Master of Salt & Bones

by Keri Lake

  Eyes on me, he steps past both of us without another word, and makes his way onto the elevator. I’m inclined to follow, but I wait.

  Once the elevator doors close, Nell sets a hand to her chest and expels a long breath. “He must’ve been working in his office. Heard her scream. God, he makes me nervous.”

  She’s been here far longer than I have, which means there’s no chance of my discomfort around the man going away any time soon.

  “Because of the scars?”

  “No. Because he’s just …” A quick glance back at me, and she frowns. “Never mind. I’m tired. I need some sleep.”

  “Yeah, of course. I just wanted to check on her. What happened earlier is still bothering me.”

  “Don’t worry about it. We’ve all done it.”

  “Really? I can’t imagine you doing something stupid.” Aside from dispensing pills like a human gumball machine.

  “Believe me, everyone in this house does something stupid at one point, or another.” She jerks her head toward me. “Go to bed. Tomorrow’s another fun day in the funhouse.”

  With a snort, I make my way back toward the elevator.

  “Hey,” she calls out to me and, after a glance back at Laura’s room, closes the space between us. “Be careful around him. Lucian. I wouldn’t get too friendly.”

  “I wasn’t getting friendly. We were just casually chatting about his mom.”

  “Nothing is ever casual with them. Everyone in this place is a master at hiding who they really are.”

  “What is he hiding?”

  Again, she looks back at Laura’s room. “Just watch yourself. I’m going to bed.”

  Chapter 16

  Lucian

  Sixteen years ago …

  Six hours with a tutor is about as thrilling as watching turtles fuck.

  I’ve always been a fast learner, and never required the kind of hammering this tutor employs to teach. Show me once and move on.

  Haven’t seen Solange today, and I’m anxious to meet up with her, to exhaust some of this pent-up frustration that has my muscles in knots.

  Book bag slung over my shoulder, I enter my bedroom, but stop in my tracks on finding my father beside the bed. I let my bag fall to the floor, and he turns toward the sound. The accumulation of different sized knives I’ve collected over the last couple of weeks from the kitchen lies beside the BDSM magazine Solange gifted me. As I said before, I’m a quick study, and if I happen to find enjoyment in it, I’m even a bit enthusiastic. I’ve become something of a connoisseur of blades. Dull, sharp, jagged, smooth.

  And I’ve managed to keep all this hidden from my mother, only pulling them out from under the bed on the times when I’m alone and keyed up. Imagining her face, screwed up in a cross between disappointment and repulsion, is enough to make me paranoid and cautious.

  Somehow, my father having found it first is worse.

  On instinct, I tug at the cuffs of my shirt, the phantom sensation of many slices I’ve made across my skin itching with my sudden discomfort.

  “What is this, Lucian?”

  Instead of answering, I lower my gaze and frown. Responding will do me no good. It’s obvious he’s searching for something that he can use as an excuse to leave another black eye on my face. Humiliate me in front of the staff and my mother. He’s never searched my room before, so why now?

  He rolls up the magazine, and for a moment, I wonder if that’s what he’ll use to hit me this time, until he starts gathering up the knives, as well. He jerks his head toward those left on the bed. “Grab those. And follow me.”

  Fuck.

  He wants an audience.

  I can see it now, all the maids, including Solange, the butler and cooking staff, all gathered in his office, with my knives and magazine laid out. He’ll ask who didn’t clean under my bed, who didn’t notice the knives going missing, just so there’s an excuse to have them there.

  Reaching for the hilts, I grab a serrated steak knife and a much smoother paring knife. I’ve found the steak knife requires a lot of pulling and dragging, more damage and messy, difficult to control. I mostly use it for scraping the skin while I get off--never cutting. The best knife, I’ve found, is actually the dagger in my father’s hands. Particularly across the thigh. But that’s neither here, nor there, now that he’s found them.

  I follow my father out of the bedroom, keeping my head low to avoid eye contact with anyone we might pass. We reach the elevator, and whereas there was a time I would plead for his forgiveness, to spare me whatever wrath is brewing inside of him, I don’t bother. I’ve grown to realize it’s useless where he’s concerned.

  The silver doors open, and my father steps inside first. I follow after, and the doors close. Only, instead of pushing the button to the third floor, for his office, he lifts his hand and presses the signet ring to a button I always assumed broken.

  I watch with curiosity as the button with the letter ‘S’ lights up. The strangest thing I’ve ever seen.

  How many times I’ve toyed with that button, determined to know why it never lit up like the others. Where it took the elevator. Why I never saw anyone else attempt to access it.

  Thoughts click into place, as I recall the one time I saw a group of men in black suits, business partners of my father’s, enter the elevator. My mother had summoned me to her sitting room, and I waited for the men to clear the elevator first. By accident, I pressed the button to my father’s office, which put me in a panic, but when the car arrived, and the doors opened, his office was empty. As if I’d imagined all those men in suits, like a sketchy dream.

  My father twists around, facing the back wall. It raises the hairs on my skin, like any moment, he’ll turn around and stab me in the back with one of those knives.

  The elevator comes to a stop, and a slight tremble snakes over my bones, while I wait for the doors to open. The sound of grinding metal from behind stirs my curiosity, and I turn around to find the back wall has opened on a cavernous room lit by sconces.

  The catacombs, I bet, though I haven’t been down here to know for certain.

  A thin gauze of cold air clings to my skin, when he leads me down hallways that seem to be made of stone. The clang of the metal knives is the only sound between us, over the steady thud of footsteps and the rush of blood pulsing in my ears.

  We pass entrances that seem to lead to other tunnels, like a maze of them one could easily get lost in. My father comes to a stop in front of a wooden door brandished with brass moldings, like something out of the medieval era, but recently updated. Once again, he presses his ring to a panel on the door, and it opens to a small, dark room.

  “What is this place?” I finally ask.

  “Generations ago, your great-great-grandfather had this castle built on an Indian burial ground the locals wanted to bulldoze. He was granted permission to keep it and bury his own relatives here. It’s where we keep the bones of our ancestors.”

  A light flips on, illuminating the room, in which a number of tools hang from the wall. Knives. Whips. Chains. Some I’ve never seen in my life. An old chair that reminds me of something from a dentist’s office sits smack in the middle, only this one comes equipped with straps, and some kind of contraption around the headrest that looks like the dental gear I wore when I was thirteen.

  More clanging fills the room as he drops the knives onto a counter opposite the chair.

  “They say it starts with animals, but that’s not always true. My obsession began with bones.” A piece of what looks to be the bottom jaw of something sits out on the counter beneath a cupboard that holds various jars, some filled with solutions and whatever soaks inside of them. “My father brought me here, and I was overwhelmed with the comfort I felt in this place.”

  “What starts with animals?”

  Setting the bone back down, he twists just enough that I see a hint of a smile play on his lips. So odd and rare, I almost wonder if I’m mistaken. “Sadism.”

  Sadism? Christ, he think
s I’m out cutting up bunnies in the yard with those knives?

  “This isn’t what it loo--”

  “For years, I thought your mother had gotten her claws into you and turned you into some pansy pianist. I thought maybe you’d blow my theories out of the water. Turns out, you have the gene, after all.”

  “Gene?” I thought sadism was learned.

  After casually crossing the room, he comes to a stop in front of the wall of weapons and runs his fingers through the braided cords of a whip there. “I’m guessing your fancy education never taught you much about behavior epigenetics. It was something I became fascinated with at an early age. How the trauma that my grandfather suffered could be passed down generations, altering the genes of his offspring. That is the purpose of our group. Evolutionary biology.”

  “I’m not following.”

  “I’m talking about your predisposition for inflicting pain on others. It has become part of your genetic makeup.”

  Brows lowering with a frown, I don’t bother to say aloud that I’m still lost in his explanation, because I know my father to be a man of little patience. One who’d belittle me as simple and slow.

  “Our group seeks to explain--”

  “Group? What group?”

  “We call ourselves Schadenfreude. We are a collective. Generations of those dedicated to studying the epigenetics of sadism. The evolution of dominance and survival.” From his pocket, he tugs out a cigar and lights the end of it, while my mind reels in a poor attempt to keep up. “It began with your Great-Grandfather Dane. There was a time, before all of this.” He gestures to our surroundings. “After the Great Depression. When he was so poor, he couldn’t afford to feed himself, or his family. At the time, he was working for the New England Fishing Company in Gloucester. Profitability was low, and fleets were reduced during the war, to be used as naval trawlers for mine sweeps. Men were out of work.” In the pause that follows, he puffs on his cigar, staring back at me. “Starvation makes a man do desperate things. Irrational things. There were whispers through the neighborhood of two Germans. At the time, they claimed to have worked in a factory during the war. It would later be determined that these men were actually Nazi physicians, war criminals who fled Germany to avoid persecution. But I digress. Their study was the effects of sadism on future generations. The concept of DNA had recently been discovered and eugenics was huge. Heredity was fascinating to the Nazis, in particular.”

  I slide my gaze toward the dentist chair, my chest cold with the thoughts of what he intends to do. If the point of this story is to prepare me for tortures that he intends to carry out on me.

  “These men offered a large sum of money to essentially torture your great-grandfather for a period of time. Their theory was that the trauma suffered would alter his behaviors and produce future offspring with sadistic tendencies.”

  “How? If he was the one who was tortured?”

  “That’s the nature of Schadenfreude. Part of his torture was witnessing the torture of others. In time, his empathy began to shift. Of course, the Germans rewarded this behavior. It’s not to say their experiments weren’t founded in some personal motivations, you know. And at the end of it, he had enough money to purchase his own fishing boat, start his own company. Build the foundations of what we are today. But the psychological effects of what he suffered never left him, and so he maintained a sort of friendship with the Germans. And it wasn’t long before he began to partake in the study himself.”

  “He tortured innocent people?”

  “Those who were poor, or required some sort of favor he could fulfill. It was mutually beneficial, as many went on to become successful themselves. That’s the nature of this study. Sadism is a genetically superior trait. And the idea of our collective is to feed what starves us. My grandfather would soon find, over time, the mind’s hunger is far more powerful than that of the stomach.”

  Lowering my gaze from his fails to shield me from the scrutiny burning in his eyes. I’ve no doubt he’s watching for my reaction, waiting for me to tell him those knives were hidden under my bed for the same reason. That I’m some fucked-up result of my great-grandfather.

  “Why are you telling me this?”

  “Because the experiment continues, Lucian.”

  “I’m not like that. I don’t …. I’m not out to hurt people.”

  “Not yet. As I said, it began with something simple for me. Bones. It wasn’t long before I was collecting my own.”

  My gaze snaps to his, the cold tickle in my chest exploding with panic. “You’ve killed?”

  “The purpose of Schadenfreude isn’t to kill, but a man doesn’t amass this much power without making enemies. If you knew how many times someone plotted to kill me, your mother, you, I suspect you’d never leave this home. Fortunately for me, I am genetically equipped to eliminate what threatens my survival.”

  His words snake beneath my skin, absorbing deep inside my own bones, as the curtain of my life yanks back to expose the harrowing reality I’ve failed to see.

  “You would kill, if someone threatened what you love, wouldn’t you?”

  I’ve never thought of it. Do I, or have I, loved anything so much in my life? So much I would kill for it?

  “Why did you bring me down here?”

  “Because it’s time you know your place in this family. In Schadenfreude. There will be expectations in this role. Things you can’t elect to ignore.”

  “Like what? Torturing innocent people?”

  “Those people will come to you someday. You will not seek them out. They’ll hear whispers of us, and they will come in desperation. They will give themselves over to you for a chance to have the life you live.”

  “And if I don’t want to help them?”

  “I’m afraid you don’t have a choice.”

  I frown back at him, studying his eyes for any sign of amusement, or humor, but my gaze is met with the same austerity I’ve come to know from him.

  “The men who make up Schadenfreude are some of the most powerful people in the world. You will come to know secrets that would destroy them. And therefore, they would destroy you. You will do the same. Protect our collective. Preserve generations of study. To observe the effects of environment on genetics. Your genetic makeup is changed, based on what happened to your great-grandfather. And it’ll be interesting to see how it manifests in future generations.”

  “You said those men were Nazis. Why would I protect, or preserve, anything to do with them? Why would you?”

  “This isn’t about them. They were eventually found out by the group, and let’s just say, it was a quiet matter of two individuals being consumed by their work. Poetic justice, I suppose.”

  In not so many words, the Germans were tortured and murdered for their lies.

  “It still doesn’t make it right. So you … you create generations of people who enjoy hurting others? How does that make the world a better place?”

  Chuckling, he flicks the ash of his cigar and puffs on it again. “The world is filled with sadists and masochists. You either find pleasure in doling pain, or receiving it.”

  “I’m not a psychopath. I don’t get off on callously hurting others.”

  He lifts the magazine beside him, silencing my argument. “Your books would say otherwise. And it isn’t about callousness. You get off because you know how it feels. Because you’ve felt the blade slide across your own skin. You’ve felt the punch beneath your ribs as you fight for a breath of air.”

  My muscles turn stiff.

  The air withers inside my chest.

  He knows about Solange. He’s seen the two of us together. There is no other explanation.

  “It began that way for me, as well. Experimenting. Testing my limits. And soon, my boy, you’ll find joy in watching others discover what you now know to be true. That there is pleasure in pain.”

  Chapter 17

  Lucian

  Present day ...

  “Lucian! So good to see you!” Pat
rick Boyd reminds me of a cross between an evangelist and a car salesman. Bright goody-two-shoes smile in place, he wears his hair slicked back like a wanna-be gangster who can spout Bible verses while soliciting your vote. The thin-rimmed glasses are supposed to give him an educated air, but really, he just comes off as confused.

  Thin, cold skin greets mine when I shake his hand. “It’s been a long time, Patrick.”

  “How’s your mother?”

  “Well.” I never cared much for my father-in-law, who never hid the fact that he favored my mother. Given his predilection toward younger women, though, it didn’t make sense that he’d find her all that attractive, which leads me to believe his feelings were also politically motivated. “Let’s not beat around the bush with formalities. I understand you’ve been inquiring about Schadenfreude.”

  Brows winging up in surprise, he shifts in his chair and smiles. “Word travels quickly.”

  “When you make enough noise, sure.”

  “It was actually your father who told me about the secret group. Before he died. Just never really had the chance to fully connect me.”

  Perhaps I gave my father too much credit for being shrewd. Of course, that’s the nature of my meeting with Boyd now. To see what the hell Griffin Blackthorne was thinking, when he made the guy privy to so many powerful individuals. Like allowing a child to play with the controls of a missile. “And what is your interest?”

  “I want to be a part of it. One of the elite.”

  Eyes locked on his, I study the fine, subtle movements of his body that betray the calm he’s trying to convince me of. The incessant twitch of his eye. The bobbing of his throat. The occasional flutter of his lashes and tip of his head. As if every nerve ending is firing at once and he can’t get a handle on it. Politicians are strange people, in that they have an ability to wear a mask for most of their public. But set them down in front of someone they might actually fear a little, and they tend to be a bit more transparent. “Are you aware of the nature of this group?”