Читать книгу Stealing Kathryn - Jacquelyn Frank - Страница 8

“Adrian?”

Adrian’s malachite eyes darted up to meet his sister’s troubled gaze across the expanse of the table. Candlelight flickered across her exquisite features, licking at her in contrary shadow and light.

“Adrian, why will you not let me see this latest treasure of yours?”

She was suspicious and more than a little upset, he could tell.

“It is not ready,” he said with quiet simplicity.

“But why will you not even tell me what it is? You have always delighted in giving me the histories that make each of your acquisitions so unique.”

Adrian narrowed his eyes on his twin sister. Aerlyn. Known the worlds over as Maya, Epona, Mari, and more, but ever to him she was Aerlyn, his steady, his guide back from the night. It was her wisdom and goodness that tempered his evil and carefully cultured chaos. She was also the frustrating force that held him ever in check, forced him to keep from giving in to the desire to run amok through the minds of the worlds.

For he was Adrian. Angus, Sandman, Morpheus, Bogeyman, all these, but ever Adrian to her. Hers was the mirror of light and healing and dreams. His was of dark fantasies, oppressive guilt, and nightmares.

She, the only one ever destined to love him…and she the only one he might once have felt that alien emotion for. That is, if he could stop hating her for her interference with his desires.

“Aerlyn, the treasure is mine.” His tone brooked no argument. It was his way of warning her to back off.

“Brother.” She quieted a moment to remove the reprimand from her tone. She must tread carefully with him. His was a delicate balance of control, one so easily set asunder. “Adrian. You have never known me to interfere with any of your baubles in the past. I am concerned that you are concerned I might. You have not done something of which I might be forced to disapprove, have you?”

“Your approval is irrelevant.” His voice dropped an octave with a threatening hint of patience being lost.

But he was on the defensive for a reason, Aerlyn mused. She narrowed silver eyes on him, her soft countenance drawing into an image of piercing discernment as she tried to measure her sibling’s motives.

“There are rules, Adrian. Rules we both must obey. And rules we must both guard each other from breaking. You know very well my approval is unavoidably relevant.” She leaned a little closer, trying to probe his thoughts, but he was shoving up a black, guarding wall against her. “That little toad you keep to assist you, the one you call Companion, has been mooning about the fortress in perpetual orgasm for the entire day now. Whatever it is you have brought has obviously made a singular impression on him.”

“Cronos is but a fool, and too easily impressed.” Adrian’s dark lips thinned and parted to reveal a gleaming row of ivory teeth, two of which were long, sleek fangs.

It was Adrian’s version of a smile.

Aerlyn was not so easily swayed.

“That is true.” She nodded curtly. “But I am not. Something is amiss in this house. Did you think I would not be able to feel it? There is a new energy here. A peculiar one.” She leaned forward, candlelight enhancing the silver starlike patterns in the ebony curtain of her hair. “What have you done, Adrian?”

Adrian lurched suddenly from his chair, the last vestiges of his tenuous control of himself gone in an instant. He roared in outrage as his fists crashed violently upon the table. Aerlyn sat back calmly as he shoved the table clear across the room with one powerfully enraged sweep of his arm.

Dishes, candles, and splintered wood struck the distant wall and floor in a din of discordant crashes. Adrian loomed threateningly over his sister, casting ominous shadows over her cream white skin and gown.

“Do not presume to censure me this time, Aerlyn!” he spat, his eyes like maddened emerald fire and his features mottling and twisting in anger.

“And if I do not, who will?” She cocked a silver-black brow. “The Ampliphi put me in charge of keeping you under control, Adrian, and I will not fail them. It is one thing that I must allow you to torment the dreams of innocents without rhyme or reason, but it is you who presume too much if you think I will let you take your spoils in manic measure!” She rose up slowly, her personal energy giving him pause as it enveloped his, making him flinch angrily. “You will show me what you have pilfered, my brother. If it is an acceptable bit of fluff, you are certainly welcome to keep it with the rest of your silly baubles. I even encourage it. You know it pleases me to see you take such avid interest in things of beauty. It makes me feel you may yet prove to have a heart in that monstrously black chest of yours.” She paused for a breath. “But there is some beauty to which you know full well you do not have rights!”

“I have taken nothing not within my rights!” Adrian’s menacing eyes bored down into her stubborn ones. “And you have no rights in judging my collection!”

Aerlyn sighed softly at her brother’s stubborn nature. She could not, of course, allow him to have his way. The strange energy he had brought to their house did not belong there. She already suspected what the source might be. She was filled with suspicious dread at the idea that her brother might have done the inconceivable.

That he might have brought an intelligent, living creature there.

Such folly could mean their very destruction. She could not allow this madness to continue.

“We shall see about that.”

She turned, the gossamer train of her dress flaring out behind her as she drifted swiftly from the room.

“Aerlyn!”

Adrian was consumed with raging, defiling blackness. It spilled from his heart, feeding the vile, chaotic monster that always dwelled just within reach of him.

He caught up to his sister in three massive strides and drew back an enormous arm. There was a brief flash of clarity that warned him he was flirting with unknown disaster, but his madness went on unimpeded. Malevolent energy gleamed briefly off the claws growing from his thickened fingertips.

His eyes glared blackly as they fixed on a target at the back of her vulnerable neck. For that brief, tremulous moment, he could see right through her flesh to the delicate structure of her spine.

It took but one blow to strike his hatefully beloved sister down.

Kathryn bolted upright in bed, a terrified scream ripping from her throat. But although she was wide awake now, the terrible nightmare was still with her.

A vicious dark beast with terrible claws rending my body in two.

Her throbbing heart ached with its rapid flight within her breast, her neck and back cramped with tortuous pain. A quick hand flew to her throat, her fingers nervously feeling her jugular as if to seek damage.

The touch made her recall with an almost avid fascination the eerie feeling of cool, deathly fingers fondling her pulse.

She shuddered and tried to shake the feeling off. It was all just a series of memories from an endlessly twisting nightmare, she told herself. But she had to admit to herself that she had never had such a dream in all her life, and it was hard to fight her feelings of hysteria. “Easy,” she spoke calmingly to herself, “it’s just anxiety from a combination of bad dreams and I’m just wiped out from caring for my family.”

She slowly focused on her surroundings.

She realized instantly she was not familiar with the bed she was in. Completely surrounded by the intricate brocade of luxurious bed curtains, she was closed into the confines of the bed. Feeling disoriented and suddenly anxious, she moved her hand to her throat, her fingertips stumbling onto the unfamiliar heaviness she realized was lying against her collarbone. It was cold, metal. She looked down and saw a cascade of thin gold wire weaving around large, breathtaking purple stones that looked like amethysts. The jeweled necklace fell from the base of her neck all the way to the tops of her breasts.

That was when she realized she was not in familiar clothing either. She had never owned anything as girly as this dress, which left her shoulders and cleavage almost completely exposed. It was made of a fine fabric like silk, soft and clingy. She was beginning to feel a very real sense of fearful unease as she scrambled to her knees and pulled the sheer violet fabric of her skirt up for inspection. She could practically see through the material, making it far more like lingerie than an actual dress, and that understanding sent a feeling of sinking dread into the pit of her stomach. And then there were the stones, the glittering glasslike stones that looked like diamonds that had been dusted abundantly onto the dress.

They looked so real.

They couldn’t be real diamonds! She had not thought there could be so many so small and so perfectly identical to one another, not to mention that they should be wasted on a nightgown!

And whatever was this creation doing on her body?

Who had dressed her in this gown?

Where was she?

She fought back the wave of nauseating fear this question drove into her throat, crawling madly over the bed to the bed curtains. She tore through the brocade, falling clumsily to the floor as she did.

She struggled to her feet, staggering as a dizzy spell threatened her equilibrium. “Oh no, not this again,” she whispered in dismay as she clung to a curtain to steady herself. She felt strange, as if she were reviving from a drug-induced stupor.

It was that moment that the full impact of the room struck her crazed senses.

“Sweet Father save me,” she uttered. Her voice echoed back to her from the cathedral ceilings and the far distant walls. The size of it! She had never seen such an enormous room! She looked around wildly, her eyes burning with the sight of all the things she could not hope to comprehend. It looked like a vast hoard of treasure, as if it had been gathered together by a mighty dragon or was perhaps awaiting Aladdin to come and find it. It was a display of the finest of metals and most precious of stones, all gleaming gaudily at once. There were other things, huge paintings, peculiar tapestries, and amazing sculptures. And almost every single item was on display in some way, be it in a case or a frame, hanging up or in a box or…

On her neck.

With desperate, clawing hands, Kathryn grabbed the jeweled necklace and tore it from her neck. She cut herself in the process, but hardly noticed as she cast the cloyingly lovely thing as far from herself as she could manage. There was a bracelet as well, and rings, each of which followed the necklace in their fates.

What was this place?

How had she come to be here?

Her heart was beating so fast with confused terror that her entire chest hurt. Panic washed over her until she could barely breathe. There were hundreds, thousands of things on display. Things whose purpose or name she couldn’t even guess. Some dreadful instinct told her she was not meant to see these things.

This unreal, malignant splendor loomed up around her like demon phantoms of beauty from places and times unknown to her.

Kathryn was drawing heavily for breath as she realized things were much more disturbing than they appeared.

“Dad!” She tore her fingers through her loose coiling hair, which had, unknown to her, been arranged just so. “Jillian!”

She started to run in a single direction. The walls were so far away, and she couldn’t even make out the doors. Everything looked the same, covered in an intricate gold inlay that went fully around the room. Then her legs seemed to go suddenly weak, the strength wobbling out from under her. She tripped over her own feet and smacked into the carpeted floor. But in spite of the painstakingly made rug, she cracked her head hard as she fell, the stone beneath the carpeting so very unforgiving. Finally, overloaded with shock and fear, seeing brilliant stars in her vision, she collapsed. The last thing she saw was those stars.

Stars.

And a curtain of soft, midnight black.

“Fool!”

Cronos braced himself for the blow that would likely kill him. It came hard and fast, hurling him an incredible distance before he crumpled to the floor.

Adrian whirled around, threw back his head, and clenched his fists as he released a howl of insane wrath. It expelled a great deal of his frustration, and so he was calmer when he fell to one knee beside his damaged keepsake.

He rolled her over with great care and tenderness. His harsh breath caught when her head lolled to the side, revealing the torn flesh at her throat and the bleeding cut across her forehead where she had struck it.

“No.” The word quavered with unendurable pain as he touched the wounds.

Ruined.

She had been ruined by his foolish neglect. She shouldn’t have been able to regain consciousness, but when he had lost his control earlier, he had lost his power over her sleep.

Never, never once, had any of his precious possessions been damaged while in his care.

Perhaps, though, this damage could be repaired.

But he knew nothing of healing.

Adrian cradled his treasure close to his chest, holding her and yet afraid to hold her. He had not meant for any harm to come to her, but harm had come regardless. All of the darkness he toyed with while captaining the nightmares of people—he knew what evil was and the deep, ugly places those people could go. He had simply wanted to remove her from that ugly world, to take her from all the pain she had been suffering. He had done so against every rule, he knew, had even attacked his sister, whom he truly loved, only to have it come to this?

The remorse that filled him then was sudden and bracing. The energy of it was intense and powerful. He drew in a breath of surprise at the feel of it. It was not a dark emotion, like the ones he was used to wallowing in, but neither was it a bright one. It was a peculiar shade of gray, and yet…so strong. Yes…he had felt it before. In certain dreams, there was guilt and sadness. Sometimes so strong it would overwhelm him, just as it was doing in that moment.

Confused and having struck down the two people who always helped him when he needed it, Adrian was lost as to what to do or feel. He gathered up his Kathryn and hurried her back over to the bed. As he had done before, he carefully arranged her limbs, smoothed her nightgown down until it was perfectly straight, and then painstakingly arranged every single curl of her glorious hair.

But as hard as he tried, the perfection of it was flawed and ruined by those terrible marks on her body. Frustrated, he roared out angrily, trying to shake off the waves of pain riding through him with such inexplicable potency. He tried leaving the room, barely making it off the bed before he collapsed to the floor. He lay there panting for a long minute, trying to make himself get up and not understanding why he couldn’t. And then, finally, his psyche shorted out and Adrian lost consciousness.

Something was pulling Kathryn, drawing her.

She had been floating in a benign gray void of nothingness. Somehow she knew that she had been there for quite some time.

But something was now beckoning her away from it.

Slowly, with a soft sigh, she came around. She opened her eyes with a hesitant flutter of her lashes.

Then she heard again what it had been that had called her back to consciousness.

A moan.

It was a low, tortured sound. The sound of someone in unbearable pain.

And whoever that someone was, he was very close by.

She sat up slowly, blinking once. She was aware of feeling stronger. Of feeling more well rested than she had been in a very long time. She did not even feel afraid this time as she quickly looked around the strange room. Of course, she wasn’t quite brave enough to look at any one thing for any length of time, either.

Then the moan came again, drawing her full attention quickly to the floor beside her.

She gasped softly.

Whoever he was, he had to be the most massive man she had ever laid eyes on. Well, maybe with the exception of the color plates of giants in her childhood fairy-tale books. Still, the difference between seeing a drawing of a mythical giant and finding yourself sitting and staring at a real one was quite vast. Why, the width of his shoulders might be nearly twice the length of one of her arms from fingertips to shoulder! Of course, she was a little small, according to some people.

She bit her lip and leaned closer with irresistible curiosity so she could get a better look at him.

He was on his forearms and knees, his face burrowed into his hands. He was dressed entirely in black. The clothing, what she could see of it, was alien to her in its fashion. Even the fabrics looked strangely coarse. It was nothing she had ever worked her needle through, and she prided herself on being a remarkably fair seamstress.

She could see the back of his large head. His features were further hidden by an outrageously thick and long tumble of silken black hair that sprouted from his scalp, tumbling forward over his neck and face. She followed the line of that neck, picking out the distinction of his bold spine through his shirt fabric and the spread of the back of an immense rib cage. His waist was narrower, though probably still as wide as her thigh was long. His hips were less wide, but in a similar proportion to the rest of his physique. The legs, tucked in a rather fetal manner beneath himself, were the size of good-sized and very sturdy tree trunks.

Sweet Father, he was twice the size of any man anywhere! She suspected he would dwarf her own husky father.

Another tormented groan rose from the object of her fascination, snapping Kathryn’s attention back to the huge man’s obvious distress, as well as her present situation. She warned herself to exercise caution. She might be a scrapper, but there was nothing she could expect to do against someone so much bigger than she was. It was likely, she told herself, that this was the person who had all the answers to what was going on.

Well, that meant she needed him to talk. And he wasn’t likely to do much of that if he was hurting. And besides, he sounded almost sad as he made those painful little sounds.

She scuttled off the bed. Approaching him slowly and carefully lowering herself to her knees beside him, she leaned over him and laid her hands on his shoulders as comfortingly as she could.

“Can I help you?” When she received no immediate response, she moved forward a little farther and sought to gain his attention by placing her hand in his hair at the back of his head. “Here now, let me help you. Please.”

Kathryn gave a yelp of shocked surprise when he suddenly lurched away from her touch, stumbling and crashing heavily to the floor, trying to crawl away from her. He barely progressed another foot before collapsing face-first into the carpeting. He whined piercingly, like an animal in raw, anguished agony, making the hair on the back of her neck raise up as if someone had just trod across her grave.

Kathryn’s heart stuttered and her eyes widened. She had never heard such a horribly inhuman sound before. It was terrifying. But as he whimpered softly again, she knew it was the most pitiful thing she’d ever heard and there was no way she could even pretend to ignore him. Bolstering her courage, hesitating with each movement, she slid cautiously back to his side.

“Please,” she begged softly, “let me help you.”

She touched him again and he reacted as if she had burned him. He recoiled, an agonized roar splitting her ears as it tore from the huddled black mass before her.

“Leave me alone!”

She fell back away from the booming power of his voice rattling the treasures around them in their casings. It must be the acoustics and the vastness of the room that made it amplify in such an ominous way.

She felt icy cold fingers of dread stroking at her throat.

There’s something familiar about that voice.

Her nightmare! He was the one who had been in her—

But no! Then that would mean it—all of this—either all of this was still the same dream or—

Or it was all real? If so, then he was the one who had touched her time and again in unwelcome ways. It didn’t seem possible, but why else would she know his voice if it hadn’t somehow been real? And it was this monstrous man who had somehow spirited her away from her home and had subjected her to all this awful terror and fear. Trapped her there like one of these shiny baubles to be gaped at and toyed with.

Bastard! she thought with unaccustomed vileness. Soulless bastard! Her family had been dying and he had violated them and her by stealing her away! Kidnapping her!

“Bastard!” she screeched, the thought of her abandoned and helpless family riling her up like a madwoman. “You bloody bastard of hell!”

She was no longer sympathetic to his pain as she flew into him, pummeling him with her relatively small fists. Somewhere in her enraged mind, a quiet voice told her she was probably doing him little or no harm. He was so much bigger than she, and Kathryn could now feel the thick masses of muscles beneath her battering hands. But regardless, it made her feel better to fight back. Then she, who had never wished harm on the slightest of creatures, felt joy that he was in pain. Utter, mind-numbing joy.

She was completely unaware of the ripple of renewed strength that was shuddering through her victim. She was oblivious to the fact that his agonized moans were replaced with a soft sigh of something slightly but distantly akin to pleasure.

The next thing she was aware of was a bone-chilling, wickedly rolling laugh. Then he surged up before her like a monolith of black rage.

She froze, her entire body locking. No breath. No blink. Not a glimmer of movement as her shocked eyes tried to absorb the impact of the face looming above hers.

He was hideous!

She had never seen such a grotesque compilation of features and was paralyzed with panic that she was seeing it now. The entire face was bloated over warped, distended bones. His forehead and jaw jutted out in a way that would give his profile a crescent shape. Cheekbones, fat with flesh, protruded starkly before falling into the contrasting concave cheeks themselves. His eyes were enormous, though sunken, the lids above and under colored in brown shadow in severe contrast to the pristine white of the rest of his complexion. The eyes themselves she had seen before. They were a brackish, swamplike black and green. The blackness in them twisted into horrifying shapes and mysteries her mind could not bear.

But the worst of it, the utmost horror of him, was his mouth. The upper lip was abnormally larger than the lower one. And as he released a malevolent laugh, she saw the wicked gleam of two fangs.

Vicious, monstrous fangs.

Kathryn screamed.

Awful! Terrible! She had never seen anything—

He seized suddenly, twisting slightly as a look of pain—pleasure?—coursed through him. Then his dreadful eyes were upon hers, sending frenzied fright bolting into her.

But before she could move, his hands came out and seized her by her upper arms. He dragged her hard up against his chest, cold and hot sensations bleeding into her wherever he contacted her flesh.

“Kathryn,” that dreadful voice hissed in exultant evil, “you are mine, Kathryn. Forever! I thought your purity would be the greatest treasure.” He threw back his head and laughed with terrible glee. “Wrong! So wrong! Your corruption…the corruption of all your innocence will be my glory! Look at me! There was pain, horrible pain, but all it took was your rage, your sweet rage to make me pulse with power again!” His malignant eyes bored into hers and she felt as though her very soul were being coerced from her. “Mine! Forever!”

“No!” She shook her head madly, struggling to be free, to get away from his sulfurous breath and damning words. “I will do nothing to please you!”

“Oh, but you already have.” He seemed to become incredibly calmer then as his eyes roamed intimately over every part of her. He reached out as if in a trance and stroked her fine hair. She recoiled, her stomach turning madly as she shuddered in revulsion. “You are so beautiful. Such a treasure. I have never had such a treasure as you. I was wrong to think you would be most beautiful in an enchanted repose. I like you much better awake, Kathryn.” She felt long, clawlike nails scrape down the length of her throat; then they seemed to retract a little, leaving his fingertips flush against her. “I can feel your life’s blood here. It is hot. Sweet. So vital and pure. Precious cargo in an even more invaluable container.” He pulled back a little, shaking his head as if there were intense thoughts warring within him. His eyes flashed a hundred shades of green in a matter of seconds.

“Don’t touch me!” She struggled in vain within his grasp. “You can’t do this to me! I am a…a free human being! Please. You can’t just keep me here!”

Kathryn felt hot tears slipping down her face. He was marveling over her like a thing, like a valuable piece of art or an antique…like just another one of the dumbly exquisite treasures she had seen around her. Was that what this was, then? A treasure room, and she the latest curiosity?

“Free, eh? Trapped on that ranch in the Australian wilderness with your father, playing mother to your sister because you know he cannot take care of her for himself? When, in your heart, you want to run to the city and experience a fully different sort of life. So what difference is it from being your father’s captive, when you can just as easily be mine? Accept your fate, Kathryn. Be thankful. There could be worse fates.”

“None that I can imagine could be worse than being a pet to a monster like you!” she cried, wrenching herself madly now in order to be free.

Her words angered him and she felt the claws in his fingers extending as if in response to the emotion roaring through his eyes and growling from his chest.

“You dare much!” he hissed. “I hold your fate in my hands, little creature! How easy it would be to corrupt you! How delightful. It could be my greatest pleasure if I wish it!”

“No!” Rage washed through her and she lunged, reaching up blindly, striking for his face with her own nails.

But something made her catch herself mid-action. Like a tossed coin, she flipped from tails to heads and the world rushed in a mad whirl around her.

Kathryn, this is not you, a quiet inner voice seemed to whisper.

She looked up into his eyes in stunned confusion. She was further troubled by the shock registering in his midnight green pupils. He had expected her to hit him, she realized on a quick, calm level of her brain. He hadn’t expected her to be able to stay the urge that…that he had been feeding into her! It was him! He was making her feel these things, and probably enjoying it! Corrupting her would give him pleasure, he had said. Well, she would not give in to his evil influence. She would not!

Kathryn suddenly had a mad idea.

He had pulled away in agony when she had touched him with kind, gentle hands. It occurred to her that this might be the only means of escape she would find.

It was insane. There was no reason for it to have any foundation in truth. But hadn’t there been endless stories, some stranger than this, where the antithesis of good or of evil could harm each other? If he could hurt her…

Softly, slowly, she quieted her thoughts. She relaxed in his grip and searched her mind for a pleasant memory or thought. One that would not lead her to anger or fear.

She ignored him when his eyes narrowed on her.

“What are you doing?” he asked, his voice ominous and threatening.

What if, like any wild beast, he was unable to help what he was? she considered. Kathryn reached out and stroked the creature’s chest with all the sympathy in her heart, her thoughts making it easier to touch him with honest caring.

His howl was so sharp, so sudden, that she almost lost her tenuous hold on her concentration. To her surprise, relief and bewilderment, her idea was working. He was in pain once again.

But she refused to take joy in that; it was not in her true nature to take joy in that. It was his presence that had caused those earlier feelings. But now that she was aware of them, blocking them from herself intentionally, she was free to feel honest pity for the thing that he was.

Her thoughts seemed to wrench into him like a hot poker spearing his heart. He jerked his hold from her as if she burned him. Kathryn screamed out in surprised pain as his claws scored the delicate skin on her arms. But she found a mind-clearing strength in her pain. She advanced on him even as he reeled backward.

“Let me help you.” She intoned the words gently, carefully. “You cannot help what you are. I can see that now. But you cannot be all evil. I have always been taught, have always believed that there is some good in everything. Even if just a little.” She did believe that. There must be something in him that was good. It was his fight against it that was probably causing him such agony.

Somehow, she knew this to be the truth of it.

“Sleep!” he screamed suddenly, his voice at a peculiar high pitch as he cast a desperate hand sweeping in her direction. “You will sleep!”

Kathryn staggered suddenly as a stunning wave of exhaustion rushed her. What the hell is this? she wondered, gasping for breath as she tried to balance on her own feet. It was some kind of a spell! She looked at him through hazy vision and saw the utter shock and disbelief in his eyes that his spell had not worked properly. It gave her confidence, and some of her strength began to bleed back into her. She stepped forward again.

“I will not sleep. I will stay awake. I will stay with you forever, remember? You will either have to fight me forever, or give in to what is right! Don’t worry,” she murmured soothingly, “I will care for you.” Just as she had cared for her sick family. Just as she had cared for any living thing in pain or in need all of her twenty-two years on Earth. Because the universe had created her to love all things.

He fell to the floor with a crash, writhing like a tormented demon from the darkest pit in hell.

But Kathryn didn’t know how long it would last. She didn’t know what to do next. She felt honest remorse fill her heart at his plight and his agony. Suddenly, she wanted to leave. If what he was was all he could be, she did not wish to be the cause of his pain for another moment. She wanted to get away so he could be at peace.

The compassionate thought just about killed him.

Then, out of nowhere, a gnomelike little man leapt out at Kathryn, backhanding her fiercely across her face.

Kathryn was flung backward, landing hard on her back so all the air rushed from her body. She was shaking her dizzy head and tasting her own blood as she watched the new intruder. He seemed to back off from her in sudden terror, clutching his hand as if in regret of what he had done and alternatively pulling his gray hair out with anxiety. He cast beady dung-colored eyes between her and the monster lying prone on the floor.

“Oh, Cronos. Oh, Cronos. Oh, Cronos,” he repeated in dismay over and over again.

Kathryn tried to get up, but he screamed like a harpy and ran at her, raising his hand threateningly over her. He laughed in relief when she reflexively cowered from another painful blow.

“You stay! You stay! Bad treasure! Bad, bad treasure! To hurt the Master is bad! Cronos hurt treasure, damaged treasure, but the Master will not mind this time. He damaged you too. Yes, I see. Yes, I do.” He seemed ecstatic with his own thought processes, pacing madly to and fro between the two bodies in the room. One he feared, yet he had found power over her. The other he feared even more, but wanted to help out of mindless devotion.

“Master! Get up! Get away! Flee from the bad treasure! Shall I kill it? Shall I throw it away? It will never hurt you then!”

The Master was suddenly lurching to his feet, still staggered with blinding pain, but strong enough to grab Cronos by the scruff of his neck and lift him up to look into his eyes.

“Do…not…touch!” the Master gasped in agonized stammers. “Do you…hear me? Never touch…her again!”

Then he cast the gray little man aside and staggered unseeingly to a set of doors Kathryn hadn’t even had a chance to notice.

“No!” she screamed. “I won’t let you leave me here!” She was up and running, determined not to lose her last chance at escape. The creature was too weak to fight her and the little man had been ordered not to harm her.

But she made the mistake of letting the rage he influenced in her come through. When he turned, shifting back his massive shoulders to glare coldly in her eyes, his pain was obviously ebbing. She gasped, skidding on the carpet to stop the forward motion that would carry her right into him. She stopped, but one massive arm swung out to her, black claws rending the skirt of her gown as he seized hold of it and used it to drag her forward.

“Mine,” he growled. “Forever.”

Then he shoved her back, allowing himself and the awful little man to exit unimpeded out of the door. It was slamming shut as she flung herself against it.

She screamed, and screamed, and screamed.

Adrian staggered down the grand hallway, the effects of her attack not so easily shaken off this time. He needed his mirror. He needed to lose himself in the comfort of its darkness. There he would hide until Aerlyn could recover. It was she who had kept him from feeling these agonies, he knew that now. She was such an eager receptacle for good that it had never had a chance to touch him before.

So this was what happened when it did, eh? It was horrible! He had never thought such a fate could be his. But it served as justified penance for the sin he had committed against his sister.

Another wave of pain crashed into him suddenly, more painful than anything the little conniving creature in his treasure room had given him.

What she had given him was secondhand. His present feelings of remorse and repentance were his own, and the fact that such good could be born so suddenly in one so black made it a powerful thing.

He was at the head of the stairs when it hit and he lurched forward and over, tumbling helters-kelter down the curving staircase.

Hours later—or was it days?—Kathryn sobbed in exhausted despair, her cheek pressed to the smooth wooden door as if it could bring her closer to the other side. She was crumpled upon the floor, leaning heavily against the sickeningly lovely portal of her prison.

“Please!” she cried hoarsely, her voice rasping weakly from overuse. “Let me out. Please!”

She had used a hundred, a thousand, similar pleas. She had begged and cajoled with insane single-mindedness for her freedom, exhausting every resource of appeal or possible influence she could come up with.

Why was this happening to her? What had she done to deserve this particular unbearable hell?

Had she somehow sinned? Had she been somehow complacent in her gift of freedom that she must now have it so brutally torn away from her? She had never kept a pet; she had even shied from catching fireflies as a child when other children seized and kept the poor things bouncing madly in mason jar jails.

“Why are you doing this to me?” she screamed suddenly, rising to her knees and pounding her fists on the massive wooden gateway before her. She wailed in frustrated misery, pummeling the doors with the same hazed mania she had used against the monster’s body earlier. She continued until her bruised skin began to split and bleed. “Let me out! Let me out! You don’t own me! I won’t let you own me! I will die first!” She was screeching at the top of her vocal cords, but that had come to be a sound barely above a rasping exhalation due to the abuse they had suffered. “Do you hear me? I will die first!”

She collapsed to the floor then, her body too weak with exhaustion and despair to maintain her battle. She wept piteously, her face pressed into the delicate woven textures of the rug. Her head ached, throbbing from inflamed sinuses and the sounds of all her screams still echoing in her ears.

She had never known such despondency. She could not find her usual fortitude, which had always seen her through all kinds of difficult situations in her life. The unknown but well-imagined path of her fate had robbed her of her will to be strong. The fight bled out of her, her spirit ailing and falling away into murky grayness.

She would never be free again, she thought over and over again. She had seen kidnappings on crime shows and they never ended well, especially the longer they went on. And with her family ill, there was no one to even report her missing. They would never find her.

She was doomed to live out her life trapped in this gilded cage. She would die and decay until her polished bones were all that would be left. Then, even in death, her skeleton would be hung amongst these other treasures to be mused and mulled over like any museum piece with a fascinating tidbit of history or gossip connected to it.

Lost.

Forever lost.

She would never see her father or sister again, and this, above all, pierced her heart. For all she knew they had likely died alone and uncared for in their beds because she, their last hope for life, had been spirited away to this monstrous place, wherever it was.

Any distance that took her from her family’s bedsides was too far away.

Slowly Kathryn drifted even farther away into the gray void of her thoughts.

She would never have a husband, would never be wife to a man she loved more than life itself.

She felt her dreams of romance drift into dust. She would never know the answers to those secrets of love between a man and a woman. There would not be holding or being touched with infinite caring and tenderness by the hand of a strong male who loved her. Where was the wondrous kinship of sharing her life with a husband and family? Dying. All these dreams were no longer hers to have. This also meant she would not be a mother, would not feel a new generation of Macdonough blood quicken in her body, and would not labor to bring that life into the world.

Kathryn finally was slipping into sleep again as exhaustion robbed away even her ability to think.

Tears slipped from her eyes when a distant, subconscious thought realized that there would not even be dreams in this sleep to allow her escape.