Scarlet Dream

by James Axler

  “I see you’re interested.” Ellie’s voice broke Kane’s thoughts, but when he turned he realized she was addressing Brigid Baptiste. Chewing one of the dates, the red-haired former archivist was watching the older woman as she pulled a thick leather-bound book from the bookcase. “Here,” she said, handing the book over to Brigid, “take a look at this if you wish.”

  Brigid took the book, her fingertips brushing against the softly rippled surface of the leather binding. Automatically she opened the cover, turned over the flyleaf and looked at the title page. There, printed in thick black ink, Brigid read BUTTERFLY by S.X. Roamer.

  Brigid read the words, wondering at the title and the curiously named author. She was about to put the book aside when her eye was drawn to the frontispiece on the opposite page. It was a line illustration, full of delicate ink strokes, with pointillism to give it definition and depth. The black-and-white illustration showed a woman, her flowing locks trailing like a lion’s mane down her naked back. The woman in the drawing was unclothed, but there were straps tied to her wrists and ankles where she knelt on the rumpled sheets on an unmade bed. Though her arching back faced the reader, the woman in the illustration was looking coquettishly over her shoulder out from the page, and her eyes seemed to meet with Brigid’s as she stared at the picture.

  “What kind of story is this?” Brigid asked, her voice quiet, timid. She already knew, she was sure. And she knew the woman, too, didn’t she? She knew the woman in the illustration. That slender athletic form, those long locks of flowing hair and the emerald eyes that stared out at the reader.

  Emerald eyes?

  Hadn’t the illustration been black-and-white just a moment before? Brigid asked herself.

  Across the room, Kane found himself standing and walking toward the blonde woman in the wisps of white lace, his booted feet sinking into the luxurious carpet beneath them. The blonde stood at the bottom of the staircase, her pale hair shimmering beneath the glow of the chandelier. She was beautiful, like an angel.

  Grant raised himself from his position on the couch, motioning toward Kane as the ex-Mag made his way toward the shapely blonde standing just beyond the doorway. “Uh, Kane?” Grant called. “You think maybe you want to get back here and…?”

  The plump woman at Brigid’s side tsked, shaking her head. “You’ve all had a long day,” she told Grant, stepping closer to him as he rose. “Your friend just needs to take a load off.”

  Grant fixed her with a look, his lips curling in a sneer. “We don’t have time for this,” he told Ellie as she swirled the liquid around in the wide brandy glass she held in her bejewelled hand. “We came here to find—”

  “Sanctuary,” Ellie finished for him before taking a mouthful of the honey-colored brandy from the glass she held. “And you’ve found it, if only you’ll open your eyes.”

  Grant could taste something in his mouth then, felt the burn of alcohol on his breath. He watched as the woman took another drink from her glass, feeling the liquid wash around his mouth and down his own throat. “No,” he said. “This isn’t…this isn’t right….”

  Ellie took a step closer, her smile never faltering. Then she was standing directly in front of Grant, her hand pressed against his elbow, her head tilted to look up at his far above her. “A brave man like you shouldn’t be afraid,” she told him, her voice like warm treacle in his ears.

  Grant watched as she took another deep swig from the glass of brandy, felt it strike his own tongue, swirl around his head the way brandy will. “What are you…?” Grant began, feeling himself sway in place.

  Ellie placed her finger to Grant’s lips, fixing him with a motherly look. “Hush now, brave man,” she told him. “Nothing will hurt you here. Nothing will hurt you in the House Lilandera.”

  Then she stepped away, and Grant stood in place in front of the couch, his head swimming. He needed to sit, he knew, could feel his legs trembling, his body swaying.

  Kane, meanwhile, took another pace toward the hallway, his own eyes fixed on the gorgeous blonde at the foot of the stairs. She smiled at him, her lips colored a pale pink as if they had been dipped in ice. Then the blonde beauty ran her hand up the side of her body, gently cupping her breast for a long, sensuous moment.

  “Go on, child,” Ellie whispered to Kane, and her voice seemed to be just inches from his ear. “Kirsten there likes you. Go make a friend. There’s no need to be scared. We are celebrants of life. Nothing can hurt you here.”

  Kane didn’t turn, his attention was fixed on the leggy blonde at the bottom of the stairs—blue-eyed Kirsten. As Kane watched, taking another step forward as if drawn by a magnet, Kirsten turned and began to scale the stairs once more, her long legs kicking out in front of her like some magnificent racehorse, whispers of lace shimmering in the light like cobwebs glistening with morning dew. Kane watched her walk away, watched the way her body moved.

  When Kirsten reached the top of the stairs another woman appeared, as achingly beautiful as the first, dressed in a cream-colored bodice and stockings, her blond hair shimmering like the rays of the sun. Where Kirsten’s eyes were cornflower-blue, this one had green eyes, the color of the ocean, and a mouth so perfect that Kane yearned to kiss it. As if sensing Kane’s wish, the green-eyed woman turned to Kirsten, reaching her arm to the back of her neck and pulling her close until their faces almost touched. Kane watched from the foot of the staircase, his heart drumming as the two women closed their eyes, long lashes blinking down like the dark wings of a crow, and began to kiss, probing at one another, open mouths joined in passion.

  “Pretty mouth and green my eyes,” Ellie muttered, the words echoing in Kane’s head as he began to scale the stairs.

  On the couch, Brigid was still looking at the illustration that formed the frontispiece of the book she held— Butterfly. In the illustration, the woman’s lustrous hair seemed to ripple slightly in the breeze, and Brigid peered more intently, utterly transfixed.

  She had red hair now, the young woman in the picture, hair the color of the sunset in late summer, and those locks cascaded down her back like a waterfall, a waterfall made of sunsets. Brigid wondered what the straps were for on the woman’s arms, wondered if she had placed them there voluntarily or if they had been placed upon her.

  As she thought it, Brigid became aware of the pain at her wrist, something digging in there where her sleeve ended. Her eyes turned to look at her left wrist and she saw the dark leather strap that had been tied there, felt it pinch her skin and noted the way her flesh had reddened around it. Beneath her wrist she saw the rumpled bedsheet, and her eyes lost focus for a moment as she looked at its creases and folds, the way it seemed to be like some static ocean laid out in front of her.

  It was just the illustration, Brigid realized. The illustration in the book, not her. And yet for a moment it had seemed as if—no, it was impossible.

  Brigid stroked her hand across the facing page, turned it over so as to cover the illustration of the woman on the bed, as if shutting her out of her mind. There was text there, the start of the story, and Brigid wanted to look away but already, without even meaning to, her photographic memory had taken a snapshot of it, was carving the words into her brain.

  Chapter 11

  Mary should not have accepted that invitation, she knew, Brigid read, even as she felt herself being drawn from the warmth of her bed to the leaded window of her bedchamber. The need within her was like a splinter in her heart, an ache born of desire. Her eyes opened, blue as sapphires, and she felt the cool night air dance across her face, painting her features in like a sirocco on the desert sands.

  In the faraway distance, Mary—or was it Brigid?—heard the tolling bell of the village clock tower, its chimes slowly droning out the 3:00 a.m. call.

  Her nightdress clinging to her like a second skin, Mary pushed back the bedcovers, felt the chill of the January night air even as she began to clamber out of her warm bed, its sheets rumpled beneath her girlish frame.

  Brigi
d, too, felt the chill, the downy hair on her arms standing upright as she turned the page of the book called Butterfly.

  There was a gap in the curtains, and a full moon peeked through, bathing Mary’s room in a shaft of beautiful silverlike liquid. Beneath that eerie line of light, the room appeared to be the bedchamber of a child, Mary thought, the mirror with flowers painted on its surface, the glass-eyed dolls that sat on the seat in the corner, their noses turned up in feigned disinterest.

  Outside, it was a January moon, alack; the Wolf Moon as the old washerwoman had called it when they had spoken just a few days before, that morning when she had found Mary trying to hide the evidence of the ruined bedsheet. Despite the chill air, Mary felt her face warm at the thought, her cheeks reddening as she recalled the way the sheet had been torn, the blood of her maidenhead spilled upon its snow-white weave, spilled from the very core of her being. Her mind still reeled at the thought of the fire that had been lit deep within her on that night, the desire that felt like a lightning strike at her very core. Now he was calling to her once again, this handsome enticement who made her so curiously light-headed, this wolf who was also a man. She heard him howl, in her head, beyond the window—it was hard to tell where the noise truly came from now, within or without.

  Silently, Brigid pushed herself from the bed, the covers arrayed before her like the waves of the ocean, finally halted by Canute. Despite herself, she almost cried out as her bare foot touched the old floorboards, for the floor was icy to her touch, like the fingers of Jack Frost playing across her sole. Outside, she knew, the wolf was waiting, and he, too, would want to play similar games.

  Brigid Baptiste walked slowly across the room, the gossamer-thin nightdress clinging to her fragile body, her nipples hardening as the night air caressed the paleness of her exposed throat. He was outside, she knew, the wolf, the man, the one who had taken her on the heart-rending journey from girl to woman just a few nights before, when the January moon had first opened the fullness of its wicked silvery eye. It was as if she had been a chrysalis, a thing forming in the darkness, growing and shaping itself into something new and wonderful. And now, having felt his touch against her skin, felt his body pressed against hers, Brigid was no longer a chrysalis but a beautiful butterfly.

  Brigid stopped before the leaded window, feeling a tremor course through her body as she reached for the heavy curtain there, where the moon’s eye peered within. The Wolf Moon could see her, her once girlish body that had seemed to change three days before, that had taken on new curves and swellings as that wolf-man had pushed her to the bed and straddled her, the light of the moon making his fur glisten. Her breath was coming faster now, her heart beating more rapidly, and again she heard the call from outside, that long, deep howling as the beast cried out to her to join him, to abscond to the forest where they could be animals together.

  She pulled back the curtain and the brightness of the Wolf Moon seemed to turn her hair to liquid fire, a raging volcano erupting over her head and shoulders, the lava cascading down the swell of her breasts, lit bright through the gossamer weave of her nightgown. Brigid felt the burning there, the fire burning within her outthrust nipples.

  Outside, just emerging from the tree line, a lone figure padded out into the open. Brigid narrowed her emerald eyes for a moment, holding one dainty, porcelain-colored hand up to shade her from the glare of the full moon. Already pale, her hand became alabaster in the quicksilver light of the Wolf Moon. Down there in the garden, close to where the mighty oaks cast their dark shadows like spectres, there stood a man. Alone, his clothes were dark as his hair, which tumbled past his collar in thick curls. Oh, but how she longed to run her hands through that mane of hair, to rub her fingers across his broad chest once more until they were tangled in the down that seemed to cover him where it was absent from her own smooth curves. This man, this beast, this animal already possessed something of her, a glistening shard of her virgin heart, which he had taken when he had taken her three nights before.

  Brigid put her hand against the handle of the door to the balcony, feeling the icy coolness of the metal that served to link the outside to the house, like a shaft driven through some willing maiden. She pushed down on the ice-cold handle, pressed her body softly against the door as the longing within her swelled like crashing waves. Her heart pounded, racing within her breast, and her breath caught in her throat so sharply that she could hardly bear to take another. An icy shiver went right through her body then, from the tips of her toes and the crown of her head, two surging winds rushing to meet, crashing together at her center, her womanhood.

  Brigid relaxed herself, struggled to right her breathing, to slow her fluttering heart. She wanted him now, wanted him so badly that even the thought of having him, of holding him, made her want to fall to the floor and sob. The moon at her back, she peered once more into the room where she had spent her childhood, where she had been but a caterpillar waiting to cocoon itself before it emerged into a bright and brilliant woman. The dolls by the fireplace seemed to watch her with their glass-bead eyes, accusing her of betraying them, of betraying her childhood.

  Then she turned once more, defiantly placing her childhood behind her, and opened the door. Brigid took a single step out onto the balcony, paying no attention to the cool night air as it rushed across her newfound woman’s body. The nightdress fluttered around her, its white silk clinging there like a second skin.

  The girl took another step forward, then another and another, all the while the rays of the Wolf Moon playing like fingers through her beautiful auburn hair. Then Brigid had reached the balcony’s edge, as if it were some strange purgatory between girlhood and the final embracing of her womanhood, and she leaned down until her elbows met with the stone balustrade outside her window. She had played with her dolls out here as a child, on summer afternoons when the days were warm, the sounds of her little-girl laughter jabbering through the branches of the oak trees that overlooked her bedchamber’s window. Now she desired just one game, an amusement that required two players for its ultimate fulfilment. Leaning down, her hair whipping around the oval of her face in the night breeze, Brigid spoke one word to the beast that waited far below in the palace grounds. “Come.” It was a whisper, nothing more than that, a sound made as much with the heart as with the lips.

  The man at the edge of the trees turned his head at the sound, and Brigid saw the way his eyes twinkled beneath the moon’s silvery light. He was so handsome, his shoulders wide and strong, his chest like one of the carved marble statues she had seen in the museum when her nanny had taken her there just a few years before.

  “Come,” Brigid said once more. “Come to me, precious splinter in mine heart.”

  GRANT FELT AS IF his feet had been rooted to the spot as he stood in front of the couch in the lounge of the House Lilandera, the rich taste of brandy still lingering in his mouth. He was aware of what was going on around him—that Kane had just departed the room, that Brigid was sitting to his left, thumbing the pages of the leather-bound tome, that the large woman called Ellie was standing at the doorway—and yet he seemed unable to react. It was like being trapped between sleep and wakefulness, his mind alert but with his body unwilling to respond.

  In a swish of skirts, Ellie paced across the room, and Grant watched out of the corner of his eye as she checked on Brigid in an almost maternal way. Brigid didn’t seem to react, even when Ellie brushed the woman’s red hair from her face, admiring her flawless skin with a smile. “Such a pretty one,” Ellie said. “So, so pretty.”

  Grant could not perceive why Brigid hadn’t responded, had not reacted in any way to the woman’s physical intrusion into her personal space. Brigid Baptiste seemed oblivious to it, as if her attention was captivated by the open book resting on her lap.

  Something’s not right here. That’s what Kane had said, Grant recalled. Whatever “here” was, it was more than just some old whorehouse on the outskirts of the bayou. After all, who would come to the bayou
for the services a place like this would provide? This area was a dead zone, and in more ways than one.

  Grant urged himself to move, to take a step forward, to break whatever spell he had been placed under that was forcing him to stand in place. He felt his muscles tense, felt the fingers of his right hand begin to curl, to form a fist.

  “Oh, my goodness, but you’re a tough one, aren’t you?” Ellie uttered, her rich voice flowing into Grant’s brain like hot fudge over ice cream. Then her hands reached over and stroked the back of Grant’s hand. Somehow the touch made his fingers unfurl. The fist he had been trying to form ceased to bunch and he couldn’t seem to muster the will to re-create it.

  Ellie stepped back, and Grant watched, unable to move, as her dark chocolate eyes played over his body, admiring him like a work of art. In her hand, she swished the brandy in its glass, the rich honey color swirling around and around. Slowly, with something that amounted to a sense of ceremony, she brought the wide-brimmed glass up to her nose, sniffed at its contents in a long drag, filling her wide nostrils with the scent of the vintage. Grant could smell it, too, he found, as he watched the woman inhale in front of him. Then, with equal precision and ceremony, she took a taste of the liquor, swallowing it before breathing out though her open mouth with a sigh, letting the rich aftertaste run across her tongue a second time. Somehow, Grant could taste the liquid in his own mouth, feel its alcohol burn down his own throat, the aftertaste on his own tongue.

  “Now,” Ellie said, “we need to help you get rid of all that tension, don’t we? Poor brave soldier who’s lost his way.”