AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“And then you met Vicky,” I stated matter-of-factly. What chance would that poor girl have had against the storm of violent rage coursing through Eddie at that point?
“I was making my way back into the house and the silly little bitch was looking for Cad. Someone had told her he was in the garden,” he said dismissively. “She was nothing more than a whey-faced whore with her skinny body and mass of hair. Looked like butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth, just like all the others. She told me she was a virgin and saving it for her wedding night, but she offered to suck my dick like an old pro. I enjoyed killing her.” His smile was faraway, dreamy, and he fingered the blade reminiscently. I tried to control the shudder of terror and revulsion that ran through me. His voice changed and throbbed with sudden regret. “I wish I could have loved you, Dita. You will never know how much I wanted it to be you. When I first saw you in Paris—my God, how you stunned me with your beauty!—I knew that if anyone was going to be able to break the spell of the past, it would be you. Then we became friends, and your friendship became the best thing I had in my sorry mess of a life. We should have stayed away from Tenebris.” I thought of the murdered girls in Paris, but I remained silent. Eddie believed the darkness that haunted him resided here at Tenebris. He was wrong, of course. It was inside him. The memories might be more concentrated here, but he would carry the Jago legacy with him wherever he went.
“I know how hard you have tried to fight the past,” I told him softly, cradling his head against my shoulder. Despite the horrors of what he had just told me, somewhere deep inside this broken man, my sweet, excitable, funny friend Eddie still existed. Perhaps it wasn’t too late to reach him. “But it was too strong for you. You couldn’t defeat Arwen or Uther, whoever it is that speaks inside you.”
“He told me to destroy your pictures. I had to obey him, Dita, even though it broke my heart.”
“Why did he want you to do that? What could he hope to gain from ruining the paintings?”
“I think it was to prove his power over me. He knew that I used thoughts of you to drive him out of my head, or at least keep him at bay. If I could fix an image of you in my mind, sometimes I could blot out the sound of his voice. He wanted to break that link with you. I love you, and I loved those paintings. So they had to go.”
My mind did not want to make the logical next step. If the things Eddie loved had to go, what did that mean for me? Instead of examining that thought, I looked across at where Eleanor lay on the mattress, like a discarded bloom that has been crushed between cruel fingers. “Let her go,” I said, “Please, Eddie. Eleanor is not to blame for any of this. No one is.”
“She is to blame,” he spat, his expression changing from contrition to venom in a heartbeat. “She knew and yet she still married my father. She bore him children, knowing that the taint of the Jagos was not dead. She carried me inside her and nurtured me with her blood. Then she brought me into the world to face the Jago nightmare alone. This time it is Lucia’s legacy. She must be made to pay for what she has done. The part of her that gave me life, all signs of her womanhood, that is what must be destroyed.”
I knew from those words who was driving his madness. Oh, Arwen Jago had claimed others before his evil gaze alighted on Eddie. But whereas Uther had been a willing conduit back into the world, poor weak Eddie had tried to fight. And in doing so, his mind had been all but destroyed.
* * *
I couldn’t tell how much time we had passed in silence. “Let me give Eleanor some water. Please, Eddie?” He shrugged moodily and I went over to tend to his sister. It was a struggle to support her and hold the cup to her lips with one hand, but I managed it at last. She drank gratefully and subsided so that her head rested on my shoulder.
“Take care of him for me, Dita. Promise me you will take care of Tristan.” It was little more than a sigh, but Eddie heard it.
“Another of your bedfellows, sis?” he snarled. “Wasn’t Karol enough to satisfy you?”
“Tristan is Eleanor’s son,” I said. Ignoring Eleanor’s desperate attempt to hush me, I continued with what I now knew to be the whole truth. “He is your son, too, Eddie. More lives than your own were broken when you slept with your sister.”
