by Lucy Auburn
Opening the door, I take his elbow and push down the way it makes my skin crawl to touch him. It's too bad, because he's a looker. The kind you'd like to screw then leave behind. What a waste of handsomeness—he should give his face away to someone who doesn't kidnap women. He leads me down the hallway and to a large curving staircase that leads back to where we first came in, near the ballroom. This place is huge—it's a castle, after all—and there's room enough on the staircase for at least four people shoulder-to-shoulder.
In a conversational tone, I tell him, "You must have an... impressive family to have inherited your own pocket dimension."
A year ago I never would've imagined saying such a thing outside of a one act play written by a sci-fi fan, but here I am, doing it anyway. Maybe if I can get him to talk about himself for a while, I can learn enough to get the fuck away from his crazy ass.
"Oh, I didn't inherit the dimension. Not exactly—that's a story for another day, when we've come to get to know each other well." The tone of his voice makes it clear that he's thinking of more than one way to get to know me, and I have to bite down on the part of me that wants to stab him to death right here, right now. "No, I inherited the castle, you see. It was my father's, and though it's gone into disrepair for quite a while, I plan on restoring it to its original dignity. Of course it could use a woman's touch."
Play it cool, Ellen. Don't vomit like you want to right now. "It's very... spacious. Don't you ever get lost in it?"
"Not after so long living here. Though I'm sure you'll find yourself lost more than once." He bares his teeth at me, the expression in no way resembling a smile. "As I said, though, if you try to escape you'll just find yourself back where you started again. So feel free to wander as you'd like—there truly is no way out."
Great. Just great. We've reached the bottom of the stairs, and are standing at the edge of the ballroom. The Serpent looks down at my feet and frowns, staring at my black leather boots.
"You didn't put dancing slippers on. It won't be the same without delicate slippers."
"What won't be the same?"
"The dancing scene. Every fairy tale has one."
I stare at him, wondering why I've been cursed to have a melodramatic romantic for a kidnapper. I wish I'd gotten some other, better kidnapper—the crazy loner who lives in the woods, or the rich guy with depraved desires. It's hard to figure out which way to go when the guy whose elbow you're holding is clearly off his rocker.
"Ah well." He smirks at me. "We can still have the fairy tale ending, even if the shoes are wrong. Just wait... after dinner tonight, you'll be begging for me to bed you. And I will—once we've exchanged our vows at the ceremony."
"Ceremony?" I choke out.
"Our wedding, of course. Like I said, I'm a gentleman—I'll take my time. You'll get a whole seven course meal and a romantic dance before I make you my wife, bend you over my bed, and have my way with you."
Chapter 2
"I mean sex." He's staring at me, eyes narrowed. "To be coarse, Ellen, I'm saying that I plan on fucking you senseless tonight. Do you understand? You seem confused. I just want you to know that I'll treat you right—every woman deserves to have her sexual appetite fulfilled."
Inanely, I tell him, "No thanks."
"Oh, don't worry." He pats my hand, smirking at me. "I understand that you're reluctant now, but by the time dinner is over, you'll feel differently. Now, come with me—as I said, the food is getting cold."
The dude is real antsy about this dinner. I get it, that's part of the fairy tale. Girl gets kidnapped, girl gets mad, handsome man gives her pretty dresses and nice food, and before you know it they're kissing, then married.
They usually skip the banging in the fairy tales, though. Not this one, apparently. He plans on whipping it out before midnight. Call me old fashioned, but I think a man should check to make sure he hasn't kidnapped a lady before he starts playing the here's-my-sausage game with her.
As I let him take me towards the dining room, where a large table under a chandelier is set with what must be enough food to feed an army, I find myself wishing very badly that I had the kitchen knife I used to kill Jack. That knife was lucky—it got me through the worst of times. Or if I could just get my powers to work... but when I discreetly move my hand behind my back and aim my palm at the floor, I feel nothing surge to my skin and exit my fingertips. It's as if they're not there at all.
Panic fills me. I've barely had my four Affinities for a week, and only been using them with any finesse for a few days, but already I've come to rely on them. Without them, I'm not sure what I'll do, except aim the rusty shears at his face and hope to stab deep enough into his eye to hit his crazy brain. Maybe if I miss his brain, the rust on them alone will be enough to take him out—if they're still sharp enough to pierce anything besides the thinnest, finest of silk.
"This is roast duck with an apricot glaze—one of my favorites. Over here is a dish of mashed potatoes that are divine, absolutely to die for, and here..."
I can't believe he's telling me about every single dish laid out on his giant fucking table. It's absurd, but my stomach is actually growling, so there's that. Staring down at the feast laid out for us, I can't help but blurt out, "Who made all this food?"
He frowns at me. "Why, I did, of course."
"But you were... you were upstairs outside my door the whole time. And there's so much here, it would be impossible for one person to make it all on their own."
"I can assure you, I cooked all this food."
"That's absurd," I tell him, but he starts to frown menacingly, and I sense that I crossed I line. So I change tactics. "I mean, it's just so impressive. I knew that you were skilled—you're legendary, after all—but I didn't know you were, uh, this skilled."
He preens at this. "Yes, thank you. You're right, I am legendary. Especially for my ability to dice a tomato. It's a skill not all possess."
"How... distinguished of you."
I seem to have sidestepped his temper for now, though I'm not sure how long I can fool him. Even an idiot—and the Black Serpent, apparently, is a fool if not an imbecile—will eventually figure out that I'm not going to sleep with him.
Though I might marry him. If it gets him to take his clothes off after, I'll have the best opportunity possible to take my shears out and do my worst with them. Getting to his brain through his eyes will be difficult, I'm realizing—but his dick, assuming it's not a micropenis, should be a much larger target. I can probably get a stab or two into the thing and run away, giving me much longer to find a way out than a simple kick gave me.
All I have to do is time it right. If we get all the way to saying our vows—or whatever he has planned—without him finding the shears or figuring out what I'm up to, maybe I can pull it off. And in the meantime, I should use every opportunity I have to get as much information out of him as possible.
As he shows me to my seat at the end of the table—apparently we're going full cliche and sitting opposite each other with a large spread between us—I consider what I want to ask most. And wind up going with, "So, how did you know my father?"
"Excellent question. Let me answer it over our first course." He claps his hand together, and I look around me, wondering where the butler or servant or magic pixies are supposed to come from. "You see, your father and I were old—"
I screech as my plate floats up in the air and moves towards some kind of vegetable dish on this side of the table. The Serpent frowns at me—I really should ask him what his name as—as the plate hovers by the dish, tilting to one side.
"Well?" He arches a brow. "Tell it if you'd like some of the sweet potato hash. It's one of my favorites—hipsters like it, apparently, whatever they are."
"No one uses that word anymore," I tell him. "Why is my plate moving all on its own? Also, what the fuck is your name?"
"Language," he chides me, like that's something I'm about to give a shit about when a nutjob has kidnapped me in his alternate dimen
sion castle where plates float in the air. "The objects around here are enchanted, of course. Something my grandfather paid for when the family still had money. Apparently there was a member of the Shadow Fold with the Affinity for it—she could touch any object and imbue it with a sense of movement and purpose. Somehow the enchantments stick long after she's dead. Lothario."
I choke on the nothing in my mouth. "Was that last part your name?"
"It's a very good name, isn't it?" He preens again, pushing his dark hair back from his forehead. "My mother chose it. A family name. Her great-grandfather was a Lothario."
Apparently he's never read Don Quixote, the 17th century book that permanently associated the name Lothario with being a male whore—a slutty slut slut, a rake, a player, a fuckboi. I didn't think anyone actually had that name, especially in the year of our Lord 2019, but apparently anything is possible.
It's far harder to be scared of him now that I can think of him as something other than the Black Serpent.
My plate taps impatiently against the side of the sweet potato hash dish, and though it doesn't have eyes, I swear up and down that it's glaring at me. It would be cute if I weren't currently being held here against my will.
"Do try the sweet potatoes." Lothario sounds like he's more than firmly suggesting them. "They're very good. I'll be sad if you don't like them—and you do want to be good to me, don't you?"
Resigned, I tell the plate, "Put some of those on you. Some of that, too. Yes, and the ham. And I guess some mash potatoes... oh, the spoon moves too, how charming. This is just great. Fantastic. I love it."
Across the table from me, a serial kill watches smugly as my plate is loaded down with food he must've been able to cook courtesy of enchanted dishes. I can feel his eyes on me as I eat every bite of the food—damn him, but it's good, the bastard.
None of this makes sense. His wildly unstable personality, changing from courteous to cold, from on edge to at ease. The castle that's in great disrepair but supposedly goes only a generation or two back. My Affinity powers, lost to me here, even though somehow the dishes are still enchanted, long after the woman who used her powers on them is dead.
It's like we're frozen in time.
One thing is for sure: no way in Hell am I kissing the frog to get out of this.
Stabbing him in the dick is more my style.
I'm thoroughly stuffed at the end of dinner, but I know better than to try to get out of dancing with Loth.
That's what I've decided to call him, by the way. Lothario is just too much. And Loth is close enough to Loathe that it describes how I feel about him exactly. Maybe after I stab his dick off, I can stab him a few more times, cut him into little pieces, and find out if this old ass castle comes with a plumbing system, since I'd like to flush him down the toilet and all the way to wherever human shit goes.
I let none of my feelings show on my face as he walks around the table and holds his arm out towards me, feet shoulder width apart, his black clothes somehow elegant and intimidating at the same time. Thankfully I have a good poker face, so I'm able to accept his help out of the chair and walk with him to the ballroom without my mask slipping.
Once, my freshman year of high school, I was in a school play—this was before Jack—and I had to hold hands with a boy named Lionel Washington who smelled like sweaty socks and sniffed up his snot every other sentence. I somehow managed to fake being in love with him every rehearsal and all the way to our performance, convincing even my classmates that I had a real crush on him. They teased me for months about that—nothing gets you exiled from the social strata more than being associated with the wrong type.
I met Jack not long after, crying on the sidewalk outside of school, my hands and knees scraped from being pushed. He picked me up and dried my tears. Wiped my skinned knees and smarting palms off with the soft corner of his cotton hoodie. Sat with me at lunch. He even, when rehearsals for the play happened the next year, conquered his fear of public speaking just so he could be cast as the romantic lead opposite me and be the boy who kissed me for the first time.
I didn't fake being in love with Jack—not until the end, when everything that was between us was faked, except for the seven times I stabbed him. But I know how to pretend on the outside when you're upset, angry, hurt, scared, and even nauseous on the inside. That mask is what I slide on as Loth pulls me to him on the ballroom floor, snaps his fingers, and makes a ghost orchestra play from the cobweb-covered corner of the room.
You'd think an enchanted duster would've come with this creepy place. Maybe it quit and ran off with the broom.
"You look beautiful," Loth says, and I make myself smile instead of punching him in the mouth. "If that old dress looks great on you, just imagine how you'll look in the wedding dress I have waiting. I special ordered it and picked it up in Paris—it's just your size."
I shiver from head to toe, not wanting to think about how he figured out my size. Going back to other subjects, I ask him, "How did you know my father, Vincent Arizona?"
"Ah, right. We were old friends. Went to grad school together—though he got the diploma I didn't," he says carelessly. "Even after I was kicked out of the Shadow Fold, he kept in touch. Good man, your father. Had a lot of secrets. He confided so much in me—he knew that I would keep his confidence and not betray him. Too bad he didn't get to finish everything he wanted to do."
I stare up at him. Based on the timeline of when I was born, he should be in his fifties, just like my dad would be if he were still alive. And the Black Serpent has been around for more than twenty years. But the man in front of me barely looks to be in his late twenties.
Maybe he uses an enchanted face moisturizer. I should ask him about it. Eve would want to know the brand so she can use it herself.
"Old... friends." He draws me close as the music slows, and I sense my chance coming soon. All I have to do is wait for the big spin, get the shears out, and stab him as he draws me back to him. To cover for my realization, I ask him, "So, uh. What did... Dad," that word sticks in my throat, "tell you about me? You seemed to think that he knew we were... meant to be together."
"Ah, yes. Well, he didn't know about you precisely." His hand crawls down my arms and towards my waist. "He just knew that it would take someone special to fix me."
I grind my teeth together and force myself to smile, getting as close to simpering as my dusty acting skills will let me when in the arms of a crazy killer. "So you're, like, cursed. And you need a woman to... fall in love with you? Someone pure of heart? Because I'm not that someone, trust me. My heart's all oozy and black."
Loth chuckles. "Your heart doesn't matter. It's the blood that flows through it I'm concerned with." As if that's not creepy. "You see, I need a Conduit to give me back full use of my powers. I've been looking for one for so long... Alas, all the others have disappointed me. You, though, must be different. I can feel it already. All we have to do is say the words of the ceremony and consummate our marriage, and everything will be right again."
I swallow thickly. "But uh, I'm not a Conduit. I'm a Brutus."
"Exactly. Once severed of your connections to your Conduits, you'll be the perfect anchor to restore my powers. Your four Affinities will do what the other girls, with their single and double Affinities, never could: bring me balance."
"You need me."
"And you need me," he says, gliding me around in slow circles that are made less elegant by the stomp of my black boots on the floor. "You'll see that soon, Ellen. I'm the only one for you. The only one who will understand you and give you what you need."
Staring up at him, I realize aloud, "So that's why you killed my family. You wanted me to be alone in this world."
An angry expression closes off his face, and I realize too late that I'm made a mistake. "I would never hurt your loved ones, Ellen. What do you think I am, some kind of barbarian?"
No, he's a perfectly civilized kidnapper with a progressive mindset. "I caught you standing over Bernard'
s body," I point out. "If that wasn't returning to the scene of the crime, what was it?"
"A perfectly innocent coincidence." Oh, sure, that's what all the bad guys say. "I discovered his body and was going to kill the kidnapper when he turned into fog and escaped. That's when you showed up with your little friends, trying to attack me, and I did the only thing I could: disarmed you with my enchanted knife and teleported you here with my ring." He pulls a gaudy-looking ring out from under his shirt, strung on a necklace chain. "What did you think happened?"
"I..." Think fast, Ellen, before the nutjob decides to stab you and blame it on pre-wedding jitters. "I thought you'd killed him, and that you were the man who killed my mom and stepdad. He had powers, like you, and disappeared in a cloud of fog. But if it wasn't you—"
"It wasn't." The fingers at my waist tighten in anger, and his eyes narrow. "You must believe me. You and I are meant to change the world, Ellen, and we can't do that without trust."
Yeah, trust. That thing you expect from the woman you kidnap but don't give in return. But I can't let him see my anger, so instead I claim, "You didn't let me finish. I was going to say, if it wasn't you—and clearly it wasn't—then we have to find out who it was. Someone with an Affinity that lets them disappear into a cloud of fog. Do you know anyone like that?"
Loth sighs and shakes his head, relaxing somewhat. "I haven't associated with the Shadow Fold in years, but they do keep a list of known Affinities. We may be able to find out who he is if we infiltrate their headquarters—after, of course, our marriage is consummated."
Right. The fuckening is nigh. And while I thought I could wait until the post-nuptial bliss to stab him to death with rusty shears, clearly it can't wait. This whole Conduit ceremony thing he's talking about sounds not-good for me, and if it's going to happen at our wedding, I have to stop him before then.