown hadn’t had any law of its own since the last demon uprising, when the rebels ate the sheriff. That very lawlessness was the draw for most of the people—human and, mostly, other—who lived, worked, and played in the five square miles of dimensional fold that lay hidden behind, beneath, and between the streets of Manhattan. Bordertown was the Wild West, but the cowboys and outlaws of the typical frontier town were demon and Fae here.

  Dangerous and deadly, with or without six-shooters.

  But she’d made the futile call, and a few minutes later, still shaking, she’d tossed her cell phone in the back of the first trash truck she saw, with some vague idea that the kidnapper might trace it back to her if she kept it.

  It was all too little, too late, though. She knew it. She’d heard his thoughts—they’d shattered the everyday barrier she wore around her mind like an icy wind slicing through a flimsy scarf. Her mental shield was plenty to keep out human thoughts; if she heard everything that people thought around her all day long, she would have gone insane years ago.