Soulless (Maiden of Time Book 2) (15 page)

Twenty-Nine

Mae

Mae led Alexia into the kitchen. A corner of the room with the fireplace had been cordoned off by a clothesline and a wide sheet. Behind the screen waited a tub filled with reflective ripples.

Burning wood popped in Alexia’s ears, no scampering of feet, no distant snoring. “Are you alone here? Have you no house-hand or husband?”

“I have a dog.”

“But none of the others?” A woman who functioned without a man dictating her life, Alexia marveled. She nimbly unbuttoned her overdress and slid it off, cringing at the crusted blood. “I do not mean to pry.”

“By all means, pry.” Mae circled around and assisted Alexia with her skirts, pulling the silky material away. “I should like it a great deal more than silence.” She paused, gathering the material together and searching the bloodstains with her fingers. “Some things are not as timeless as others.”

Sadness welled up in Alexia’s heart. Then Mae was one of the lasting creatures, like Nelly, like Ethel. “Have they been gone long, your family?”

Mae smiled, her head down. “I am not lonely here. Why, our brothers and sisters visit from across the globe, and I have housed more than a few children. You may have met my most recent boarder.” She draped the dress over the privacy line. “He appears but a boy, wee in size, but he is a young man who carries messages for your sweetheart.”

Images of a boy on horseback danced through her head, the lad who had visited Kiren’s house in the woods with regular news.

Mae loosened Alexia’s bustle and corset. “Your mother came to stay here. Helped me for a time.”

“
My
mother, Dana?”

“It was because of the nightmares.” Mae set the stained undergarments aside. “Poor child was plagued by nightmares. She hoped they would fade on scorched earth.”

“And did they?”

“Aye.”

Alexia stepped into the warm water, shivering. She would have given most anything for the nightmares to disappear when she first came of age—to not see people’s imminent death. She appreciated her mother’s need. “And this is where she met my father?”

Mae handed her a bar of soap and a wash rag. “He was a dashing young rogue, but she seemed to know him the first time he stepped through that door. My heart broke for her when he left.”

“But he returned.”

Mae nodded and sat down on an over-turned barrel. “They always return.”

Thirty

Compelled

Charles paced the upper hall, pausing once to glance out the window at the moonless sky. This secret house had been empty most the day—since shortly after his daughter disappeared. He didn’t like it.

Alexia was not yet married, which meant she should be under his care, and the eerie silence, the hushed voices, and rushing to and fro left him uneasy. Worst of all was the lack of answers.

A door in the hall slammed open and the woman with white hair stumbled out. Her eyes lit on him. “Baron Dumont, do you know where Nelly is?”

“Who?”

Her shoulders dropped. “The cook. And my name is Ethel, as you have clearly forgotten.”

“Right.” He scratched his head. It was not that he intended to be rude, but they were below his station, and his chances of speaking with any of them again—well, they were apparently increasing by the moment. Regardless, he intended to divorce all connections to them the instant this conflict ended.

At Ethel’s scowl he smoothed the disdain from his face. Here he was not the man who possessed land and governed. He was merely a guest and it was his duty to deport himself appropriately until such time as he could resume his proper place in society.

“You would do well to remember some of us can read minds.” Ethel winked.

He tensed. “You read my mind?”

“I read your face, but you had best exercise caution. Not all of us are forgiving.” Her smile communicated her good intentions in informing him, but the warning shot a panicky need through his knees to carry him far, far away from here.

“Your assistance is needed in the kitchen.” Ethel pulled the door shut.

His eyebrows shot up. “My assistance?”

“That is what I said.” She burst into a cloud of mist, the haze evaporating.

He crinkled his nose. It was not natural, not right, the way they moved through this world—even if she had saved him only a day ago.

He begrudgingly turned toward the stairs, but a muffled whimper carried through the closed door. Returning to the wood, he placed an ear against it.

A wisp of voice struck him, a groan.

“Who is in there?” he called.

A gasp. “Help me.” The pitiful whimper grabbed his heart.

A girl. A child.

Charles twisted the handle. He pressed the door back, revealing white oak-paneled walls and a solid-framed bed. Golden curls spilled across the bed, a small body curled in on itself.

He stepped closer. Gaunt lines cut across the child’s porcelain-doll face, her limbs trembling beneath frayed velvet. Charles remembered the days when Alexia was so slight, when he used to watch her run and play in the yard...an adolescent girl.

Brown eyes fluttered open and closed again. The girl (could he even think of her as a child?) possessed the most brilliant red lips he had ever seen, her lashes long and thick, the width of her broad cheekbones both sensual and slimming. The spice of nutmeg pulled him in, rooting a hunger for physical intimacy—the need to know if her flesh was as soft as it appeared.

Charles froze. What was wrong with him? He had not looked on a woman this way since Rosalind’s passing. And to view this girl in such a fashion...

Bewitched. It was the spell they cast over mortals. How he despised them! All of them.

And yet he couldn’t turn away.

“You are Alexia’s father,” the brazen soprano left his ears tingling. Her chocolate stare swallowed him, bitter and addicting.

Do not speak to it and it can have no power over you
.

The girl laughed, her throat catching in a cough. Her little body shook as she lifted her wrists into view, dual golden bracelets linking them together. Her lashes lifted, eyes pleading. “Help me.”

A hint of cinnamon—but softer and sweeter—breathed over him, leaving his mouth watering. His fists clenched. He needed to get away from her, to leave this bizarre craving behind.

“Help you?” he asked.

“Remove the gold.”

Charles stood back. There must be a reason she wore the bracelets, but how could a little decorative jewelry make any difference?

“Please.” Her voice caught, nearly breaking in a sob.

Charles couldn’t help himself. He reached out to unlatch the bangles, but there was no release mechanism.

He slipped a finger between the thin metal and her skin. Her breath caught. He met her consuming stare.

It was an avalanche and he’d been buried, pressed under layers of sweet earth, an interment he never wished to escape.

“Free me,” she whispered, lashes batting in slow motion.

He bent the bracelet, pinching it into a point and then twisting it in the opposite direction.

Snap.

Tears spilled down the girl’s cheeks as the metal fell away from her arms. Charles gasped. Her skin was charred black, two ribbons of ash around her wrists. Her fingers wrapped about his, warm and small. A trill of need rang into his veins, echoing in his ears and blocking out all but her.

Color had returned to her face, her cheeks rosy, her skin begging to be caressed. “I will never forget this, Charles Dumont.”

He swallowed.

She melted into a gentle haze, the fog embracing him before skittering away and leaving him cold.

“No!”

He twisted to the doorway where Ethel stood.

“What have you done?”

Thirty-One

Family

The mirror hung before her, returning a countenance much less grand than expected. Alexia possessed foibles: skin imperfections, one eyebrow slightly higher than the other, cracked, dry lips, colorless cheeks. No, not the ghastly creature she had been all growing up, but neither the impossible beauty she’d come to recognize. This was the real her.

She grinned.

The eyes remained the same. That jade hue she’d always liked caught the late afternoon rays and reflected the window at her back.

She had slept nearly the whole day and was thankful for no disturbances from the Soulless in the night. She’d roused this morning to the noise of new arrivals, hoping Kiren had changed his mind and returned with Father. The newcomers were a family, but not hers. She’d had every intention of greeting them, but had sat back down in bed. The next thing she knew, she’d opened her eyes to near-evening light stretching across the wall.

Kiren had been right to leave her behind. She was in no shape to assist him, no shape to help anyone—not even herself. Even now, a dull ache hung at the back of her mind.

A girl’s squeal drew Alexia to the window. The child of five sat drawing with a finger in the dirt between a garden and the stable. To be so young, so carefree... Alexia envied the girl. That kind of innocence needed to be preserved.

As promised, Kiren’s ring of white blossoms dotted a line across the yard, marking a perimeter that encompassed only the inn and a short stretch of grass. Glimmering caught her eye, something in the off-road fields.

A distant silhouette trundled through the grain. The wheat grazed at his beltline, his shoulders square, strong looking, his dark curls catching the breeze.

She squinted.

Another flash. An earring...

John!

She stumbled backward. How could he have found her so fast?

Sarah
.

Straightening the bed and gathering up all evidence she’d occupied the chamber, she grabbed her shoes and hastened out the door barefoot—to keep from making too much noise. John could easily drag her out of the building, away from safety, and carry her helpless to his masters—if he didn’t consume her first!

The hall waited dark and empty. She hurried across it, cautiously tiptoeing down the stairs. The gathering room waited silently.

She scampered through the chamber and into the back where Mae disappeared last night. Certainly the building possessed a cellar somewhere in the vicinity of the kitchen—or a back door. She could hide in the shrubs outside.

Alexia flitted into the kitchen, glancing at the iron kettle hanging over the flames of an open spit. Next to it, a floured working space proffered brown feathers and the trimmings of a pie crust. A single chair sat in the corner, directly over a cellar door with a metal handle. She shoved the chair aside and pulled back the hidey-hole covering.

“Mae?” cordial bass rang from the entry. Shivers tickled over her arms.

“John?” the innkeeper replied from a room over.

“I am very pleased to see you in good health. How are you weathering?”

Down Alexia stumbled, into the darkness, recently sanded steps smooth against the soles of her feet.

“Seasonable and tired.” Mae’s voice dimmed behind heavy planks.

John’s muffled bass only carried through for its weight. “Seasonable? No, seasoned, and well-spiced.”

“Oh, John.”

Still a flatterer. All Soulless were from what Kiren said.

Alexia pulled the trap shut as the kitchen door opened. She sat.
Don’t breathe. Don’t think.

Slivers of light trickled through the boards, revealing the tops of crowded shelves in a cellar pantry. The bitter taste of herbs scented the air, and a narrow path led between racks to a deeper bowel of pitch.

Thump
.

Dust dropped over a distant shelf.

“Certainly a different
scent
to this kitchen today.” 

Alexia’s heart froze. He knew.

“Smells
delicious
.”

Mae laughed. “Chicken pie. Be ready in an hour if you would like some.”

“You are too kind.”

“I know it.”

More footfalls, aimed to the door above her head. Alexia felt her way forward, noiselessly fumbling between racks toward the back of the cellar, heart drumming. There had to be a way out! If John found her, she was a good as Soulless.

“John, you are shaking my inn to pieces. Do not stomp around like an unlicked cub.”

“Or you will do the licking?” He chuckled.

Alexia remembered the days she’d liked that laugh, the days it had brought her comfort, the days before she knew what he was. She needed a place to hide or an escape. Perhaps if she wound through the shelves she could circle back and escape before he caught her.

Her foot slid over a ledge. She threw herself back and crashed onto her rump, shoes flying.

Ouch.

Dragging her fingers across the dirt, she halted at a drop off. Emptiness gaped before her as though someone had intentionally dug a pit in the middle of Mae’s cellar. Why would she have a gaping chasm down here? Could this be a trap? Was she working with John?

The innkeeper called, “Do not disturb my stores, John.”

“And risk your wrath? I would not dream of it, fair Mae.”  The cellar entry opened, dropping a rectangle of light across Alexia and brightening the top rung of a ladder leading into the hole before her. She peered into the circular cavity, as far across as she was tall, a tunnel that disappeared into darkness, perhaps one that exited the building, or maybe simply a cubby deep enough to hide in. Why did Mae need a tunnel into the ground?

“I noticed the missing jar of preserves last week, John.”

“It went to a good cause, I can promise you that.”

Grabbing the raw wood of the descending ladder, she slipped into the darkness. John’s boot thumped the first stair.

Alexia scrambled downward. 

“Now out of my kitchen.” Mae’s rebuke carried from further and further above. “I have important work here.”

“Very well, madam,” John’s voice boomed closer.

Pitch engulfed Alexia.

John had destroyed Sarah, taken something so joyful, so pure, and tainted every hope of happiness. Alexia trembled with rage as she descended. It bubbled beneath her skin and threatened to burst, to fracture the very fabric of time like shattering glass. He took Sarah from her, forever. Let him come too close and feel the wrath storming through her heart.

Cold washed down her spine as she recalled Kiren’s warning. She couldn’t use her gift here. If she tried, it would kill her.

Heavy footfalls thudded toward her.

What was she but a mouse in comparison to John’s hunkering form? Rarely had she met a man so large or firmly built.

She descended faster.

If circumstances were otherwise, she would have climbed back out of this hole, altered time and shoved him over the brink, listening for his neck to snap when he hit the bottom. His life would be adequate payment for her beloved aunt.

Except he would not die. The Soulless could not die. Perhaps he would be eternally immobilized by the fall?

She grinned.

Alexia gasped mentally. What was she thinking? She’d never harbored so malignant a wish toward anyone—not even the man who had nearly raped her and then blackmailed her father into a marriage arrangement.

But John had courted Sarah, knowing his state of being might ultimately prove her damnation. When Alexia confronted him, he’d admitted it and yet swore his love for Sarah. A love he should have proven by letting her go.

Boots scraped the rungs above her. She bit down and doubled her efforts.

A jingle carried up from below, like iron rings grazing across one another.

She glanced down, startled by a splinter of light on a distant floor, so thin and gray it had escaped her previous notice. Who—or what waited down there? And if light, might she discover an exit? Right about now, slowing time would be only too convenient to make an escape. Why had Kiren brought her to a place her abilities were useless?

Because he loved her. Because he feared for her. Because he knew she would overdo if given the least provocation.

And John was certainly provocation.

The ladder ended. Solid earth pressed beneath her feet. She glanced up for John, but he was lost in the blackness.

Rattling metal.

She knew that sound. Two days in the darkness with a cell mate who both terrified and bewildered her had cemented the jangle into permanent recognition. Two days of pitch blackness with nothing but Bellezza’s cruel cackle and the rhythm of iron chains.

A prisoner? A tasty morsel John was saving for later?

She stepped forward, hands out. Two wooden doors fell back at her touch, whining on rusted hinges—hinges set into earthen walls. The chamber had been chiseled out of the ground, rounded walls plastered and whitewashed, but blemished where rivulets of dirt had bled through. The uneven ceiling domed far above her reach. Wooden planks had been laid and polished into a balmy sheen beneath the pool of radiance—an oil lamp. It brightened the oval cavern, outlining a crude table, a rocking chair, a framed bed, a chest, and a body dangling from the wall.

Alexia gasped. “Sarah!”

Her near-sister’s face was pale and ringed in shadow, strained but triumphant. Sarah twisted in her irons. Her feet barely scraped the floor, just enough to keep the shackles from pulling her shoulders from their sockets.

“A-Alexia?”

Hundreds of questions formed at her lips as she closed the distance, but only one escaped. “Did John do this to you?”

“Alexia, no! Stay away.” Her aunt turned her head, cringing.

“It is day, Sarah. The New Moon is over. You cannot hurt me now and I am not going to leave my family to perish.” She poked at the shackles, searching for a weak link.

Sarah’s crimson eyes burrowed into hers. “It does not lessen the hunger.”

Guilt tightened her chest. Sarah had given up joining the Passionate to remain in Alexia’s life, as a true sister might, and Alexia had spat on so generous a gift, ready to abandon her dearest friend the instant Kiren appeared. She touched Sarah’s pale cheek. Heat seared into her skin, as if her near-sister might spontaneously burst into flame.

Alexia jerked back and inhaled.

“This is my fault.” All along she had blamed John or Bellezza, but she had known what would happen to Sarah. She had permitted her best friend to love a devil. Tears pooled in her eyes as she searched the nearby table for a key. This change could have been prevented. “If I had only arrived sooner that night—”

“It was her choice.”

Alexia whirled around.

John stood at the foot of the ladder, arms crossed, wearing a squared grin, blocking the only exit.