AllFreeNovel
Share Us
The woman drops the cord and folds her fingers back in her lap. Bree bangs two blocks together and cracks up laughing. The Roman warrior returns to his post on the steps and frowns at her.
“You’ve been given a remarkable gift, Bree Mortimer,” the woman whispers, stroking the child’s tufts of light brown hair. “But there are some who will have you believe it is a curse. When the time is right, I will come for you. I will teach you what you need to know – that is my promise. But others will come, as well, with fear and malice in their hearts. You must choose your own path.”
Bree doesn’t respond, which does not surprise the woman. She is not such a fool as to expect a child to understand the monumental power that hums in her veins. She is here only to observe, to ensure that Bree will be safe at Grimwood until it is time.
“Is everything okay?”
The woman whirls around to see Mike Mortimer leaning in the doorway, his face and upper torso now covered in black soot. But Mike can’t see her.
He peers down at his daughter on the playmat, and at the woman’s abandoned pink travel case still sitting by the fire.
“Bree-bug, did you see where the Pink Woman went?”
1
Edward
Brianna’s scream rends my soul.
And not in a metaphorical, poetic way.
In a painfully corporeal, “my heart is being torn from my chest and eaten by carrion birds,” way.
Brianna is behind me, with Ambrose, and every metaphorical bone in my ghostly body longs to turn to her, to drag her far away from this horror and comfort her with the myriad of sensual skills I have yet to share with her.
But if Brianna is behind me, she is safe, for now.
Unlike Pax.
His body jerks as the Ripper drives the knife through his chest. Pax tries to grip the blade with his big, stupid hands like the fool he is, but they slide away, slick with blood. The Roman’s head lolls to the side, his eyes finding mine.
I’ll never admit it to him, but the artist in me has always been drawn to Pax’s eyes. They’re an icy, expressive blue, usually sparkling with some kind of Roman mischief. But now they swim with pain.
Pax in pain? The idea that such a brutish creative canfeelundoes me completely. If the Ripper can fell the mighty Pax Drusus Maximus, then what hope do the rest of us have to stand against him?
“Friend…” Pax rasps, his words rattling. He stretches out a hand to me. “Go. Protect Bree…you must…”
His words are drowned as blood spurts from his lips.
No. This cannot be.
Pax’s eyes roll to the heavens, and a serene expression appears on his features. Bile rises in my throat, a somewhat novel sensation since I don’t have a throat or a stomach to produce bile. But I’m close enough to Brianna that she can give me these old, Living sensations.
And the sensation I feel now, as I watch my friend dying, isshame.
Pax is giving his life now, with happiness, because he believes it will save us. He came to this cemetery to die by his own hand. He thought his sacrifice was the way to protect Brianna.
His is true nobility, not like my tainted bloodline of cowards and selfish pricks.
Pax thinks this because I told him so. I made him believe that he is the cause of all our misery, that he is worth more to us dead than alive.
How could I do this to him?
To Bree?
Is this what he looked like the day he died on the battlefield? The mighty oak felled?
No.
