“What followers?”
“The others that came in with me. Don’t worry, though, they’re decent people, you’ll like them. She conned them into thinking she was good; she deceived them into being her followers.”
“I see. We at the Trust only ever knew her as Rochere. It was always her last name, although her age and her first name varied as she grew older and disappeared, only to reappear as a younger relative. It’s interesting to find out her true identity at last, something we never would have known had you not won.”
“Actually, Max’s the one that saved the day in the end.”
“I was always pulling for Max. We all had high hopes for him, greater than we ever had for anyone before him. We were so disappointed when he did not win when it was his turn, but I’m glad to hear that he finally did succeed. Where is he, then? I should like to shake his hand and offer him a reward.”
“He’s in the ICU. They don’t think he’s going to make it.”
“It can’t be,” Julian objected. “I spoke to the hospital staff and the only one of your group in Intensive Care is some poor chap who is severely deformed.”
“That’s Max, or rather what Arrosha did to him.”
“She was capable of that? Oh, poor Max,” Julian said, looking sad. “I remember him well. I was a much younger man back then and my responsibilities were much like Troy’s were with you. I always liked him. A quite handsome fellow he was back then, before…”
“Rochere got hold of him. I know, I saw a photo of him from back in his baseball days.”
“You did? Where?”
“Rochere’s victim collection that she kept in a storeroom.”
“Oh,” he said, disappointed. I could tell he was hoping for a more uplifting story than that. “Well, anyway, Ashley, another reason for my visit is that I wanted to tell you not to worry about your possessions. We’ve retrieved them from the apartment and they are safe at our Trust house in the Garden District. Also, don’t give one more thought to your hospital bill or any other financial worries that you might have. That goes for your friends, as well.”
“They’ll be very happy to hear it.”
“I’m just glad to be able to help. You see, the Trust is an organization of great means; all of your needs will be met. You do not have to worry about money ever again. You have freed Edmond and rid the world of a great evil. You deserve a reward even more than we can give you. I hope that we will get a chance to help Max in the same way. I realize that there is nothing that we can do that can possibly repay you for what you did, but we can try. I suppose what I’m really saying is, Ashley, from this point forward, you are an extremely wealthy woman.”
I had to chuckle softly under my breath.
“What’s funny?” Julian asked.
“Nothing, really. It’s just that’s what Arrosha offered me if I handed over the amulet.”
“I see. Well, I’m certainly glad that you made the right choice.”
“So am I. One thing, though. When my friends get out of the hospital, they have no place to stay.”
“They do now. They’re more than welcome to stay with us at the Trust house, as are you. Here’s my card,” he said, pulling his business card out of his pocket and handing it to me. “Call us if you need anything. Anything. There will be someone here from the Trust sitting vigil twenty-four hours a day until Edmond regains consciousness. We’ll be sure that you know when that is as soon as we know.
“Until then, Ashley, it was nice meeting you and goodbye.”
“Same here,” I told him. As soon as he had left, I began to worry about Edmond. When would he wake up, I wondered. And when he did, what would happen to the two us now that we were no longer joined by a psychic link? I wanted to stay up and process the events of the last few days, but before I had much chance, a nurse came in to give me my painkillers, which sent me into a deep, medicated sleep.
The next day was uneventful, boring even, but the day after that, Julian knocked on my door and said, so excited he could hardly contain himself, “Ashley, he’s awake. Edmond’s come out of his coma. Please come quickly.”
“Is he all right?” I asked, concerned.
“Yes, he’s fine. He’s still very weak, but the doctors expect him to make a full recovery. He’s asking for you.”
I got out of bed. Julian helped me with my robe and then pushed my hospital wheelchair to Edmond’s room. When we got to his room, Edmond was sleeping again already. Julian pushed my wheelchair up to his bedside and I looked upon him. Edmond, the man who had been a pillar of strength to me during my ordeals, was lying in the bed, so helpless.
Whenever I’d seen him before in my dreams, he’d been such a dashing figure of a man, the epitome of the classic hero of any romance novel. His appearance had changed from even his captivity in the stasis chamber, for the nurses had cut his hair, shaved his beard and mustache, and trimmed his nails short. Lying upon the bed, he seemed so fragile in his current condition and yet this touched me even more. No longer in danger myself, my heart went out fully to this brave soul who had never given up, who had kept fighting year after year, decade after decade, century after century, against an evil powerful foe that threatened the existence of the world itself. Yet the world would never know his contribution, for it was simply too fantastic.
Julian, standing beside me, gently nudged him awake.
“She’s here, Edmond,” he whispered, his head close to Edmond’s ear. “You told me to wake you when Ashley arrived. She’s here now.”
Edmond began to stir. I could tell that it was hard for him to wake up, that he had to force himself. I began to stroke his hair as I told him, “Edmond, it’s me, Ashley. I’m here now.” I stood up from the wheelchair and took his hand. Then I bent down and kissed him on the cheek.
Edmond blinked and forced his eyes open. He smiled weakly.
“Ashley,” he said, “I’m so glad you’re here. I finally get to touch you.”
“Are you okay, Edmond? Are you alright?”
“I’m tired. But I’m free, I’m finally out of my prison. How did you do it?”
“I didn’t, Edmond, I failed you. It was Max that saved you. He found a way to use Arrosha’s weaknesses to his advantage. It was her underestimation of him that finally tripped her up.”
“Good for Max,” he said weakly, “But still he couldn’t have done it without you. If you hadn’t gotten so far he would never have gotten the chance to defeat her. Is he here? I need to thank him.”
“No, Edmond, he’s still in Intensive Care. They don’t know yet if he’s going to make it.”
“What happened?”
“It was the things that Rochere did to him that’s endangered his life.”
Edmond’s eyes welled with tears. “No,” he said, “Oh, no.”
“She really underestimated Max,” I continued. “She thought she had broken him completely. But he came through for us in the end.”
“Poor Max. Poor man.” Edmond began to become more agitated when Julian put his hand on his shoulder.
“Steady, there, man,” Julian comforted him. “You’re suffering from exhaustion. You need to rest.”
“Yes, yes, you’re right. I’m sorry. I am tired, so very tired. I need to sleep. But before you go, Ashley, I’m so grateful that you made it out alive. Are you alright?”
“I’m fine, Edmond. A few bumps and bruises, a few broken bones, but I’m on the mend now.”
“Thank God. Please promise me that you will come back tomorrow. I have so much to tell you.”
He looked up at Julian and said, “Take good care of her, will you.”
“Of course,” Julian answered. “We’ll be back later, when you’re up to it.”
On our way out, I turned to around to look at Edmond once more. He was fast asleep before we reached the door.
We went back to my room in relative silence.
“I must say,” Julian told me, “that he looks much better than I ever would have thought, conside
ring what he’s been through.” He tried to sound as upbeat as possible, but his face revealed his worry.
“Do you really think so?” I said, hoping he was right. I was shocked when I saw Edmond lying in that hospital bed. I was so used to seeing him so vital and strong in my dreams that the contrast was startling. In reality, I supposed that he probably looked much the same as when I’d seen him in the stasis chamber, but his long hair and beard had hidden a great deal of his emaciation. For some odd reason, I’d always expected that if I won, the Edmond that would greet me at the end was the Edmond that had appeared in my dreams. I wasn’t disappointed, no, far from it, I was just worried about his recovery. I had waited so long to be able to be with him and now I had to realize that I had to realize that it would take longer than I’d expected.
“Oh, yes, quite. I’d imagined that he would have been more harmed by his ordeal than he has been. I’d say that after all is said and done that he looks extremely well, considering.”
“It’s only because that vicious bitch that held him prisoner found out too late how to kill him.”
“What do you mean?”
I explained to him about the zombie creatures that Rochere created and how she found the way to preserve them was to tap into Edmond’s stasis field.
“So,” Julian remarked, “if he hadn’t been rescued this time, there was a good chance he never could have gotten away?”
“That’s pretty much it. Unless we got very, very lucky.”
“Oh, my, I had no idea we had cut it so close.”
“Arrosha told me that this was the last real chance we had.”
“Oh, dear,” he said, newly distressed. The room got quiet again. After a brief while, Julian said, “Well, anyway, I think he does look remarkably good, considering.”
The next day, Edmond was awake for a longer period of time, although he was not able to stay awake for more than a few minutes at a time. It took him days to relate his tale. He told it to us in pieces, each time relating it only until he was too tired to continue.
For the sake of clarity, I have compiled his tale here, unbroken.
Edmond’s Story
“It started simply enough. My friends and I were a group of adventurers. Bored with the traditional life in England that my father had lived, bored with the life that I was expected to live, we three friends decided to make the most of our money, money that had come to us by the simple act of being born, more money than we had a right to waste on selfish pursuits alone. The three of us each believed strongly in archaeology; it was our passion. We felt that it was a true science whose future warranted it furthering and thus we founded the Institute for Antiquities in order to do so. Young and idealistic, unmarried with no children at the time, we were able to indulge our interest in the civilizations of the past.
“Always more at ease in a tent on an expedition than in Society, we started our little group, which Julian has just informed me to my utter surprise, still survives to this day under a different name. Christopher, a friend of mine since childhood, and I were primarily responsible for cataloging and researching the artifacts we found. Freddie, our mutual friend, had gone to law school and was in charge of the business end. All three of us went on the expeditions together, expeditions to Greece, Egypt and beyond.
“It was during one particular expedition to the Himalayas that we found the artifacts responsible for Arrosha’s demise. We had spent a couple of weeks at a ruin site and come up pretty empty. While the area’s rich history had promised a great number of artifacts, the locals were extremely protective of them and did not want us outsiders meddling with their heritage. As a result, the expedition was proving to be a failure until one night, a local boy sought us out and told us that for a certain amount of money, an enormous amount to him but a piddling sum to the three of us, he could make sure that we did not go home virtually empty-handed. He led us into a cave that the locals considered haunted and in a sub-chamber, several openings below the initial cave, under a pile of debris, were small artifacts. There were the things we expected to find, crumbling wall paintings hidden behind centuries of soot, fragments of clay pots and clay idols, but among these latter was the treasure he had promised. Two boxes, incredibly intact with no damage whatsoever, lay among the rubble. He said that he had found them several years ago but when he told the others in his village, they said that all things in this cave were cursed and forbade him even to touch them. He warned us not to go back to the village with our find. We would not be welcome and our lives would be in danger. The discovery was so remarkable that we paid him more than we had promised. We spent the night in those caves, waking up early the next morning only to find the youth gone. Climbing down the mountain, we saddled up our horses and rode until we made it to a town where we could catch a stagecoach and then later the train to make our way home.
“I can’t tell you the feverish excitement we felt at this discovery. I wasn’t able to eat or sleep past what I needed to do in order to stay alive. As soon as we arrived home, we cataloged our find and carefully began to study it. We looked at these boxes en route, of course, but were not able to place them to any known time period or civilization. We knew that we’d have to wait until we reached home to give them the attention they demanded.
“When we finally arrived in England, we raced back to our Institute, which was little more than a large study at the time, and began to examine our treasure from the expedition.
“We’d never seen anything like it. Upon first glance, the boxes appeared to be a rose quartz, the artifacts, a dragon and a dragon’s head, seemed to be of clear crystal, but closer scrutiny did not bear this out. They were made of a strange material that no one had ever before seen. All the experts with which we spoke, even those in the field of materials, were completely stumped.
“The only clue that we found had proved to be almost as much of a mystery and as indestructible as the rest of the treasure. Hidden in one box was what, at first glance, I thought to be merely a piece of parchment, but it did not behave as parchment. While it was tightly folded for what must have been centuries, it was in pristine condition, white as could be with not one sign of aging. When we removed it for closer study, the paper showed no sign of ever having been folded. When we crumbled it, it would not stay crumbled. The only way that it would keep any fold at all was to be folded along its original lines, an arrangement into which it fell quite naturally. Written upon it were strange, indecipherable symbols. In the box that contained the second artifact was yet another parchment, one which behaved normally, folding when it should and showing the wear and tear of its many years. We had to be particularly careful with it, for it was becoming quite fragile. Upon it were written letters in three other languages. While none of them were familiar to me, Christopher, more a linguist than myself, was certain that at least one of them would turn out to be in a language that could be deciphered. He copied down all of the symbols to paper and made it his quest to translate at least one of these languages, so eager was he to know what the strange parchment meant, hoping that at least one of the languages would still be alive to make the second parchment a ‘Rosetta Stone’ of sorts.
“We’d only been back a couple of weeks when an overpowering urge to travel to New Orleans took hold of me. I couldn’t figure it out, for I’d never been interested in traveling to America before. It was a young country and at the time I was interested only in very old, ancient civilizations. I tried to ignore this urge, but it soon became an all-consuming obsession. Looking back, I realize now that the amulets were placing me on the track of Arrosha; it was they which wanted me to track her down. At the time, though, I had no idea from whence this urge was coming. I knew that I needed to get to New Orleans right away, for I was becoming almost physically ill from my obsession with that city. I thought it would be hard to convince the others to let me go, but as soon as I brought it up, I found that they, too, were caught in the grip of the same fixation of traveling to New Orleans and taking the amulets
with us.
“We decided not to travel together. Freddie was engaged to be married, so he decided to stay in England with his fiancée. I would go ahead to get settled and Christopher would follow me. For the sake of the objects, we felt it would be safer for us to travel separately, that I should take one of the amulets and he the other, just in case one of the ships went down during the voyage. I’ve spent many years regretting that decision, for it was the one that allowed Arrosha to take me prisoner.
“I arrived in New Orleans a little over a month later. I found a temporary place to stay while I looked for a more permanent home. More restless than I’d ever been, I played many more games of chance than was my habit. One night, I played poker with a man who liked to gamble too much, one who did not have the cash to back his losses. The next morning I found myself the proud owner of a house on Toulouse Street and a black female slave named Virginia. I moved into my new home, and, not knowing what to do with Virginia, since not only I was unaccustomed to having a slave, I was vehemently opposed to the practice, I freed her. She had no family and nowhere else to go, so I kept her on as paid housekeeper, a decision I never regretted, for she became my right hand man, so to speak, a person upon whom I knew I could always rely.
“Still restless, still bored and starting to wonder why I had left England in the first place, I joined the New Orleans’ high society, where, due to my family’s wealth and standing, I was welcomed with open arms. I soon began to attend their parties and gatherings with great regularity. This perplexed me, for it was not my nature. I had always been more at home working or sleeping in a tent on an expedition than with taking tea and sherry as I whittled away my time with people I found frivolous.
“It was at one of these social functions, however, that I first met Arrosha. Surrounded at all sides by every able-bodied man there, she was by far the most beautiful woman that I’d ever seen. When she looked at me, it was as if the world contained only the two of us. She came over and whispered something in my ear. I think it was just ‘pleased to meet you’, or some other polite banality, but what I heard was a promise, a promise of unending lust and sex. There was more to it than just her words or just her looks. She exuded an exotic fragrance, a fragrance of flowers, musk and incense, a fragrance that spoke of long ago, faraway worlds. I was reared to be a gentleman, but I could have thrown her to the ground that very instant and ravished her right then and there. The animal instinct I felt stir within me stir was driving me to a madness I head never before imagined.
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