The Hallowed

by Lani Lenore

  I should tell him I’m sorry. That I didn’t mean it. But she couldn’t move.

  How could she be so foolish? So selfish? She had been only concerned with her own confusion, and had not stopped to think of what he had needed. She had completely turned her back on him, and she could not even imagine the horror that would come from him doing the same to her. Now there was guilt inside her—terrible gnawing guilt—and she could not even speak up to beg for forgiveness.

  The sensation of touch brought her out of her thoughts as fingers brushed along her arm. Her chest tightened, and gentle pressure against her shoulder urged her to roll onto her back. She did as she was guided to do. Adam was there, illuminated faintly by the firelight.

  “Adam,” she managed to whisper into the space between them. “I—”

  So much trouble, and she could not think of anything to say. The warmth of his body was unyielding, even with the sheet between them, and she did not have to see the entirely of his form to know that he had removed his clothes. Celia felt tremors radiating outward from her core as she watched his dark eyes. He stared at her with a firm expression of unwavering determination. He wanted something from her, but he did not voice it. Still, he showed her. His hand gripped the sheet, and he pulled it from between them. Her only protection, gone. She was exposed.

  Her body could hardly withstand the shock of pleasure as his warm skin leaned against hers. She gasped, for the feeling could be expressed in no other way, and she accepted when he kissed her lips. Against her, she could feel the pounding of his heart, circulating his blood, giving him life and energy. She could not think it was strange, for her heart was rushing in a similar way, and she couldn’t concentrate on more than the flames of heat.

  This kiss was not as she had tasted before. It was full of hungry passion more than caressing love. The course and cause didn’t matter much to Celia. She was only glad that he had returned to her, and she embraced him, allowing him to manipulate her lips as their bodies entwined.

  Adam knew precisely what his aim was with her and didn’t waste much time at it. She felt his engorgement against her thigh. It was hot, searing like fire. He put it in its place, gradually as her body allowed.

  There was no pain—as if she’d anticipated it—only rolling sensations of bliss, like waves caressing a shore. She felt something strange then, as if a beast was clawing inside her, needing to be free. Since she could not let it go, she let it overtake her. She met the man in his motion, and she released all of her fear and frustration in vigorous sex.

  Adam was no longer a stranger to her, despite previous doubts. She knew him. She remembered his promises and his kisses. Their love was real. It was in motion.

  “If you let him touch you, you will never leave this place.” Those words were far from her now. Celia lost herself in his body, and he in hers. Though she had no education in these acts, her need to achieve pleasure came as naturally as breathing. For hours against the bed, they broke apart and connected again in different ways—in lust, in love, for the sake of battling madness.

  When she could no longer move her legs, and after he had exhausted himself, emptying all that was inside him, there was finally a need for rest. Celia laid her head against his chest, and he put his arms around her silently. Though breathless and somewhat eased from her stress, her mind began to wander as her eyes drifted cautiously around the room. Though Maynard was gone—done with his prowling—still, she couldn’t help but feel that someone had been watching.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Adam was lying on his back, staring upward through a hazy film that stretched across his eyes. His muscles were weak. He was weary. Though he tried to move, his limbs were distant, disconnected. The world was covered in fog, but through it, he could see faint orange lights overhead.

  “Are you sure that you want to do this?” a voice asked through the haze. There was fluid in his ears, muffling the sound, but he heard the words. Adam believed that he was the one being addressed, but when he tried to respond, he could not part his lips. Shortly afterward, the answer came from another mouth. There was someone else in the room.

  “Yes,” was the response. There was no hesitation.

  The first speaker was a man; the second, a woman. He could see the outlines of their faces now, standing over him, peering down at his prone and motionless body.

  “Aren’t you going to wake him up?” the woman asked. Her head was surrounded by dark curly hair that drifted around her as she moved.

  “He is awake,” the man insisted, turning his profile. His nose was hooked, and there was not a hair on his head. “That’s all you’re going to get, and it’s enough for what you want, I assure you. Trust me, it’s best this way.”

  They stared down at Adam as he struggled to see them more clearly, but his eyes refused to focus. He couldn’t say he thought much of what was happening, observing impassively.

  “I’m going to advise against this once again,” said the man in the room.

  “You’ve already advised me enough,” the woman snapped. “I know what I’m doing. Now leave.”

  The image of the man lingered a moment and then receded, leaving only the woman in Adam’s sight. There was a loud sound—a door closing—and then it was quiet once again. Above him, he heard the woman sigh shakily, nervously. As he watched without blinking, she seemed to grow in height, her image stretching taller until he was able to realize that she was on a ladder. She continued to rise until she had reached the level where he was laying and then she came closer, moving across him to splay her legs over his hips. Her dress spread around her, and he felt the warmth of her bare flesh, however slight, settling on him. Despite how he could not even flex his own muscles, he felt himself tighten, and his erection was beyond his control. The woman was not shy or hesitant. She urged it into the depth of her.

  There was no sensation, and he had few thoughts about this sexual act—this rape. He could not control the fact that he was responsive to it. It was all beyond his concession as slowly, she encouraged him to erupt.

  The woman tilted her head back and sighed with satisfaction. Adam woke up from the dream.

  His eyes rolled, moving rapidly until they shot open, and Adam sat up on the bed. The dream had retreated, but it remained with him—both the images and the unwelcome feelings of confusion and violation. Now that he was awake, he was able to recognize the people in his dream. The bald man was Baltus LaCroix. The woman who’d ridden him, Anjessica. What a strange dream…or had it been that? Had his brain truly created all that, and could it have even if he’d tried to force it?

  Sighing to relieve himself, though not quite satisfied within his mind, Adam turned his attention to Celia. She was lying near him, her bare skin wrapped up in the sheets, sleeping soundly. Though at any other time he might have wished to rouse her—as he had so many times in the night—his dream had put him away from thoughts of physical desires. Carefully, he rose up from the bed and pulled on his clothes. The girl was not disturbed.

  The window was showing a pale glow of sunlight. The rain had ceased. Adam would have been pleased to see this, if not for grim reality. There would be no horses or carriage waiting to take them down the mountain. They were prisoners here.

  But there is a way. I’ll find out the truth, and then I will find a way to escape.

  He hadn’t been completely honest with Celia, but he forgave himself for that. It was only in his desire to protect her that he made the difficult choice of dealing with these matters alone. That was why Adam left her sleeping there and ventured out into the house.

  Adam roamed along the third floor, considering his knowledge. He knew many facts about the family and the state of things, though very few of them fit together. However, he did have two pieces that fell in line. The first thing that had bothered him, that he’d not told Celia, was about the house. He was starting to remember it. He knew the place, and it was as if he had built it from the ground up with his own hands. He might have hand-picked the win
dows and imported the tile. But how was it familiar to him? He didn’t belong here, and therefore shouldn’t have known the layout of the house. He hadn’t been able to grasp it, but then he’d found the room of Hugh LaCroix.

  Celia wouldn’t understand, he’d decided. She’d take it all the wrong way.

  Adam himself wasn’t sure how to take it, but he wasn’t going to stop—not until it all came together.

  He wandered the halls now, and it was his intention to view the other rooms along the third floor, which were the forbidden bedrooms of his hosts. He passed leisurely along the corridors, watching for anyone else who might have been loitering about. When he saw no one, and he was satisfied that he was the only one lurking, he moved back to his own door, but he would not go back inside yet. It was time to have a look at the rooms where the family slept.

  Adam went past Celia’s room and his own door, heading to the one further down, which was at the end of the hallway, a fair distance from his own. The door was locked and he no longer had keys, but that was not going to stop him. Not today. With little hesitation, he rammed his shoulder into the door, and when it did not burst open, he tried again. The second attempt was much more productive. The lock broke free, and the momentum of his effort took him inside.

  The room was dark and unoccupied, though he couldn’t say he would have cared if there had been someone present, sleeping or screwing or whatever it was people did in this house. This bedroom was furnished with a bed, a table and two chairs, and a wardrobe, but it was clear of personal effects. Was this another guest room? The empty room of the master? Because it did not appear to be lived in at all. Somewhat annoyed, Adam was ready to turn from the room when something caught his eye.

  It was a glow of light that had caught his attention, but there was no reason for it to be where it was. The light had come from a small spot in the wall, and oddly enough, there was a chair sitting in front of it. Adam’s anger had already risen to the brim before he’d even approached it, for he knew what he was looking at. There was a small hole in the wall that could be used to see into the next room—his room—and he conceived the sight he would see through it. Lowering his eye to the hole, Adam peered through, and he was not surprised to see a clear, head-on view of his bed, or to see Celia sleeping there on it.

  What sort of perversion is this? He wondered angrily. He could not sort out the ‘why’, but he knew ‘what’. This was a view hole placed so that if someone had been behind it last night, they would have seen—in its rawest and most uncensored form—exactly what he and Celia had done.

  Adam bit down on his rage, but when he tasted blood, realized that he was biting his own tongue.

  “There is no excuse for this,” he muttered aloud, and having seen enough, stood up. He contemplated his options—exploring the rooms further or finding someone’s face that he could smash in—but before he could make his decision, a figure in the doorway caught his attention.

  He turned, half-expecting to see one of the maids standing there, waiting to reprimand him for his intrusion. That was not who he found. But it was a woman. Stationary in the doorframe, Anjessica stared at him from within the blanket of her dark hair. One hand was resting on her pregnant belly. The other was nervously handling a handkerchief.

  Adam watched her, thinking of so many things he wanted to yell at her in his rage, but none would come out. He didn’t think she was the one responsible for the peephole in the wall, but his dream had seemed so real—too vivid for it to be false—and she was responsible for that.

  “Well?” he said, finally finding his voice. “Aren’t you going to ask me if I’ve remembered anything?”

  Anjessica said nothing in response, but clenched the material over her stomach in a fist. The motion seemed significant, for directly afterward, she turned as if to leave the doorway. Adam was much swifter than the pregnant woman, and he did not wish to let her leave. In an instant, he had reached her. He gripped her arm and pulled her back into the room, forcing her against the wall beyond the opening. His arms stretched to the wooden panels on both sides of her, locking her in place. Her breathing was uneven, and she refused to look at him, staring off to the side.

  “I want you to tell me the truth,” he said, knowing he had her trapped.

  The woman breathed through her nose in an uncomfortable and sullen way, like a child being forced to confess to the spilled milk. Several moments passed before she answered.

  “I can’t,” she said quietly.

  Anjessica had an attractive quality to her, but Adam noted that she looked better from a distance. Up so close, he was able to realize the small imperfections of her face. Her eyes were too close together, and there were fine lines putting parentheses on her mouth. He took in these things, but her appearance meant little to him now. It was what was inside her mind that he needed.

  “You will tell me what I want to know,” he assured her. She had answers that he knew he could get at. He may not have been able to pry them from Irving or the maids, but this woman could not hope to escape him. “Whose room is this?”

  Reluctantly, she said: “Baltus, but he rarely stays here.”

  “Why has he been watching us?”

  At this, she wavered in her answer. “To make sure…” She paused and wouldn’t go on.

  “Of what?”

  Clenching her eyes tightly as if there were pain, she opened them again, finally daring to look up at his face.

  “I told you: I can’t.”

  Adam shook his head, not liking the short answers he was getting from her. But were these all she was going to give, no matter how much he pushed? He lowered his head in exasperation and in doing so, could not but let his eyes fall on her large belly.

  She’s pregnant. It was a strange thought, considering that he already knew this fact, but looking down, it was as if he’d realized it for the first time. Anjessica was pregnant, but in his dream—his memory—where she’d mounted him, she hadn’t been.

  “How long have I been in this house?” he asked quietly, considering the truths behind what he’d just discovered. “Do I belong here? Am I…”

  He gulped, as if the words he were about to utter were bile on the brink of an upsurge. But at this point, he had to let his darkest suspicions through.

  “Am I a LaCroix?” he asked her. By his own tone, he knew he was afraid of the answer.

  For a moment, he thought he saw a flash of pity in her green eyes. Still, she did not give him an acceptable answer, not letting anything escape her lips, and Adam had had enough.

  “What did they do to me?” he shouted into her face. “Why don’t I know who I am!”

  Anjessica was startled. He saw her tremble. There was no doubt that she was afraid of him, and perhaps intimidation was the way he should go, because she responded.

  “If you want answers, Baltus’s journals will tell you everything you want to know,” she obliged him. “He’s kept a record of everything.”

  “What everything?” Adam demanded.

  “You,” she said. “And her.”

  Baltus had journals detailing the events that had brought them here? The when, how, and why?

  “Where can I find the journals?”

  She breathed a sigh of regret, a woman sworn to secrecy who knew she would have to break her oath. Did this mean something to her, or was she simply afraid to reveal the truth to him?

  “Tell me,” he coaxed, trying a gentler approach. After all…

  Standing there in the quiet, Adam reached out and let himself touch her protruding stomach. There was a groaning sound from within, and Anjessica released a shuddering breath in a note somewhere between pain and ecstasy when the child inside her responded to his touch. He felt it move, and he suddenly remembered what Celia had told him about it.

  Her stomach is black, rotten.

  At the remembrance, he backed away from her, and saw that tears were beginning to spill down the woman’s face.

  “Look over there, in the corner,” she
directed him, wiping tears with the handkerchief. “Just leave me out of this. I don’t want it anymore. Irving can go the hell.”

  Sniffling, Anjessica turned her back on him and left the room. He watched her go, feeling unrightfully sentimental toward her, but he separated himself from it the instant he turned from the door.

  The place she had indicated was an empty corner near the window, and the only thing significant about it was a long tapestry that hung on the wall depicting—oddly enough—an image of Eden’s garden with a naked and statuesque Adam and Eve in the midst. He moved toward it, lifting it out of the way. The cloth was hiding an opening in the wall that led on to a hidden stairway beyond. Certain that he would find his answers beyond the darkness of the passage, Adam proceeded, disappearing behind the tapestry, and not caring who he would meet along the way.

  When Celia opened her eyes and noticed the sunlight that was coming through the window, the first thing she did was reach for Adam. Her hand slid across the mattress, searching the soft sheets, but found nothing there. She met only emptiness beside her and a warm place in the bed that had already begun to cool. She sat up abruptly, searching the room for him, but he was not there. The sun had shown its face, and he was gone.

  After the night they’d had, she’d expected to wake up beside him. It may not have been the first time they’d shared intimacy together, but it was the first she remembered. He should have been beside her to smile and break the day in a subtle moment of remembrance, but no. He had left her, and she felt grossly mistreated.

  Maybe it was only a nice thought that I should be able to have him with me. Should I know him better than that by now?

  Sighing, but ordering herself not to cry, Celia got up from the bed. She reached to the floor, grasping for the dress she’d worn the night before, seeing that it was still damp and stained with Maynard’s blood, but she felt like a martyr, and so she put it back on. She didn’t even bother to run her fingers through her hair in order to make herself look more presentable. With her arms wrapped around herself, Celia left the room. She was in a daze, and had no thought to a destination.