My gaze strayed to my companion to find that his expression was tight and his shoulders were taut. He didn’t look happy about leaving Low Town and less thrilled about being in the open forestland, which seemed odd to me.
“You good?” I asked after looking down at my speedometer. I wasn’t speeding too much so I didn’t think it was my driving that was making him nervous.
“Fine,” he bit out.
“Sounds like it,” I murmured. I paused, waiting to see if he would comment further, but Bronx remained silent. “I’ve never cared for leaving town. You grow up with other kids telling you every kind of horrific faery tale imaginable, knowing that most of them have some kernel of truth to them. It really is no wonder that most people don’t ever leave the town they’re born in.”
“I was born in the Bronx,” the troll volunteered after I ran out of things to ramble about. “Moved to Low Town about twenty years ago.”
“Then Bronx isn’t your real name? It’s a nickname?”
“It’s my birth name. Trolls are named after the places in which they are born.”
My face scrunched up as I mentally digested this unexpected bit of information. I had only spoken to one or two other trolls in my entire life and I hadn’t caught their names. Truth was there wasn’t a lot known about trolls because they didn’t tend to be very talkative. Most people thought that they just weren’t very bright and tended to avoid them because they weren’t pleasing to the eye like elves and were frighteningly strong like ogres.
“So, there could be several other trolls running around with the name Bronx,” I said.
“I would imagine so, but then there are other humans running around with the name Gage, correct?”
“Probably. But do you also have siblings with the same name as you?”
“No, I’m an only child. Most trolls have only one child.”
“Really? Why?”
“The mother tends to eat the spares.”
I jerked the wheel as I twisted around to look at him in shock. I had heard of animals sometimes eating their young, but never another race that I actually spoke to and worked with. My mouth hung open as I struggled to recover and say something that was coherent and not overly insulting to his people when I heard him softly chuckling next to me. I caught sight of the huge grin on Bronx’s face out of the corner of my eye. He was teasing me.
“Fucking asshole! That wasn’t funny,” I grumbled, slowing down the speed of the SUV so I didn’t kill us in case something ran across the road in the dark.
“Sorry, it’s just that humans tend to believe the worst about trolls,” Bronx said in a smooth, even voice, showing that he wasn’t in the least angry about the fact that I believed him. His shoulders slumped slightly as the tension that had hummed through his large body dissipated.
“Are you really surprised considering the world we live in? The only things that humans seem to know about trolls are that they are big, strong, scary, and frequently violent.” I ticked off each item on the fingers of my right hand as I released the steering wheel. “You’re not exactly the most talkative group.”
“I’ll agree with all that,” Bronx said with a small smile. “We’re long-lived like a lot of the other races, but not particularly fast healers. We’re also solitary. We don’t live in clans so it’s sometimes hard to find a mate, even if it is just for the purposes of procreation. And even if you do find a temporary mate, it’s not easy to conceive, so most trolls don’t have siblings.”
I slouched in my seat, leaning my head against my left hand while resting my elbow on the door. I couldn’t imagine living like that. All of my earliest memories were crowded with thoughts of my older brother and younger sister. There had been other children who were human as well as some of the other races who attended my elementary school. All my life, I had been surrounded by others, particularly of my own race. Even while I was stuck in the Ivory Towers with the warlocks and witches, I never felt alone—just isolated. I couldn’t imagine what it might have been like growing up as a troll without others like myself around.
“Sounds . . . lonely.”
“There’s an old saying that holds some truth: there’s only one thing more annoying than a human,” he started, his voice a deep rumble. My head popped up and I looked over at him, my heart giving an erratic little beat as I waited for him to finish. “And that’s other trolls.”
“Oh,” I mumbled.
“Don’t feel bad for me, Gage. I don’t miss the company of trolls. Never have.”
We fell into a comfortable silence, listening to the evening DJ drone on about upcoming concerts, local pub crawls, and updates on traffic congestion for the evening commute. About an hour outside of Low Town I turned off on a lonely road that wound up a hill, rising above the forest as the trees started to thin out. As we crested the hill, we were stopped at a two-story wrought-iron gate. One man walked around to my side as I rolled down the window. A second man stood a few feet away from the front passenger side tire; a shotgun was pointed directly at Bronx’s head. To his credit, the troll looked completely unperturbed, his attention on the man approaching me.
“What’s your business?” the man demanded. He remained a couple feet away from me, a gun drawn but not pointed at me. On his waist, he wore a sword, while several other knives were stashed about his body. Bullets weren’t effective against everything that you might run across, but I didn’t know of any creature that could come back from having its head cut off.
“My name is Gage Powell. I called earlier today. I’ve got an appointment with Aemilia.”
His eyebrows jumped up in surprise at the mention of Aemilia. “Identification.” I tried to ignore his reaction, despite the fluttering of nerves in my stomach, as I reached into my back pocket and pulled out my wallet. I handed him my driver’s license and waited as he checked it against a little sheet of paper he had pulled out of his pocket. He handed it back, then stared at my companion. “What about him?”
“He’s my assistant. It’s already been cleared with Aemilia.”
“Yeah,” the guard drawled as he stepped back and waved for us to pull forward as some hidden guard flipped the switch for the gate to open. “Good luck with that.”
I rolled up the window against the cool night air as I drove through the gate and continued up the path. The asphalt road quickly turned to thick gravel, filling the car with the sound of crunching over the murmur of radio that played in the background. Bronx leaned forward and turned off the chatter before shifting in his seat to look at me.
“Did I hear you correctly? Did you request a meeting with Aemilia?”
“Yeah,” I mumbled. Bronx wasn’t the only one questioning my sanity and I didn’t blame him. I was thinking I was pretty crazy too. Aemilia was the head of the local order of Vestal Virgins and believed to be the most powerful and most dangerous. If you were crazy enough to seek them out, then you damn well hoped you didn’t get stuck with her.
The Vestal Virgins weren’t what most people thought they were. They weren’t a bunch of young, nubile virgins lounging about in white togas as they waited for orders from the gods. They started out as chaste little human girls, plucked from some of the local blue-blood families, or just families with a sizable wad of cash. But what waited for us at the top of the hill was no longer human.
Vessels for bodiless creature that fed off the dark spots on the souls of other creatures, the Vestal Virgins were possessed upon reaching puberty and spent the rest of their lives collecting and protecting the secrets of others. In the Roman Empire, they had been the most trusted of citizens and highly regarded. They were the keepers of state secrets and important legal documents, and even the final judge on accused traitors of the empire. Now people went to them to hold their secrets, because many believed that the Virgins could lift away the weight of the secrets as well as the guilt. Of course, the problem was trying to tell them
just one dark secret. Supposedly if you were caught in the grasp of an older, powerful Virgin, she could pull all your secrets free, leaving you hollow and empty.
The Vestal Virgins could keep all this power and strength so long as they remained chaste. A breached body was an unclean body. The spirit would flee the body and the Virgin would die. Aemilia was one of the oldest Virgins and head of the order. To reach that peak, she would have had to remain chaste the longest, making her tears the most powerful. Exactly what I needed to wipe away the effect of the potion over Parker.
As we turned a final curve in the drive, we came upon a large mansion with gleaming white columns that seemed to glow in the flickering firelight cast by the half-dozen iron sconces that lined the front of the house. All the tall windows were bright with yellow light, framed by curtains that had been pulled aside. It felt as if the whole house was waiting for our arrival despite the late hour.
“Gage, I can talk to her for you,” Bronx offered as I threw the car in park in front of the building. “This is my mess, my mistake. I can collect the tears.”
“Thanks,” I said with a sigh. I pulled the key out of the ignition and sat there, staring into the darkness. “I appreciate it, but I have a feeling that she’s going to want me. We’ll tell her that we want to make a trade. She can feel the weight of our secrets before we tell her anything and then she can choose which would be fair. They might be nasty bitches, but they are bound by magic to be fair.”
Bronx nodded, his expression grim. I didn’t know how much he knew about the Vestal Virgins, but he seemed to understand what was at stake here. I’m sure he had his share of secrets, but I had a feeling that regardless of what he had done in the past, Aemilia was going to want me. I had never heard of a warlock or a witch visiting the Vestal Virgins, but I did know that they were one of the few groups safe from the Ivory Towers. No one had ever stolen a secret from the order. All the virgins had died in the process of trying to rip the secrets free, and the Ivory Towers had decided to let them live in the hopes that one day they would be able to find a way to pull the secrets free.
Standing next to Bronx at the foot of the stone stairs leading to the front door, I looked over at my companion. “If things go bad, I want you to take the tears I get and use them to tattoo Parker. Considering that trolls don’t seem to be as oversexed as humans, you might be able to get it done after only one or two tries. Just draw and color in a drop of water around the flames engulfing the heart.”
“You think it’s going to be that bad?”
“Possibly not.” I shrugged before beginning up the stairs to the front door. “I’ve lived this long thinking that everything is going to go to shit when you least expect it and it’s served me well. It doesn’t hurt to plan ahead.”
The truth was that I didn’t want to think about being laid low by some pissed-off possessed virgin chick. There were far worse things in this world and it was hard not to lose your self-respect when you were turned into a quivering mass by some retro-Roman psycho.
CHAPTER SIX
It was only when I was standing in the opulent room with its tall ceiling and prerequisite marble columns that I remembered that I had been stuck in the same dingy jeans and ragged Pixies T-shirt for two days. And I doubted waking up in the women’s bathroom had helped either. I hadn’t a clue as to what my hair looked like, and my teeth were starting to feel a little fuzzy. Yeah, this was how I always imagined meeting the head of the local order of Vestal Virgins. Of course, I could have happily gone through my life without that prestigious honor.
Aemilia lounged on a plush sofa with thick red cushions next to a blazing fire in a hearth that couldn’t have fit in the lobby of the Asylum. One long, pale arm dangled off the end of the sofa, holding a crystal wineglass. She was garbed in a white toga that seemed to barely cover the essentials, while her hair was twisted up and piled on the top of her head. For a chaste group, you’d think these women would be dressed a little more modestly. But then the dozen men scattered around the room, armed like they meant to take on the nearest country alone, kept visitors from being too aggressive.
Beside me, Bronx bowed to Aemilia while I shoved my hands into my pockets. She hadn’t done anything yet to warrant such respect from me. The Vestal Virgins were little more than perverted voyeurs that got off on people’s guilt, remorse, and fear.
“You must be Gage,” she purred in a deep, luscious voice that seemed to strike straight for my groin. Fantastic. This is what I needed. A chaste little sex kitten that wanted to play. Aemilia swung off the sofa and placed her wineglass on a nearby table as she padded closer on bare feet. When she was standing a few feet away, I saw that she was older than I had initially thought—appearing to be in her mid- to late thirties at least, if not a little older. Apparently the Vestal Virgins weren’t kept eternally young by the creature that inhabited their bodies.
“I’m Gage Powell and this is my friend Bronx. We came for a trade,” I said tightly.
Aemilia’s thin brow arched and she smiled, appearing amused by my discomfort. “A trade. Well, now that is highly irregular. What is it you want from me?”
“Your tears,” Bronx replied.
The Virgin’s laughter was like the soft tinkling of fine china in a tea shop. “Oh, then I hate to disappoint you. We don’t cry. We don’t feel much of anything anymore, except maybe hunger.”
“So you’re not human any longer?” Bronx inquired. Between his conversations with Parker and now Aemilia, I was learning that Bronx was a very curious creature, as most questions made him sound as if he was studying the person under a microscope.
Aemilia gave a little shrug. “Not much.”
“Don’t worry. I can make you cry,” I said.
Her expression turned arctic cold when she looked over at me. “If you think physical violence can bring me to tears, you’re sorely mistaken. Even if by some slim chance you could get past my guards, you would never break me or any of the Vestal Virgins.”
I took a step closer to Aemilia and smiled. “I’d never physically harm you. I don’t get off on hurting women. No, I’ve got other means of wringing tears from you.”
She stared at me for a moment longer, a curious smile answering on her own full lips. “And what are you willing to pay for an attempt to capture my tears?”
“A secret from one of us.”
“Only one?”
“It’s a fair trade,” I replied. “Test the weight. I’m sure one of us has a secret that would be worthy of such a trade.”
Aemilia took a step backward and held out a hand toward Bronx and me, placing it just in front of our chests over our hearts. We had to wait only a second before her eyes flared and snapped to my face. There was no mistaking the hunger that filled her wide blue eyes as she looked at me.
“You stay,” she commanded, then looked at Bronx. “You may go.”
Bronx turned to look at me, waiting for me confirm that it was all okay. I nodded. “I’ll meet you in a few in the entryway. Just be careful not to talk to anyone out there.” The troll made a sound like a snort as he walked away and shut the door behind him.
“Now send away the rest of your men,” I said, stepping closer to her.
“My guards are trusted and loyal.”
“Send them away. I’ve already sworn that I won’t hurt you.”
Aemilia flashed me an evil grin as she lowered her voice. “Whisper it in my ear. They’ll never know.”
Closing the distance between us so that my T-shirt brushed lightly against her bare arm, I bent my head down so that my breath danced across the soft shell of her ear. “I’m not going to tell you. I want to show you.” Gently wrapping my fingers around her wrist, I pressed her hand against my chest over my heart. “Feel it. Feel the weight of my secret. You’ve been here for years and one of the best secrets you’ve ever encountered is right at your fingertips. You’ll feel so good when y
ou get this secret, and all you have to do is send your men away. Be alone with me. I swear, no harm will come to you.”
Her fingers trembled where they rest on my chest and her breathing had become more ragged as I spoke. On a bet, I had seen Parker send a woman spiraling into an orgasm without touching her, using only words. This conversation was much more sedate, yet it had me wondering if maybe my initial plan of wringing tears out of Aemilia from sexual frustration was a bad plan.
“Everyone out!” she announced in a hoarse voice that cracked.
“But—” one guard started to say.
“I said out!” she yelled, clenching her fist in my shirt as she pressed closer to me. Without thinking, I wrapped one arm around her waist, holding her as if to protect her and maybe I needed to. The only thing standing between me and Parker’s cure at the moment were the armed Boy Scouts who were reluctant to leave me alone with the Virgin. Several of the guards frowned at me, but left without further argument.
Even after the door closed, I looked around the firelit room, staring deep into the shadows, reassuring myself that we were truly alone. I had a feeling there were cameras discreetly stashed in a couple corners, but it would be video only. The guards watching wouldn’t be able to hear anything that was said.
“We’re alone now. Tell me!” Aemilia demanded, leaning against me until she was practically riding my thigh. Her breasts were pushed against my chest so that I could feel her nipples through the thin material of her toga. There was a flush of excitement to her cheeks and her eyes sparkled.
“In this trade, you give me the tears first.”
The Virgin angrily shoved away from me, her expression twisting, becoming ugly. “You can’t do that! You promised me a secret.”
0.5-The Asylum Interviews: Bronx: An Asylum Tales Short Story Page 5