“Our savior.” Bertrand and Celene lifted their glasses. Rasmus appeared in the small doorway but made no move to find a glass.
I lifted my glass hesitantly. “Thank you.”
I smiled and took a sip. Maybe I’d judged the vampires too harshly. Maybe kidnapping people and forcing them to have fun was just the European way. I clicked my glass against Bertrand’s. It was a cultural difference I could get used to, I guessed.
Mephos collected Celene in his arms, and they spun around the candlelit banquet hall like graceful fiends in the night. We watched them waltz to a tune in their heads while shadows bent and swayed around them. Rasmus skulked in the doorway, not fully in the room or out of it. That seemed to describe his entire existence. I had yet to figure out how he fit into the lifestyle of the Cathar immortals. If he didn’t partake of the springs, why linger in Mephos’s court?
“That was amazing, what you did.” Bertrand leaned into me. His massive presence loomed close. “How could you understand what the ghosts were saying? Did they even have a form of speech?”
“I don’t think their utterances would qualify as speech. The sounds they made were more to emphasize what they were saying with their hands.” I didn’t have any idea how to convey the complicated information they shared mind to mind. How do you tell someone that cave people may have been telepathic without sounding crazy?
“When the medicine woman was inside me, I could hear her thoughts, and they were detailed, precise, and sometimes complicated, but sounds were rarely attached to them.” I sat on an elegant loveseat nearest the buffet and rubbed my forehead. My fingers came away with dried red pigment. I still wondered why the Star Clan woman had not taken the mantle of life from my touch. She would have been in corporeal form long enough to restore the painting herself. It was almost as if she wanted me to learn the magic.
“They were an interesting people. They showed me a glimpse of their nomadic lives. They followed herds. They traded art and bone tools. Running into other tribes was exciting and sometimes dangerous, but the many clans shared their sacred spaces. La Grotte des Ames was equivalent to a cathedral or a basilica.”
“That’s fascinating.” Bertrand took a seat next to me. “I know a few anthropologists that would enjoy speaking with you. Imagine what we could learn from your conversations with the gate’s guardians.”
I emptied my glass and waved my hand.
“Oh, no. Once was enough. You couldn’t pay me to do that again.”
Someone must have scratched the record that was playing in the vampires’ heads because Mephos and Celene came to an abrupt stop.
“What if the gate destabilizes again?” Bertrand asked a little too calmly.
“I assume you will prevent the further seepage of limestone onto the bison. They are talismans holding the magic in place.” I looked from Bertrand to Mephos to Celene. Rasmus scowled from the doorway.
“The second gate will never be stable. None of them are.” Rasmus croaked.
“I did what I could.” I looked from face to unhappy face. “I did what you asked, and now it’s time for me to go home.” My voice wound down to a whisper as I realized that my hosts might have a different perception.
Mephos strode slowly across the banquet hall.
“Did you try the chocolate mousse? No? What about the crème fraiche?”
I shook my head.
“We have the best of everything here, Melisande. In fact, if you would like to extend your stay, we’ve just begun to show you Europe. We could take a tour of the Mediterranean. What about Turkey or India?”
“Or the Orient,” Celene added.
“There’s so much to see and do, and you are so young.” Mephos lowered to one knee in front of me and took my hand. “Tell us what would make you happy, and we will procure it for you.”
He lowered his mouth to my hand and his eyes took on a predatory light. I shot Bertrand a nervous look. He’d promised to keep me safe.
“Thank you for the offer. Really, thank you. But it would make me happiest…to go home.”
Celene stepped behind Mephos and rested a slim hand on his shoulder. The tension in his body eased a bit.
“What will we do without your amusing commentary, mi amor?” Celene gave me an uncertain smile. Until that moment, I wouldn’t have thought anything could make the red-haired vixen uncomfortable.
“Allow me one last chance to entice you to stay.” He dropped my hand and stood. “Please, Melisande—” He swept toward the door and nearly walked right through Rasmus. “Follow me,” he called from the hallway on the other side of the small door. Celene and Bertrand trailed behind him.
The passageway was long and branched many times. I struggled to keep up with the party but finally stopped to take the pretty, impractical heels off. I gathered them up and dashed ahead in the direction they’d set off in. I caught a glimpse of Bertrand’s tailored shirt disappearing around a corner up ahead, but I stopped short as a small figure appeared before me.
The hair on the back of my neck rose. A light wave of cataplexy weakened my knees. She’d surprised me. The tiny woman looked young and too pale to still be among the living. I lifted my hand to touch her white cloak, then changed my mind. A troubling aroma filled the air around her. It turned my stomach. The foul odor reminded me of festering wounds. Her distant eyes sought me through the confusion of her memories. Her desperation washed over me. Carefully, I let the smallest piece of my brain fall asleep and horror dropped me to the floor.
Gibberish mumbled from her mouth in a language that sounded like French, but I couldn’t be sure. She took a step toward me and then another. Ice pricked my palms as chains slid from the world of thought, weaving through my skin into the realm of reality. I tried to get my feet under me again, but the sheer terror rolling off the little ghost stole the strength from my muscles.
“Don’t.” I scrambled to my hands and knees. The frantic spirit didn’t comprehend my warning. Her presence seemed scattered and worm-eaten beneath her crisp, white habit.
“What are you trying to say?” I spoke slowly, sending the meaning of my words toward her. Soft, shuffling footfalls sounded at the end of the hall as a row of white-cloaked bodies slithered into view. The remnant of the young nun froze. Her face quivered with fear as she lifted a finger to her mouth.
“Shhh.” The thread of a sound carried on a cold air current to my left ear. Goosebumps traveled down my arms. The line of bent figures slowed as it crossed the mouth of the hallway ahead of me. One of the figures turned my way, and the young ghost screamed. She lunged for me. Chains snaked around her hands, but she kept coming. The icy links bound her arms together, but she shuffled forward undeterred. I leaned away from her grasping fingers until the chains had made it all the way to her neck.
“Stop!” I flooded the icy tethers with my will, and the ghost came to a standstill.
The nuns at the end of the hall slowed.
“Les Soeurs de la Douleur Immaculee,” the ghost cried. “Les Soeurs de la Douleur Immaculee!”
The nun at the end of the line turned my way. Her sweaty brow folded down over fever bright eyes. She looked me up and down, then sniffed the air. The ghost in my chains began to twist. She wriggled against my restraints. Her arms torqued. Her legs pushed. I stared in surprise as my chains began to crack. The intensity of the young ghost’s distress fractured the links of her bonds in several spots.
“S’il vous plait,” she begged desperately, and one clutching hand broke free. Dagger-tipped fingers ripped toward my face. Her eyes flooded to black as she rode me back down to the floor. Her delicate features transformed into a ravening twist of fury. Her psychic impression swelled to choke the narrow hall. Several chains snapped. This wasn’t a mere apparition. The phantasm snarled and ripped at the chains around her bloated body.
A soft chuckling rolled down the hallway. I craned my neck to see the line of nuns staring intently in my direction. Their faces pinched in exaggerated expressions.
“Stop!” I shouted again, and a wall of ice sliced from my palms. Chains the width of my fist curled around the wraith, twisting it into submission. The mass of hissing, popping ice shuddered once, then went still.
I clutched the frozen links in my hands and waited for the nuns to make a move. Their fiery stares melted into me. Their bodies trembled. A shriek sounded from the front of the line, and the white-robed configuration moved forward again. The rope of lumbering figures disappeared from sight.
“Douleur.” The word dripped from the sharpened teeth of the phantom.
I knew enough French to recognize the word “douleur.”
It meant pain.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
On a scale from mildly endangered to royally screwed
Melisande
“We should put a bell around her neck,” Celene joked as I entered the barrel-roofed room. A dark ribcage of beams stretched overhead to support a heavy wooden roof. A triptych of slender stained-glass windows looked out at the windswept night from behind what must have once been an altar.
Four chairs, each on a stacked dais, were positioned at the corners of a diamond design tiled into the rough stone floor. The chair to the left was made of gilded wood and upholstered in a buttery red velvet. The slim curves of the high backrest narrowed at the base then flared into low, rounded arms and a wide, cushioned seat. Sparkling rubies held the decadent fabric in place. The oversized gems were the kind that might have once bedecked a crown. It looked like Celene.
The chair to the right was made of rough-hewn iron with a tint of rust at its edges. Behind it stood an impressive suit of armor, though the chain mail had oxidized and dulled with disuse. The surcoat draped over the armor was faded and moth-eaten, but the proud red cross of the Templar still held its color. For some reason, the rotting fabric hurt my heart. A thick sword, too long to be practical, leaned against the austere seat. It was clearly Bertrand’s place.
At the far end of the diamond sat a low-backed chair with a leathered surface that made the hairs on the back of my neck raise. A patchwork of browns, grays, and yellows were stretched tightly across the backrest and seat. The material looked to have been scraped and tanned to a point of rigid perfection. I hoped it was animal skin, but my hindbrain knew better.
“Please come in,” Mephos summoned in an authoritative tone. His commanding air still fit poorly with his young countenance. I stepped into the diamond as they each took their seats. I felt caged under the low, vaulted ceiling. Shafts of moonlight mixed with the wan light of several candelabras. I thought to take a seat but the only chair available was the one next to me, and it was less than inviting. Gray wood twisted and leaned like a tormented tree, reaching petrified branches toward the shadows above. The jutting armrests thrust forward, brandishing polished knuckles of time-battered wood. The back and seat were covered in a black fabric that seemed to drink the light. I thought of the bracelet they’d used to ensnare me. Maybe this chair was ensorcelled as well. If I sat in it, would it bind me as the diamond cuff had?
“These are the Thrones of Cathar. The four pillars of strength that control the gate.” I looked from chair to chair. The Star Clan controlled the Second Gate, not these people, but it didn’t seem like a good time to refute him. “The Throne of Fractured Fate.” Mephos gestured to Bertrand and his heavy, forbidding seat. Bertrand seemed to bristle at the title. “The Throne of Carnal Surrender.” His hand waved in Celene’s direction. She writhed slowly against the luxurious fabric and caressed the shapely golden armrests with her smooth, fondling hands. A soft trill of laughter slipped from her scarlet lips.
Mephos thumped his chest with his open hand, then gripped the leathery armrests of his own seat. “And this,” he spoke with not a trace of modesty, “is the Throne of Stolen Blood.” Almost at the same moment he’d uttered the word blood, the skin of his chair began to pulse in bifurcating lines of blue and red. The subcutaneous branches throbbed as if driven by a desperate, ravenous need.
“And that—” He pointed to the hollowed-out chair next to me. “—is the Throne of Captive Souls.” I backed away as something creaked inside the fossilized wood. I’d felt that eerie sense of presence in an object before. I could practically smell the haunting. What manner of damnation it contained, I couldn’t tell, but it felt very wrong. A bit of movement drew my eye to the back of the room. Rasmus leaned against the wall, barely visible in the shadows next to a broken chair.
“What’s that?” I pointed to the tangle of torn leather and bone white wood heaped unceremoniously in a corner.
“That was the Throne of Mortal Madness.” Mephos’s gaze burned into Rasmus’s detached face. “Now that we have you, we no longer need it.”
A sharp, stinging splinter of fear pierced my brain. Did they have me? I turned to Bertrand, but the look on his face was unreadable. I shifted my gaze to Rasmus. A hint of contempt rode his boney features. The faulty beat of his hammering heart seemed to quicken for a moment. Was he mad? Had the mortal death that sought to snuff him out every second of every minute driven the ex-priest insane? A tangle of fevered formulas and mind-bending math raced through my mind and was gone. Rasmus. A trace of his twisted thoughts whispered down the line between us, and none of it felt sane.
“Please take a seat.” Mephos gestured to the Throne of Captive Souls. Its haunted wood stirred with awareness. Something malevolent coursed through its desiccated timber.
“I’d rather not.”
“Just try it out for a moment. I think you will find that it suits you,” Celene cooed.
“No, thanks.”
“Sit…in the chair.” Mephos’s voice lowered.
Some tiny part of my psyche begged me to cooperate, but that part could kiss my ass. They’d made a mistake not drugging me again. I sent a chain of ice back through the door behind me and pulled my new friend through. An unearthly howl filled the throne room as the ghost of the young nun unraveled before them. She was the strongest entity I’d come across since my poltergeist, and she had been ready to make a deal.
Disquiet souls clustered in every corner of the cloister, unable to free themselves from the trauma of their miserable lives, but one stood out. One spirit left this world under a particular set of circumstances that, when the environment was right, created something very few ghost hunters will ever encounter. The earthbound soul of the tortured nun had evolved into a White Lady.
“Melisande.” Bertrand’s voice cut through my hardening resolve. “Think this through.” His casual posture shifted minutely. With that, the molecules of my resolve fused into something harder than steel.
“Yeah, I’m done thinking.” I pulled the wrathful entity into arm’s reach and slicked my fingers along her ectoplasmic manifestation. She folded with my touch, condensing and sharpening. All her rage and devastation curved into a glinting blade with a hilt that coiled up my arm. I whipped the weapon in an arch around me and the seething white edge sang through the desanctified space.
Celene’s face slackened as the moment went sideways, but her stunned disbelief seemed to ferment into something fierce. Mephos’s eyes filled with a lunatic light.
“Is this how you repay us for our hospitality?”
I ran through several possible answers, but I was pretty sure it was a rhetorical question.
The vampire’s hand slammed against the arm of his throne so loudly I thought the frame would crack, but it didn’t. Instead, it pulsed. My vision blacked around the edges as if I’d just stood up too fast. Rasmus spasmed behind me. I’d left my flank exposed. I whirled on the ribbon of a man and raised my searing cold blade, but he didn’t advance. His flesh crumpled and reformed and collapsed again. His face imploded with pain. Rasmus was clearly not a threat, so I put my back to him.
“I’ve done what you asked. I’ve fixed your gate. I may even turn a blind eye to what you are doing to your guests, but it’s time for you to fulfill your promise.” I pointed the sword at Mephos. “I’m going home.”
I knew an airplane ticket was probably out of the question now. As much as I hated to do it, I backed toward Rasmus. I kicked a foot at his splintering form. He turned desperate, hopeless, time-ravaged eyes to me. His gaze lost focus, and he tucked in on himself.
“You think the way we feed is wrong?” Mephos pushed himself to a standing position. On the outside, he looked like a teenager about to throw a tantrum, storm out, and leave some rubber on the driveway of the family home. But the hardened look in his cinnamon eyes showed what was really going to happen. “Would you like to know how we used to feed?” He stepped off his dais and pointed a finger at me. The charred edges of my vision shrank to a tunnel. Blood drained from my head as if I’d just pulled a few Gs in a fighter jet. I staggered away from him, which put my back against the wall.
“Mephos,” Bertrand cautioned. The dark-haired vampire turned his maniacal gaze on the knight and Bertrand said nothing further. That scared me more than Mephos’s slow advance.
I thought to say something, anything to deescalate this situation, but what was left to say? Nothing. I was done playing with these psychopaths. They couldn’t be reasoned with.
“If you are going to brandish a weapon, little girl, you better be prepared to use it.”
Was I prepared? I hadn’t been prepared to be taken from my home. I hadn’t been prepped for dealing with vampires. I’d been tossed into a world with cursed mummies, doomsayers, and magic-wielding cave people without so much as a drop of lubricant. Was I prepared to use my weapon?
Yes.
Mephos rushed me like a freight train. His muscles moved faster than anything I’d ever seen. He floated like a dream. I couldn’t stand up to that. I couldn’t challenge a dream, so I let the nightmare wrapped around my arm handle it.
White Ladies were documented to exist in every culture, but they were a rare entity. The White Ladies of Northern Europe were said to haunt rural areas or lonely graveyards. Filipino White Ladies didn’t have faces. The White Ladies of North and South America were said to cause car accidents on deserted roads. I hadn’t realized what this ghost was at first because the tunic, scapular, and cowl of her habit were already white, but there was no mistaking what she was now. The injustice of her death, her purity, and the infecting need for retribution had all coalesced to form an entity that could disrupt the material world even more than a poltergeist. She was approaching demonic level.
A Shiver of Shadows Page 21
