Love Lies (Tails from the Alpha Art Gallery Book 3)

by Cynthia St. Aubin

  My mouth hung open in pure, dazzled shock.

  Slick wood floor gave way to carpet thick enough to cushion every echo, submerging the room into a breathless kind of peace. An enormous four-poster canopy bed formed the room’s focal point, the lush wood-paneled walls a reflection of the tapestries and priceless masterworks we’d encountered in the hall.

  As if drawn by a magnet, I floated over to the bed letting my fingers explore the intricate carvings. A story unfurled itself beneath my fingertips. Mermaids and sailors, faeries and knights, angels, demons, flowers, tree branches, all offering themselves up to my curious touch.

  My hands fell to a green satin bedspread and brushed the tassels of an army of bed pillows. “This is lovely,” I said.

  “You haven’t even seen the best part.” Mark crossed the room and tugged a gilded rope attached to the wall opposite the bed. Forest green curtains parted, a giant panoramic window.

  The landscape unfolded beyond them like a living painting. The carpet of green ended abruptly at insistent rocks. Beyond them, the ocean shifted in endless brushstrokes of green, gray, blue, and white.

  Padding across the sumptuous carpet, I joined Abernathy, where side by side, we surveyed the countryside of his birth.

  “Thank you,” I said.

  “For what?” he asked.

  “For bringing me here. For giving me this room.”

  Amusement lifted his lips into a smile. “As if I had a choice.”

  “You could have said no,” I pointed out.

  “I did, as I recall.” I saw his smile in my peripheral vision.

  “Well, yes. But I wouldn’t be here if you really meant it. You could have made me stay, and you didn’t.”

  “I try to give you what you want, when at all possible.”

  What I wanted at that particular moment was to have Abernathy naked and sweaty in that giant, sumptuous bed.

  Mark cleared his throat in the adorably official manner that usual preceded a serious announcement. “There’s something I need to talk to you about.”

  “Oh, don’t worry. I already promised Allan. No jumping. No hugging. No stealing food from other people’s plates and/or hiding it in my purse,” I said, ticking each forbidden action off my outstretched fingers. “And under no circumstances am I to ask famous artists or writers if they want to make out.”

  I flatter myself to think the slightly bemused expression on Abernathy’s face was fondness. The miraculously wrinkle-free fabric of his button-up shirt tightened over his chest as he took a deep breath. “Perhaps we ought to sit down for this discussion.”

  Uh-oh.

  Together, we surveyed the seating options. A brocaded chaise longue before the SUV-sized fireplace. Two intricately carved but severely straight-backed chairs on either side an end table that probably cost more than my entire college education.

  And…the bed.

  I lifted an eyebrow at him in a silent challenge.

  Abernathy tucked his hands in the pockets of his criminally well-cut trousers. “I’m perfectly capable of controlling myself in the face of temptation.”

  That made one of us.

  “After you,” I invited.

  This had less to do with deference and more to do with the rear view of the aforementioned trousers.

  We crossed the sumptuous Persian rug with its tangle of forbidden forest colors. Languishing rose petals. Dead leaves. Weathered grapes.

  Abernathy managed to seat himself on the waist high mattress without even having to do a cheek-lift. I, pragmatic creature that I am, availed myself of the small wooden set of stairs at the bed’s base. Opting for safety separation, I crawled up to the headboard. It would give me a good six feet of separation should Abernathy leap at me.

  Or vice versa.

  Snagging one of the many throw pillows, I hugged it to my chest and hunched over, elbows resting on my thighs. “So, what’s up?”

  “While you’re here at Castle Abernathy, you’re going to experiences some—” he paused, clearly seeking a word that wouldn’t freak me the fuck out “—changes.”

  “Changes,” I repeated. “What kind of changes?”

  The buttery afternoon light filtering in through the window behind him limned his hair with a corona of gold as he sat there, considering.

  “There are places in the world with a will of their own and a long memory. Castle Abernathy is one of those places. For close to a thousand years my ancestors have lived in these halls, and as a result, those halls bear their signature. Their life force, if you will.”

  “K,” I said. “I think I’m following you. But I don’t quite get how that would change anything for me.”

  He shifted to face me, angling his knee toward the center of the bed. “Speaking in energetic terms, like attracts like. And, you yourself have, in an unexpressed fashion, the kind of energy Castle Abernathy is attracted to.”

  “You’re saying that the castle itself is attracted to me?”

  “Maybe not you as much as it the transformative energy inside you. As a result, that energy will express itself in ways you might not be used to.”

  “Like my leg hair will go crazy, or I’ll have sudden urges to hump legs and bay at the moon?”

  Though, to be truthful, two out of three of those things already happened on the regular.

  “Maybe I’m not explaining this in the right way.” Abernathy scratched the darkening stubble above his crisp white collar. “Okay. Let’s think of it this way. What’s the difference between an acorn and an oak tree?”

  “Do we have to do riddles?” I sagged back against the pillows. “I’m having a very Alice in Wonderland moment right now.”

  “I really want you to think about this,” he said, fixing me with that dark, panty-dropping gaze.

  I blew air through my pursed lips, feeling entirely too exhausted to commit myself to riddles. “Time? And the right conditions.”

  “Exactly,” he said. “The acorn wants to become an oak. That is its purpose. It’s a compact container for an entire life that wants to come into being. The thing that makes you an heir is the same.”

  “You’re saying this…this thing that makes me an heir wants to me to change?”

  “I’m saying that every single cell in your body is like that acorn. Now, what would happen if you dropped an acorn in a field that had nourished a whole forest of oaks?”

  “As cute as this little enigmatic quiz is, I’m jet-lagged and in massive need of a nap. How about you just tell me what’s going to happen?”

  Abernathy stood, walking toward the wide picture windows. “Whatever powers you’ve been beginning to develop while you’re around me will be amplified.”

  “Like it was when Allan’s blood was in my system?” After my post-Wilde transfusion, not only was I capable of tossing humans around like so much meat confetti, I had pretty much gone flying at Abernathy crotch-first about every other nanosecond.

  “Worse,” he said.

  Acidic panic spread in my stomach. Worse was not a word I loved in any context. “Worse how?” I asked, my mouth metallic from adrenaline.

  “This time it’s not a foreign body influencing you. It’s the you that you would be if you chose to complete your transformation. All your hopes, all your dreams, all your desires. Translated to their purest forms and fed by infinite power with which to acquire them.”

  “Everything I want, and the power to obtain it? But that would make me a...a monster.”

  “Welcome to my world.” Mark gave me a small, sad smile. “Which brings me back to why I brought this up in the first place.”

  “And that would be?” I picked at the silky tassel on the corner of one of the pillows.

  Abernathy caught me with the full force of that whiskey in the sunlight gaze. “You might want to work on not thinking so loud.”

  “Thinking so loud?” Talking, I could understand. I wandered about with a filter like swiss cheese, my mouth a direct conduit to the freakshow circus of my brain. B
ut my thoughts? If those were broadcast wholesale, I’d be in deep sheep dip.

  “Sheep dip?” Abernathy asked, a wry grin twisting his lips.

  “Wait,” I said. “You could hear that?” Just how much of what went on my head did he have access to?

  “All of it, at the moment,” he answered.

  I clapped my hands over my ears, as if that could somehow stop information from leaking out of my head.

  “Normally, it’s like a radio station I can tune out,” Abernathy explained. “And I do. But here, it’s like a direct feed.”

  Well, fuck. How many times had I thought about riding him like a birthday pony since we’d arrived?

  “About twelve. I especially like the scenario involving the grand piano and an ice bucket.”

  “Okay, I officially don’t like this.”

  “Listen,” he said. “It’s not a completely constant thing. And I’m going to do my best not to listen. Just try to help me out, if you can.” He pushed himself off the end of the bed and moved toward the door. “I’m going to go check on everyone. Try to get some rest.”

  Rest.

  Right. Like that was going to happen.

  I sat in stunned silence, ideas buzzing around my head like blue-bottle flies. What would I, Hannalore Harvey, be like as a werewolf?

  I thought of the pure, thrilling ecstasy I’d felt every time I’d given in to bone-deep longing for Abernathy. I thought of the hungers, both physical and emotional. The colors, the sounds, the savage poetry and beauty of the world experienced through Abernathy’s painfully acute senses. I thought of the terrible sounds his body made when he’d transformed right in front of me in the gallery. The destruction he’d wrought both because of me and on my behalf.

  Could I do that?

  Could I be that?

  Too twitchy to sleep, I found my way into the bathroom, which, oddly enough, was larger than my entire studio apartment. Wall to wall marble, mirrors, and a shower boasting approximately 87 heads and jets. When I figured out how to adjust it to a setting that neither fire-hosed my eyeballs nor my nether-regions (though I made note of the latter for future reference), I stripped, scrubbed, wrapped myself in a fluffy towel, and padded back into my room.

  Not wanting to slip back into my wilted travel clothes, I wrestled my surly vintage suitcase over to an equally vintage trunk. There, I popped open the brass catch that never failed to snap my knuckle and opened the lid.

  There, looking up from the candy-colored mound of panties, was a face.

  Not just a face. A head.

  A woman’s this time. Heavy lids sank halfway down filmy brown eyes. Straight, dark brows slanted across the pale forehead beneath a wild corona of brown curls. It was the lips beneath a long, thin nose that gave her away. Angular and precise like they’d been carved from living porcelain by a surgeon’s scalpel.

  I didn’t need Joseph to identify this face. I’d seen it in countless 19th century paintings and grayscale film stills. From the paintings of Alfred Stevens, leading man in my master’s thesis about dangerous women in art.

  Sarah Bernhardt.

  Blood had leaked from her severed neck and stained several pairs of my white socks a bright crimson. Only at the edges had the color begun to darken to brown.

  My heart felt heavy in my chest. My face numb and my lips tingling.

  How was this my life?

  On wobbly legs, I walked over to the nightstand next to my bed and picked up my phone. Not wanting the mind-reading Mark to be involved and not knowing where Allan or Joseph were quartered, I tapped a quick and exceedingly strange text.

  There’s a head in my suitcase.

  Mere moments later Joseph and Allan came tumbling through the door like dominoes.

  Allan, who had traded his customary vest and button-up shirt for a smoking jacket, silk pajama bottoms, and gold monogrammed slippers, gazed down into the suitcase, his eyes puffy with sleep. “Weww, you got to ‘and it to them vampires. She looks bloody fabulous.”

  And she did. Even severed from the rest of her body, her iconic beauty remained as pure and timeless as a marble monument. She held us all in her thrall, even dead.

  Re-dead? Un-undead?

  Fucking vampires.

  “What I don’t understand is how she got here,” I said. “I mean, I feel like TSA would have been at least mildly concerned should they have discovered this in my luggage.”

  “When have you not had it with you?” Joseph asked, bending to take a closer look at the case’s contents.

  “We stopped at the pub in Edinburgh for lunch,” I said. “Also I did take a quick shower to rinse off the travel funk.”

  “This happened in the last half hour,” Joseph said, his voice grave.

  “And ‘ow do you figure?” Allan’s tone held as much wonder as genuine curiosity.

  Joseph plucked something out of the suitcase and tossed it to Allan, who received it with a mix of concentration and disgust.

  “The blood has only just started to dry around the edges.” Joseph carefully poked through the contents of my suitcase and I felt a rush of relief that I had opted not to bring my magic rabbit at the last second.

  “And when did you turn into Perry fuckin’ Mason?” Allan held up a black and white scrap of fabric and inspected it against the waning light from the windows overlooking the moors. The sun had crawled toward the green hills, leaving splashes of purple and orange to battle for the expanse of sky. “Wai’ a tick.” He squinted at the fabric. “Are those giraffes?”

  My heart sank in my chest with the inexplicable sadness that only the loss of a treasured everyday object could bring. “Not my favorite panties!”

  “’ere’s de head of a vampire in your suitcase, and you’re fussin’ over a pair of knickers?” Allan asked, a perfectly groomed eyebrow raised in curiosity.

  “I loved that pair,” I explained. “They were like a hug I could wear under my pants.”

  Using a slim finger, Allan sling-shotted the soiled panties back toward the suitcase. “I’m right sorry ‘bout your knickers, love. But I’m afraid we’ve got oursewves a bigger problem.”

  “Like the fact that those have been discontinued and I will never be able to find another pair?” I asked.

  “Like the fact that someone put this head in your suitcase sometime after we arrived at the castle.”

  Ice water seeped down my spine at the thought of someone stealing into my room while I showered. Head in hand, listening to me warbling Patsy Cline through the door amongst that spattering water.

  “I’ll ask Mark ‘ooh’s on the property,” Allan said.

  “Speaking of which.” Joseph clipped my suitcase closed. “I’d better take care of the luggage before any other guests arrive.”

  “Bring back what you can,” I called after him.

  “I’ll go with ‘im,” Allan offered, shuffling toward the door. “I know a fing or two about getting blood out of fabric.”

  When they were gone, I reluctantly slid back into my used tank top and panties, and flopped facedown on the gigantic boat of a bed.

  Under the watchful gaze of a thousand unblinking, lacquered eyes, I surrendered to a black-brained sleep.

  I awoke in pure, mortal terror.

  Unable to breathe. Unable to move. Unable to scream.

  It was neither day, nor night, but some hellish unidentifiable interval in between. Not light enough to see, not dark enough not to.

  Something cold brushed the soles of my feet and began a slow, sinister journey upward. Gripping my ankles, stalking slowly up my calves, slithering up the insides of my thighs and over my hips.

  Mute, suffocating, panicking, I couldn’t so much as twitch as it licked its way up my stomach and settled itself on my chest. Faceless, formless, ancient.

  Looking at me.

  I felt its regard on my face like the tingling of a numb limb, knowing instinctively when it moved to my hair, my eyes, my mouth.

  My throat.

  A touch as lig
ht as the tip of a feather began at the indentation at the base of my throat and slowly slid upward, ending beneath my chin. There, it grew to the sort of gentle pressure a lover might apply to turn your mouth to theirs.

  The chill sank downward, circling my neck like a scarf.

  Then, tightening.

  Beneath that inexplicable, deadening grip, my heart beat hard enough for me to feel it against my ribs, my oxygen-starved brain beginning to shrink my vision to a single darkening point.

  Hot tears leaked from the corners of my eyes and ran down my temples. Pooling in my ears.

  The scream I couldn’t release vocally tore loose within my mind. I imagined it echoing off the rough stone walls like a singular, violent choral note as I sank deeper into the circling black.

  Just as I began to go under, the doors to my room flew wide, and all at once, I was free.

  The pressure vanished and I felt the strange hot surge of blood rushing into my head. I lay tangled in the sweat-soaked sheets, the canopy of the four-poster bed with its embroidered stars exactly as it had been when I’d fallen asleep.

  Abernathy rushed in, wild-eyed and wild haired.

  “Hanna?” he said, rushing over to the bed. “What happened? Are you all right?”

  Clearly, my mental gymnastics had roused him from an equally deep sleep.

  I sat up, panting as I clutched the silky sheets to my chest, trying to find words for what I had just experienced. “I don’t know,” I said. “I woke up, and this, this…thing was on top of me.”

  “What did it look like?” Abernathy seated himself on the edge of the bed next to me, the depression in the mattress rolling me slightly toward him.

  “It didn’t look like anything,” I said. “It didn’t have a face, or a…a body.”

  Even in the half-light, I could see Abernathy’s face take on a too-familiar skeptical expression. “It didn’t have a body?”

  “No. But it was on top of me and it was crushing me and I couldn’t breathe.”

  “Sleep paralysis,” Abernathy said, relief lightening his expression. “It’s where your brain wakes up before your body—”