by Gina Kincade
Once they left his room, he felt like he was slipping when he walked, unable to fully acknowledge or control his legs underneath of him. He took notice of the piercing sting in his heart as he viewed images of both Aubrey and his mother in his head. By the time he had finished the battle of acquiring clothing, which had fought him by failing to obey every effort he made to place them on his body, angry tears burned his eyes analogous to the fire that built within his lungs.
Grasping his door, sure he would fall into unconsciousness, a surge of anger met with a surge of energy. He went down the steps so fast he was almost unable to note his feet upon them.
“I am going,” he yelled as he passed the hall where most of the house stood vigil. He grimaced at how the tears in Lord Sanderly’s eyes matched his own. The weight of his guilt sent a crushing blow, swiping at his exhausted thoughts. All this pain and suffering of so many burdened him as his fault for falling in love with Aubrey in the first place. Although, he knew not how to resist such a woman as her. Her image came to mind, strong and beautiful in a magical way that had nothing to do with her powers. He couldn’t bare the reality of how she might look now.
He could still smell her upon his skin until the night air stripped that from him, too. So stirred, he had not heard Lord Sanderly coming upon him from behind. When Edmund stopped short in front of the house, his run interrupted by a servant with a horse, Lord Sanderly bumped into him. It set him off balance enough that if it hadn't been for the horse in front of him, he would have hit the ground.
“I beg your pardon, Edmund. I took the liberty of having a horse brought round, thinking you might have been too vexed to have thought of transportation yourself. I did not dare hope to have time to gather a carriage.”
“I can not give you thanks enough. Pardon my abrupt departure, and know that I am quite aware of the apologies and thanks I owe to you and yours.”
He faintly heard the parting words, “Take up caution, Edmund…” as he spurred the horse quickly from a starting gallop to a run.
A spiteful moment of thankfulness hit him, acknowledging the brightness of the moon, which would allow him faster travel as he prayed it would also aid Aubrey’s rescuers.
He tried to control the vague and the vivid placements of his imaginings on Aubrey’s whereabouts and troubles lest he lose his way. Much to his chagrin, he could easily see the pain and anger and fear that may be clouding her eyes at this moment, wherever they had her, as it would be the same as or worse than he had once put there when he transformed back into a man in front of her on the island. His heart pounded in his chest, and he realized his failure to operate his lungs as he lumped himself in with the cutthroats who took her away this time.
Castigating himself, he froze a moment aghast at the horrors his mind dredged up. She could be manacled somewhere with tight metal cutting into her tender flesh. No sooner had he fought the image than he rioted with the grim vision of another man’s hands on her. Rage seized him, flashing black over his range of sight. He hoped she had had on some stitch of clothing beyond her nightgown before they manhandled her. Unable even to feign control as Lady Dalysbury’s townhouse came into view, a roar escaped him. He had to fight the urge to shift into something beastly and tear through anyone who tried to stop him from getting to his mother.
He hitched the horse and went straight to beating on the door. He had to have some control or he would have no chance of obtaining any information. When his call was not answered within what his anger deemed a reasonable amount of time, he added screams of his mother’s name to the pounding of his fists upon the thick wood. Incognizant of true minutes ticking away, the sides of his hands went from throbbing to numb by the time a servant ventured to the door with two other large servants behind him.
Without care, he pushed through them all, mounting the stairs two at a time. “Wake up now, Mother!” The name stuck in his throat, and in his mind he denounced her of her titles of mother, lady, and even human being! “You obviously care nothing for me! Get Aubrey back within the night without a hair harmed upon her head or trust me, I will ruin you!” His final words came as he barreled into his mother’s room.
“Get her back now, Mother!” bellowed from his already hoarse voice as the two men from the doorway attached themselves to both his arms. “Call them off!”
He flailed against them, moving about like a caged animal, when his mother finally found her voice. “I can not, for the sake of my own safety, release you until you calm your person down.”
“You will not be safe from a wolf nor a beast, will you?” He turned to her then, knowing he bluffed on the beast, but the monster stirred within him. “Do you want to see me shift again and kill both of these buffoons before you? Or, shall I spare their lives? The decision is all yours, Mother, but I warn you not to tarry.”
“Release him and be gone immediately,” his mother shrieked.
“Mind your manners, Edmund. You do have your father’s powers, but shall you abuse them the same” she said just loud enough for him to hear, but low enough to not be overheard by the men descending the stairs in a hurry.
“Lecture me not.” Edmund met her steely gaze with a clenched jaw and slits for eyes. Rage boiled inside him.
“I would not believe it of you, but I was witness to it with my own eyes. Such devil’s work I have not seen since my time with Aelfin. Do you mean to seek him out now and start traipsing with the black spy himself.”
“Hold your tongue, Mother! Get me Aubrey now!”
“Whatever are you raving about?”
“Damnation, woman! You mean to tell me you are going to sit there now and lie to my face after the lies you told last night at Sanderly? I expect such flummery, and yet still it baffles me.”
“Lower your voice before the house is full of rumors. What is it you want exactly, Edmund?”
Edmund’s huff turned into a low growl, which he noticed with sinister delight had straightened his mother’s back more fully.
“I want Aubrey. You gave an amazing performance about planning our wedding tonight, however none of us were fooled. I know now it was to put me off your track when you had Aubrey abducted tonight.” The word incited him again. He would not let her stall. “You are wasting my time. Get Aubrey back from whomever you had take her. Do it now before I shift and maim you so that you suffer like I am!”
“If I did have anything to do with her disappearance, how would hurting me help you to locate her?” she said.
Her smirking voice as much as he could take. Just as he contemplated what to best shift into to scare her into telling him, the same servant who had opened the door for him tried to hold back an irate Lord Sanderly. Edmund knew he had his mother now, as she remained the most important thing in her world. Lady Dalysbury would have to pretend to be a lady in Lord Sanderly’s presence.
“Pardon me, Edmund, but Aubrey is being held captive within the dregs of the city. My servants were beaten while trying to free her from a common cage in the back parlor of a shop. They were brought unconscious and bloody to my steps by the charleys just moments after you left. I came as soon as I roused the one enough to tell me what had occurred. We must leave at once with hopes they did not move her to another location.”
Springing to life at the news, Edmund shouted his parting sentiments to his mother with all his fear and all his anger raising the pitch of his tone as he ran from her room and down the steps. “If but one hair is harmed upon her head I shall see you hanged for this!”
Again, he pushed his horse as fast as he could make it go despite its obvious hesitation in the darker streets of the night. The journey seemed endless as images of Aubrey plagued him again. He momentarily felt a twinge of guilt at endangering Lord Sanderly in this pursuit. The poor man tried to make his horse keep time with Edmund until he slowed at the mouth of the city.
“Where?” he demanded, knowing Sanderly would forgive him his abrupt tone. “Bowrey Street, the pawnshop. My man said they followed her there and tri
ed to force their way into the back of the store. They were stopped at the door, but not before they saw Aubrey forced into a room by two barbarians who had her wrists tied together.”
“Lead the way.”
Outside of the closed up pawnshop, the two tied up their tired stallions with haste. The moments unraveled slowly around him as he walked the perimeter of the building. He found himself in strange country with a rush of obstacles and decisions he had not the time nor patience for. Ideas leaped up at him, accosted by his rational side, which barely functioned.
Once he had fumbled with each door and window like a lunatic, he started shouting and pounding upon the door like the beast lurking beneath the surface. He entertained thoughts of shifting to break down a door, however his aching hands had hit upon one too many doors this night. The building formidable, its wooden slates taunted him. They kept him from laying sight upon any of the chilling images he could conjure up of her locked in there cold and afraid. As the portrait in his mind of her consumed his thoughts, he bellowed her name.
“No one is coming, Edmund,” Sanderly interjected within a momentary lapse of noise. “I do not think anyone is in there.”
“What if she is in there alone and…” He stopped, unable to complete the thought. The tension in his whole body wore on him in onslaughts of pains through his head.
“Edmund.” Lord Sanderly touched his arm.
“We have to get inside!” His breath came in rampant pants now. “Let us break a window around back.”
He raced there, took a large paving stone in his hand and forced it through the window. With the other man’s help, he entered without gaining as many cuts and scrapes had he embarked upon his own way in.
It took him little time to find himself faced with only empty rooms. He could smell her familiar scent. His skin tingled with exhaustion. Going mad, like he had retreated into a recurring bad dream, his thoughts grew obscure and misty. He no longer had an easy time of walking. Downtrodden in his failure, he made his way outside by simply unlocking the front door.
“Thank Heavens no one heard your commotion. The street is desolate save a harlot who fled when she heard your shouting. We must flee here, and then figure out our next move.”
A nod of his head in agreement had set them back upon their horses. As they headed back to Sanderly’s, his bleak options displeased him much. This time proved worse than his travels to the island. At least, that time, he had a destination in mind. This time he did not even have a direction to turn in hopes of finding her.
His Aubrey, his world, her presence or lake of controlled whether his heart raced in his chest or died under the clenched hand her absence wrought. Bringing to mind her image as she sat in her gown last night, she possessed more beauty than any he had ever seen. Going back through his memories like flipping through a book of pictures, he remembered her smiling with the sun glistening in her hair on the island. He remembered her bright eyes as she watched him achieve the completion of another spell. Also, he recalled her flush in the throws of passion beneath him.
He thought she would have been able to use her magic to protect herself somehow from a physical attack. Had his mother paid off the type of people who would know how to deal with someone with her special abilities? Then he remembered that she had talked of connections through magic. He flagged Lord Sanderly to stop.
“Is there a way I can feel Aubrey, given we have practiced together? Is there a spell or something that would lead us to her?”
“When you left, my wife was calling upon her family for help in locating her through a spell. Hopefully news will await us when we arrive back at my home.”
Feeling like death walking, an empty and weary shell of a man, he knew he would indeed make a pact with the black spy himself to get Aubrey back into his arms. Alas, the closest thing to the devil he knew of was the birth father who did not even know of his existence.
Chapter Nineteen
Aubrey sat with both arms roped to a bedpost in a country estate which had been large and impressive, even in the dark. The men had brought her here after a fight had broken out at the pawnshop they'd first shoved her in. As she tried to control her thoughts to at least keep her wits about her, she did not know where she felt more unsafe. At the shop, she had not known the identities of her attackers, nor what they wanted from her. Here, in the bedroom where they'd hid her, she'd already had the displeasure of being briefly introduced to Aelfin Pendle.
They had immediately placed a holding spell upon her own magic, leaving her as defenseless as any other human being. All she had heard about the man and his infamous coven of sorcerers must be true, because she'd trembled in his presence. His unjust uses of magic left a blackness to stain his aura, which matched the darkness of his countenance.
Weak from her attempts to save herself along with her lack of sleep, she still refused to dream here. She had lost track of time since being taken. The curtains upon the windows hung as thick as the coverlet on the bed to keep her from any sight of light, be it from the sun or moon. With no idea where she sat or how long they had traveled to arrive here, a great fog had descended upon her faculties. She had nothing more to do than await the next arrival of evil into this room, and hope to find out what plans he had for her. Then, maybe she could devise a plan for escape or at the least a strategy for survival.
Worrying over Edmund’s reaction to her disappearance almost made her forget the bruises she had inflicted upon herself by struggling against her kidnappers. While she fretted about him meeting his real father, she had to think they would come face to face eventually. The other scenario had him never finding her. Her worry only seemed to expound upon the rumblings of her empty stomach. She had refused all food and drink, not trusting any man who would work for or associate with Edmund’s father.
He had refused to tell her how he knew about Edmund, since Lady Dalysbury had claimed him unaware of his son’s existence. Could this man have sensed Edmund’s magic and undergone an investigation into finding his son in the short time since we returned? Surely, even black magic has its limits. Is it possible Lady Dalysbury actually called him herself? The timing is too peculiar, but what has the woman to gain from revealing such a truth? The Lady has a lot to lose, so she must have been quite desperate to have done so. She scoffed at the memory of the Dowager’s words last night. Her anger ardent over the Lady’s performance, regardless, she need not caution herself about her wayward emotions as her magic had been bound anyway.
She jumped when the room’s large wooden door opened again. Her wrists cried out with great affliction within the ropes. The slip knot seemed to tighten with her movement. Aelfin entered the room with another man. She sat perfectly still with her body coiled as tightly as she could manage, her only defense to their overzealous observance of her.
“How are you, Aubrey dear?” He slurred the words like he had the tongue of a serpent.
“How would you think?” She kept up her false bravado, although they both knew with her magic bound she had no power against him.
“I am sorry for the inhospitality of your visit, but I can not seem to persuade you to stay otherwise. I do wish it could be different, our meeting. Please, do not fear me. I am sure you will soon come to see we have many a common goal.”
Her preconceptions of the man may have made him look sinister, but his striking likeness to Edmund confused her frail perceptions. The man smiling upon her appeared an aged Edmund with a shade darker hair peppered with silver and his skin wrinkled beyond her guess at his true years.
She kept silent without ever taking her eyes off him. The other man walked to stand to her left beside the bed, while Aelfin sat beside her on the right. With her body pressed up against the large headboard, his thigh pressed up against her bare feet. They had given her no time for shoes or clothing. Of course, since they had just pulled the blanket she had laid beneath in her bed up over her head and bound her body with the sides of it, they did discover not she had no clothes on until they'd
placed her in a carriage. Luckily for her, Aelfin had ordered she not be harmed. Therefore, one of the men had immediately removed his shirt from under his coat to put on her.
She would've felt more wantonly exposed in the thin linen if Aelfin himself had not ordered her covered with a counter pane. He had claimed to be making her more comfortable while she remained ironically tied to the bedpost. Nowhere else for her feet to go now, he leaned in closer to her. Holding her breath as if it could stop him from placing any sort of sordid spell on her, she braced herself for whatever words would come from his mouth and set her fate until Edmund found her.
“I see we are not of the mind to talk much yet. That is fine. You may simply listen. It will suit my purposes either way. I want to meet my son. A great amount of time has been robbed of me.” His face set and steely, still something flashed through his eyes which felt like pain even without any ability to truly discern it. This did not help, though. Men on a whole had been known to be more reckless with their magic when they allowed emotions to come into play, especially those so raw.
“I intend to get to know him.” He continued spitting the forcefulness of his intent at her. She didn’t imagine he'd ever been denied what he wanted. “I hear he has skills, a shifter it has been said. I am greatly impressed, and knowing what I could find out about you in such a small amount of time, I wonder how much you had to do with his current magical successes. I wish you would tell me all about the island. I have heard of it many a time. Although, as business would have it, I never had the opportunity to travel there myself.”
He paused a moment. When she just stared at him, keeping her face stone, he continued, “As well, I am told you do not approve of me or my magic, even though you have magic of your own. I suppose that is why you refuse to talk to me. We could sit happily discussing Edmund’s merits while we wait for him. However, I suppose you draw a line betwixt what some would call black and some would call white magic. To me, magic is magic; the difference is simply mere levels of what you can obtain from it. Regardless of all of that, I intend on getting to know my son. I also intend not to lose any more time with him. I have been apprised of your situation. His mother does not approve of your wishes to be together. I, on the other hand, would be perfectly blessed to see you two happy. You are a lovely girl.” With the sentiment, he placed his hands upon her bent knees.
