AllFreeNovel
Share Us
He chuckles and walks back to his drinks, taking my glass with him to refill. “I’ve been taking your concoctions for the last seven years, Gray. You’re about the only version of safe I know. My wife included.” I snort and watch as he smiles at me, his neck twisting as he hands me another drink. “You mix it and get comfortable. I’ll deal with her and let you in.”
“You’re a maniac to even contemplate it. Neither of us know how that will work out.”
“And yet you’ve brought her here to me,” he says, sitting back on the couch. “Don’t fool yourself.”
“I didn’t bring her here for that.”
“Yes you did. You just haven’t thought it through yet.”
No matter what he’s thinking, that is not what I brought her here for.
A bustle of noise starts out in the hall before I can question the logic in my head, loud footsteps followed by heels walking. I wait, watching the door, and eventually see Faith coming into the room alone. She kisses Malachi without acknowledging me, her lithe body slipping into his lap with her normal cat like grace. Noises are made, hushed words between them. I look back at the skyline out there instead of listening in, part of me now giving some consideration to thoughts I shouldn’t be processing. More stupidity. Still, the thought circulates, idiocy proving me as dense as Malachi is being.
Time passes by as I think. Maybe I’m trying to find sense in his idea, give it credence. There isn’t any. We all know it. But here, in this castle with its strange hedonism downstairs and the air of nature in here, the fantasy seems plausible. Intriguing, at least. As is the thought of just fucking her and getting it out of the way. Rough, hard. No connection. No drugs. It would be done then.
Finished.
I wander to the chair, wondering what Faith’s done with Hannah. She’d need talking to about this, consent offered for anything I might be considering rational.
“In your guest bedroom, Gray,” she purrs, still looking at Malachi. “I haven’t touched her.”
That answered that.
“Shame,” Malachi says.
“I don’t think he wants me to touch her. I don’t think she does either. I might be sad about it.” She turns her head to look at me, eyes narrowed under her soft swathe of blonde hair. “She’s spitting a lot by the way. Angry about something. You, I think.”
“Me?” I ask.
“Yes. Something about you not protecting her from monsters with face veins.”
Malachi laughs. “Face veins?”
She shrugs and leaps out his lap, reaching for the decanter and a glass. One shot downed and she sways out of the room swinging her tail in her hand, probably with the intent of going to hurt something.
He looks at me. “I know nothing about face veins.”
“No, but I do.”
Chapter 19
Hannah
I’m shaking, shivering. I don’t know where I am, or what I’m doing.
I think there was someone with me a while ago, but I’m on my own now. I perch on the end of this bed, staring blankly at the dress I was wearing. It’s been thrown at a chair. Tossed as if irrelevant. Maybe that monster did it. Maybe he brought me here and stripped me of my clothes, did things to me that I can’t remember. Where’s Gray gone? He was with me before it happened. He was with me, attached to me by this chain scrunched into my hand, and then the monsters came.
My finger wraps into a ringlet of my hair, twisting it about as I try to think, remember before the monster. There’s nothing but that music and that dance and those veins in his face. My finger taps at my temple, trying for sense and lucidity.Tap, tap. Tap, tap, tap. It was vibrating. The floor was. Or maybe I was. I don’t know anymore, but I’m swaying to something. A song. Waltz. Everyone was dancing to it, twirling and dancing and laughing. At me.Me. They laughed at me, as he moved closer. One step. Two. He kept coming. And then I fell onto the floor, and then into something hard.
After that – nothing.
I gingerly stand and move around this room, looking over the furniture. It’s lavish. Huge. Golds and silvers. An antique bureau. Paintings on the walls, gilt framed. Tall wardrobes. A pair of vast cream damask curtains cover the bay window, the colour matching the four-poster drapery I was just under. Two chandeliers hang low in the room, ornate and opulent. I stare at one of them, watching the light dance in the crystals, and then notice another door at the end of the room. I’m in a house, a mansion maybe. How? I was in that place with neon lights and cold clinical rooms, pills on the tables and people with strange outfits on. Where’s this?
I shrink back towards the curtains, hunching. I’ll hide in them. Wait. Or maybe I should escape. Run. I can remember that.Run, run, run. Get away from the monster. My hand pulls on the cream fabric, tugging it out of the way.
The sight that greets me makes me gasp and back away from it. There’s nothing as far as I can see but snow and ice, mountains and trees in a murk of light. It’s so bleak, so barren of any life at all. I creep back to it and stare, my fingers resting on the curtains for security. Bleak and barren. Those two words seem to resonate, waking something up inside my mind. I tap my head again, trying to think. What’s bleak and barren?
Tap, tap. Tap, tap, tap.
