He turned back toward Abraxas. His breathing had calmed considerably. “I need the three of you to go to Balfour, a rural town outside the Halifax Regional Municipality of Nova Scotia, Canada and scout the area,” he instructed. “As soon as you confirm that Dane and Jason, Beth’s brothers, are there, I want you to attack. I will sense it and join you.”
Abraxas, Baal and Amitt nodded in agreement.
“But be aware, I cannot leave for too long. This battle must be swift. My absence will be obvious and raise too many questions,” he added.
“I understand, my lord,” Abraxas added and lowered his head in obedience.
“As do I, my lord,” Amitt said and bowed so deeply Darius was granted a clear view of her bare breasts. He forced himself to avert his gaze for fear the sight would stimulate him anew. He did not have time for another romp.
Baal chuffed and scraped his foot against the ground below, redirecting his focus. The beast was eager to maim.
“You can’t do this, Darius! Please! They are innocent people!”
Darius faced Desmond again. “Look into my eyes, Desmond. Look into my soul.” Sky-blue eyes bore into his, burrowing, searching their depths for a shred of decency. When Desmond’s gaze found nothing more than a liquid black abyss, his pale brow creased and his gaze grew wide. “I can and I will kill them. They will oppose me soon enough, thereby forfeiting any claim to innocence.”
“No,” Desmond breathed.
“Don’t look so shocked. You know what I am. Listen to that voice inside you, it knows what I am,” his voice was a razor blade nicking at Desmond’s spirit. “Really, do you honestly think I care about women, children or the elderly?” He laughed sadistically. “You can’t be that stupid.”
Abraxas cleared his throat and interrupted his interaction with Desmond, “What do we do with him?” he asked and gestured with the tip of his chin toward Desmond.
“He is a weak human now. He isn’t going anywhere. But to be safe, chain his wrists and ankles.”
“Yes, my lord,” Abraxas replied and set about gathering lengths of chains from just beyond the cavernous cell. He unlocked the chamber. Hinges creaked and groaned in protest as he pulled the bars toward him. He bound Desmond quickly as his prisoner did not resist.
“Wonderful,” Darius clapped his hands together loudly. “I will see you soon, when we slaughter those harboring Dane and Jason. The children are to die slowly,” he said and stared straight at Desmond, smirking.
“No! Please no!” Desmond cried and dropped to the hard ground, landing on his knees. He took his head in his hands, his torment palpable. Darius enjoyed every agonizing moment of it.
When finally he tore his eyes from the tortured display, he looked between Amitt, Abraxas and Baal. “I have to leave. I will see the three of you when it begins.”
He closed his eyes and envisioned Arianna’s small cabin and felt his body scatter into the night like grains of sand carried on a breeze.
Chapter 19
A dreadful feeling clung to Arianna, slimy and stagnant like scum on a pond. She tossed and turned in her bed, unable to sleep, tormented by a sinking feeling that niggled at her brain. It was more than Beth’s death, something baser and far more profound. Her world felt as if the thin veil between good and evil had become so threadbare it could no longer filter the two realms, and that the latter now seeped through. She wondered whether her daily existence had been infiltrated by wickedness.
As soon as the question formed in her mind, the light bulb in the lamp on her nightstand flickered. She sat up and stared at it, wondering if it were an electrical malfunction, or something more nefarious. The bulb hissed and sputtered, blinking several times as if in answer to her unspoken question. She sucked in air sharply, exhaustion and grief jumbling her perception, and a shiver of unease swept over her skin. She stood and was about to make her way to the bathroom in hopes that a shower would help tidy her thoughts when her front door opened slowly. Large jade eyes popped against deeply bronzed skin and glowed with a brand of annoyance-tinged shock that did little to calm her unease.
“Why are you still up?” Darius barked at her, his dark brows forming a ‘v’ just above his eyes.
Briefly taken aback, Arianna felt as if his reaction had been entirely organic, a natural, knee-jerk response. She did not respond verbally, but furrowed her brow at him, making plain her disapproval of his attitude.
He saw the effect his tone had on her and his facial expression segued into one of concern. “Are you okay?” he asked in a voice softened by restraint. An unnatural smile parted his lips and revealed even white teeth that she noticed for the first time boasted sharp canines.
For an inexplicable moment, Arianna’s heart rate accelerated and adrenaline saturated her muscles as if in the throes in an acute stress response.
“Arianna, are you okay?” he asked again and advanced a step.
She jerked skittishly, involuntarily, physically recoiling from him. Her movement did not go unnoticed by him and a glacial glint gleamed in his eyes. For reasons she could not rationalize, she felt as if she were seeing him for the very first time. “Yeah, I’m fine,” she replied after a lengthy silence.
“You don’t seem fine,” he snapped. His forced smile remained but did not reach his eyes. “Why don’t you lie down,” he suggested.
“I’m fine where I am,” she replied perhaps a bit too defensively, for his smile tightened so that his full lips paled and stretched across his teeth. In him, she saw scarcely bridled rage stewing and wondered why she hadn’t seen it before.
“Oh Arianna, you poor thing,” he crooned and cocked his head to one side. His tone of voice was sympathetic, as was his head tilt, but everything about his demeanor was robotic, as if his words were cloying, chafing the very fabric of his being painstakingly.
“Did you find anything?” she asked to see how he would react to a question that did not relate to their current conversation.
“There is nothing to find,” he replied sharply then caught himself. He drew in a long breath and closed his eyes as he pinched the bridge of his nose. “I looked,” he said in a more controlled voice, his mask back in place. “I did not find anything that would implicate anyone else. It was one of her brothers. It is the only thing that makes sense. One of them did it.” He spoke with finality, as if his words were law and he somehow governed her thoughts.
“A loving brother murdering his sister in cold blood does not make sense to me at all. I know Dane and Jason. They did not do this,” she matched his certainty and replied.
Darius pursed his lips then scrunched his features and smiled thinly, his expression condescending. “You may have thought you knew them,” he addressed her as if she were a mental patient and allowed his sentence to hang in the air unfinished.
“I know them better than I know you,” she fired back automatically.
His eyes widened briefly, a natural reflex too quick for him to suppress. And in that reflexive moment, he revealed a secret. He let slip that a mighty river, full and strong, carved a chasm through his core, gushing and overflowing with toxicity. Arianna glimpsed it, the pure, unadulterated hatred teeming within him. It splashed like acid across his face, corroding and corrupting handsome features. For a split-second, she swore she saw an entirely different being, a monstrous creature. She swore she saw Darius for who he really was.
The split-second ended almost as quickly as it began. His face resumed its usual countenance, one she could only see now as artificial. “Arianna, I am not the enemy here,” he said soothingly. “I am your friend. You have been traumatized,” he started, but she stopped him mid-sentence.
“Yes, you’re right,” she humored him. “I am going to go outside and look around, clear my head a bit while I’m out there.”
He frowned at her news. “I’ll go with you,” he proposed.
What’s out there, Darius? What don’t you want me to find? She thought. I see you! Her brain screamed.
“No, that
’s not necessary. I want to go alone.”
Arianna did not leave room for negotiation. She went directly to the bathroom, leaving Darius with his mouth agape. She closed the door and dressed, then marched past him out the front door and into the clearing.
The night air had grown chilly. Fog blanketed the area and clung to trees and shrubs. The woods appeared haunted, crawling with ghostly curdled shapes that dove and lunged at every turn. But spectral mist did not frighten Arianna at the moment, reality did. She looked over her shoulder as she dashed past limbs and leaves, sagging as if bearing the weight of snow rather than vapor. She’d expected Darius to follow despite her firm refusal to allow him to join her. But the woods were silent, unnervingly so. Perhaps he stalked her, loping behind her with what she now thought of as predatory grace, soundless and deadly.
The hairs on the back of her neck rose. The creepy stillness of the forest unsettled her to her core, almost as much as Darius’ suddenly glaring duplicitousness unsettled her. She looked all around her, searching for something, anything that would clear Dane and Jason. But all she saw were skeletal branches, gnarled and knobby tree trunks, spiky brush, and skulking wisps of fog.
Pain hammered at the backs of her eyelids. Tears threatened. Her life, the life she’d patched together like a quilt and held dear, had fallen apart at the seams when Desmond left after his father’s death. He’d gone to Agnon’s compound after sensing his untimely passing and returned a different man. Though she could not blame the late warlock for her lover’s transformation, she could not shake the sense that there was a unifying thread connecting them.
And a single name crept into her thoughts: Darius. Darius’s name glared like a neon sign and eclipsed reason. His sudden appearance just after Desmond’s interlude with his mysterious cousin, Beth’s murder, somehow, the events related to Agnon’s death, and Agnon’s death was somehow connected to Darius. She could feel it. She did not know why or how, just that a common fiber bound them.
She closed her eyes and reached out with every part of her, allowing her energy to guide her. Sounds became sharper, smells richer and her senses more keen as she tried to figure out where Darius had gone when he’d come outside, allegedly searching for clues. She inhaled deeply, could almost smell him. But his scent was different. Earlier it had been fresh, like the sharp scent of verdant grass and sunshine. Arianna still detected those notes. Only now, a new note dominated: violence. A woodsy musk tinged with the metallic, iron-rich odor of blood hung heavily in the air and fused with the crisp scent she thought she knew. She looked all around her at the still, black night, at land that chopped and rocked like a violent sea, and half expected to see Darius materialize, sweating and spattered with blood. But she did not. Instead, the landscape and the smell caused a memory to float to the very edge of her consciousness, so brief it almost slipped by unnoticed. Arianna latched onto the image. Darius had said there was nothing out in the woods, nothing that could be found, likely because he hadn’t been looking for Beth’s killer at all. It might as well have been written on his face. He did not give a damn about Beth or finding her killer. For all she knew, Darius was her killer.
The notion scrabbled her, shivering across her skin like thousands of insect feelers.
Did Darius kill Beth? The question nearly staggered Arianna, fury ripping through her body as visions of death and gore blanketed her thoughts and gave birth to a slew of possibilities. Darius could have killed Beth then sifted back to the couch without her knowing. He’d been insistent that Arianna sleep. The scenario bloomed, rippling like a wave in a placid pond. It certainly made more sense than one of Beth’s bother’s murdering her. Beth had been the only one living among them who had questioned Darius, and publically at that. She had not masked her dislike for him. It all started to make sense. The only issue that remained was eye witnesses placing either Dane or Jason leaving Beth’s cabin shortly after her death. But she did not believe either Dane or Jason capable of killing his sister. But Darius was another case entirely. The thought of blood on his hands resonated deep within her. She continued to probe with her powers, prodding and exploring the ether until she picked up on his trail, a trail of power that existed like a glimmering wave of twilight, wispy and intangible. She followed it, her heart racing, for less than thirty steps before it ended abruptly. Frustrated, she balled her fists and slammed them against her thighs. The trail vanished without a trace. She was forced to think that he had sifted from exactly where she stood.
“Where did you go next, Darius?” she asked the forest and heard her voice echo with the strain of a thousand eerie cackles. But it did not offer an answer beyond its distorted return of her voice.
She closed her eyes and delved deep; summoning every bit of energy she could invoke and felt herself fade.
When Arianna opened her eyes, she saw an ashen fortress rising from the colorless landscape of Ellsworth Land and realized where she was. Desmond had once described this place to her. It had to be Agnon’s stronghold; it looked exactly as Desmond had depicted it.
Cold slapped every square inch of her body, stinging and prickling like thousands of needles pricking her at once. She hugged her midsection and felt confident Agnon’s citadel stood before her. She opened the front door and stepped inside.
She found herself in a mudroom, the space austere and unusually clean, but a scent hung in the air, metallic and unmistakable. Blood. The coppery sour stench filled her nostrils. She followed it as it hooked its acrid talons into her and towed her along. From the mudroom, she went directly to a living-room area and saw the source of the smell. Crimson smears, similar to the ones at Beth’s cabin, defaced the walls in a macabre mural of gore. But unlike the scene at Beth’s, a broken body was nowhere in sight. She scanned the room, hand covering her nose and mouth against the pungent stink, and noticed that a massive hearth stood at the center of the wall beside her, a fire blazing inside. She quickly reached out with all her senses, probing for the slightest hint of another being like her present, but felt nothing. Whoever started the fire had left not long ago. Her gaze returned to the red marks. The pattern of them, the almost deliberate nature of the smatterings, were achingly familiar, like the brushstrokes of a sadistic artist, one whose work she’d seen before.
Realization hit her with the force of a sledgehammer, crystallizing all that was before her. Darius. Darius killed Beth, not Dane or Jason. Darius had done it. And he’d killed Agnon too. Love loss did not exist between her and Agnon. She hated the bastard but assumed her time to tangle with him would’ve come, and if he were to have fallen battling her, his death would’ve be a righteous one. He would not have endured what the walls bespoke had happened to him. But that time would never come. Agnon had been struck down brutally.
Arianna closed her eyes and could see the monster Darius was, lurking beneath the mask of civility he’d cultivated so meticulously. A frothing swirl of anger burned in her gut. And with the frothing swirl came insight. Desmond’s face flashed in her mind’s eye over and over again. But she had yet to make the connection between Darius and Desmond, though she was sure they were interconnected somehow. Had Darius brainwashed Desmond and that was why he’d bedded his cousin and betrayed her? Or was she simply grasping at straws to excuse dishonorable, unforgivable behavior? Uncertainty made her temples pound.
She combed both hands through her hair and held her head for a moment, willing answers her way. And they came in visions. Jarring images jerked, playing out roughly before her eyes like a movie flickering bumpily on an ancient film reel. What she saw made her gasp. An image of Agnon being murdered blinked and wavered followed by clips of Desmond being tortured. Interspersed among gruesome picture after gruesome picture, a secondary scene rushed forth then receded disjointedly. Amitt surrounded by darkness, her dress hiked up as her breathing hitched in sexual ecstasy. A single cohesive element unified all the images playing out in her vision and was presented as a face, a familiar face.
Darius’ gleaming eyes and s
un-kissed skin, the genetic gifts he disguised himself in, stared at her in every ghoulish excerpt.
“No, no, no,” she heard herself whimper as the reality of her life crashed into her with tidal wave force. She fought the surge vehemently, trying to focus, to concentrate on keeping her emotions in check. Breathing deeply to steady herself, she felt an all-encompassing energy engulf her, tether itself to her, and pull hard. She began walking on legs that felt commanded by a force separate from her own. She crossed the room, made her way into in a state-of-the-art kitchen. She went directly to an oversized pantry closet and grabbed a large key from a hook on the inside of the door as if she’d done it hundreds of times, then opened a cabinet beside it and retrieved a flashlight. She gripped both tightly as she left the room and went directly to the first door in the hallway off the kitchen and opened it. Beyond the door was a wide stairway. She quickly descended it and learned that it led to a finished basement. Stark black tiles shimmered in the bright overhead lighting. The soles of her shoes moved soundlessly over their surface as she strode toward a door in the far corner.
With each step she took, her grip on the key grew tighter and tighter until the metal threatened to puncture her skin. Her fingers trembled as she clumsily manipulated the single key into the massive padlock securing it. Sweat stippled her brow. She brushed it away with the back of her forearm before twisting the key in the lock and removing both. After a deep breath, Arianna pulled the door toward her. Its hinges bemoaned its weight as she leaned back using every ounce of her might to yank it open. When finally it yielded, a yawning pit of darkness stretched before her, fading into nothingness. The sight gave her panic. Her thumb fumbled with the switch on her flashlight, hand trembling and clumsy as she tried to slide it forward, but nothing happened. She shook it several times, batteries rattling loosely, before a weak beam of light crawled across the floor and revealed a narrow swath of glistening, gray stone. But inky shadows pushed it back, smothering it. A part of her wanted to turn back. Perhaps it was her remaining shreds of common sense. Perhaps it was something else entirely. Regardless, she did not heed the warning. She crossed the threshold.
The Arrival: Arianna Rose, #4 Page 21
