“H-how do you know of this?” Catching her wandering hands, he held them over his rapidly thumping heart.
“News of it is all over town; it is all anyone is talking of.”
“You never leave the house, pet.”
One narrow shoulder rose and fell. “True enough, however I still hear the clucking of the neighborhood hens.”
“You truly believe you could handle such a gathering?” Edgar’s gaze scoured her face, as if he would find the reason for this abrupt change miraculously scrawled there. “With all those people?”
Her full lips curled to the side, dimpling the thinly healed flesh of her scar. “I am not the delicate flower you think me to be, Edgar. For the promising path before us to come to pass, our attendance at that ball is mandatory.”
Unable to form a convincing argument to the contrary—though many plagued him—Edgar could only gulp down his trepidation and dip his chin in a nod of agreement to his beautiful lotus—flowering forth from the murky pond of death.
20
Ridley
“How could you not recognize him?” In the middle of her red-faced rant, Ireland tripped over a dip in the crumbling cement stairs that lead down into the subway. Catching herself on the wobbly handrail, she huffed an inaudible string of expletives under her breath. “He worked at the museum! You were face-to-face with him!”
Noah’s hand rose to the middle of her back as she steadied herself and stomped on. “My girlfriend was turning into a homicidal killer at the time. I was a tiny bit distracted.”
Ireland bounced off the bottom stair, a small dust cloud kicking up beneath her boots as she landed. The terminal was blanketed in heavy darkness, the only light offered filtering down from the stairs. In the distance she could just make out the faint silhouette of elaborate archways. Each tapered down into sturdy mosaic covered posts, some of the ornate tiles chipped away like missing teeth in a wide smile.
Her lungs constricting at the stale, stifling air, Ireland coughed into her elbow. “I was just—ahem—having a moment.”
“A moment? That’s what we’re going to call it?” Noah joined her at the bottom of the stairs and squinted into the darkness. “It wasn’t a sneezing fit, Ireland. There was genuine fear of bloodshed.”
“Well, now you’re just being overdramatic.” Ireland smirked at his exaggerated eyeroll. “Remind me again why we came down here? If this is where the obviously fake cop—”
“Obvious only to you,” Ridley chimed in, his arm brushing hers as he thumped off the last stair.
She paused long enough to shoot him a glare. “If he told us to come down here, I still think we should’ve run screaming in the other direction.”
Their voices echoed off the walls all around them, taunting them with the extreme solitude of this abandoned abyss.
“Don’ ath me,” Rip snipped, drenching the back of Noah’s shirt with a rain of spit from attempting to talk through two pairs of teeth. “Appawently tings happen an we awr justh suppoth tah accepth it no questhions asked. Hath a stwange pawr of teef sthuck in yawr mouf? Nofing weiwd about dat! Leth’s go for a walk!”
“We couldn’t find Lenore up top, maybe she went underground,” Noah explained, cringing over his shoulder at his damp shirt. “And if we find her, hopefully we can find a way to get those things out of your mouth. Because they are not a redeeming new attribute, let me tell ya.”
“And if not, we can go in search of that fake cop and I can threaten to give him a colonoscopy with my sword unless he tells us what he knows!” Ireland chirped with enough enthusiasm to raise eyebrows.
Rip pulled up short, his nose crinkling. “Tha’s tewwifying.”
Ridley skirted around behind the group, bumbling further into the darkness’s enveloping cloak. His face-to-face encounter with Ireland’s Hessian alter ego caused him to attempt a bit more independence from her touch. The cavernous terminal seemed as good a place as any for such a challenge—until a ghostly whistle blew. The sound resonated off the walls and whipped Ridley’s head around in search of its origins. Air stirred, swirling and eddying into the wraithlike silhouettes of travelers. Dated by their period dress, the apparitions hurriedly went about their busy afterlives paying no notice to him. In the middle of it all, stood a young boy dressed in knickers and a sailor-style shirt. An over-sized bowler hat sat cockeyed on his head, shielding one eye. He scanned the crowd, an easy smile dimpling his freckled cheeks. Not a care or worry seemed to darken his spirit as he calmly waited, most likely for his mother. Every now and then he would glance up at the red balloon floating overhead, tied to his wrist, tug it down and giggle as it floated back up to full height.
Ridley expelled a relieved sigh through pursed lips. As visions went, this one wasn’t too bad—yet. As if the earth itself hatched a maniacal plot to test that theory, the ground beneath his feet began to shake, quaking with enough force to send him stumbling to reclaim his footing. His arms stretched to the sides for balance, he pivoted back towards the others.
“Did you see his uniform? It was dated! I’m telling you, he wasn’t a real cop!” Ireland paused to click on the flashlight app on her phone. Holding it out before her, she strode further into the terminal.
“Sorry, Crane.” Noah shrugged. “I see a cop car or a man with a badge and I stop investigating. That’s one of the things I take at face value.”
They can’t feel it, Ridley thought bitterly. Resigning himself to the need for her touch, he fought the bucking ground beneath him to get back to Ireland.
A dim blue light beamed out from the incoming subway track, accompanied by the unmistakable rumble of wheels over rails. The spectral crowd lurched forward in expectation of the ghost train’s arrival. Moving as one demanding body, they pressed toward it, blocking his exit path with their unyielding urgency. Pivoting in frustration, Ridley’s breath caught in equal parts horror and revulsion. That same little boy had been caught in the midst of the mob, his slight frame being jostled dangerously close to the track and the thundering rumble of the incoming train.
Ridley’s mouth creaked open, intending to call for Ireland. To beg her for a simple touch to chase away this ominous scene. Instead his own words betrayed him, “R-red balloon!”
Her hair framed her heart-shaped face as she glanced his way with a wry grin. “Sounds like a good time is being had in Ridley’s Wonderland.”
Muttering under his breath at the deficiency of his dependency on her, he acted against his better judgments by spinning on his heel and throwing himself headlong into the sea of bodies. Shivers rocked through him each time the chill of their ethereal forms brushed his skin, yet he battled through it and pushed on.
“Where’th he going?” Rip raised his chin in Ridley’s direction as the darkness swallowed him whole.
“No idea.” Ireland scowled and flipped her bangs from her eyes. “Ridley?”
“See?” Noah gestured after him. “My idea of making him a leash kid doesn’t seem so crazy now, does it?”
Set on his mission, Ridley let their voices faded into nothingness behind him and stomped on through the phantom crowd. His manic stare staying zeroed in on the boy while the high beams from the incoming train grew. The first squeal of the pumped brakes threw the mass of bodies forward again, not unlike racehorses bursting through the gates after the trumpet’s blast. A briefcase toting man, with a grey bushy mustache and a hurried stride, flung his overcoat over his arm and accidentally slapped the young boy with it. The boy rocked back on his heels, the first signs of fear registering on his young face as he noticed the edge of the platform precariously close behind him. Breaking into a full out sprint, Ridley cut through the vaporous forms, pumping his arms for all he was worth. His breath came in sharp pants. Would his presence matter in the afterlife of a long dead boy? He didn’t let doubt of that hinder his stride.
“I’m going to get on first!” the hollow trill of a child’s voice resonated off the commodious walls. Two forever-young manifestations broke throug
h the crowd, pushing and shoving their way through the masses.
“No, I am!” the smaller of the two boys giggled, his open coat blowing behind him as he ran.
The chubby-faced boy in the lead glanced back over his shoulder, oblivious to the young boy teetering on the edge in front of him. The train materialized from its yawning tunnel. Ridley’s head shook, denying what was happening even as he watched the larger boy’s elbow slam into the boy with the balloon. Hurling himself forward the remaining distance, Ridley’s hooked fingers swiped but caught only misty air. Slamming down on the platform edge, he could do nothing but watch the cherub-faced boy tumble back. His arms pinwheeled at his sides as he plummeted straight into the path of the inbound train. Metal screeched. Sparks lit the tunnel like tiny fireworks. Even so, the conductor’s effort to stop was in vain.
Overhead, that one lone balloon drifted slowly away.
“Ridley?” Ireland, his tether, softly soothed, her voice beckoning to him like the first glimpse of home after a lengthy prison sentence.
Rolling toward her, the chipped grout edge scraped against his shoulders, snagging the fabric of what had once been an expensive shirt. His breath caught, escaping his parted lips in a throaty gasp. She sat astride the most formidable ebony stallion he’d ever seen. Its nostrils flaring with each heaved breath that exploded out in puffs of white steam. Hooves like polished onyx pawed anxiously at the ground. Impressive as the equine was, it paled in comparison to its rider.
The burnished bronze clasp of her cloak fastened in the middle of her breastbone. The black, thick-weaved fabric falling open to frame the swell of her breasts. Soft flesh strained against the beaded corset-style top of her strapless wedding gown that molded to her ample curves. What once must have been a billowing skirt of satin and crinoline had been shredded to ribbons, parting to reveal a tempting glimpse of her milky white thigh before it disappeared inside a black leather stiletto boot. Her face gleamed from beneath her drawn hood, a lunar goddess raising her proud head to honor the night.
Ridley clamped his slack jaw shut. Forcing a gulp down the arid oasis of his throat, he studied the dark shadows under her blazing topaz eyes. Somehow they added a seductive air of mystery in which he longed to lose himself.
Cerulean lips parted, murmuring his name with a breathy sigh that spoke directly to his most primal male instincts, “Ridley.” Her clenched fist unrolled slowly, one finger at a time, to reach for him. “Join me.”
Pushing himself up on one elbow, he let his fingers intertwine with her velvety digits. Her whispered caress setting his skin on fire in a way he never dreamed possible. Whether she pulled him up, or he floated under his own accord, he didn’t know or care. Somehow he found himself seated on the saddle behind her. Scooting back, she wriggled closer between his legs. Her hood fell back as she leaned into him, giving him a stellar view of paradise. Raising one hand, she weaved nimble fingers into his hair to draw him closer still.
“Don’t fight the darkness,” she whispered against his lips. “Together, we can own it.”
A growl—pure animal—tore from his throat as he grasped the rise of her hips. “How?”
“Own what’s inside you.” Her mouth closed around his top lip, sucking softly and sending waves of euphoria lapping through him. “Embrace it as the gift that it is.”
Unable to refrain, Ridley crushed his mouth to hers; his hands expertly outlining her curves. A cold slap against his thigh jerked him from the moment. Resenting the distraction, he glanced down to find Noah’s cloudy, unseeing eyes staring up at him. His mouth open wide in an eternal scream, his severed head swinging from his girlfriend’s hip.
“Son of a—!” Ridley used more force than necessary to push himself away. The motion forced him off the horse, where the ground quickly rose to meet him.
The impact from a fall like that should have hurt, or at the very least rung his bell. Instead, he found himself flailing on the floor in a mad scramble to get his feet under him.
“Uh, Ridley? You all right, dude?” asked an audibly leery female voice.
His neck wrenched, throbbing its disagreement. Ireland. Not the betrothed of the damned version that collected heads of former lovers on her belt, but the flannel clad one that looked like an extra from a Nirvana video.
“I’m here if you need me,” she gently offered, extending her hand to him.
Hissing through his teeth, Ridley recoiled as if her touch were venomous. Placing one quaking hand on the floor in front of him, he finally found is footing.
“All you have to do is take my hand,” Ireland lured, casually waving her hand back and forth like she was tempting him with a Scooby snack.
“Nah!” he hollered in her face with a stern enough conviction to shoot her eyebrows straight up in to her hairline. “Nuh-finsh-nickeny!”
Ireland raised both hands, palms out, in hopes of slowing his crazy roll. “Okay, didn’t get a word of that, yet somehow it still managed to be kind of offensive.”
“It’s okay, man. It’s just us,” Noah assured him, stepping up beside Ireland.
Ridley squeezed his eyes shut, his hands gripping his hair in white-knuckle fists. “Not real,” he whispered once, his tone gaining a fiery conviction as he got stuck on repeat. “Not. Real. Not REAL!”
The chant became his battle cry, Ridley’s shoes slipping across the tile work in his charge straight for Noah. His hell bent intention being to plow straight through what he knew to be the mist-formation spirit of the recently decapitated. He anticipated the momentary chill of storming through the vaporous being, not slamming into a muscular chest nose first. His cartilage twisted and mashed into his cheek. Noah’s head snapped back as the two tumbled to the ground, tangling in each other’s limbs.
Amidst Noah’s pained groans, Ridley’s head rose. An arm, which most definitely didn’t belong to him, swung in his face. “You’re real!”
“I could have told you that,” Noah snipped, beginning the bothersome task of unknotting himself, “had you asked before tackling me. Thanks to you, I’ve now been to third base with a dude.”
“I thought you were a ghost,” Ridley admitted with an anxious giggle-snort.
“And here I thought this assignment would be boring,” an unrecognizable voice, as smooth and decadent as melted caramel, broke through their chaotic moment.
The space around them brightened, coming alive with shimmering blue tendrils that chased away the inky blackness. Swirling in a rhythmic dance, the coiling wisps bonded together to form a wicked grinning face. Birthed in shadows, he fully emerged. A ruffled collar protruding from his tailored coat, dated him to a time period of carriages and oil-burning lamps.
Bewildered recognition settled into the lines of Ireland’s face. Her head cocked in confusion, she called the newcomer by name, “Rip?”
21
Ridley
“Thath’s not me!” Rip floundered for a more compelling argument, only to settle on the obvious, “I’m wite hewe!”
“You sure about that?” His younger counterpart floated to his side with a haunting, rolling fluidity. Positioning himself shoulder to shoulder with the aghast older version, he began a cursory comparison. “Same height, some dashingly handsome bone structure. Of course, yours is hidden beneath an excess of wrinkly skin and flea infested hair, yet if one looks hard enough they can still see it.”
Ridley’s head snapped from the old version to the young and back again. Pawing at the air in search of Ireland’s hand, beads of sweat popped up along his hairline. “Ghoul!”
“Oh, I’m not a ghoul, lieve!” Young Rip corrected, whirling in a corkscrew of vining smoky tendrils. “That’s Dutch for ‘dear,’ by the way.”
Extending her hand to Ridley to help him up, Ireland’s teeth ground to the point of pain. “I don’t remember asking.”
Bone rolled over bone under the pressure of Ridley’s sweat soaked grip. The second his feet were under him he abandoned the laws of normal human contact by tugging her to h
im, intimately close.
“Whoa! What are we doing here?” Ireland squeaked, mentally thanking the darkness for hiding the hot rush of red flooding her cheeks.
“He’s still here!” Ridley hissed against her ear. “He’s real!”
“Who me?” Young Rip giggled, instantly appearing beside them. “Funny, I don’t feel real, probably because I can do this.” Jamming his hand through Ireland’s chest, he wriggled his fingers between her shoulder blades before reaching down to slap her ass. “Yow-za!”
“Stop that!” Backpedalling, Ireland slapped frantically at his arm. Her efforts accomplished nothing more than churning up musty air. “We need rules about boundaries … and another girl in this little group!”
A protective flare expanding his chest and tightening the tendons of his neck, Noah caught her sleeve and tugged her behind him. “Or you could go full out Hessian. Playing grab-ass is a riskier game when you throw in a broad sword.”
“That’s right! She is the beast.” Young Rip’s face, with its eerie transparency, bobbed before her. “Much prettier than the last one. Then again, it would be difficult to be attractive with spinal fluid pulsating from your neck stump. Even so, deep in the pools of your eyes I can see it there. Waiting. Panting for carnage.”
Her lip curled in a threatening snarl. “That would be my growing dislike for the ghosts like you.”
“Ghosts? Such creatures are common next to me!” A lilt of amusement trilled through his tone. Another swell of mystical haze and he was back by the older Rip’s side. “I happen to be an extension of this man’s essence, summoned forth when Ridley crammed those enchanted dentures in his mouth.” Tipping his head to Rip, he muttered out of the corner of his mouth, “It doesn’t get more intimate than wearing another person’s teeth, does it? Hope that fella didn’t have scurvy.”
Raven (Legends Saga Book 2) Page 14
