“You were the one he wanted,” he continued, shedding both light and confusion on a mystery that had puzzled her for two centuries. “And I would do anything to hurt Roman D’Angelo,” he said, leaning forward in his massive throne-like chair. “Anything at all.”
Chapter Nineteen
She was right. The mansion was vast.
She did it more to keep moving than anything else; the magic she had inside of her after all of these years felt a little like a homeless man winning the lottery. She desperately wanted to spend it, and it had already been proven that she didn’t quite yet know how. So instead, she moved through the mansion, going from room to room and trying her best to distract herself.
Thus far, she’d gone through six lavishly appointed quarters she could only assume were guest rooms, two posh sitting rooms, a study, a palatial tri-level library that she could have lived in, and of course Jason’s own opulent bed chamber. Through windows, she’d been able to determine that there was a glass-domed conservatory and a maze garden, though she hadn’t yet found the entrances to those, and the land beyond them was shrouded in a soup-like fog. There was sure to also be a kitchen somewhere, as well as an attic of some sort, but she’d yet to locate them.
At the moment, she stood at the end of her fourth or fifth hallway. She’d just opened a thick metal reinforced wooden door to reveal a descending spiral stone staircase and darkness.
A scent wafted up the stairs toward Chloe, subtle enough to hint at the passage of time. It smelled like wax or matches. There was also the faintest touch of spice, perhaps, like sandalwood.
And leather. There was that too.
Chloe’s heart rate kicked up a notch. I know what this is.
She felt along the wall for the power switch, found it, and flicked it on. Light illuminated the stairs, barely reaching the top step where she stood. Because the stairwell was winding, there was still no way to see what waited at the bottom.
She slowly descended the stairs. Her leather-soled boots echoed loudly upon each carved stone landing.
As she touched down on the main floor, the fireplace across the room burst to life, at once emitting a warm and crackling glow. By now, she was used to this. It had happened in every room she’d entered.
But the leaping, dancing flames cast an added gleaming, ominous light upon the objects in the room, both large and small. For a very long moment, all Chloe did was stand at the base of the stairs and stare.
She’d heard about this. She’d known for a long time that the Warlock King had… darker tastes when it came to intimate relations. In truth, there was nothing particularly surprising about the tables with their leather straps, the metal bars bearing strong, padded restraints, the cruel wooden “pony” along one wall, or the various whips, paddles and other, more exacting and devious devices that were so brazenly displayed along another.
It wasn’t the wax candles that had been burned and dripped, no doubt on quivering, helpless flesh, or the chest of shut drawers with their hidden contents that brought Chloe up short. This was no surprise to her at all.
Having been the unwilling receptacle of real human emotion for countless generations, Chloe had long ago come to realize that this, or some degree of this sort of thing was not actually the exception when it came to human sex, but the rule – no matter what a man or woman would otherwise have you believe.
The skeleton residing in most mortals’ closets bore a much more striking resemblance to handcuffs than a skeleton at all. For some odd reason, it just wasn’t yet considered “okay” to be honest about needing to relinquish control to someone you trusted in order to enjoy sex. The old brain need for dominance or submission hadn’t yet shrugged off its taboo label. Humans worked so very slowly through their innumerable issues. It took forever sometimes. Sometimes it never happened at all.
So it wasn’t the room and its tools that stopped Chloe in her tracks and sent her blood speeding heatedly through her body.
It was something else.
It was that as she stood there, her sea foam eyes roving over the room’s dark, delicious promises, she couldn’t help but imagine herself held firmly beneath the Warlock King’s various straps and restraints, Jason standing over her… his will automatically and irrevocably her own.
And then, even more surprisingly, she couldn’t help but imagine Jason tied down instead.
Chloe blinked. Heat infused her neck and cheeks.
She turned away from the inner room to face the stairs, anger fanning her rising temperature. The magic inside of her crackled in her eardrums, reacting to her changing attitude. I’m blushing? Seriously?
She felt like some ridiculous Victorian woman with the vapors.
I can handle this, she told herself firmly. She turned around to face the room again.
But she proved herself wrong when she roughly put one foot in front of the other only to stop beside the adjustable wooden table, so immaculately kept, so perfectly designed – and found her gaze straying over the straps. They were reinforced with steel bands, locked down with impossibly thick steel connectors, and looked strong enough to restrain a werewolf.
There’s no way he could escape from that if I got him into them, she thought.
Then she blinked again and stepped back. What the hell is wrong with me?
“It’s this blasted magic!” she exclaimed softly. It was making her feel… wicked. No wonder warlocks behaved the way they did! No wonder Jason was so infamous!
“Oh, infamous my ass,” she hissed next. Once his secret had gotten out about all of this, the women of the supernatural world had fairly flocked to his proverbial doorstep. Her fellow Akyri had taken to trying to meet him, in fact, wanting to experience a session or two under what was supposed to be a very practiced hand.
He wasn’t infamous. He was famous.
Chloe put her face in her hands and forced herself to take several deep breaths. And then a few more.
Finally, after a few long minutes, she lowered her arms and straightened. She turned away from the table and began heading back toward the stairs, having decided that she’d seen enough. But after three steps, the firelight behind her reflected off something in the stone wall adjacent to the stairs.
Chloe frowned and stopped, tilting her head to the side. Rough stone didn’t normally reflect light. She squinted as she stepped toward it.
The flash came again, this time reflecting the light in a quick horizontal line before disappearing. Chloe hurriedly closed the distance to the wall and leaned in. It was almost impossible to see, as the metal was painted to nearly perfectly match the color and texture of the stone. But there was enough of the paint worn off to give its location away.
Set within the stone was a small metal panel. It was about the size of a playing card and without decoration.
Chloe sensed no magic coming from it. There were no wards over it, no protection spells. If the panel was trapped, it was trapped the old fashioned way. Chloe raised her hands, fingers poised over the metal. She wondered if darts would come shooting out of the other walls. Spears, maybe?
Images from Disney’s Indiana Jones ride played in her mind.
With a mental eye-roll and a shake of her head, Chloe pressed her fingers against the panel. It immediately slid inward half an inch and then emitted a clearly audible click.
Chloe froze. She began counting the seconds that ticked away as nothing happened. On second number six, there was a scraping sound from behind her. It sounded as if it were coming from all the way across the room.
She spun around. The opposite wall was moving. Something small broke loose near the top and tumbled to the stone below. Then more pebbles broke free, skittering down the wall and across the ground. A cloud of dust was rising, coating the table and instruments nearest to the wall.
Chloe felt lightheaded. She heard her blood rushing through her eardrums, pulsing in riotous rhythm with her terrified heart. She was frozen to the spot, unable to do anything but wait to see what it was sh
e’d just unleashed.
The rumbling raucous grew louder and deeper, the tremor of two very large objects scraping against one another. She watched with wide eyes as the entire wall slid slowly to the side, revealing a new and depthless dark beyond.
The sliding, scraping calamity went on for another few seconds before finally slowing and coming to a stop altogether. There was a remnant tumble of stray pebbles as the final loose fragments broke free and joined their predecessors on the now filthy ground.
Then all was silent.
Dust clouded the air, causing her to cough. Chloe pulled the sleeve of her shirt down over her fingers. Then she stretched her fingers out, placing them over her mouth so she could breathe through the material as she pondered the yawning, open maw before her.
Chapter Twenty
There was no light switch for this room, nor did a hearth burst into flame when her foot crossed the threshold. Instead, more than two-dozen candles alighted where they rested atop a desk, small tables and a bookshelf throughout the room.
The effect was beautiful, warm and inviting. Chloe was pleasantly surprised.
She’d been expecting the worst. The way the wall had slid to the side – all of that noise and all of that rubble – was reminiscent of some doom and gloom revelation in a treasure-hunting movie. So it was with a newfound appreciation and a deep sense of relief that she walked in to the now candle-lit room to find that it was nothing more than a small office.
Chloe moved slowly into the room, feeling as though she were setting foot into the most important part of the house, despite its outwardly humble appearance. She felt like an intruder…. As if she’d stumbled upon something no one at all was ever supposed to see.
The room itself was quite small, especially considering the scale of the rooms in the rest of the house. It was also for the most part unadorned. There were no plush rugs on the ground, no intricate tapestries draped along the carved stone walls.
Instead, there was a desk against one wall, medium-sized and composed of plain, dark stained chopping-block wood. An equally strong but nondescript chair was tucked partway beneath it. Atop the desk were a small number of various types of items.
Along another wall was a bookshelf containing at most a dozen books of different shapes, sizes, and colors. These rested haphazardly against one another, as there were no bookends to hold them in place.
The final large object in the room was a wooden chest. It had a latch, but no lock.
Chloe stood at the center of the office for a moment, considering her surroundings. Then she moved to the desk.
There were five things atop the desk: a baseball on a stand in a glass cube, a model rocket ship that looked as though it had been constructed out of toilet paper roll centers and had the word “Stardust” scrawled across it in silver ink, a clear crystal fountain pen with dried ink around its nib, a stack of plain blank papers, and a sterling silver framed photograph of two infants. One of the babies was wrapped in pink, the other blue.
Chloe knew who the children were. They were The Healer’s twins. Most Akyri knew of them; their birth had been a rather momentous event. It had literally been felt in the magical ether, like a shockwave or a rippling after a stone has been tossed into an otherwise indistinct pond.
Chloe gently touched her fingertips to the frame. It was clear to her now that Jason himself had created this little hideaway just off his “dungeon.” He was the one who had hidden it so carefully away, tucking it inside the shadow of something that was sure to gain much more attention should his mansion ever be invaded. No one would think to look past the objects in the other room.
Jason was clever.
Chloe turned away from the photograph and bent to get a closer look at the baseball. It was very old; it had browned quite a bit and some of the leather was cracked with age.
It was also signed.
Chloe was not necessarily a baseball fan, but she’d been alive long enough to recognize the name once she deciphered the faded handwriting.
John McGraw.
Chloe whistled low and straightened. If she’d had the urge to lift the glass and hold the ball seconds ago, it was now gone. McGraw not only played for the New York Giants, but also managed them – and died in 1934. The ball was an invaluable relic. She wasn’t going to be responsible for ruining something so rare.
She stepped back and looked around again, this time focusing on the bookshelf. Some of the books were old enough that their titles had been worn off of their leather spines. The smaller and thinner books, which were also much more colorful, were clearly children’s books. These were easy to identify.
The Giving Tree was the first she recognized.
The Phantom Tollbooth.
Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day.
Oh the Places You’ll Go.
And Alice in Wonderland.
Chloe felt something tight in her stomach. It unknotted and unwound, filling her chest with a heavy discomfort.
She thought of Jason Alberich the Warlock King, and imagined him as he must have been as a child.
With fingers that now trembled slightly with the sense that she would at any moment destroy something priceless, Chloe very gently pulled out the largest of the older, leather-bound books.
Mark Twain’s The Mysterious Stranger and his lesser known, decidedly bitter if honest final work, Letters from the Earth were the first two books she pulled out. She carefully slid them back in place after reading their titles and went for the next book. Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights.
The heaviness in Chloe’s chest worsened. There was a pattern here. It didn’t take a psychologist to realize it.
As if to seal the fate of Jason’s darkening adulthood, the final book was The Count of Monte Christo by Alexandre Dumas.
Chloe replaced the book among its weathered companions and couldn’t help but once again compare them with the bright, new copies of the children’s books beside them. There was no denying the contrast.
How had he come about these books? Had they been given to him? Had he purchased them himself? What made him choose these in particular, and keep them here in this super secret place in his already secret mansion?
Chloe felt a breeze. It caused the candles to flicker slightly, and she hugged herself. She turned toward the opening, sensing suddenly that she was not alone. She smelled lavender. But there was no one there.
Only ghosts.
With that thought, and the subsequent shiver that followed, Chloe covered her mouth with her hand and turned to the final object of her curiosity – the wooden chest that sat on the ground in the corner of the office.
She knelt before it. At once, she felt the cold of the stone beneath her seeping through the material of her jeans. There was no lock to work around, so it was only Chloe’s own hesitation that stopped her now.
After a few seconds of uncertainty, she placed her fingers on the trunk’s ledge and lifted.
She wasn’t sure what she’d been expecting. Between the BDSM toys in the next room and the nostalgic items in this one, she was left truly confused about the man who slept upstairs in his massive, aptly named king-sized bed.
What she did find was paper work.
Chloe let the chest lid drop gently against the wall. From what she could tell, there were around ten bundles in the trunk, each tied with leather strings or held tight with rubber bands. There were a few folders here and there as well, and what looked like a stack of holiday cards.
Now Chloe really did pause. She looked over her shoulder at the small office with its baseball relic, its lovingly framed picture of a brother and sister, and its children’s books. I’m trespassing.
This is Jason Alberich, she thought. This is the Warlock King. This right here.
It made little sense. The dichotomy of the sparse, lush décor of the mansion and the cold cruelty of the dungeon – compared with the odds and ends of this small room – was overwhelming.
Chloe reached in to
grab one of the folders that stood upright against one end of the chest. She opened it.
Inside were several slightly worn documents. There were a few medical records and what looked like… a certificate of adoption.
It was from Sacramento, California. Two names were inscribed on the document: Jason Alberich, and Lalura Chantelle.
As if mesmerized by what she was holding, Chloe gently placed the adoption certificate on top of the other papers in the chest and pulled out the medical records. They detailed injuries to an infant: a broken rib, contusions, and abrasions. The infant apparently suffered malnutrition, vitamin deficiencies, and dehydration. Doctor’s notes were scribbled and difficult to decipher, but Chloe could make out mention of abandonment.
She put the papers down and sifted through some others, careful not to disturb their order or tear or bend anything. Eventually, she’d more or less pieced together what they all meant.
The realization was profound.
Jason Alberich had been abandoned by his parents as a baby. He’d been found by some bystander, brought in to the hospital, and treated for a plethora of maladies that no child should ever suffer, especially by that tender, innocent age.
Years later, Lalura had adopted him. Perhaps she’d seen something in him or recognized something that others couldn’t. Maybe his magic had called out to her. There were a thousand possibilities. But in the end, Jason Alberich had gone from a home of hatred and neglect to one of celebrated wisdom and care. There was no greater witch than Lalura Chantelle.
Chloe again turned away from the contents of the chest. Her eyes skimmed over the books on the bookshelf. Now she knew who had given Jason the children’s books. She wondered whether those had been the first gifts Lalura had ever given him. Had she taught him to read, in fact?
She also knew who had given him the Yule and Halloween cards that were tucked away in the chest.
She knew why Jason had a softer side, if you could call it that. It was a side that might like baseball or building model rocket ships. And she knew why he had a harder side – one that might feel anger and resentment, or the desperate need to maintain absolute control.