Jasmyn

by Alex Bell

  ‘Hey, careful with that!’ I heard Jaxon say. ‘We haven’t got an endless supply of those, you know, and I don’t fancy being stuck down here in the dark.’ The torch was picked up and switched back on. ‘You didn’t break it at least,’ Jaxon said. Then he added, ‘You don’t look too good. Is there something—’

  ‘I’m perfectly all right!’ Ben snapped, and I heard him snatch the torch back. ‘Why don’t you just shut up for a while? If the swansong sings we need to make sure we can hear it.’

  ‘Whatever you say, Ben,’ Jaxon replied mildly.

  To my horror, I realised that they had continued their walk and were heading right towards me. I stared around frantically but didn’t have time to make a run for it into the next chamber. So I hurriedly crouched down and pressed my back even harder against the wall, utterly still, my heart beating painfully fast, the pulse of it ringing loudly in my ears as Jaxon and Ben passed through the arch of the doorway and right into the chamber mere paces away from me.

  I kept utterly motionless, not even daring to breathe and wishing to God that I had black hair and skin rather than being so white and conspicuous. All either of them had to do was glance in my direction and they would see me. I had no idea what they would do but I was keenly aware that there were two of them and one of me, that I was deep underground where no one would hear me no matter how loudly I shouted and that I would not even be able to phone for help as there wasn’t the remotest chance of getting any reception this far underground.

  And one other thing I now knew for sure was that I had severely - severely - misjudged Ben. After so many years of knowing his family I had realised that he was quiet and antisocial, but it had never in my wildest dreams occurred to me that he was so cold, calculating and murderous. I cringed to think how many times I’d been alone with him since all this began. And now I was trapped down here in the catacombs with him and Jaxon and with no hope of escape until the morning.

  Thankfully they walked past without looking in my direction. I kept my eyes glued to their backs as they walked through into the next chamber. My body was frozen and it required a great effort of will to make myself move. I had to find somewhere to hide and could only pray that I would remain undiscovered during the night. Moving as quickly as I could without making any noise, I turned the corner and slipped back into the room they had just come from, reaching out with both hands to gently guide myself along the wall of human bones. Ben and Jaxon had taken their torch with them and I didn’t dare turn mine on or relight my candle in case they noticed. The only advantage I had was that I knew they were down here but they were unaware of me. For the moment.

  I tried desperately not to panic, but the reality of it was that I had managed to trap myself down in the catacombs with two very dangerous men. What if I never got out? There were so many hours still to go before the morning when they’d be open once again. What if I was discovered by one of them first? Only a small portion of the catacombs were open to tourists - many of the underground passageways were shut off. It would be perfectly easy to hide a body down here that wouldn’t be discovered for years and years, if ever ...

  I shook my head in an attempt to clear it. I mustn’t think that way. I had to remain calm. Just because Ben obviously regretted not killing Liam before he died of natural causes didn’t mean he would kill me. Surely if that had ever been his intention he would already have done it. After all, he had had opportunity enough. All he wanted was the swansong. I probably didn’t matter much to him either way.

  I wished to God that I’d never left the small room I’d been in earlier, for neither Ben nor Jaxon would have been likely to go in there and I would have been tucked out of the way then. But even if I were now able to find my way back to it, or somewhere like it, I couldn’t risk the gate making any noise when I slipped through. At the same time, I didn’t want to simply stay in the bone-filled chamber in case they should come back. But I didn’t have much choice. It was pitch black once again and if I tried to move I was sure to knock something over and make a hideous racket. So I quietly sat down, far back from the door, beside the skeletons of the dead, and prayed that I would not be joining them any time soon.

  As I sat there, my ears and eyes straining into the darkness, I told myself that it was okay. I had been lucky - they didn’t know I was here. The catacombs branched off and doubled back on each other. I would always be alerted to Ben and Jaxon’s return well in advance by the light of their torches. When they came back, I would simply have to dodge into another chamber, keeping one step ahead of them and staying just out of sight - like a petrified mouse fleeing from two fat, sleek, arrogant cats, I thought to myself angrily.

  But the plan went wrong almost at once. For I was not expecting Jaxon and Ben to split up. When the glow of distant torchlight touched my chamber about half an hour later - just enough to take the edge off the darkness - and I could dimly make out the tread of footsteps, I assumed that it was Jaxon and Ben returning together. I got silently to my feet, shaking the stiffness out of my limbs, and then crept into the next chamber. I walked through it, keeping my fingers lightly in contact with the wall of bones to guide my way as I found the doorway and slipped into the next room.

  And that was where it all went wrong.

  As soon as I was inside, a voice I recognised spoke suddenly out of the blackness:

  ‘You’re not supposed to be here!’

  I yelled in alarm, shocked to hear someone speaking to me when it was so dark that they should not have been able to even see me.

  I had had no inkling whatsoever that there was anyone there until then and jumped back in fright, knocking straight into a wall of skulls, cringing as they landed noisily on the ground around me. The familiar words rang in my head and I remembered hearing them in the cemetery just the night before - spoken by the male statue with Liam’s voice ...

  Hope burst through me so savagely that it was physically painful. A torch was turned on and light was suddenly being shone in my face. I looked past it to the person standing before me and joy exploded in my chest - for the man holding the torch was Liam.

  21

  The Black Rose

  It was Liam! He was right there before me - real and alive again! I reached a shaking hand out to touch him—

  ‘I never thought you’d actually come down here,’ he said, sounding horrified.

  The voice froze me where I stood. For it wasn’t Liam as I had first thought - of course it wasn’t - it was Ben. The dim light and the fact that he’d spoken the words I had heard the statue speak in the graveyard had tricked me for a moment but, now that he spoke again, I knew that this certainly was not my husband and joy was replaced with terror as Ben lunged at me desperately.

  Shocked into action, I lashed out at him viciously before he could touch me and, by pure luck, I managed to catch him on the chin with my fist. He staggered back and dropped the torch, which went rolling across the floor. I rushed towards the door but before I could get there he caught hold of the collar of my coat to drag me back, one arm clamping across my stomach and the other around my shoulders as he pinned me to him and hissed in my ear.

  ‘Hold still, Jasmyn! ’

  His fingers dug into me painfully and I could hear the anger in his voice. I had never been so terrified in my life. Surely he was going to kill me. Why hadn’t I listened to Liam when he’d said that Ben was not to be trusted? Why hadn’t Liam made it clearer to me? Why hadn’t he come out and told me frankly that his older brother was a dangerous lunatic?

  I threw my head back hard, felt the crunch as I hit Ben’s nose.

  He didn’t let go, but his grip loosened just enough for me to get one of my arms free and elbow him in the stomach. He doubled up and I took advantage of the moment by grabbing one of the long bones and bringing it down hard over his head. It was not as effective a weapon as I had hoped for it was so old that it shattered over him, crumbling into dusty bits. Still, it was enough to bring him to his knees. I didn’t hang aro
und waiting for him to get up again but grabbed his torch and fled.

  I had barely passed into the next chamber when the swansong started. I needn’t have worried about not hearing it for it seemed to echo all the way through the underground caves with a music so sweetly perfect that there could be no doubt that something magical had made it. It was coming from close by and I followed the sound even though I knew that Jaxon - and Ben when he got to his feet - would be doing the same thing. It seemed to me that finding the swansong was my only chance of getting out of there, for once I had it, I could enchant the pair of them to stay well away from me ... Of course, I had no idea how to make it work and could only hope that it was as easy as waving a magic wand ...

  As I had predicted, the music was coming from one of the rooms marked with a distinguishing feature - there was a large plaque across one wall commemorating the Battle of the Château des Tuileries. In the right-hand corner was a semicircular display of long bones with four rows of skulls cutting across it at regular intervals. The music was coming from there.

  There was no time to be discreet about it - Ben or Jaxon could be upon me at any moment. I dropped the torch and then grabbed great armfuls of bones from the top of the stack to scatter about me on the floor. I did not think the rose would be buried very deep, for Liam would most likely have hidden it there when the catacombs were open during the day and therefore would have had to be relatively quick about it. I was about a quarter of the way down, just removing the second layer of skulls, when I glimpsed a black petal nestled between two bones and caught the familiar seductive scent I had smelled before.

  But the startling thing about it was that a word had been written on the petal in fine gold letters: Jasmyn. I frowned, reached out my hand towards it and was just about to pluck it from its bed of bones when Jaxon crashed into me from behind, knocking me right into the skulls, scattering them everywhere, clattering against each other noisily. He shoved me aside and grabbed the rather crushed black rose off the floor just as Ben ran into the room, blood smeared across his face from where I’d head-butted him.

  ‘I found it first!’ Jaxon shouted triumphantly. ‘And I’m not handing it over until the money is wired to my account!’

  Ben snorted a humourless laugh. ‘The truth is, Jaxon, I can’t pay you,’ he said, throwing up his hands. ‘Not a thing. I spent the lot on this search. I have nothing left whatsoever. I’m flat broke. In fact, I’m in debt. I’m on the verge of bankruptcy. Treasure hunting turned out to be a more expensive venture than I anticipated. ’

  Jaxon stared at him. ‘You lying bastard!’ he exclaimed. ‘Well, you’re not getting it until you fork over the money! Or perhaps I’ll just venture out onto the black market with it after all.’

  ‘No,’ Ben said quietly. ‘You won’t do that.’

  ‘Be reasonable! I’ve put a lot of money into this too!’

  ‘Tough,’ Ben said flatly. ‘You can easily afford to lose some of your ill-gotten gains, I dare say. Hand it over.’ And he held out his hand for it.

  But Jaxon tightened his grip on the black rose and took a step back.

  ‘All right,’ he said. ‘All right. I won’t find another buyer. We’ll come to some arrangement, Ben. You can pay me in instalments or—’

  ‘You don’t seem to understand,’ Ben said and, for the first time, I heard impatience in his voice. ‘I’m not paying you a thing, Jaxon. Not now, not ever. So hand it over. I’ve waited a long time for this.’

  Jaxon twisted the rose agitatedly by its stem. The light of the dropped torches on the floor gleamed off the lettering that I now realised was on every single petal. They were all the same as the one I had caught a glimpse of before - every one had Jasmyn written across it in delicate gold letters.

  ‘I could enchant you with it!’ Jaxon said, suddenly struck with a brainwave. ‘And force you to give me the money once you get it!’

  Ben’s teeth showed white in his face as his lips parted in a smile. ‘That won’t work on me,’ he said. ‘Here’s what I want you to do - first you’ll give me the rose, then you’ll go back to the entrance to the catacombs and wait until morning, when you’ll tell the security guards who find you that you stayed down here the night for a dare. Then you’ll never breathe a word about this to anyone and you’ll never come anywhere near me or Jasmyn ever again.’

  He stopped talking and looked at Jaxon who was standing there hesitating, clearly wrestling with himself about what to do. When several seconds went by and he still didn’t hand over the rose, Ben slowly bowed his head without another word. Jaxon glanced at me as if he thought I had any idea what was happening. I was half-standing, half-sprawled against the wall where the bones had been stacked until Jaxon knocked me into them. The light from the torches on the floor cast enough of a glow that when Ben lifted his head again just a moment later, I could clearly see the reason for Jaxon’s whimper of fear.

  Ben’s eyes were entirely red. From the whites to the pupils, they were a vivid scarlet. Jaxon took one look, threw down the black rose with a frightened cry, grabbed one of the torches and fled, leaving me there alone. Ben bent down and picked up the rose. As he straightened up I considered making a bolt for it too. It would mean running blindly into the catacombs in the pitch dark, for I couldn’t get to the torch behind Ben. But he was also blocking off the exit and would surely grab me if I made a run for it.

  As he turned around I found myself pressing my shoulder blades into the damp wall behind me, as if hoping I might pass straight through it. His eyes were still that murderous shade of red - like a devil straight from hell - and the question slipped from my lips despite my fear: ‘What are you?’

  Ben blinked and - at once - his eyes returned to their normal, human shade of brown. He took a step towards me and I grabbed a bone from the floor by my feet, braced to defend myself, trying to judge the angle from which he would lunge at me. When he moved his arm I flinched and tightened my grip on the bone, preparing to strike him.

  But he simply held the flower out to me.

  ‘Take it,’ he said quietly in a voice that was suddenly devoid of all the frightening coldness with which he’d spoken to Jaxon. ‘Please, Jasmyn. Just take it.’

  Perhaps he was mad. It certainly appeared that he was not completely human. My sweating hands clutched the long bone and for a moment I seriously considered smashing it over his head as hard as I could and then running after Jaxon. But something about his stance made me hesitate. He did not look like a dangerous attacker armed and ready for me to run or fight back. The way he held the rose out to me was as if it was the most beautiful bloom he had found in a field full of flowers that he had picked himself just so that he could give it to me. He was close enough that I could see the strange desperation in his bloodshot eyes.

  I looked down at the black rose, with my name written on every one of its dark petals. He was holding the stem so tightly that I could see lines of blood trickling through the fingers of his shaking hand. But when I held out my own fingers and cupped them around the head of the flower, Ben let go of the stem at once and took a step back.

  The petals were velvety smooth against my skin but I only had a bare second to notice before there was the sound of something breaking - like glass shattering. The rose fell apart in my grasp, all the petals fluttering loose to land at my feet before the stem turned to dust in my fingers. Then a memory rose so suddenly and unnaturally into my mind and with such vivid clarity that it was like it had happened only yesterday rather than more than twenty years ago.

  I was hunched miserably in the doorway on my first day of school, cringing at the names the other children had been calling me all day and trying as hard as I could to be invisible by sitting there and not moving and therefore not giving anyone a reason to rip viciously into me. But then a ball rolled into the doorway and stopped beside me. Hastily, I grabbed it with the intention of flinging it back out before anyone could come looking for it.

  But it was too late. A boy’s shoes had a
lready skidded around the corner and come to a stop in front of me. Miserably, I held the ball in the air, hoping he would just take it and go without saying anything horrible to me. The boy took the ball but stayed where he was, bouncing it on the spot. When I risked a glance at him, I saw that he was looking right at me and so I hurriedly lowered my head, trying not to do anything to provoke him, waiting for the dreaded question, ‘Are you a ghost?’

  Instead, after a moment, he said, ‘Are you a snow princess?’

  ‘Snow princess?’ I repeated - the words blurting out of my mouth before I remembered to be shy. ‘I ... don’t know.’

  ‘I think you are,’ he decided. He then promptly sat down cross-legged and rolled the ball towards me. We rolled it back and forth to each other across the tarmac until the bell rang to signal the end of break. Then we both stood up and I handed the ball back to him.

  ‘Thanks,’ he said, thrusting it into the pocket of his shorts. Then he said, ‘Do you want to play again at lunchtime?’

  I nodded shyly, a tiny glow of happiness - and relief - fluttering in my stomach at the thought of having someone to spend lunchtime with. He grinned at me and said, ‘I’ll bring the ball.’ As he turned towards the doors, he added over his shoulder, ‘My name’s Ben.’

  22

  Bewitchment

  The playground disappeared and another memory took its place. I was sitting hidden in the hay in my grandfather’s stables as a six year old, watching eagerly for faeries.

  ‘What did she look like again?’ Ben whispered.

  ‘Sshh,’ I hissed, poking him sharply in the ribs. ‘No talking.

  You’ll scare them all away.’

  To my relief, he obediently fell silent. Then the memory switched to the two of us riding along a bridle path as adults, with Mr Ed twitching his lips in response to Ben’s voice.