“I’ve tasted cream a thousand times a thousand, but I’ve never tasted it on you,” he said.
Had she known? Had her head gone light because she knew her nibbles of delicate pastry had overwhelmed any decision on his part to keep his distance? Or on her part to stay calm and controlled?
Earlier in the evening, he’d given her a calla lily instead of a kiss. The lovely flower had been no substitute at all. Its soft petals were nothing compared to...
He sucked the sweetness of cream from her lips. He sought its remnants on her tongue. He pressed into her until her bottom was on the table and his impossibly muscular body was between her legs. The pastry was forgotten as his mouth took its place, a much more decadent treat. Forbidden. Bad for her. Crazy. She tasted sweet cream and pastry and fire and a wicked hint of wood smoke that must be the never-before-tasted burn of Brimstone heat on her tongue.
She opened to him. She didn’t resist. Their tongues twined. Their bodies melded as closely as clothes would allow. He tasted her completely, plundering every gasp, every sugar-sweetened sigh.
And when he finally pulled back, as she clung to him so she wouldn’t fall, she finally saw the flush of pleasure on his face and neck that the pastry alone had failed to give him. Heaven help her, but she instantly ached to give him more. It wasn’t his marbled perfection she wanted to caress; it was his vulnerability. She wanted to explore the chink in his armor that had allowed him to taste her.
“Good night, Katherine. You heard Sybil. It’s time for bed,” Severne said.
He backed away. She straightened. In his deep, smoky voice, the suggestion of bedtime was much less utilitarian.
It had been only a kiss.
Only.
She walked by him on quaking legs. He let her go. But between them was so much more heat than could be blamed on hell’s fire.
Her whole life she’d hidden in music. Perhaps being excellent at hiding made her also long to seek. Severne hid many things behind his mystery and his muscle. His hardness was his armor. But he was capable of softening. He’d softened tonight. For one stolen moment, his mouth had softened on hers. She couldn’t risk losing herself in the search for the softness he hid from her and from the world.
Victoria was missing, and she couldn’t afford to lose herself in John Severne before her sister was found.
Chapter 5
The next day John left the opera house as much to escape the memory of Katherine’s taste as to fulfill his duties. The house he visited was small, but neat, in a row of older bungalow homes in Roseland Terrace, a part of Baton Rouge’s Garden District that had been carefully maintained. The elderly man inside the historic Craftsman was happiest in a home with few rooms and big windows to let in the sun. The navigable home kept him from being confused as he moved from room to room with poor eyesight, failing legs and a cane in a stoop-shouldered shuffle.
And the big windows kept the shadows at bay.
He didn’t like shadows.
He didn’t remember why.
At first John Severne had tried to correct his father’s failing memory. He’d consulted the best doctors. He’d experimented with homeopathy and modern medicines. But then he’d seen the grace in Levi Severne’s forgetfulness. The relief.
His grandfather had been killed by one of the daemons he’d been charged to hunt. He’d died a doomed man. He’d known hell had come for him. Though only a young teen, John had seen him consumed by Brimstone’s fire until nothing was left but dust. His father had seen it, too. He’d taken John’s hand, helpless to prevent for them both the same fate unless they were successful in their task.
Down to the last name on hell’s most-wanted list.
John Severne had visited with the father who hadn’t known him for decades. Every time he came, they met for the first time. A nearly immortal man with Alzheimer’s was a pitiful sight. But it was also a respite. They spoke of other things. The hydrangeas were blooming. Levi Severne liked blue. The big clusters of blooms made him smile.
Severne had left his father on a chair in the backyard, where the flowers swayed in the breeze. The nurse would collect him in time for an afternoon siesta. No more killing. No more strife. He had no memory of the damnation that had once plagued him with nightmares.
“We’ll beat it, John. We’ll beat it. I promised your mother before she died I would see you saved. I promised her my father’s terrible contract wouldn’t damn you.”
How many times had his father repeated that pledge to him?
How many times had he stood watching the frail old man he loved and quietly vowing the same pledge back to him?
“I’ll beat it. I’ll save you. You have my word,” Severne said.
The burn in his throat wasn’t Brimstone.
The evil old man who had been his grandfather had deserved the agony that had devoured him. He’d brought it on himself. His father had been an innocent child when Thomas Severne made his deal with the devil. John had been sacrificed to the Council when he’d been barely old enough to survive the burn of Brimstone that had claimed his blood.
* * *
He had been playing with jacks when his grandfather came for him. It had been his favorite game, to bounce the ball and swipe up as many metal crosses as he could before the ball came down. He’d wiled away many a lonely afternoon in solitary play, too grand of parentage to be approached by servants’ children or the children of performers. He was often alone while his father was away on hunting trips.
He’d been too young to imagine that his father hunted monsters. But he’d often wondered why his father hunted when their cook visited the butcher for all the meat that went into his oven and pots.
He bounced his ball, and Grandfather caught it before it came down. Only then did he notice the shiny boots that had crushed the tiny jacks he’d not scooped up in time. His grandfather hauled him up roughly with his other hand, and the jacks John had managed to scoop fell from his fingers, prizes he would never come back to retrieve.
His time of childhood play was over.
He was five years old.
His grandfather had taken him down several flights of stairs too quickly for him to follow safely. He’d fallen several times. Skinned both his knees. His arm had felt almost ripped from its socket each time his grandfather had pulled him to his feet.
“It’s past time. The Council grows impatient. Your father should have done this well before now,” the old man had growled.
He’d had a booming voice up until the very end, when its deep resonance had morphed into high-pitched screams.
He’d done his best to keep up. His father had always warned him not to anger Thomas Severne. With his bushy brows and wild hair over ruddy cheeks, the old man had featured in many of John Severne’s nightmares even before that night.
More than once, in fevered dreams, his grandfather had picked him up and tossed him into a roaring fire.
John didn’t dare cry even when his knees bled. He didn’t dare protest even when his elbow popped out of joint from a jerk too hard and sudden to anticipate. Agony flared, but he didn’t cry out loud. Instead, he hurried as fast as he could, all the way down to where his father had always forbidden him to go.
The secret catacombs beneath l’Opéra Severne.
These dark, endless caves were filled with chill shadows his father warned him might not be as harmless as they should have been.
The giant door protested when Thomas Severne pushed it inward and open.
John had mindlessly held back. His instinct to fear the catacombs was greater than the order always to obey his grandfather when he couldn’t avoid him.
Thomas Severne jerked even harder on his arm. The dislocated joint screamed. He bit through his lip to keep from crying out at the pain. He stumbled after his grandfather, knowing he was in great dang
er, and his father couldn’t save him.
“It’s a good thing your mother is dead, John,” his father always said. “She would weep to see what has become of us.”
But John prayed for the angel of his mother to save him from his grandfather that night. They’d practically run through the catacombs to answer the Council’s call.
“You will serve them, as your father serves them and as I have served them. It is the price we must pay for our success and longevity,” Thomas Severne said.
His grandfather’s shadow was thrown crazily onto the walls by the lantern he’d taken up in his other hand.
John thought his legs would give out before they reached their destination. He’d thought he would pass out from the pain. He knew his grandfather would continue to drag him on the hard, uneven ground of the catacomb’s floor. He’d run his first marathon that night, his legs pumping, his scuffed boots flying. His knees would hurt worse if he didn’t stay on his feet. His arm might actually be ripped from his body. He focused on those two horrors rather than shadows and his grandfather’s crazed urgency.
Finally Thomas Severne stopped in front of what John thought at first was a door as black as pitch. Only there was no door. Instead, there was only an opening made of flat, solid darkness. He never would have tried to walk through it if his grandfather hadn’t tugged him roughly into the black.
But it was the pause before the tug that made his stomach fall away. This was the first time he’d seen his terrifying grandfather afraid. Thomas Severne squared his shoulders and took a deep breath. His fingers tightened around John’s fingers.
Then they stepped through the doorway.
His arm was a white-hot agony most adults couldn’t have endured.
His knees bled.
But in those moments, as he passed through the doorway with his grandfather, every cell in his body screamed in pain.
They came out on the other side, into a high-ceilinged chamber that had no end to his child’s eyes. His grandfather pulled him forward to a long pathway that stretched far out of sight between two rows of stadium seating filled to capacity with a silent, faceless crowd. John felt the weight of thousands of eyes. His grandfather ignored them. He pulled the tiny child at his side along.
But they walked beneath those stares. Calm and slow. With only his grandfather’s tight grip to show that the calm was a lie.
Thomas Severne was still afraid.
To John, the dais they finally reached with its massive table was made for giants. But the men who sat along its intimidating length were normal-sized.
They spoke.
His grandfather replied.
And then he was grabbed under his armpits by Thomas Severne and lifted high off the ground. He cried out at last. The move cruelly wrenched his arm, and it was almost a relief to shout. His grandfather didn’t care. The man at the head of the table came to take him. As he was lifted even higher, he saw the bronzed wings hanging on the wall above the Council.
He’d thought of his mother and of angels, but not for long.
The other men at the table rose and came to where their leader held him. They wore plain black clothes, but when they rolled up their sleeves and drew blades across their wrists, their blood was brilliant flame.
He screamed and screamed.
The Brimstone entered him though every opening in his skin. His pores. His nose. His mouth. That moment supplanted his nightmare of being thrown into fire.
He choked on the hot coals of his breath turned to embers.
That’s when he knew the men were not men. As he choked, he heard Thomas Severne laugh.
His father had wept when he’d come home. But his training had begun. Grim came soon after, a dark gift that nonetheless soothed his pain.
Levi Severne hadn’t saved him. But he’d tried. Where Levi had failed, John was determined to succeed.
* * *
His grandfather might have deserved to be completely consumed by Brimstone’s fire, but his father didn’t deserve the torture that lurked, waiting to claim him if his son failed to fulfill the contract before he died.
He wasn’t sure how much time he had. His grandfather had signed his deadly deal just after the Revolutionary War. Levi Severne was only five at the time. Such a small boy. Innocent. But condemned by his father’s greed. His mind had started to fail when he reached two hundred twenty-five years old. The Brimstone prolonged their lives, but it didn’t hold off the price of age forever.
Severne clenched his fists against the damnation looming so close to his father. The sun had gone behind a cloud, and Levi Severne had called for his nurse in a small voice that seemed to come from the boy he’d been so very long ago.
He’d done his part. He’d hunted daemons for decades. He’d taught his son how to fight. He’d shown him how to handle the terrible burn of Brimstone in his blood. He’d taught him to look away from the walls of l’Opéra Severne as the burden of years and souls began to weigh him down.
He’d tried to teach him how to hope. Levi had always been an optimist. He’d met and married a beautiful Southern belle, thinking he’d be free from the contract before they had a child.
He’d been wrong.
She’d died in childbirth believing his promise that her son would be saved.
Severne didn’t believe in hope. He’d never allowed the softness of hope. He believed in perseverance, determination and pain. He would need all three things to save his father before his mortal body failed.
And maybe one day he’d be graced with the ability to forget all he’d done.
The nurse had come to check on her charge. She must have rushed out as soon as she’d heard him call. John was pleased by her quick response. The best that money could buy. Her tone was kind and patient as she responded to Levi’s fear of the darkened day and the shadows that stretched toward his seat from the bushes, which had given him pleasure only moments before.
The nurse helped his father up with the aid of his cane, and the two slowly made their way toward the house. He resisted the nurse, though, forcing a pause beside the hydrangea bushes. Severne watched his father reach out and take a cluster of blossoms in his hand. Levi Severne pressed the bloom to his face and inhaled, but then he dropped the crushed flowers, and John could tell by the nurse’s consternation that the old man cried.
The nurse urged Levi to come with her. She soothed him with soft assurances of safety. Severne knew from experience that inside, many lights and lamps waited to be turned on. All Levi’s caretakers knew the house needed to be aglow during a storm.
His father’s fears would fade. His tears would dry.
To be sure, John waited and watched until light after light came on. Even as fat droplets began to fall and sizzle on his skin, he waited. His temperature dropped, but he ignored the chill. He paid no attention to the wet seeping into his hair to run in rivulets down his face. He waited until he was sure the house was lit and his father snug inside before he turned and walked away.
* * *
Kat should have known she couldn’t be quicker on the draw than John Severne. She’d thought she would return the opera glasses before anyone missed them. But the next day when she climbed the stairs to the third-level balcony and quietly approached the box corresponding with the number on the porcelain handle, she found the opera’s master in the seat she searched for.
She tried to halt her entrance in time to go unnoticed, but he rose to turn and face her. He’d heard her steps, or he’d felt her approach as she suddenly felt him. She’d tried to tune out the pull of his Brimstone blood, which followed her wherever she went in the opera house, but rather than helping her avoid him, it had placed her in a compromising position.
He was both everywhere she walked and here, where she least expected to find him.
“Where did you find tho
se?” Severne asked.
The box was small. It held only two seats. And the opera glasses were obvious in her hands.
He didn’t seem to mind the close quarters. As the curtains she’d parted closed with a whoosh in her wake, he moved even closer while she tried to think of what to say.
Was this his box? Were the glasses his? Why had they been in Victoria’s room?
All those questions assailed her along with his nearness and the unusual appearance of his rumpled clothes. He wore a white oxford shirt and black pants, but his jacket was missing, his sleeves were rolled up and his tie was loosened.
“They were on my sister’s bed. Left on her pillow,” Kat said. “I thought I should return them. She must have accidentally carried them away. I assume they belong to this box.”
Below, dancers practiced for the ballet often omitted from performances of Faust by other opera companies. At l’Opéra Severne, the ballet was a favorite of fans. It represented the temptation of Faust by the greatest and most beautiful women in history that had been offered to him by Mephistopheles.
So far, from what Katherine had seen of rehearsals, this version was suggestively choreographed while still seeming subtly playful in its eroticism.
“This box is like the other boxes in the house. Elite patrons own them all. Some families have kept them for generations. Politicians, celebrities and foreign aristocracy all float in and out in relative anonymity. To be honest, I thought this one was abandoned. Many seats are kept by the elderly and passed down to heirs who prefer sports arenas or video games,” Severne said. “I’m here only temporarily. Captivated by the view.”
So she’d found the stoic yet sensual master of the opera house looking down on his lithe dancers? Her cheeks warmed. “They are captivating,” she agreed.
The dancers practiced with an old stage piano more suited for vaudeville than opera, but they were talented. Once their moves were paired with costumes, lighting and the full orchestra accompaniment, the ballet would be sublime.
“I’m proud of every aspect of the show, but I do enjoy this dance—the temptation, the resistance, the surrender,” Severne said. It was almost a confession. He was a daemon professing his fascination with the dance of damnation.
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