by Lita Stone
“Come, Mistress Lynn, I will tell you all you need to know.”
Lynn eyed the naked woman floating above the gable. A strange and overwhelming sense of jealousy pervaded her. Lips curled, a rumble vibrated from her. “Start with who the hell you are.” She glanced at the sky where Isaac had vanished. “And end with why my mate has abandoned me!”
Chapter Twenty-three
A low growl purred from Lynn’s lips. A growl? The stump of her severed finger throbbed, spurting blood.
She slid her shorts on and searched for her shirt and bra, then remembered Isaac had shredded both. Shredded them with a claw that extended out of his hand. Tears pooled in her eyes. Tears of frustration. Of rage and unfathomable jealousy and a cocktail of other harshly unstable emotions. A wild rabid spirit had invaded her loins, mastering her humanity. Never in all her thirty-one years had she ravaged a man like she’d ravaged Isaac.
She tilted her head back and roared. An inhuman scream vibrated from somewhere deep and foreign. A single bat screeched from atop the mansion’s roof. A distant child cried out, fleeing.
Her stomach rumbled.
Royal purple curtains on the second floor window back-dropped the ghostly woman who floated near the ledge. “I am Ira.” She bowed while levitating.
Lynn stepped closer to the awning over the front door and glared at the bald woman. “You’re a ghost?” Lynn cringed at the husky tone of her own voice. Shaking her head, she covered her eyes. “I think I’m going to shred you like paper and I don’t even know why.” Her lips curled back and she involuntarily snapped her jaws. Instinctively she reached out to grasp the closest stone pillar. The spirit inside urged her to climb the column.
“It’s your true self coming forth. It’s what you are.” The ghost held her position near the second floor window.
“This isn’t what I am. For God’s sake, I’m a fourth grade music teacher.” Holding balled fists over her head, she said, “I hate you!” The nub of her missing finger twitched and bled. Blood speckled her hair. She grimaced. “Come down here you phantom whore!” She slapped a hand over her mouth. Had she really said that?
“Geminus females are legendary for their ferocious nature. None, in all the universes, dare cross one, especially one who has found their mate—the most aggressive beings in all existence. But I am Isaac’s servant and not a threat to you.”
A soured tangle of anxiety and anger twisted inside Lynn’s gut. Geminus? Mate? Confusion overwhelmed her. A sharp nail drove outward from her abdomen, causing her to groan and clutch her stomach. “I think I’m starving,” she wheezed, bending over.
“You need to feed, Mistress. Refrain from shredding me like paper, and I will serve you.”
A coy, almost child-like expression on Ira’s face made hating her difficult. But not impossible. Lynn straightened, held her head high. “Can a ghost even be shredded?”
“A Geminus can rip my corporeal and incorporeal body from the mortal realms.”
“How exactly do you serve Isaac dressed in...well...nothing.”
Ira floated to the ground, glancing down at herself at if she’d forgotten she was buck naked. She tittered, covering her mouth. “My apologies, Mistress.” A frail black robe materialized, covering her from neck to foot. She waved Lynn on. “This is your new home, Mistress. Please come inside and I will tend to your wound.” Ira glided through the front door, leaving Lynn alone in the driveway.
She shrugged then followed the ghost inside, into a foyer. To the left, she spotted a bull horn tree. Native to Central America, she’d never seen one up close. The tree was young and still potted but spines already sprouted from the base of its leaves. Extraordinary.
“Mistress?” Ira waited further down a dimly lit corridor. Over the hallway’s threshold, a large beaver-like head looked back at her with lifeless eyes, and threatening teeth.
With reluctance, Lynn followed the ghost through the dark hallway.
The fragrance of Frankincense and myrrh captivated her, the same scents she recalled from the garden she’d envisioned earlier that day. The mansion held both a classic and contemporary styling. A chandelier that probably cost more than her three-bedroom home, hung low over a long dining table. A marble fountain churned sparkling clean water. She could smell its purity, the absence of pollution. How she could smell it, she had no clue.
Ignoring the instinct to lean forward and lap at the unpolluted trickling water, she panned the vast entryway and living area. As large and luxurious as this place appeared, the walls threatened to collapse in on her.
The hallway gave way to a formal dining room with an exquisite wood table. Lynn paced the length of the table. The walls mocked her. They may as well have been bamboo bars—the room, a makeshift cage.
The spirit within hungered to be freed back into the wilds.
Lynn held her bloody hand against her bare chest. More blood smeared her naked breasts. Sweat bubbled on her forehead. Anxiety rolled through her. The ceiling was two stories high, yet it felt more suffocating than a coffin. She lifted her hands over her head, readying to catch the falling lid that would surely seal her into an eternally dark tomb.
Ira said, “It’s the metamorphosis warping your sense of reality.” She led Lynn through a living area—big enough to park three vehicles.
“This is unbelievable,” Lynn muttered. “None of this can be real. That man drugged me, he kidnapped me and you’re his accomplice. You two are sickos like the people from those true crime shows.”
Ira whirled around in mid-air. Her black robe blossomed into a southern belle dress but remained black as coal. The ghost whirled again and the dress shriveled into a petite skirt and tight top before the robe returned. Then Ira melted through the table only to materialize next to Lynn.
“Mistress, I’m afraid this is all very, very real. You are Geminus. Soon, very soon, the metamorphosis will awaken the hidden Beast hibernating within your soul where it has been since the day your Geminus twin parents conceived you.”
Geminus twin parents? So her mother was a Geminus twin? And what the hell is a Geminus twin?
A sudden fever gripped her entire body. Her skin felt aflame. Screaming, Lynn lunged at Ira. She tossed the phantom bitch through the wall. Lynn tore open the glass doors that led outside and stepped onto the flagstone patio. An expansive courtyard surrounded her.
Ira floated toward Lynn. Lifting a black silk robe from an iron hook on the brick wall, she held it out.
Lynn snatched the robe from Ira and the ghost floated off, following a path made of silver hexagonal stepping stones embedded in the lush green grass.
Lynn tied the robe’s cloth sash around her waist while blood from her severed finger stained the soft fabric. She glanced at the wide open and dark sky. Anxiety gone, she sucked in a deep breath. A breeze curled around her, a welcoming sensation. Clean, crisp air filled her lungs.
The three-story walls of the mansion barricaded the courtyard. From what or whom, Lynn wondered. Inside its barrier, a row of Neoregelia flowers, the cultivar of Hannibal Lecter, a crossing of punctatissima and carcharodon. Quite rare for this region, yet the leaves were a vibrant burgundy and missing the typical stripes and dots. She slid the long, shiny leaf between two fingers. Beautiful.
“Master is a lover of tropical plants. The Neoregelia is one of his favorites. He says it reminds him of his home, a spectacular jungle-covered world.”
Lynn inhaled the flower’s exotic fragrance. Despite her chosen career as an elementary school teacher, horticulture had been her first true love. Ever since she was a little girl, the plants, flowers, vines and trees had called to her, a fascination that thrived deep inside her core. Her mother supported her interest in the local flora, always decorating her room with exotic plants.
But Ira had said she was separated from her parents. Was her mother really her mother at all?
Lynn watched as Ira neared a large marble fountain—beholding statues carved to depict three of the same creature: a seductiv
e woman with large bat-like wings; another was of her squatting, her palms flat on the ground between her bent legs, as if about to take flight; the third captured the frightening woman in mid-flight with a giant scorpion draped along her back, its curled tail appearing to belong to both arachnid and woman.
Lynn tilted her head in the direction of the western sky. Something beckoned. Two stars glimmered brightest. Divinity filled her body and soul like she had drank the world’s most wholesome ambrosia. “What’s happening to me?”
“You are maturing, Mistress,” Ira said. “The Geminus inside of you is awakening.”
“What is this ‘Geminus’ you keep talking about?”
Ira’s slim lips formed a gentle smile. “It is no great surprise you don’t know your origins. Geminus offspring are always scattered across the stars and hidden from other adult Geminus, including their own parents. For like many animals of this world, they will cannibalize their own young out of territorial preservation.”
Lynn frowned. “I’m not a Geminus. I was not ‘scattered across the stars’. And my parents did not give me up. I was born right here in Texas! By my mother.”
“And what of your father?”
“My mother raised me alone.” Blood gushed from her clenched hand and splashed onto a granite stepping stone. Saliva filled her mouth. Swallowing, she longed to lap the blood, like a house cat would milk.
“She was not your mother,” Ira said. “She was—”
“You know nothing about me or my mother. How can you say such a thing?” Lynn hissed, like a hormonal alley cat.
“Because,” Ira said, her gentle smile fading. “After the fusing, Geminus cannot survive without their mate. Separation would mean certain death. Your Geminus parents gave you to a surrogate mother so that you would have the chance to mature and that a mate would claim you.” Ira glided across the courtyard like a dainty string of silk. She tugged on Lynn’s arm, urging her toward the fountain.
“Get away. Don’t touch me!”
Ira clasped a strong hand around Lynn’s wrist.
“What are you doing?” Lynn tried to pull away, but Ira possessed uncanny strength for a dainty string of silk. Icy water rolled off one of the statue’s wings. The liquid cauterized Lynn’s wound, sending sharp tingles through her hand and up her arm.
Lynn examined the stub: the blood, severed skin and bone gone, erased. “It...d-doesn’t hurt anymore.” She stared at the missing digit, but could not even see a hairline scar.
“I am here to serve.” Ira bowed. “I will fetch you food.”
“Wait.” Lynn grabbed at the ghost’s robe, her fingers slipping through the fabric and touching cold hard flesh. Lynn recoiled.
Ira smiled sweetly. “Yes, Mistress?”
When she looked into the woman’s sad gray eyes, Lynn lost her train of thought for just a moment. “Why do you ingratiate yourself to him?” She scowled. “Are you in love with Isaac?”
Ira shuddered, as if in fear of the very thought. “I feel nothing but gratitude for Master Isaac.”
Lynn’s brows furrowed. Her face scrunched, conveying her doubt. “Gratitude for what?”
Ira whirled and floated toward the edge of the courtyard. “I became with child and was unpromised and unwed. My brother had me killed and my soul was sent to Purgatory.”
Lynn stared at the back Ira’s pale scalp. She was a woman once and wronged by her own blood. Now she was a slave or servant or whatever, rescued from a place called ‘Purgatory’. A place Lynn’s Baptist pastor had preached did not exist. Heaven or Hell were the only two options for the dearly departed.
Yesterday Lynn watched her daughter—whose name she could no longer recall—practice ballet, readying for her recital. Today her daughter was dead and she was listening to the woes of a ghost. And the phantom’s tale afflicted her with more sorrow than the memory of her own daughter’s murder. She struggled for words of consolation, but alas could not find any words of worth.
Ira’s robe fluttered with the shift of the wind. She glanced over her shoulder and gave a weak smile. “My brother gave me to Union soldiers. They raped me before peppering me with buckshot.”
“As in the Civil War’s Union army?”
Ira nodded, gliding her hand over her slightly protruding belly. A baby bump. “This was once my world too, in another place and time.”
Lynn gasped and covered her mouth. “You’re not still...”
“He’s within me, where he’ll remain until the end of time with shrapnel lodged in his tiny unborn body.”
Lynn swallowed a dry lump. “I didn’t mean to pry. Good Lord, forgive me.”
“You need not apologize. I am grateful to serve Master Isaac and you, for you both can have the love that life never granted me.”
Lightning flickered in the western hemisphere.
Whiteness blinded Lynn. Unable to see her own body, her head rushed through a long, winding white corridor, chasing the fleeting spirits of her past; her faceless children, with sunken black eyes, stood sullenly in a threshold and vanished into mist as she raced through them. Another white corridor blurred past her peripheral vision. Several ivory doors slammed shut on either side of the hallway. The slow flapping of wings echoed from around the next bend.
Then she stood in the courtyard again. The odor from a wet rat drifted from the edge of the brick wall several yards away. The heels of her hands pressed against her eyes. She felt Ira’s cold grasp on her shoulder. Lynn lowered her hands and gazed into the tenderness of a tragic soul.
Her first friend in her new life.
“You are not of this world,” Ira said. “You’re feeling the proof of it right now. The quicker you submit to your inner Beast, the quicker your soul will be at peace.”
“My family was murdered,” Lynn said, her tone matter-of-fact. She wanted to be angry but hunger made her weak yet the thought of eating caused nauseating cramps. “My supposed mate has abandoned me without a word of explanation and now you’re saying the woman I thought was my mother isn’t who I thought she was.” She threw up her hands. “And I’m not even human. My whole life has been one big fat lie.”
“Your surrogate mother, I am sure, cared for you deeply, as if you were her own child. Otherwise, your Geminus parents would not have entrusted her with you.”
“So my parents are from another world? And they sent me here to live with an adopted mother?”
“Yes, Mistress.” Ira gave a thin lipped smile. “It is the safest option to assure the survival of the young.”
Lynn let out a shaky laugh. “Safest? The more you tell me, the more questions I have.”
Ira floated toward the fountain. “Then let me start from the beginning. The Geminus originated beyond the stars, and beyond the veils of this universe and reality. Galmoria—” she waved a hand over the statues “—gave birth to the first Geminus twins on a distant moon after mating with multiple beasts. But the Geminus have since spread among the universes for they are the most territorial creature in existence. To protect their offspring, the females are sent to live with surrogate mothers, and the males are sent to harsher worlds where they will mature into stags like Master Isaac. No two males can inhabit the same world or they will destroy one another. They will even destroy their own offspring.”
A cool wind blew. Lynn hugged the silk robe tighter against her body. “Then Isaac came here to find me? To mate with me?”
Ira shook her head. “There has not been a Geminus mating on this world since Sodom and Gomorrah. You are very fortunate, for the odds of discovering your twin are astronomical.”
“If not to find me, then why did he come here?”
“Isaac returned in search of the one Galmoria calls The Beloved.”
“The Beloved?” Jealousy flared inside her. A river of blood flashed in her mind. Her mouth watered. Lynn sat on the base of the cool marble fountain. “Why did he abandon me here with you? To go find this ‘Beloved’ one?”
“Before Master Isaac and you can mate
, he must dominate Galmoria and prove his seed is worthy of procreation. She is the Priestess who must bless the Fusing before the two of you can mate and you can mature into Vixenhood, a fully matured Geminus capable of bearing cubs.”
“Isaac must...dominate that woman?” Lynn gestured with a nod toward the statues.
“She is not a woman,” Ira said, giggling. “She was once a demigod, and led an army of mighty beings against the forces of God, defeating all the saints and holy warriors of a distant world before claiming it as her own dominion.”
“I don’t understand any of that,” Lynn said. “And I refuse to believe I am the offspring of a demon creature that opposes God!”
“All you need to know is that you belong to Isaac and he belongs to you—and that he will do all in his power to protect you, and place you high upon the cosmic throne.”
“Me on a throne?” She scoffed. “How can he promise that then abandon me with a naked ghost?” Hot tears slipped down her face. She covered her mouth. “I need him here...with me. Not with her!” Lynn flailed her hand toward one of the statues.
“In time, this will all come to make perfect sense,” Ira said.
Lynn glanced up the walls of the mansion surrounding the lush courtyard. The estate was like something she’d only read about in dark romance novels. Counts and governors or dukes would wisp homely young women to their elegant abodes and romance the pants right off them. She returned her gaze to Ira. “You want to know something crazy?”
The ghost floated to stand beside Lynn. “Yes madam. Tell me something crazy.”
“I can’t remember my past anymore. My kids. My husband.” Lynn snickered. “All I can think about is Isaac and pleasing him. What kind of monster am I?”
“You are no monster, Mistress Lynn. You are Geminus.”
Lynn sighed. “This isn’t the way it’s supposed to be. Love and romance is what fairytales are made of. Not beasts who bite each other’s finger’s off.”
“Before Isaac, on this plane of earth, did you experience love? Was it a, as you say, fairytale?”
