“What about the essence of a dead person?”
“After a body dies, their essence no longer inhabits the astral plane.” He admitted, knowing where the conversation was headed. “I know what you’re thinking. I still should have sensed something.”
“That’s your heart talking not your head.” Stephan swiveled around to bore into him with amber eyes. “Consider, if the entity is demonic or the spirit of a dead person then it follows that you would not have seen it. The only reason I could was because it disrupted the normal pattern of heat in the room. Sometimes, particularly now that Eden dampens the wilder aspects of my ability, I can sense you, and everyone around me, as a vision of heat. It is like souls in the astral realm only I am sensing the heat contained by each person in this realm. That night, there was a pattern of heat in the room or rather an abnormal pattern, devoid of heat. It couldn’t have been a person…not any living person, anyway.”
Dominic absorbed the logic in his brother’s words with a heavy heart. Stephan was right of course. “We need Cael’s input.” He should have completed his follow-up interview by now. Dom was about to quit the room when Stephan halted him.
“I’ll go.”
Dom ducked his head on the astral for the briefest instant. “They’re in the library.” He called as his brother reached the study’s door.
* * *
“Will you stay with her while I speak with Dominic?” Cael whispered.
“That was my intention.” Stephan returned his hushed tone.
Eden reclined against the spongy cushions. With arms spread out on the back lip of the couch, she watched the two from across the hexagonal room. They probably thought they were being discreet. She could hear them as if they were shouting. Even if she hadn’t been able too, she might just as easily have guessed what was said.
Ever the polite dandy, the mind doctor excused himself, leaving her alone with the other one. The Dangerous One. The sniveling twit she presently inhabited had rightfully christened him “the Sphinx”. This one was perceptive, with a cold shrewdness that made him the most difficult to read. One thing she knew, he was not to be trifled with, not with that ability of his. She’d have to get rid of him, discredit him somehow.
He approached her with a volume in his hand. “Shall we continue our reading, then?”
She waited until he stood just in front of where she’d poised the girl’s alluring body. “Books are for bluestockings who are too dull to keep up their end of a conversation. I never bother with them, having found a much more pleasurable pursuit for my eyes…” Raking him over with a predatory gaze, stopping deliberately at the junction of his thighs. “…and my mouth. Would you like to join?”
His hard amber stare said he didn’t. She sensed from that look that she wouldn’t have an easy time with him.
He shifted his towering frame and sat on the upholstered stool opposite the couch, as far from her as possible.
“What have you done with Eden?” His voice was deadly calm, his mien a wall of menace.
“I am the new, improved Eden.” She purred in a soft seductive voice, pulling a slow hand through the once blond tresses. Since the initial appearance of the wide raven band at her temple, increasing strands had encroached, threading the blonde with lustrous black.
“Know this. If you harm her again you will suffer… a great deal. Dominic is not a violent man. I am.”
She let her hand fall from her hair to the modest neckline of the gown, tugging recklessly at the delicate lacing there. “What do you think he’ll do when he learns his trusted and beloved brother attacked his helpless betrothed? Forcing himself on her mercilessly.”
“Knowing Dom, he wouldn’t believe you but he’d disown me anyway to save her from disgrace. Then, he’d spend the rest of his life torturing himself with guilt and regrets.”
The fabric tore loose, exposing a creamy swell of breast and the crisp white corset beneath. Next, she kicked free of one slipper, and viciously scratched and banged the second one against the wood floor until the heel broke from its base.
“Care to wager?”
“Do not underestimate him. He will not be fooled.”
“We shall see.”
Chapter 40
The door opened and in strolled Cael. His solemn manner spoke volumes.
“Bad news?” Dominic predicted.
“I’m afraid so.”
“Same here.”
“Well, let’s have yours first then.”
Cael listened, his face intense and thoughtful as Dominic relayed the particulars of his and Stephan’s meeting with the Reverend Martin ending with his previous conversation with Stephan.
Cael remained silent at the end of his spiel. Dom scanned him for a reaction, finding nothing but a rueful expression, “Well?”
“Hmm…I’m not sure which is worse, your news…or mine.”
“The interview?” Dom prompted again.
He sighed a long, telling breath. “It differs…vastly, from my previous assessment. Her mood was erratic: one minute hostile, the next aloof, and at times overly affectionate. She would not answer direct questions, and I caught her in several unsolicited lies.”
“What does all that mean?” He cringed, dreading the answer to his own question.
Cael ran a hand through his hair, rucking up the dark gold tuffs. “Dominic, if I had read a transcript of the two sessions instead of conducting the assessments myself, there would be no convincing me that they were describing the same patient. This new Eden—” He paused, massaging his temples. “She is indeed showing signs of mental distress as well as a significant dissociation from reality.”
“Is she…?”
“There are several cognitive disorders which could explain some of her behaviors.”
“So it is as I thought. Insanity.”
To Dominic’s utter surprise…and relief, Cael shook his head. “Then, too, there is still the matter of the visions, her affect on Stephan, and her ability to sense you. No, insanity is not my final consensus. It does not fit her case. I have what I believe to be an answer to your question, which ironically is not a solution to her problem.”
Dom exhaled the longest breath he’d ever held in his life. Dread turned to hope. “What is it, then?! If not insanity, what else could be causing—”
“Dominic, have you considered the possibility that Eden is adept?” Cael posed the question in a quiet, scientific voice. “That these strange happenings are the manifestation of a gift she has not yet realized and the nature of which is volatile…perhaps even dangerous. I think it is that stress on her psyche causing the instability and not some inherent mental weakness. There is documented evidence that certain psychic abilities put extra strains on the mind. I’ve…seen it myself, with one of my patients…suspected it in several others.”
Dominic reeled at his brother’s words. The thought had not occurred to him…so simple, so logical. The more he considered it; the more it made sense. Her sensitivity to astral travel, her uncanny ability to sense him when he was invisible, her affinity for Stephan, the visions, not prophetic like Gabriel’s, but certainly of a psychic nature.
“Cael, you’re a genius. Stephan thinks she is possessed by an evil spirit of some sort.”
“I think my theory more likely…and possibly more hopeful than the alternative.” He held up the forgotten list. “Spirit possession has no basis in scientific or medical fact…and thus, no literature, no treatment options. We know that adepts exist. Plus, she has displayed signs of an ability of some sort.”
“Say, you’re right…what do you suggest?”
“First, I recommend postponing the wedding-”
“No. Out of the question.” The wedding was non-negotiable. “She is with child. I’ve seen a second essence mingled with hers.”
Cael conceded without a fight. “Well, in that case, I would recommend calling in someone with more expertise on the subject. We don’t even know the nature of her gift. We need someone who can he
lp us figure out exactly what we’re dealing with…as well as help her exercise some level of control over whatever talent she has.”
Dominic knew of whom he spoke. “Greyson?”
Cael nodded. “We are out of options and I think we can both agree her condition is worsening. Will you at least consider it?”
“Yes. I’ll consider it.” What other choice did he have?
* * *
“You won’t find a letter opener or any other sharp or harmful object in that desk or any other room on this floor. I suggested to Dominic after your last ‘accident’ that it would be prudent to remove the apple from the Garden.”
“High and mighty bastard!” She sent the drawer skidding across the floor, sending paper, and various knick knacks flying in its wake. Her hair was deliberately messed, dress torn to shreds, and her face splashed with water from the vase that now lay upturned and cracked in a puddle of expanding liquid.
Seizing upon a leg of the desk, she snapped it from its socket with little effort. The desk tittered precariously like a spider trying to starve off the throws of death. Her eyes narrowed upon the jagged trio of nails protruding from the deep mahogany wood.
“I’m curious, what you plan to do with that.” He impaled her with that prying gaze of his.
She threw him a serpent’s smile, flipping the wood so the dangerous end aimed at the flat curve of her stomach exposed by the torn corset and ruined dress. Let the Sphinx try to explain fresh wounds on the demon’s whore. With that delicious thought, she struck downward, anticipating the pain that always came with victory. But it never was. The three nails plopped to the floor. White-grey ash from incinerated wood floated away on air, some landing on her person.
“No matter.” She snatched up the nails only to fling them down just as quickly, shrieking in pain.
“I will not allow you to harm my brother’s fiancée.” He aimed his gaze at the scorching hot nails, melting them down to a silvery viscous liquid.
The evil was enraged. Eden could feel its anger and hatred rushing through her quivering frame like a runaway locomotive, engines dangerously close to overload. It began shrieking, spitting out what sounded like angry curses in a tongue she herself neither spoke nor understood. She launched them up from the floor and across the room in a fantastic leap that rattled Eden’s nerves. A minute or so passed before she regained any awareness of the surroundings and the entity’s actions.
Since having the interloper’s will imposed on her mind and body, she’d been having a progressively more difficult time maintaining her own consciousness. At times her essence seemed to be displaced to another realm. A dark, hollow place where she saw nothing, heard only echoes of silence, and was completely cut off from her physical self. The realm rendered her unable even to listen in or observe the entity’s actions. Minutes sometimes hours passed before she returned to her body. She knew because there were holes in her memory that signified a ‘loss of time’.
She was just coming out of one such blackout, trying to reorient herself when the smarting pains along her torso hit her. She, or rather the entity was struggling, writhing and shrieking beneath a great weight. Her wrists shackled wide apart by that same weight pinning her squirming body to a cushioned surface.
Stephan. He had a hold of her, restraining her clawing hands, trying to still her as she thrashed about. Although he was a sizeable man and physically strong, if not overtly burly, it seemed to be a struggle for him to maintain his hold on her.
That was how Dominic and Atherton found them: tussling atop the ottoman.
“Stephan!”
The entity hyper-extended their neck in the direction of the voice. Eden caught a distorted glimpse of Dom and Atherton’s shocked expressions. She screamed anew, a fearful note injected deliberately by the entity. Likewise tears sprang to her eyes.
“Dom…” A pitiful whine.
Stephan relinquished his hold on her, owning to her cease struggle. “Do not be deceived. She was attempting to injure herself.”
Free of his hold, the entity staggered them over to fling herself in Dominic’s waiting arms. “He-e-e-e…attacked me. I couldn’t get away.”
“She attacked herself.”
“And that necessitated such force holding her down?” Dominic couldn’t help but be skeptical. It was ludicrous to think the slight woman trembling in his arms would require such maneuvers to restrain. But he was reminded of her relative ease in flipping him over not two days before.
“I was not wholly successful in protecting her.” Still breathing heavily, Stephan gestured to her person.
“Liar!” She spewed at Stephan before turning pleading hazel eyes up to his face. “He fell on me with the intent to rape, thinking I would be too ashamed and frightened afterward to tell of it. He even went so far as to brag that even if I attempted to expose him, no one would believe it. Dominic, you believe me don’t you?”
* * *
Dom hesitated, glancing from his brother’s flush face and the ransacked library to Eden’s sincere mien. His brother could be rash, impulsive even, though his recent behavior was anything but. Stephan had shown a certain predilection for Eden. Could it be possible? His heart railed against the idea. He would have to think on it logically, and at a less emotionally charged moment. Seeing his pregnant fiancée, whom he loved dearly, penned beneath his brother was not an image he wanted fresh in his mind when trying to decide who to believe.
“Cael…I-”
“Tread carefully.” Came his brother’s warning. “Stephan is out-of-sorts.”
For the first time since he’d arrived on the estate his brother looked like his old self: hair messed, eyes ablaze with defiance and passion. Before the incident at the university, evenings had often found Stephan engaging in a philanthropic tête-à-tête. He loved politics and a spirited debate.
“If I had attacked her in a fit of lust and rage, this estate would be a smothering pile of cinders. Think on that.”
Dominic swung a disheveled Eden up in his arms and turned to exit the library. “You said it yourself. Her presence helps keep your gift in check.”
“That thing in your arms is not Eden.” Stephan countered. “Can’t you feel the coldness, Dominic? The evil?”
Cael stepped forward, between the two brothers. Dominic felt the heat of disapproval trained on him. Heat?…come to think of it. The room had grown hot. With this realization, Dominic dropped a protesting Eden out of his arms and pivoted.
Cael put a hand to his chest to stop him. “This conversation is dangerous. Go. Have Ethan look her over. I’ll speak with Stephan.”
Dominic ignored the warning, brotherly concern winning out over his better judgment. “Stephan…”
His breathing was pronounced, erratic. Amber eyes alit with a luminous glow were peeled and wild…darting about, frantic almost. “Get out of here…Now!”
No sooner had the words left his mouth, the hearth erupted. Intense blue and white shards of heat shot out of the opening, blowing the grate with such force that it sliced through the air and clattered to the floor on the opposite side of the library.
Heat hit him in intense waves. His lungs felt like they were on fire with each arid intake. A cough overtook him. He snapped his eyes shut but not before they’d begun to sting and burn. The only sounds louder than the roar of flames and his own desperate attempts to breathe were Eden’s hysterical shrieks. Eden. He must protect her.
“Cara, shhhh, you must calm down. The heat, it is intense but not unbearable.”
She lay huddled on the floor, too panicked for his words to register. He collected his wits about him as best he could under the onslaught and took a deep scorching breath. It took some doing to get a secure enough grip to lift her writhing body. “Cael! Where are you?”
“Here.” The answer was muffled but close.
“Where’s Stephan?”
“Behind me somewhere. I cannot see.”
“Try to calm him down.”
He piggybacke
d her to Ethan and Kathleen. Normally, he would have looked before he leaped. He hoped that he wouldn’t interrupt them in flagrante delecto.
As luck would have it, they were sitting alone in one of the parlors having afternoon tea. When he materialized with his burden, Kathleen upset the teapot…or so he thought from the reddish blur and swirl of fabric he could make out. Likewise, he heard crockery breaking. And he could smell the rich cinnamon-y aroma of Ethan’s favorite chai.
“Dominic, what’s happened? Is she injured?”
His ears still rang. It took him a few seconds to make out the words. He inhaled several gulps of cool refreshing air. Blinking maniacally to clear his bone-dry eyes, he succumbed to a fit of coughs. Ethan caught him as he stumbled.
Eden must have fainted. Her shrieks and struggles had ceased. He shoved her into Ethan’s arms. “Take her, I haven’t the time to explain. Kathleen, help Ethan. And keep away from the library until you hear from me. Is that clear?”
“Yes, of course, but…wait-”
He was back in the library an instant later, purposefully astraling adjacent to his younger brother. The heat was still intense, but not so much as before. The air scorched his nasal passages and throat, but he seemed able to keep his eyes open. Blinking often to keep them lubricated, he stepped forward.
“Stephan…” Though his vision was still blurry he was able to follow the tall figure with the shock of dark mahogany hair. It moved to and fro, near visible emissions coming off his body.
“Dom, no, you mustn’t touch him.” Cael’s warning froze his movement. “He’s lucid but for some reason he hasn’t spoken. The effort may be too much.”
“How can you tell?”
“When you left the heat crescendo-ed. He seemed to notice my distress and blew out some of the windows so I could breathe. Plus, if you’ll look to the hearth, the flames have subsided some. I think my voice, even just our being here helps him focus. He’s easing down but it’s going to take some time.”
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