by Josie Litton
“You violated that when you tried to take his head off! After that, he had every right to take your life instead. Sparing you merely showed his contempt for anyone who dares to challenge him.”
Sebastian hesitated. Slowly, as though venturing into unchartered territory, he said, “I disagree. I think he did it because of her. He didn’t want her to see what he really is.”
“Let us hope so,” his father replied. “If he does truly care for her, she will make him vulnerable.”
I had heard enough. My horror and revulsion at the thought that Adam would be harmed, even killed because of me blotted out every other consideration. I had to act.
Looking around quickly, I saw several small, portable welding torches laid out on a table. Pushing any thought of their intended purpose from my mind, I lifted one and examined it carefully.
To my great relief, it was almost identical to those I had used in an art class during my junior year, Metal Sculpture 101. The class had been fun; I’d really enjoyed it. Never in my wildest dreams--or nightmares--could I have imagined that I’d also acquired a skill that might save my life. And possibly Adam’s as well.
But I couldn’t fool myself. As a weapon, the welding torch was far from ideal. For one thing, I’d have to be very close to use it. And then it wouldn’t last long. I’d have one chance, no more.
The beating of my heart became a metronome counting off the passing seconds. Distantly, I thought that it should have been beating faster. But inside I was eerily calm, unflinching in my acceptance of what I had to do.
I was still thinking about that when gunfire rang out above my head, followed by the shouts of men and, very quickly, their screams.
Chapter Seven
Adam
We came down the spiral metal staircase that led from the ground floor of the private home in Montmartre that Eloise had guided us to. The residence was unremarkable in every regard except one; it concealed a portal to the city of darkness that lay deep below the city of light.
Like so many cities in the Old World, Paris was a palimpsest, layer added upon layer, thickening over time. The present, where we dwelled, was only a thin veneer on top of all the sins that had gone before, inevitably to be covered over by those who came after us.
Most Parisians gave no thought to what was under their feet, below the Metro and the sewer lines, below even the jumbled bones of their ancestors stacked in ghoulish displays for the shocked delight of tourists. Only a very few ever ventured into the hundreds of miles of hidden tunnels that ran like glistening arteries through the darkness. Following hand-drawn maps, the ‘cataphiles’, as they called themselves, forded buried canals to swim in ancient quarries filled with crystal clear blue water. In passageways beyond, they partied, staged performances, built candle-draped altars, and created their own versions of cave art.
None of them suspected that the world they boasted was uniquely their own held secrets they would never glimpse, places accessible only to a tiny elite that had their own reasons for preserving them.
“I recognize the mural,” Eloise had said.
“What mural?” I asked.
“See that flash of red, just there, through the open door?”
I looked intently and saw the hint of a writhing limb and a mouth gaping in a silent scream.
“I could be wrong,” she said, “but I think I’ve seen that before.”
She was trembling slightly, her coolness burned away by her encounter, however brief, with the monster. I took no comfort from that. Nothing mattered to me except the moment. Grace and I were both trapped within it. I was determined that she, at least, would escape.
The staircase with its tight coil like the inside of a nautilus shell was far from ideal; it spread my assault force out in a single line and lessened the advantage of surprise. But we seized it all the same, exploding into a room where armed men in fatigues were gathered, weapons leaning at their sides as they smoked and drank coffee. Ninety percent of war is waiting, it’s said. Almost all the rest is better not remembered.
We were shooting as we came, quick bursts of bullets shredding the air. In the tight confines of the space, there was nowhere to run. It was over in minutes.
I took an instant to scan the room, saw that Sebastian wasn’t among the dead or dying, and kept going. Two chambers farther on, I found him, standing directly in front of Grace. Incongruously after the video I had seen, she was dressed in white, her hair tumbling around her shoulders, and her expression calm. She looked, I thought, like a bride. Or a sacrifice.
As I stared at her, she turned her head. For an instant, our gazes met.
Hers said, “There you are. I’ve been expecting you.”
Later, I would reflect on that even as I told myself that I had to be wrong, I couldn’t have seen what I thought that I had. Even so, in the most hidden places of my dark soul, I would cling to it.
But first--
Sebastian turned, the automatic weapon he held rising in his hands, aiming directly at me.
Blue fire arched from Grace’s hand directly into his face. He screamed, dropping the weapon, and reeled backward. But only for a moment. Too quickly, his hands lashed out, closing around her slender throat. Her body jerked as he lifted her inches off her feet. The fire sputtered and died. Her fingers clawed at the vise of flesh and bone that was slowly strangling her.
I lifted my own weapon to fire and realized that I could not. Grace stood between me and the man I had come to kill.
No matter. It was better this way. I threw the weapon aside and leaped. We crashed to the floor, all three of us together. I heard the satisfying crunch of bone as my fist shot upward, angling under his ribs. The blow drove all the air out of him. He opened his mouth to scream but could only manage a grunt. Agony and lack of oxygen together made him loosen his grip. Grace tore herself free and rolled away.
Relief flashed through me and was as quickly gone. Even with my men taking control, she was still far from safe. That gave me all the incentive I needed.
Sebastian was strong, I had to give him that, and fueled by rage and pain. But he was no match for the monster.
It should have been over quickly. Would have been if I hadn’t dragged it out. With a weapon or without, I could kill a man in seconds. But I kept Sebastian alive long enough to feel his cheekbones shatter under my fists and savor his screams.
Blood sprayed in my eyes, almost blinding me. It didn’t matter. In my mind, I could still see Grace in the tank. That would have been bad enough but the reality was far worse. Another image taunted me: Grace in the cell where I had put her weeks before.
Grief and guilt burned through my veins. I welcomed the agony when Sebastian, in a last desperate effort, clawed the wound on my shoulder open again. Pain ripped through me, igniting along every nerve, coalescing at the base of my spine and roaring up to short-circuit the higher functions of my brain, leaving only the most primitive in charge.
I grabbed his head and slammed it into the stone floor of the chamber. Once…twice…again. The back of his skull turned to pulp and his eyes stared at me sightlessly. Still I wasn’t satisfied. More blood sprayed over my face and hands. Some of it, maybe even most was mine. I didn’t care. In the distance, I heard Grace’s voice pleading but lost in the red fog of fury, I couldn’t stop.
Not until powerful arms pulled me away, holding me fiercely even as I struggled.
“Enough,” Rolf said. The note of sympathy in his voice--even pity--was jarring. It brought me back abruptly to myself. The full weight of what had just happened slammed down on me. I had saved Grace but in the process, I had also done the unthinkable; she had seen the monster. There could be no going back from that.
Distantly, I heard my heart pounding as though it was about to burst. Darkness was closing in from all sides. I stopped fighting and let it come.
Chapter Eight
Adam
The bleating of a goat woke me. Not the plaintive whinnying of a kid or the reassuring nicker of
its mother. This was the full-throated complaint of a male pissed off about something or other. Or just deciding that he liked the sound of his own voice. When the clamor had gone on for several minutes, I opened my eyes.
The ceiling above me was crossed by dark wooden beams and bands of sunlight. Off to one side, I could make out tall windows standing open with a wrought-iron balcony beyond them. Gauzy curtains fluttered on the fragrant air.
Not the Swiss clinic again, thank God. But where?
The thought stirred that I knew this place. Moreover, I associated it with a rare sense of relaxation and ease. Even of happiness.
Despite the goat.
He didn’t go unanswered. The squawks of the ducks he’d disturbed quickly built into a cacophony.
A memory flashed through my mind: A gaggle of downy white bottoms waddling at speed into a pond sprinkled with green lily pads. Beyond, neat fields of grape vines running down gently sloping hillsides. And in the far distance, the broad span of the Rhone flowing toward its rendezvous with the Mediterranean.
I fought to sit up. My body felt too heavy and there was something wrong with my left side. Thick white bandages covered my shoulder. My arm was bent at the elbow and strapped to my chest, immobilized.
My mind cleared with brutal speed. Pain that had nothing to do with any physical injury roared through me.
Grace…
Fighting to breathe, I threw back the covers, swung my legs over the side of the bed, and managed to stand. My legs wobbled but I made it to the window and looked out over a landscape that was achingly familiar despite my having seen it all too rarely.
I was in Provence, in the farmhouse my parents had bought shortly after they married. It was their retreat from the world, a place where the constant demands and responsibilities of the family were held at bay. As a child, I had believed it might be heaven.
Rolf must have done this, spiriting me out of Paris while I was still unconscious and taking me to the one place where he thought I might find some measure of comfort. A forlorn hope, all things considered. My chest constricted; I had to force myself to breathe.
Where was Grace? The question mocked me. After all she had endured, she had to be as far from me as she could get. But what did that mean exactly? Had she gone back to New York and the clutches of her family? Or was she some place where she could recover and build a new life?
Wherever she had gone, the only certainty was that I would find a way to protect her from every source of harm. And this time that included me. The confrontation with Sebastian had ripped the scales from my eyes. I was the greatest danger to her. I was what she needed protecting from. No matter how much that tore me up inside, I couldn’t do less for her. No sacrifice was too great to keep her safe.
I didn’t dare to think beyond that. Any further and I was staring into a future too bleak and barren to be faced. As it was, the pain was scarcely bearable, a burning agony inside me worse than anything I had ever felt before.
The goat was acting up again, making himself heard above the ducks. I latched onto the sound, trying to focus on it and the world beyond. But the darkness inside me was too strong; with every beat of my heart, I felt it pulling me under.
A woman appeared suddenly from around a corner of the house. She was tall and slender, wearing a short, sleeveless dress the color of ripe wheat. Her limbs were slim and lightly tanned. Backlit by the sun, her features were cast in shadows.
“Be quiet!” she said to the goat. “You’ll disturb him!”
Her voice rippled through me, sweet, warm honey flowing over all the ragged edges. I stiffened, sure that I had to be hallucinating. She couldn’t be--
The goat stared at her for a moment, then turned away and deliberately began nibbling the grass, as though the idea of silence was its own. The ducks in the pond flapped their wings briefly before settling back down. When tranquility once again reigned, the woman heaved a sign. She lifted the weight of mahogany hair from the back of her neck, rolled it in a twist and gathered it high on her head. Even at a distance, I could see the bruises on her throat.
My mind came to a full stop. Sheer, desperate instinct took over. If I was in the grip of mad delusion, I wanted to be as far into it as I could get.
I crossed the room, threw open the door, took the stairs two at a time and burst out onto the side of the house where the woman was standing. Abruptly, I thought to slow down but it was too late; she saw me. Rather than recoil, she merely started at my sudden appearance.
At once her chin went up. A frown played across her eyes. “You’re supposed to be resting,” Grace said. Despite the note of sternness in her voice, she sounded more relieved than annoyed.
I stopped and stared at her, afraid to get too close, afraid not to. She was there, she was real. And she wasn’t turning away from me in disgust and horror. Somehow, despite everything, I’d been given a reprieve, however short that might be. It was the closest I had ever come to witnessing a miracle. A sense of reverence filled me. I savored it even though it scared the hell out of me. Maybe literally.
My gaze swept over her. She was alive, whole, and seemingly unhurt except for the bruises that even now made my fists clench with the need to punish Sebastian further. Her beauty--inside and out--drew me away from such thoughts. She was so achingly lovely. Everything I could ever want, living, breathing, right in front of me.
Hunger roared through me, desire so powerful that I barely stopped myself from taking hold of her. Only the fact that I had no right to do so prevented me. That and the shadows under her eyes. She looked exhausted.
“Shouldn’t you be as well?” I asked. Miracles were all well and good but I wasn’t about to put up with her not taking care of herself.
A reluctant smile curved her lips. “According to Rolf, I’m supposed to be lying on a chaise lounge, reading a book or better yet, napping.”
The very ordinariness of her response made me feel almost intoxicated. In that state, I responded with giddy relief.
“Yet here you are, going head-to-head with a Billy goat. Which of you do you think is more stubborn?”
She shrugged. “He stopped, didn’t he?”
Her eyes never left me. I felt their touch to the marrow of my soul. She knew that I was sleeping in the room above. She didn’t want me to be disturbed. So she’d come to confront the goat, despite her own weariness.
People did things for me--served me, obeyed me, even in rare cases such as Rolf went far beyond that. But this was different. It was what a woman would do for her man, a wife for her husband, wrapped in domestic intimacy that almost undid me.
I had to make light of it or lose the rawly new resolve that I clung to.
“Because of the ducks,” I said. “Anyone would be scared of them.”
The sweetest sound I’d ever heard was her laughter. “You might be right,” she allowed. “They win on attitude.”
I walked toward her, drawn by an attraction so intense and primal that it felt woven into the very fabric of the universe. Belatedly, I remembered that I was barefoot and wearing only a pair of loose gray pajama bottoms. One arm was useless, I was still none-too-steady on my feet, and I probably looked like hell. None of that mattered. Only Grace did.
“Rolf is the one who’s right.” I said. “You should be resting.”
“So should you.”
I thought of the empty bed above and fought a shudder. “I will if you will.”
She hesitated a moment, then nodded. I didn’t offer my hand and she didn’t reach out for it. But we walked together back the way she had come, to the secluded pool set a short distance from the house and screened by tall Lombardy pines. It would be evening soon. The air was filled with the scents of resin mingling with the perfume of late blooming lavender. Somewhere in the nearby bushes, a cuckoo called.
Grace settled on a recliner. I took the one beside her. Lying down was awkward with one arm not working but I managed. For a time, just being that close to her was enough. I hoped that sh
e’d drift off but when I looked at her, she was watching me, her gaze unfathomable.
Seeking some--any--distraction from the ravenous intensity of my need for her, I asked, “How long have we been here?”
Softly, she said, “Since yesterday evening. Rolf got us out of Paris.”
“He’s a good man.” Despite the fact that I suspected the arm brace was overkill, intended to make the point that if I couldn’t restrain myself, nature would do it for me.
Grace nodded. “I don’t know how he managed it.”
She waved a hand as though to fend off a memory that rose all the same. “There were bodies everywhere and there had been so much gunfire. I thought someone would have reported it but there was no sign of the police.”
I could have told her that the authorities would have been warned from on high to stay away until the scene was sanitized, after which they could solemnly report that there was no sign that anything untoward had occurred.
Instead, I said, “There was no need to worry about them.”
She shot me a quizzical look. “It was you I was worried about.”
The monster raised its head and stared at her in bewilderment.
“Why?” I meant why would she possibly care but of course, she took it differently.
Her lips parted on an exhalation of surprise. “You were hurt…bleeding… Your wound had re-opened.”
That was what troubled her? After what she had seen me do?
When it became obvious that I was at a loss for words, she rushed on. “Why did you have to deal with Sebastian yourself? You brought an army with you. Wasn’t that enough?”
Enough to let another man usurp my right and protect her in my place? As overwhelmed as I was with gratitude that she was still there, I couldn’t lie to her. Not even if the truth took us onto dangerous ground.
“I needed to kill Sebastian myself. It was personal, not because I’m the head of the family but because of what he did to you.”
