by Sophie Avett
Gwyneth’s gaze found hers, held. Recognition. Fear. And then, those emotions were replaced by a terrible light. She chuckled. “I’ve got you now.”
Elsa’s stomach folded with unease. Nothing was funny. There was nothing funny. Squatting before the witch, Elsa tried to will herself to move, to speak, but she was paralyzed by a sudden realization. The amulet. Her gaze fell to the jewelry held securely in Gwyneth’s hand.
The other witch stumbled to her feet. Her silver Greek star fell limp against her chest and she scooped up her heels. “To think I was…” Her voice was vibrating like she could barely contain the urge to laugh. She reached up and brushed her fingers beneath her eyes, tending her makeup as she managed her feet into her heels. “When he finds out…”
“No.” Elsa let out a catlike growl, magic surging through her heels to ink the air in an angry black whirlwind.
Gwyneth paid her no mind as she smoothed her bob to perfection with a shrug. “You could kill me, sure. But you won’t be able to keep your secret forever.” She pulled a tube of lipstick from between her breasts and applied it without use of a mirror. It was perfect. Ruby red perfection.
She turned a sly smile in Elsa’s direction. “Marshall has an exquisite attention to detail. You and I both know it’s only a matter of time.” She stuck out her lip. “Now, imagine him finding out you’ve been lying to him all this time. Do you suppose our vampire will be very forgiving?” The witch braced a hand on her hip and took a decisive step forward. “You should know that miserable animal better than that.”
Leaning closer, Gwyneth brought their faces inches apart. “Take it from someone who’s lied to him and lived to speak of it,” she dropped her voice into an even whisper, “he’ll break you without a second thought. I mean, look at me”—she motioned to her willowy curves—“and I’m barely holding on to him. What exactly did you think would happen when he realized he’s been fucking a troll this whole time?”
For the first time that night, Elsa felt true fear. Never was Marshall to know. He couldn’t know. It would ruin everything. He would never look at her again. He would recoil in disgust. She’d never lied to him. They’d had an unspoken deal. If he could guess, she would tell him the truth. She’d known he would never guess right. She’d been safe. Until now.
Heart pounding in her ears, she tried for cool, annoyed with herself when her voice wobbled. “Don’t. Please.” Elsa hated herself for what came next, but she lowered her chin in submission. “I’ll leave tonight.”
Gwyneth’s mouth curved. “Oh, I know you will.” The beast witch sent a pulse of magic through the amulet. It glowed. Cracked, and then shattered. Red shards, pieces of silver were suspended in a glittering cloud before they finally fell and showered the tiles.
Every break was felt in Elsa’s heart. Her eyes widened and she reared back, releasing a terrible whine of horror and pain. She flung herself on the ground, gathering the shards. It was over. It was all over now.
The other witch folded her legs, demurely squatting with her knees pressed together. “Now,” she said, “you can either go home and wait for that document I promised…” Elsa looked up and met the other woman’s eyes. Gwyneth offered her a strangely polite smile and produced a folded square of paper. “Oh, I will keep my promise. A beast witch must keep her word. It is our way.”
Her eyes softened. They looked human for the first time that evening. “Listen, I don’t have a personal problem with you, Elsa. I really do understand how a girl like you could take all his bullshit seriously. But that doesn’t change the fact that it’s bullshit.” She unfolded the page and set the Bits and Pieces flyer next to her on the ground. “So, you can either go home and save your store, or you can stay and we can find out just what kind of man Marshall is. The one you think he is. Or the one I know he is.”
She stood, heels clacking as she closed the distance to the door. Elsa stared at the piece of paper. Dressed in the red gown, the photographic version of herself peered over her shoulder. Her mouth hidden, all that was visible were fierce glowing green eyes. Greed. He’d captured her Greed. And just as her father’s Greed had been his undoing—it had been hers as well.
The glass door whispered open. Every cell in Elsa’s body cautioned her to stay quiet, but she blinked back tears and spoke anyway. “Perhaps it was never your appearance, Gwyneth. Perhaps why you lost him has everything to do with your manner.”
The other witch paused, and then sighed. “Oh, sweetheart, of that, I have no doubt.”
The glass door swished closed, leaving Elsa huddled over the broken pieces of her amulet. She didn’t linger long. After she’d painstakingly collected every sliver of her amulet, she gathered herself and made her way to the suite. Everyone who saw her stopped to watch. Some of them cursed. Others drew signs of protection. Instant revulsion and fear. Every recoil and wince humiliated her all over again, but she walked with calm. She didn’t even cry until she reached shore.
* * * *
Across the other side of the ship, Marshall glared at his father. Henry Ansley’s smooth soles clacked against the smooth wood as he parted the shadows in rags. Razor snowy blue eyes pierced the darkness, glowing with an ethereal predatory heat. Sharp cheek bones. Sleek, ruthless lines stretching a crisp gray suit taut. It was like looking into a mirror from the future. And it was all glamour.
Marshall knew better than most what was behind that steely façade. Henry Ansley was a true demon—just an incorporeal mass of shadows held captive by particularly ruthless webs of consciousness. A creature born out of the depths of human wickedness, sexual perversion, and most importantly, shame. He was madness. Pure and potent madness.
“Son,” he said.
It was just one word, but it was more than enough to set Marshall's fangs on edge. It was enough to make his shoulders ten times heavier with the weight of expectations. Surely, he could make a run for it. Maybe he’d make it to the door. But his father would catch him, of course. He was a phantom, capable of seeping through the keyholes of locked doors. Walls and prayers would never be enough to hold him.
Marshall lit his cigarette and turned his gaze out onto the glowing sea. “Your timing is terrible.”
Moira opened her mouth as if to correct the off-handish way her son had spoken, but Henry Ansley quelled her with a look. She straightened, clasping her hands before her. “Very well, I will leave you two to speak in private, but you will be civil. You may be men, but you’re still British.” She left in a waspy net of black lace.
Alone, father and son stood on the balcony. Henry gripped the banister, gaze fixated on the horizon. “I see you have fared well.”
Marshall blew out a stream of smoke. “Shall we pretend you care for reasons other than greed?”
“Greed?”
Those eyes. He could feel his father’s piercing gaze raking across his face. It made his skin crawl. Knots twisted in his stomach. He felt sick. Inside and out. But it wasn’t going to change anything. Henry Ansley might be the only being on this earth with the power to make Marshall tremble, but he wouldn’t know that. Marshall would never give him the satisfaction of seeing him sweat again.
He nursed his cigarette and offered coolly, “As I understand it, the company goes up for sale if you don’t name an heir very soon.” His father’s expression remained neutral, but the fury radiating off of him was palpable. How satisfying. The vampire continued with a bitter smirk, “Pick another, old man. I’m sure there are plenty to choose from.”
Henry’s sensual mouth curved with a shrewd little quirk. “You are my only son, Marshall.”
How…surprising. “Shall I be moved?”
The incubus straightened, clasping his hands behind his back. “Why are you being so difficult? I cannot imagine this is a simple act of childish rebellion. Cassandra might be prone to such crude methods of discourse, but you were always different.” His brow knitted with genuine confusion. “Am I not offering you everything you’ve ever wanted? To live as I have? To know my
power and claim it for yourself?”
There it was. The reason why true monsters had never quite evolved past killing each other in back alleyways. That was why Wingates Castle bled. That was why the raven never did save Poe’s graceless soul. Emotional attachments and humanity’s unity were beyond them. They existed in slavery, because they existed as predators. It was natural law that predators be solitary creatures, predictable and pure.
Henry Ansley was a true demon.
Marshall was probably more man than he would ever outwardly admit. They would never understand one another. There was no point but to live and let live.
Flames. His mind was taken with an image of red hair. Of holy fire. Of the woman waiting for him. He chuckled dryly and flicked the cigarette. “I don’t want anything from you, Sir Ansley.”
For the first time in his life, he meant it. More than anything—he meant it.
Marshall pivoted on his heel and pocketed his hands. “You’re wasting your time.”
He’d gathered a few steps toward the balcony doors before his father’s voice rang out over the waves. “Don’t walk away from me, imp.”
Marshall hardly even paused and continued on his way. Shadows riled and hissed. Tension sang in the air as the vampire forcibly parted the obsidian web barring the entryway.
“I had hoped we could discuss this as men.”
The polite, shiny veneer of a threat. It was real, no doubt. But my, how he didn’t give the slightest fuck.
The shadows crackled. Any moment his father would reach out. Would pummel him, and this time, he would let him. His father delighted in the struggle—and for once, Marshall's anger was such that he didn't need to release it. As strangely amusing as it was, he couldn’t help but wonder if Henry Ansley was prepared to deal with Thor’s hammer and the woman who wielded it. Demon or no, Elsa would have Henry Ansley’s ass in a sling. Easy.
The shadows came for him then. They manacled his ankles and pulled. He fell. Velvet top hat whipped off in the inertia. He snatched it from midair and was dragged through a splice of reality with a quirked eyebrow and a smile.
The world as he knew it was erased and all that was left was the airy, smoky, and charred incubus plane. Acrid air. Harsh and heavy. Brimstone, cinder, and blood. It smelled like Hell.
In many ways it was Hell.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Sitting behind a desk fashioned out of gray and black shadows, Henry Ansley peered at him. Having shed human form, his was a black mass of tentacles with two searing blue eyes. Strangely enough, it was much more comforting for Marshall to think of his father this way. To see him like this. Completely stripped of anything that might trick someone into thinking the being watching him was anything more than a vicious sex demon.
“Sit, imp.” His father’s voice remained the same. Cool, breathy, Victorian iron.
Marshall attracted tendrils of darkness. He hooked them into his skin and drew himself to his feet. Rakishly seating his top hat, he whistled at the vast wasteland extending from all four directions. “Quaint.”
Henry Ansley said nothing. It appeared that his father would say nothing else until Marshall took a seat. The younger man tilted his head in and gathered the shade in long ravaged zombie limbs with clawed, dripping, half-eaten fingers. They swiped and pushed at the walls of reality his father had sealed them in. Nothing came of it. He would go nowhere until his father was satisfied. How…irritating.
He melted into a seat of plush darkness. “You’re expending quite a bit of effort, old man. It would behoove you to hurry and say your piece. I have a ‘go fuck yourself’ all nice and already ready for you.”
His father sighed, though he wore no mouth. “America has ruined you.”
“Oh, it has its charms.” Marshall dropped his head back to peer into nothing. There was no ceiling. No sky. Just black nothingness. “I find it suits me. I’ll be staying right here.”
“You will return to Britannia and take your seat at the head of the company.”
There was no flicker of uncertainty in his father’s statement. No wobble or crack of doubt. Like that son of bitch wasn’t taking him seriously.
Marshall straightened, leveling dead eyes across the desk. “Will I?”
“Think of your mother and sister.”
And you almost had me… Marshall sagged back into the plush. “What about them?”
“Tell me, imp, what do you suppose allows your mother to maintain control over the clan? What do you suppose keeps assassination attempts and mutinous uprisings at bay? Your mother is a cunning and powerful woman”—the note of pride in his father’s tone grated on Marshall’s every last nerve—“but she alone is not what keeps the clan protected, prosperous, and, more importantly, peaceful.”
“And you suppose I care, do you?”
“Oh, but you are amusing, dear child.” Henry Ansley’s voice cooled into steel fit for asylum bars. “I was attempting to be delicate.”
Insidious black ruin riled, tunneling around, but there was no wind. Not a single fleeting breeze. Just stillness and a rising tidal wave of needle-like smoke. It rose like a twister, and his heart punched against his ribcage, mouth going dry. Otherwise, he didn’t react, save for the elegant crossing of his slender legs. “Well, I suppose your incompetence can’t be helped, but perhaps you’d like to bore me with inane drivel?”
His father’s eyes were unchanged. Cold and dead, but there was a note of harsh amusement in his tone. “It is most beneficial that you have remembered that while you are on this plane, you are at my utter mercy.”
“What mercy?” he snapped.
“Precisely. Now, will we continue this discourse as Englishmen?” His father’s voice vibrated through Marshall’s bones and squeezed screams from the cyclone enclosing them.
They were Marshall’s. They were Marshall’s screams.
Suddenly, he couldn’t breathe. He was suffocating. All over again.
The tentacled web of shadows rippled as his father continued in his signature monotone of condescension and narrowly-fettered annoyance. “My company fuels the entire clan. If your mother loses her wealth, she risks losing her support in the council. If the dissention does not fester from within, it will certainly attack from without. Your sister will be bartered to whatever will take her in a vain attempt to fight off would-be conquerors.”
“That’s it? That’s all that happens after you topple from grace? We lose our rubles and rations?” He smirked. “Woe is me.”
Severe blue eyes flashed with bloody intent. “Moira will lose everything. Starting with whatever remains of the clan and its resources. Then, her life. The remaining Wingates—yourself included—will be eradicated to ensure total control. My company is that clan, Marshall. Every mouth is fed and protected from my table and it is the only reason our family has managed to surv—”
Our family? Marshall laughed. Hard.
It was bitter, ugly laughter and he couldn’t have helped it if he tried. His father was right. No matter how he cut it, Henry Ansley was right about all of it. The clan would fall. It was cold and calculated politics. Simple. Neat. Nothing to laugh about, but he couldn’t stop. Hysteria shook him. From the inside out and he blinked back tears. “Give it to Moira. Or Cassie. I don’t…want it.”
“Irrelevant,” he scoffed. “You know very well that would be the equivalent of placing a bounty on their heads. Your mother wouldn’t last a year. Your sister even less. Do you fail to realize the purpose of the Wingates’ alliance with me, a demon? Unlike your mother and Cassandra, you are nearly indestructible.” The tentacles pulsed, thousands of tiny eyes winking to life within the writhing folds. “I am indestructible and will prevail until the Reaping Hour.”
A fat coil roiled and thwacked the desk. “After your ancestors lost their influence and wealth at the conclusion of Dante’s Seven Year War, you were hunted. Every last Wingates. Your mother’s great-grandmother was the last of her name. Our paths crossed and she made a pact with a devil. I hav
e taken Wingates after Wingates as my wife because I am bound to protect. Now, it is time for the responsibility to pass to you. And by queen and country—you will bear it.”
Marshall didn’t need to hear all of this. He knew it. He’d always known it. Cassandra knew it. That’s why she’d cried the last time he’d seen her. She’d cried for all of them. Maybe she knew her brother better than anyone else. He plucked his cigarettes and lighter out of his pocket. “I will make my own way.”
“Could you be persuaded to give up the habit? It is rather crude, don’t you agree?”
Marshall pinched a cigarette between his lips and ignited the lighter. “Maybe I’m a slight more stubborn than you’ll ever be, old man. Or maybe not. Maybe I’m just like you.”
“Nonsense,” he snapped, the sound like a funeral horn. It echoed. And the noise waves seemed to vibrate. Marshall blinked and found himself standing on the balcony of the Palatine Light. What the fuck? His eyes widened at the moonlit ocean. It rippled. Sea and salt tingling on the tip of his tongue. Crisp. Burning his lungs in fresh air.
“Nonsense,” his father repeated. Marshall’s wide eyes flitted to his side. Henry Ansley stood in corporeal form, blue eyes turned to the ocean and hands bracing the balcony. “I had no part in raising you, Marshall. You are your mother’s son. Moira taught you discipline and duty. Delilah…” Marshall flinched and Henry continued, “She taught you chivalry. And your sister”—he let out a heavy wayward sigh—“is the source of the boundless patience you seem to possess.”
Everything was wrong. Marshall tossed a glance over his shoulder to the entryway, beckoning him toward the festivities. He should leave. He should let this bastard talk to himself and go find Elsa. That’s what he wanted. He hated Henry Ansley. Almost as much as he hated himself. Why in the fuck was he still standing here? Marshall’s jaw clenched and he narrowed his eyes on the ocean. “What did you teach me? Tell me, old man.” He braced himself against the balcony as rage sang to boil his veins. “What the fuck did you do to me?”