by L. M. Pruitt
“Open the door, Jude Magdalyn. The house waits for you, and it grows impatient.” Williams lifted my limp hand and slid the key into the lock with minimal effort on my part. The tumblers shifted smoothly and I could almost see them fall away. Our hands turned the knob and the door swung open without a sound. The keys dropped from my hand as I took my first look at what had been decreed mine.
Every surface gleamed, sparkled or shone, and the rest were free of any sign of dust or neglect. The foyer boasted a long row of china cabinets on either side filled with pictures and books rather than any plates or statuettes. In the quiet of the house I could hear a clock ticking, and had the vague, slightly insane hope it was a Grandfather clock. They always seemed to me the epitome of quiet wealth.
As I wandered further, the foyer giving way to a short hall ending in a flight of stairs, the others - except Williams - flowed around me. Gillian turned into one room and then another and I hoped there was not only a clock but a map, because as big as this place was, I was bound to get lost without one. The men split off, half heading up the stairs while the rest filtered throughout the main floor.
I stopped at the first cabinet, studying its contents before moving on to the next. Some cabinets had one picture, with a few books and random objects, others with almost a photo album on display, surrounded by faded books and wooden dolls beginning to turn to ashes. I could feel Williams behind me, patiently waiting as I worked out what this series meant. It meant something, I just couldn’t figure out what it was.
I paused in front of an empty one. The dust tracks inside indicated things had been removed recently. One more puzzle in a long line of them. The next cabinet wasn’t empty and I let out a little gasp when I saw its contents.
There were only a few pictures but it seemed fitting since she had barely been older than myself when she died in the convent hospital. I’d never seen a picture of my mother; the sisters hadn’t bothered to keep one and didn’t think to save her personal belongings. I knew it was her, as surely as I’d recognize my own face. It was mostly the eyes, exactly the same shade of pale gray as mine, that gave it away but there was something else.
That something was the way I knew the woman in the photos was my mother. I just knew. The photos were mostly of her alone, or with a group of people who could only be members of the Covenant, but toward the bottom and back were a few more. It was like someone had tried to hide them from sight but hadn’t been able to bring themselves to do it completely. Reaching up, I opened the doors, noticing the slight tremor of my fingers.
Careful to not disturb the arrangement so much I wouldn’t be able to replicate it, I pulled a framed photo forward, the dust thicker on the glass than on any other surface in the house. My lips were dry and my voice low when I spoke.
“My parents?”
Williams turned the photo fully toward the light, a sigh slipping from him. “Yes. If memory serves, they had just been hand fasted. She was with child—you—within six months.” Williams dropped his hand, sliding it into his pocket. “Within another three, your father was murdered, and five months after, she was in her grave as well.”
“They look so young. They look... they look in love,” I finished, somewhat lamely. But they did. They all but glowed with it, and even now, twenty-six years later, I could feel it while holding their photograph.
“They were. The members of the Covenant yearned to be around them the way flowers yearn for the spring sun after the winter.” Williams took the photo from my hand and gently placed it back in the cabinet, the doors shut with a small snick. “One cannot speak of them without speaking first of their love. Few find something as amazing as they had, though we all search for it.”
I turned my head to look at him curiously, our faces so close I almost made myself cross-eyed looking at him. “Do you mean to tell me that as long as you’ve been around, you haven’t found anything even close to what my parents had?”
Williams chuckled and I swallowed at the little spark of pure lust it sent through my body. Just a little one, but sometimes the littlest ones do the most damage. “Jude Magdalyn, my living years were spent amongst the sort of women that gave their favors not for love, but for love of money, and little changed once I was turned until I came into contact with the Covenant. If I were to find such a love, I doubt I would even recognize it as what it was.”
Somehow my hand had found its way to his waist, where it settled, whether for my support or his I don’t know. “So you’re just going to give up, even though you know there’s a possibility it’s out there?”
Williams’ hand dropped from the cabinet door to cup my jaw, and I couldn’t control the shiver it elicited. Sparks, shivers – if I’d heard bells and whistles, I’m not sure what I would have done. His eyes bored into mine. “I wouldn’t have taken you as an incurable romantic, Jude Magdalyn. You would seem to be full of surprises, quite a few of them pleasant.”
I let out a shaky breath, trying to laugh it off. “Must be the air.”
Williams stepped closer, one little half step that brought us up against each other. “Weak excuse, Jude Magdalyn. Try again.”
His hands playing along my jaw and along the nape of my neck made it difficult to breathe, let alone form rational thought. “The house.”
His teeth grazed the lobe of my ear, and my hand clenched in his shirt while my pulse slowed down to a standstill. Hart could have launched the end of the world and I don’t think either one of us would have been able to move to stop him. “Once again, I doubt your veracity, Jude Magdalyn.”
A sound, half groan, half murmur blew across his cheek when I turned my lips to his. “Maybe I just want to jump your bones, and this is my plan to do it.”
His hand fisted suddenly in my hair, and the gasp I let out wasn’t due to pain. My heartbeat was loud in my ears. If Williams had a pulse of his own, I wouldn’t have been able to hear it over mine. I felt his answer on my lips more than heard it.
“Clever girl.”
For some reason, my first thought when they pressed against mine was, his lips should have been cold. They weren’t, a hint of heat grew and spread from his lips to mine, and through the rest of my body until I was a pool of gentle warmth, my muscles loose and yet tight at the same time. My hand lay loosely against his hip, there more to keep contact with him than to hold myself up. Williams was doing that all on his own, one hand twined in my hair while the other pressed against the small of my back, pushing me into him.
I’d seen the past, and I’d seen the future, but I hadn’t seen time stop until then. The steady tick-tock of the unseen clock slowed until it stopped altogether. When I opened my eyes, I could see tiny particles hanging suspended, waiting patiently to continue on their journeys. The air was so thick, so full of the moment, breathing it was like inhaling maple syrup.
Keeping my eyes open was too hard, and I closed them again as Williams’s mouth moved over mine. I hadn’t been wrong when I’d assumed he’d had a few lifetimes of experience and knew how to use each one of them. Gradually, all the tightness went out of my muscles and even though Williams held me in a firm grasp, I felt my knees give way. I let out a little whimper of disappointment when the move pulled my lips from his. His mouth swallowed it up as he shifted us smoothly, as if he’d anticipated such a thing.
I think we could have stayed forever in that moment, in the kiss, as impossible as it seemed, if a few things hadn’t happened. The first was the sound of someone cursing furiously, in what sounded like French. With it, everything—sound, time, gravity— poured back in on us. I felt my pulse accelerate until I thought my heart would burst from the sudden pressure. I pulled back, gasping for air as my lungs fought furiously to inhale and the air around me fought for me to exhale.
Williams helped me slide to the floor, pushing my head between my legs, kneading the back of my neck. I don’t know what the conversation above me entailed as it was conducted in French at a furious pace, with people joining in at random moments, but I ha
d the feeling at least one person was not happy with the pair of us kissing. Probably more, as the yelling increased.
How long the argument would have gone on I have no idea, except Gillian and Williams had the brilliant idea of asking me my opinion of me kissing him. They asked simultaneously, in French. When I raised my head and gave them a confused look, they both exhaled a deep breath.
“Gillian is concerned you were… forced into kissing me,” Williams explained, throwing her a look full of disgust. Gillian crossed her arms and returned his look with one of her own.
“Right. Because in the brief time you’ve known me, you’ve been able to use force at every juncture, and I’ve just followed as meekly as a lamb.” I sent Gillian a withering look of my own before shaking my head. “Any more concerns, Mother Superior, or does that cover it?”
The second thing that would have brought an end to the perfect moment, if it hadn’t been interrupted by angry chaperones, was the peal of the doorbell. You would have sworn there were a thousand church bells in one little button. And the longer you pushed the button, the louder and angrier the bells got.
One of the guard stepped around the pile Williams and I were making on the floor. I noticed the slight bulge at his back, and when I would have asked what it was, Williams laid a finger over my lips. I glared at him, but kept quiet. The hall had gone silent, except for the rejuvenated clock. There was a click to my right, and I turned my head to see one of my guard crouched on the stairs with an absolutely enormous gun in his hand.
On a silent three count, the guard at the door grasped the knob and wrenched the door open, moving to block Williams, Gillian and I as the rest of the guard moved forward. The bells were finally silenced, and the guards gathered in front of the door, staring down at something on the stoop. One of them called back to Williams and he and Gillian stared at each other.
My heart was still pounding, but now it was adrenaline making it race. “What’s at the door?”
“The guard will take care of it. Right now, you need to familiarize yourself with the house, and—.”
I cut Gillian off, pushing to my feet despite the continued wooziness I was feeling. “I want to see. What’s at the door?”
I was already moving down the hall when Williams made to grab my arm. I eluded his grasp easily. I pushed the guard aside, it was easier thought than done considering the fact one of them had twice my body mass. Eventually, I pushed to the front to stand next to the one who had opened the door. He caught me before I fell to my knees.
Izzy was laid out on the narrow stoop, as peacefully as if she were sleeping. She was eerily reminiscent of a corpse, lacking only the pine box. Someone, in a sick attempt at humor, had wound her rosary through Izzy’s hands, clasping them over her heart.
I wasn’t aware of holding my breath until my lungs begun to burn. I let it out on a sob, clamping a hand over my mouth in an effort to contain the sound. I felt the shifting of bodies behind me, and let Williams pull me back into the house, my knees giving way completely. I pressed a fist to my heart, rocking back and forth, tears streaming down my face.
The hall was utterly silent except for the sounds I made. Eventually they fell away to whimpers. When Williams knelt in front of me, I lifted my head, locking eyes with him. My voice was low and quivered with fury when I spoke.
“When Hart dies, I want my face to be the last thing he sees.”
Chapter Seven
The sun’s first rays colored the horizon when I laid my head on the pillow and closed my eyes. I would have traded damn near anything for an hour of absolute quiet and solitude. Not everything – but I would have traded quite a bit, for an hour without someone hovering over me.
Under the direction of Williams and Gillian, Izzy’s body had been checked to make sure she was truly dead and not just in the first stages of turning. The only good piece of news - that her neck was snapped – meant there was no way she had been turned. One of the guards advised she most likely hadn’t felt anything more than a brief snap of pain.
My eyes watered for a moment before I rubbed them with my palms. Izzy hated any kind of pain. If she broke a nail she’d whine for a half hour, minimum. If she had to die for no reason, at least she hadn’t suffered.
There had been a brief argument over what to do with her body. We couldn’t leave it on the front steps. Gillian wanted to burn the remains to make absolutely certain she wasn’t going to rise. Apparently a snapped neck wasn’t enough proof for her. I knew Izzy’s mom enough to say that if Izzy disappeared without a trace, she’d have the city in an uproar looking for her.
In the end we staged an elaborate, painstakingly detailed accident in her apartment bathroom. My guards did most of the work, with Gillian and Williams once again doing the directing. If they were looking for some sign of the leader of the Covenant, or whatever I was, to move to the forefront they were disappointed. I stood, watched without lifting a finger, or offering comment. I wasn’t hollowed out, empty, or any of those things they say are normal when you experience death. I just couldn’t seem to connect what was going on with reality.
God, I was so tired. Every part of me ached, in a way that reminded me of winter nights when none of us had been able to score enough cash for a hotel room and the shelter was full. The cold chilled right down to the bones, sucked you dry, no matter how hard you fought to stay warm. That’s how tired I felt - achy and dry.
The closer it got to sunrise, the more nervous everyone got. I could barely tell the difference, but the others seemed able to discern we were running out of time without being told in any way. We left Izzy’s apartment an hour before sunrise, and the ride back to the Crossroads - the proper name for my new home - was only slightly less terrifying than being in a professional race car. We made it in one piece and I decided to save the complaining for a time when it was a bigger deal.
The guards scattered through the house again, and before you could say the word “chaperone”, Gillian gripped my arm and frog-marched me up the stairs, leaving Williams to stand at the bottom. I managed to turn my head at the top for a quick look and caught the half smile he was fond of before Gillian herded me down a long hallway, presumably toward a bedroom.
She did take me to a bedroom, but only to drop me on the bed, plant herself on a chaise, and read me the riot act as far as Williams was concerned. I tuned out ten seconds into her speech. I’ve never been one for taking directions, even less so when it relates to my personal life. Gillian noticed, and zapped me with a little of her extra energy, anger, or plain bitchiness.
After I quit yelping and rubbing the singed hair on my right arm, she continued. “You cannot allow your lust to overtake your common sense. Believe me when I say these types of things always end badly.”
“Anastasia. Funny movie, although I don’t think you got the quote quite right. I know you didn’t get the voice.” I flopped back on the bed and pulled a pillow over my face. I wondered if it was stuffed with feather down because it sure as hell felt like it. The fluffy cushion was heaven to my tired senses. “Geez, Gillian, lighten up. I may not be able to set people on fire like others in the room, but I know when someone’s pissing on my shoes and telling me it’s raining.”
“Just like your mother. So sure you know what you’re doing.” I could hear her voice through the pillow, an odd combination of anguish, regret, and exasperation. “Even the smartest people can be fooled, it doesn’t make them any less, it makes them more human.”
I sat up, tossing the pillow aside to tilt my head and stare at her curiously. “I think that’s the least critical thing you’ve said to me in the short time I’ve known you. And, truth be told, vaguely insulting.” Pulling my t-shirt off, I tossed it toward the hard-backed chair by the bathroom door, giving a small “whoo-hoo” when it draped over the back. My bra and track pants were going to have to stay on. As much as I would love to strip down completely and turn my brain off, I wasn’t getting naked in a house full of strangers.
“I’m
well aware that my personality is fairly abrasive, but being in a position of authority does not afford one the luxury of being polite and tender when dealing with allies and enemies.” Gillian rubbed her eyes, one of the few signs of weakness I’d seen from her, and pursed her lips before continuing. “We, Williams and I, have placed the lives of hundreds of people in your hands. Perhaps you can understand our – my – position better, knowing the Covenant’s future lies with your ability and willingness to learn.”
“Well, nice of you to make sure I know there’s no pressure.” When she opened her mouth to respond with an equally snarky comment, I held a hand up, palm out. “Seriously, can we just table this until we’ve both slept? I’m not at my best without sleep, and if we’re going to be throwing fireballs or moving mountains, or whatever the hell I have to learn how to do, I’d like a little sleep before I have to start learning.”
Gillian rubbed her eyes again, a gesture I could understand. It doesn’t really make you feel any better, but it helps.
“One day−.”
“I swear, if you say one day ‘when you’re older’, I will throw a temper tantrum without the aid of magic that will make you look like an amateur.”
My threat fell on deaf ears as Gillian continued speaking over me. “I’ll tell you more about your parents, and hopefully you’ll better appreciate the delicate position you’re in. Until that time, I trust you’ll rest well. You’ve little need for alarm during the day with a house of trained warriors.”
“Yippee,” I muttered into the pillow, pulling the unbelievably soft sheet and comforter up to just under my chin. “For now, I’m serious about the checking out thing. We’ll talk more when I wake up. Later. Much later.”
I was ninety percent asleep before I finished speaking. Maybe I dreamed it, because it didn’t strike me as something Gillian would do, but I would have bet she tucked the covers around me and dropped a kiss on my forehead on her way out.