by Trina M. Lee
Falon strode across the ballroom to the set of closed doors. I followed along, keeping my distance in case something leaped out at him. Tentative, he reached out to grasp the gold handles. Both doors swung open, revealing a narrow hallway so dark we couldn’t see more than the first few feet.
“Um, screw that,” I said, peering into the hall, wary of getting too close. It felt an awful lot like what I’d imagine staring into a cave inhabited by a bear might feel like.
Falon grinned, enjoying my discomfort. “Scared?”
“Cautious,” I corrected.
“We could just stay here and fuck on top of the piano.”
Right on cue the piano began to play. A chill crept over me as I turned to glower at it. Nobody sat on the bench, but the keys moved just the same, playing a dark, disturbing melody.
“Yeah, let’s not do that.” Normally I would have flung an insult in his face, but I just didn’t have it in me as my skin crawled.
Taking advantage of my unease, Falon grabbed my hand and dragged me close. “Don’t let a lame parlor trick stop you. It’ll be like a big ‘fuck you’ to Shya. Come on.”
He pulled me close so that our lips almost touched. Desire flashed in his silver eyes. It echoed inside me. I couldn’t help it. It was in my nature to want him. However, it was also in my nature to survive, and right then finding my way out of this house was my main concern.
“Get off.” I shoved him away and cut it across the room at a brisk walk. No way was I going into that dark hall without checking out the other exit first.
“Trying to.” Falon strolled along behind me, hands stuffed in his pockets. His super chill demeanor was annoying as hell.
I shot a wary glance at the piano, which continued to play. “How can you be so calm? It’s suspicious.”
The alternative exit was another set of double doors. They were already open, revealing a red carpeted, dimly lit hallway. I poked my head out of the ballroom. All I could see in either direction was the hall. It seemed to stretch on forever.
“Shya’s not going to spring his best work on us first. No point in getting all worked up. Save it for the good shit.” Falon surveyed the red hallway. “I’m assuming you want to go this way. Probably a bad idea. I’m willing to bet the other way out would be the better choice.”
“Because it’s less obvious? Maybe that’s what we’re supposed to think,” I suggested. “This way is lit. I’d like to be able to see what’s ahead.”
“So? We both have enough power to light the way. I thought you were a big, bad wolf.”
We were wasting time. I needed to find the others. “We don’t have time to argue. Why are you trying to get me into that creepy hallway, Falon? Do you have an agenda in here that I don’t know about?”
He pointed a finger in my face, and I bit at it, forcing him to jerk out of reach. “You’re getting on my nerves, Alexa. Fine. We’ll do it your way. Left or right?”
Falon shoved me into the hall, holding tight to my elbow so I couldn’t shake him off. No sooner had we stepped out of the ballroom than the doors slammed shut. I bit back a squeak of fright, ashamed of how fast my composure was being stripped away.
I felt compelled to go left so I headed that way. The hallway was narrow, lined with gas lamps in wall sconces and portraits that watched as we passed. More than once I caught the eyes of the man or woman in each painting moving. It was a lame, Scooby Doo trick but it had me watching over my shoulder.
The corridor was quiet. It stretched on so long I started to doubt my choice to come this way. No way in hell was I admitting that Falon might have been right.
“It’s got to lead somewhere, right?” My voice was shrill. “Shya can’t just trap us in an endless hallway.”
Falon shook his head. “He said there’s a way out, so there has to be. It just won’t be what we expect.”
“I wonder where the others are.”
We rounded a bend and came to a staircase. The stairs were oddly shaped and mismatched. A curve in the staircase made it impossible to see what was at the top. We had no choice but to go up.
“Ladies first.” Extending a hand, Falon tried to usher me up the stairs.
“Screw that,” I hissed, jerking out of reach. “Don’t pretend to be all chivalrous now. We both know that’s bullshit.”
Being led to a higher floor didn’t feel right. I glanced back the way we’d come, wondering if perhaps we should’ve gone right instead of left. Falon noted my uncertainty and started up the stairs before I could drag him back down the hallway.
“Maybe we shouldn’t go this way,” I said, rushing to keep up with him. Yeah, I was afraid of being left behind. Who would’ve thought I’d ever find Falon’s company preferable to being alone?
“We can’t backtrack our every move. You made a choice, and now we stick with it. Unless you want to split up.” He snickered, climbing the stairs without a glance back.
I followed him up the creaking staircase, muttering obscenities the whole way. We were walled in on both sides. Trapped, really.
“This is interesting.” Falon came to a stop.
He pressed himself against the wall so I could see past him. There was a fork in the stairs. What the hell? On one side they continued to spiral up out of sight. The new set of stairs branched off the first, curving a different way.
“You choose,” I said.
“Let’s keep going on this set.”
Every second I was in this house, I became more convinced that accepting the invitation was one of the stupidest things I’d ever done. There was no way I was leaving without some kind of victory.
As we continued to ascend, I began to feel too closed in. The stairway didn’t appear to be getting any tighter, but it felt that way. Maybe it was this damn house fucking with my head.
The stairs ended abruptly at a door. “Ok then.” Falon let out a perplexed huff. No hallway or anything. Just a door.
“Can’t imagine this goes anywhere good.” I braced myself as he reached for the doorknob.
There was a spark and the smell of burning flesh. Falon jerked his hand back, cradling it against his chest. He jerked his head toward the door. “Fucking silver handle. You try.”
“Seriously? Maybe there’s a reason you’re not supposed to go this way.”
Instead of arguing, he grabbed my hand. Though I fought him, he was stronger than me. He slapped my hand onto the doorknob.
“You’re an asshole.” I turned the knob, but the door didn’t open. I tried pulling it toward me, then pushing. “It won’t open.”
“Keep trying. It has to go somewhere.” Though we hadn’t been in the house that long, Falon sounded as frustrated as I felt.
I jerked on the door, back and forth. Either it was stuck, or we weren’t supposed to find out what was on the other side. Just when I was about to give up, the door flew inward. It dragged me off my feet into whatever awaited.
There was nothing. It was just a black hole, and I was dangling over it. I shrieked, flailing about and struggling to hold onto the door. My hand slipped and I was falling.
With a rustle of wings above me, Falon grabbed my hand, stopping my descent. My heart pounded in my ears, something I so rarely heard these days. As Falon started to pull me back up, something grabbed my ankle from below. It felt cold and clammy. I couldn’t be sure it was a hand. The way it felt brought something serpentine or tentacle-like to mind.
“Something has my ankle,” I cried. Terror filled me with the sickest sense of dread.
Whatever had me was yanking hard, trying to tear me out of Falon’s grasp. It succeeded in pulling me down far enough that he had to hover above me, held up by wings alone.
“Give me your other hand.” His wings beat hard as he fought to pull harder than whatever was trying to drag me down into oblivion.
With my free leg I kicked at the thing coiled around my ankle. Though I had nothing to aim at and no idea of what lay below, I used my free hand to fling a psi ball down there before
reaching for Falon. When it reached for my other leg as well, I kicked with all I had, fighting to dislodge it from my ankle while keeping it from grabbing the other.
“Please don’t let me go,” I begged as panic choked off my voice. My imagination was concocting the worst images of the thing eagerly dragging me closer.
Falon gritted his teeth as he held tight to my hands. “I’m not letting go.”
The thing below gave a mighty tug, and my hands began to slip from Falon’s. His wings created a forceful wind that battered me. With each beat a high-pitched noise grew, screaming through my ears, reverberating inside my head. But I had bigger worries than a headache. Whatever that sound was doing to me, it was also doing to the thing below. As the frequency grew in pitch and strength, the grip on my ankle loosened.
I kicked at it until it let go completely. Falon pulled me up and all but flung us both back onto the stairs. With a flick of his wrist, the door slammed closed, and we tumbled down several stairs before coming to a stop in a tangle of limbs and wings.
“What the fuck was that? It felt cold and slimy.” I gasped.
Falon disentangled himself from me, tucking his wings against his back before they disappeared altogether. He grabbed my ankle and slid my pant leg up to examine it. His fingers were gentle against my skin. “No idea. Could’ve been almost anything. There’s shit like you wouldn’t believe living in the underworld. It doesn’t seem to have hurt you though.”
Other than some blotchy red marks, I appeared to be damage free. Yay for that. I put a hand over Falon’s to stop the soft motion of his fingers on my ankle. “Thank you. I know we love to hate each other, but you could’ve let me go, and you didn’t.”
Falon pushed to his feet and motioned impatiently for me to do the same. “Don’t get all female and emotional on me. I’m saving you in case we come across something I can’t fight. Then I’ll use you as a distraction and run.”
He stepped over me and headed back down the stairs, leaving me to scramble after him. I cast one last look back at the door from hell and beat a hasty retreat. Despite the terrifying experience, I was able to smile to myself. Falon shot down my gratitude like someone who’d never had it shown to him before. He liked to think he was a mystery, but little by little I was figuring him out.
We returned to the fork in the stairs and, after exchanging an irritated look, headed up the stairs we had yet to take. It wound left and right, a confusing meander. It was wider than the last staircase though and lined with more of the ridiculous, watchful portraits. I flipped a man in one of them my middle finger, chuckling when, with a scowl, he returned the gesture.
Reaching the top felt like a small victory. It also felt like a trick. The stairs ended at another hallway. This one was lined with windows on one side, and my pace quickened as I hurried to peer out.
“What the…?” I gaped out the window, blinking fast as I questioned what my eyes were telling my brain.
“Figures,” Falon muttered as he sidled up beside me.
Beyond the window, bathed in the faded light of a false dusk, was a maze. Tall green hedges spanned as far as I could see. Disappointment crushed me. It was rivaled by my slow-burning rage.
“God, I want to bitch slap Shya. So if we ever get out of this damn house we have to go through that next? Shit.” In a fit of temper, I raised a hand crackling with blue and gold power.
“No, Alexa, don’t.” Falon reached for me, but he was too late.
I threw the blast into the window, expecting it to shatter. Of course it didn’t. This was Shya’s make-believe house of illusion. The window was indestructible. It deflected the shot back at us with double the force.
On instinct I ducked. It smacked Falon, pasting him against the wall.
With a grunt he took the hit and turned angry silver eyes my way. “Goddammit, you stupid wolf. This entire house is made out of power. You can’t go firing off shots like that without considering that it might just blow up in your face.” He strung together enough obscenities to make me envious of his creative work. “I should’ve dropped your ass in the black hole.”
I snickered. “If only, huh?”
“Shya just had to stick me with you, didn’t he? You’re right. It had to be rigged.” Shooting me a glower, he turned away.
“Hey, Falon.” I trailed after him, pausing to scrutinize a creepy, grinning mask hanging on the wall. No way I was touching that thing. “How come you still see me as wolf? Everyone else always feels the need to point out that I’m a hybrid or a vampire. They talk like I’m not a wolf anymore.”
He didn’t turn around or stop to wait. “You are a hybrid, I suppose, but you were the wolf first. Becoming a vampire is something that happened to you. But you will always be a Hound. It is your origin.”
Falon didn’t know how much that meant to me. He never would. I took his words and stored them away for safekeeping. I would remember them when I needed that sentiment the most.
The pattern on the carpet changed beneath my feet as I followed Falon. What started as a mundane flower design morphed into a moving dragon, the same dragon I’d bore on my forearm until recently. Shya’s sigil flowed over the carpet, stretching out its long neck, tail swishing back and forth. I expected it to come at me, but it remained part of the décor, merely watching me from its place on the floor.
I recognized it for what it was: a reminder from Shya that he was everywhere, watching, playing the game. Doubt snuck up on me, and I wondered if somehow he knew what we were planning.
As Falon walked with purposeful strides ahead of me, the dragon snapped its massive mouth full of teeth in his direction. Falon was oblivious to the dragon writhing about behind him, lunging at his ankles like a shadow that passed right through him.
“That can’t be good,” I mumbled beneath my breath.
“What are you going on about?” Falon turned to sneer at me, and the dragon disappeared. The carpet was a rose design once again.
“Not a damn thing.”
He held my gaze, and I worked up my best innocent expression. It wasn’t fooling him. So I tried a smile and received a puzzled frown.
“Better keep moving,” I said, marching past him like I had a clue where the hell I was going. I rounded a bend and was elated to discover three doors. “Looks like we have something here.”
Only one of the doors was closed. It was at the very end of the hall. One on either side stood open, and I crept up to the closest, wary as I tried to peek inside.
It was a bedroom. A four-poster bed and a vanity table from another era made it seem like it existed in another time and place. I scanned the room for any sign of another way in or out. I wasn’t venturing in there without a damn good reason.
“This is just a distraction,” Falon said. “You know the door at the end of the hall is the one.”
“What’s the hurry? I thought you wanted to do the dirty as a ‘fuck you’ to Shya. There’s a bed right there.” I nudged him with my elbow. “Unless you don’t think you can get it up anymore. I mean, it is kind of spooky in here.”
Yeah my insult material was lacking tonight, but it still wrenched a snarl out of Falon, which was what I wanted. With a disgusted snort he crossed the hall to peer into the room on the opposite side.
“Don’t be absurd. If anything makes my dick shrivel it’s the sound of your voice after twenty minutes.” Gazing into what turned out to be an office, Falon inclined his head thoughtfully. “I’ll still bend you over that desk though, if only just to shut you up for a while.”
The office was tidy and small. A desk sat in front of a window that looked out onto the maze. A stack of papers sat atop the desk. Naturally I was curious about them. Knowing that was likely the reason they were there, I kept my feet planted in the hallway.
“Think we should go in?” I asked. “I want to see those papers.”
Falon made a beckoning motion, and the papers drifted from the desk, floating through the air to settle in his hand. I pressed close to get
a look while trying not to touch him. He slid me a sidelong glance and shook his head.
“Looks like a contract,” I mused aloud.
Certain words jumped out at me as I tried to make sense of it. I skimmed it fast, trying to absorb the content and make sense of what I was seeing. The contract was between Falon and Shya. It stated very clearly that the agreement written by Shya was to ‘use any means necessary to obtain and maintain the trust of Alexa O’Brien, including forming an intimate relationship with her’.
The contract went on to state that should Falon fulfill that commitment he would be forgiven any and all previous offenses against Shya. That meant he would be forgiven for his many betrayals. No way. Shya didn’t forgive. And yet, I questioned it. He would go to any lengths to get something if he wanted it bad enough.
“This is a lie,” Falon declared, voice rising as he lost his temper. “It’s bullshit, Alexa. I’m not working with Shya anymore. He’s trying to fuck with you.”
“Is he?” I studied him, searching his silver eyes, seeking the truth. “How do I know you wouldn’t do anything he asked to start over and have a clean slate with him again?”
“Because I have my own agenda and it doesn’t include him. Don’t forget that you’re the one who seduced me. You’re the succubus.” Falon waved the contract through the air, and it caught fire. The smoldering ashes fluttered to the floor only to be crushed under his boot heel.
I wanted to trust Falon. Hell, I needed to trust him, for tonight anyway. Shya was a liar and a manipulative asshole. Still Falon was pretty damn evil in his own right. I’d seen it myself. The bottom line was that neither of them could be trusted, but only one of them was lying about this.
For a moment I considered abandoning Falon, saying fuck the whole plan and trying to find my way out alone. Maybe if I won the favor from Shya, I could use it to protect those I cared about. I didn’t need Falon for that.
“How do I know you didn’t let me seduce you? It’s not like you fought it very hard.” I slid a hand around to grasp the back of his neck and pulled him close, brushing my lips across his. “Resist me, Falon. Right now.”
