Dominic's Nemesis

by D. Alyce Domain

  “Talking helps then.” Dominic nodded. “We’ll talk to him.”

  Chapter 41

  Ethan left the bedside and met him before he could set a full three feet into his chamber. “How is Stephan?”

  Dom ran a frustrated hand through his hair. Singed bits disintegrated in his fingers and floated away. “He stalks about like an animal. He can’t sit down, stand still, or even cover himself. Anything put against his skin is reduced to ash in a matter of seconds…including the floorboards, if he stops pacing.” Dom closed his eyes, gesturing as a testament to his own uselessness. “I don’t know, Ethan…he claims its normal. We’ve put him in the still room below levels as a precaution.”

  “What’s so special about the still room?”

  “It has a stone floor that he cannot burn through. After an hour Cael suggested we just let him walk it off. The room remains cool, so he must have his talent under some control.”

  Dom watched Ethan’s thoughtful expression as he processed the information. “I’ll take a look at him in the morning. What did you tell the servants about what happened in the library?”

  “That Miss Prescott stumbled near the hearth with an oil lantern in her hand.”

  “Do you think that explanation will hold? This estate is equipped with gaslight. Why would anyone be using a portable oil lamp?”

  Dominic shot him a caustic look. “No one is likely to question the eccentric Conte Ambrosi. Half the staff thinks I’m blind.”

  “True.” The doctor turned his attention back to his patient. “She rests well.”

  Dominic followed his brother’s gaze to the bed. The expression was anything but reassuring. “What is it?” He demanded, anxious.

  Dominic watched Kathleen carefully arranging the sheet up to cover a dosing Eden. Ethan then pulled him over by the window, further out of earshot.

  “I am unable to heal the newer wounds: the scorch marks on her palm and wrists, the scratches and bruising along her torso.”

  “How is that possible…” The doctor’s worry mirrored his own.

  “I don’t know, but Dom, that’s not even the strangest part. There are more scars than before, as from long-ago healed gashes. This is the first of my seeing them and I examined her not one week ago. The wound signature is completely different.”

  “Wound signature?”

  “I determine a history of past diseases and injuries by touch. For instance, by touching a patient’s foot, I can ascertain if that person had ever broken a bone in that area. By touching a scar I am able to ascertain the type and cause of the wound that resulted. As of right now Eden’s wound signature is different. The Eden that I examined just now has never suffered a skeletal injury in her life. The Eden that I examined on all previous occasions dislocated her shoulder when she was five or six years old, and fractured her ankle in her early teen years.”

  “So what are you saying, that she is not Eden?”

  “I am saying that her wound signature does not match Eden’s. Beyond that, I don’t know.”

  “What of the child? Is it unharmed?”

  Ethan gaped at him. “What child?”

  “She is with child. Surely, you must have recognized her condition.” When Ethan’s expression conveyed no such knowledge, his fear doubled. “You can ascertain that she broke her foot a decade ago but you cannot sense the life growing inside her. Don’t look at me like that, dammit! I have seen a change in her lifeforce…something else intermingled with hers, like with Kathleen.”

  “Dominic, I don’t know what you’re seeing, but that woman lying on the bed over there is NOT with child. If you do not believe me, you have only a few days to wait before her monthly visitor arrives to confirm her lack of pregnancy. Although…” He hesitated. “There is evidence that she has given birth before…numerous times.”

  “That is a lie!”

  “It is preposterous, I know.” He agreed, hunching up his shoulders. “I’m at a loss to explain it. Her…ahem, hymen was quite firmly in place when she arrived on the estate. A broken hymen leaves a wound signature.”

  “English Ethan.” He snapped.

  “Her maidenhead was still in tact a month ago when I first examined her. It is quite impossible that she bore seven children since then, but nevertheless that is the echo I get from her signature.”

  “Will she…heal normally without your help?” Dominic’s eyes tracked back to the sleeping form across the room, a frown marring his features.

  The doctor waved away his concern. “Yes, yes, most certainly. There is nothing to be worried about on that front. I’ve put a salve on the burns, plus given her a sedative to alleviate her nerves and help her rest.”

  “Have someone alert me when she awakens.”

  “Of course.” The doctor answered automatically even as he made his way back to his patient’s bedside. “Oh, one other thing.”

  Dominic shrugged, indifferent to any further upset.

  “I don’t know if you’ve noticed but her hair is steadily darkening. I don’t know how or why. But in conjunction with the other changes and it’s almost as if she is… transforming into a different person.”

  * * *

  Evening found Dominic swirling a snifter of much-needed after-dinner brandy. He dug his free hand through freshly cropped hair. He’d had Renfred snip off the ruined bits after he showered and donned fresh clothes. He watched as his brother Cael slipped into the study with a quiet calm that Dominic had come to appreciate. He, too, had bathed and changed.

  “Renfred?” Dominic inclined a brow to his brother’s shorter hair.

  “Kathleen.”

  “Ahh.” He nodded and went back to swirling his drink. Dom gestured for him to pour himself a snifter, and waited until he did before he ask, “What is it?”

  “Stephan’s asleep. Kathleen is beside herself with worry that he will catch a chill sleeping unclothed on the stone floor. I tried to explain to her that that was not likely.”

  Dom humph-ed and raised the glass to his lips. “Ethan informed you about Eden?”

  “Yes.”

  He felt his brother’s eyes following him, discreetly, of course. Cael was the master of convert observation. “I’m fine, Cael. There is no need to hover like a wet-nurse.”

  “I wasn’t aware that’s what I was doing.” He countered as he took a sip of his brandy. “I thought we were having an evening drink. You are my brother. Is it so odd that I should seek your company?”

  Dom sighed. The brandy had a rich flavor, almost florid, but he hardly noticed. “You were right, of course. This situation with Eden, and Stephan as well, is beyond us. I intend to seek Greyson’s expertise. Since you are already familiar with the man and he with you, I would ask you to accompany me.”

  The mind doctor’s only reaction was a lift of his brow. “When?”

  His snifter resounded against the shiny metallic tray as he sat it down. “Tonight. And we will not have the luxury of being discreet…or polite.”

  “Very well, then.”

  Dominic watched him take another leisurely sip of brandy. “You don’t seem surprised.”

  “You’ve shocked me so much of late until I have become adept at not reacting.” He confessed with a half-smile.

  Of late, he’d been surprising even himself. “I will need several hours of rest first. Please awaken me at midnight.”

  Chapter 42

  Tonight was the night she would free him of his demons. Once the doctor and his red-haired harpy had given up their bedside vigil, she’d been able to sneak down to the kitchens and collect the last tool. It wasn’t a proper ceremonial dagger but it would have to do. She was also forced to substitute a porridge bowl for a chalice, mismatched dinner candles as incenses, pilfered ribbons and cravats for binding cord, and a woolen dressing gown as the ritual robe.

  She crept into the darkened bedchamber draped in the hooded dressing gown, using stray shafts of moonlight to navigate. When she reached the bed on which he slumbered, knife clutched
in one hand, she crotched. As silent as a shadow, she scurried about the floor drawing a pentagram with the bed as its center. The bed’s circular shape would enhance the ritual’s effectiveness. She would have liked to perform the séance in the music room, with the added power of the full moon beaming down from the skylight, the ceremonial circle set up where the pianoforte stood. The space, its architecture, the raised circle, the direct connection with celestial bodies all exuded ambient energy.

  “Soon, my love.”

  When she was done, a flickering candle rested at each of the five points in the pentagram. Binding him was pointless, but for compliance with ritualistic tradition. Since she had already deviated from protocol she decided to adhere to as many of the sworn ways as possible. She waved a hand over his prone form. The counterpane and the sheet beneath levitated off the bed and floated noiselessly away. He squirmed under the chilly night air, twisting himself up in his nightclothes. An arm reached out as if seeking something but he did not awaken. She alit the bed, levitated his right ankle just enough to encircle it with a strip of cloth…likewise his left wrist, which hung off the edge. The circular bed was without posts so she connected each ankle with the opposite wrist by a connecting strip that crisscrossed his back.

  She concocted a potion in the ‘chalice’ and placed it in the approximate center of the bed. His nose twitched, followed by a muffled grunt. The smoke emanating from the candles and the concoction’s sharp aroma threatened to rouse him. If she delayed any longer she’d waste her advantage, and she meant to keep the upper hand long enough to accomplish her goal. She flipped the hood of the dressing gown over her head and arranged herself so that she levitated, seated Indian-style, over the exact center of the circle within the pentagram.

  She began the harmonious vocalization, a string of mystical prayers and phrases murmured over and over, specifically to raise and channel psychic and spiritual energies alike. The power she would need to trap the spirit inside the body long enough to cast out the demon inside him once and for all. Her voice deep and throaty and touched with the fervor of madness rose with the power of the incantation, climbing ominously towards its zenith. Almost there. The power surged within and with it she shook off the last remnants of the sniveling one. She had complete physical and mental control over her conduit…her old abilities were not just restored but magnified. Doubled, no tripled, and still growing.

  * * *

  Dominic awakened to a chill crawling along his skin. Odd. It had been years since he’d had a nightmare. He shook his head to clear away the dream’s thrall. His recent trip to Italy and the business with Gabriel had trudged up more than just memories. He could almost hear the humming in his ear from the…wait, not humming, chanting and this time it was no dream. Someone was chanting. But who would be in his room besides…

  “Eden?”

  Blinking and disoriented, he tried to turn but found his hands and feet were bound together. When he tugged with wrist or ankle he was at war with the other and doing so only served to tighten the cords holding him. The droning above him continued in a deep accented voice. He recognized the invocation as one the Witch used on him years ago. There was something in the air, a heavy scent that reeked of candles …or perhaps incense. He caught sight of a lit taper on the floor at the point of a triangle and a second one a yard or so away. A pentagram. Panic arose.

  “Who is there?!” His voice trembled.

  “Don’t worry my darling, it will be over soon.” A woman’s voice, familiar.

  His breathing grew rapid and shallow as the horrors of his childhood swallowed him.

  He longed to wipe his eyes. They were beginning to water and burned. The chanting started up again. He had to get a’hold of himself, his fears, push them aside long enough to free himself and deal with the woman. Logic dictated it must be Eden, probably in the thrall of another of her visions…or at the mercy of some unseen force. Panicky, he flashed into the astral, disintegrating the bonds at his wrists and ankles. Nothing but souls survived a trip to the astral realm.

  Trepidation beat at his brow like the heat of midday. The essence nearest to his was not Eden’s. The second essence he had noticed before had grown considerably. It eclipsed Eden, reducing her to a mere appendage…not unlike the anomaly he’d observed in the twins. Trepidation turned to fear. The dominating essence was a monstrous thing, opaque and foreboding; with a flurry of crazed colors and distorted spheres that continuously elongated until they tore in two and converged on other disquieting globules. It was an essence he hadn’t seen in years, one he’d recognize anywhere, his worse nightmare…come true.

  Dominic returned to the corporal world, face up on the bed with a woman hovering mid-air over his chest like a djinni from Scheherazade’s thousand and one nights. He just did make out her features in the eerie flicker of light.

  “Mama?”

  The chanting ceased. She shrieked and hissed away from his visage, flying backward in a nimble maneuver to land in a defensive stance. The hood of the dressing gown slipped from her head. Her raven-hair and night eyes were much the same as he remembered. The telltale streak of white-blond at her temple and the tiny hazel flecks embedded in her irises, the only proof that the body she inhabited was not her own. Stephan had been right. Eden was possessed by something evil.

  “There is no escape this time. I will send you to hell where you belong!”

  She lunged forward. He caught the silver glint of a blade as she sliced it towards him. Pinned to the bed by an invisible force, he did the only thing he could…he astraled. But that was as far as he got. She must have erected a psychic barrier of some sort. He could not travel beyond a certain distance, the outer edge of the pentagram’s points his suspected.

  The one thing she was never able to do in her lifetime was capture him after the onset of his astraling ability. She must have grown stronger in death…or perhaps she was using some unrealized talent of Eden’s, which would explain why his mother had chosen to possess her. Or, perhaps, it had nothing to do with Eden at all, maybe she just needed someone close to him, who had access to his person, someone he trusted, someone he loved…

  In either case, she’d trapped him. He couldn’t move about on the astral to warn his brothers or to escape. Neither could he reappear on the corporal or she would maim him with the blade. She’d dipped it in poison, no doubt. He supposed he could try to overpower her, a ludicrous idea given her telekinetic abilities. He abandoned the thought. Perhaps if he shimmered directly behind her and caught her by surprise… The problem was, shimmering wasn’t that precise. He had no way to discern which direction she faced from the featureless canvas of the astral. She could be constantly shifting her position, anticipating such a move. No, that would never do.

  He was safe for now, but he’d have to come up with a viable plan soon. He couldn’t remain on the astral too long; what would become of Eden in the meantime? Having her essence displaced by his mother’s did not bode well for her continued health he suspected. Then, there was Cael to consider. One of his brothers would come to check on him soon. Stephan could handle himself if necessary. Ethan, though no match for Lillian, at least had self-healing capability. But Cael was defenseless against a psychic threat.

  Cael! As if the very thought of him conjured his essence, Dominic noticed that his most vulnerable brother approached them. Dom had anticipated having more time to strategize, although he supposed several hours could have passed in the waking world. Hell and damnation! He’d have to shimmer in to warn him. With any luck maybe Lillian would be more willing to take a stab at him rather than Cael.

  He waited until he saw a simultaneous shift in emotion of both Cael and his mother’s essence, predicting that to be the exact moment that his brother entered the room and the one took notice of the other. He shimmered, landing on his feet beside the bed, behind and to the right of where Lillian hovered.

  “Run, Cael! She will immobilize you with her mind. It’s useless to combat her.”

 
The younger man appeared not to hear him. His amber gaze fixed on the woman above the bed.

  “Cael, are you listening to me? I cannot move beyond the chalk outline even on the astral plane. If you can still move, leave now before she—”

  “Michael, my precious little love.” She called to him in a sweet voice, cream put out to bait a kitten. “Don’t be frightened. It’s mama. Come to me.”

  “Mama…” Cael took a step forward, horror and disbelief streaked across his face. He turned to Dominic, confused. “Dom, I don’t…understand.”

  For the first time since their childhood, Cael seemed to desperately need him. A memory hit him square in the face of a white blond Cael, two years old staring up at him teary-eyed after scraping his knee, a similar expression on his face. It was a humbling experience.

  “Michael…Mama needs your help.”

  “Cael! Don’t you dare!” Dominic spat. “Turn around and get the hell out of here.”

  Dom would have ripped off his nightclothes to remind him of exactly the sort of monster Lillian was, but she had frozen him again. Cael, however, appeared in complete control of his movement. He couldn’t understand it. Why didn’t she simply seize him with her mind? Unless…she wasn’t able to. Perhaps by confining him to the inside of the pentagram, she’d confined herself as well.

  “Remember what she did to me, Cael.”

  He could only watch and hope as his brother shook himself and stumbled backward. “Dom, astral out of there. She’s got a knife!”

  “I cannot astral beyond the pentagram.” Yes, that had to be it, he thought. By limiting him she limited herself as well. “I don’t think her ability extends outside it either, otherwise you’d already be at her mercy.

  She laughed, a brittle humorless sound. “Very well then, I’ll have to save him myself.”