by D B Nielsen
Immediately, I shifted my gaze once more to the exterior of Satis House looking to find a way in. That was the moment when I noticed that one of the French doors from which Finn had exited was hanging slightly ajar, having failed to latch properly behind him.
Wasting no time, I seized my opportunity.
Taking my usual route, I entered through the hole I’d cut in the mesh fence and skirted the perimeter of the building till I was on the opposite side of the property. The terrace was cold and silent as I slipped along in a crouched position, this time without the cover of darkness protecting me – or perhaps the darkness was just a comforting delusion, given the extraordinary powers Finn held. I supposed he’d be able to sense my approach no matter the circumstances.
The French doors continued to emanate the faint, disturbing miasma of energy which I’d encountered on my first visit, but nothing was going to keep me out. I was absolutely determined to find answers. The sight of the mysterious visitor only increased my resolve. Wrapping my purple cashmere scarf around the palm of my hand like a boxer preparing to enter the ring, I opened the door wider, permitting myself entry. Even through the layers of wool, I could still feel a faint pulse which made me slightly queasy, but refused to withdraw my hand from the knob beneath my touch. Once inside, I took stock. It was very dark; natural light dimly illuminated the room from the French doors which I’d left slightly ajar behind me. The only other source of light emanated from the hallway.
I crossed the room silently, taking care where I placed my steps. Slipping quietly into the corridor which ran the length of the wing, I headed towards the entrance hall. The hallway was also very dark, for no windows opened onto it, and the heavy dado panelling and dark wood of the display cases were equally oppressive. Two sources of light shone ahead; an orange glow radiating from one of the rooms opening onto the corridor and the coloured lights dancing across the floor of the entrance hall which poured in from the enormous stained glass window at the top of the stairwell. On both occasions when I’d entered Satis House previously, the stained glass had remained dull, absorbing the darkness outside. But now, the sun provided a rainbow of rippling light, illuminating both the foyer and the end of the hallway. Foolishly, I headed in its direction.
It was freezing cold inside the manor. Unlike the heat that ensconced me in the drawing room last time, the corrupted antiquities in the glass cases seemed to devour all warmth. Though I was shivering violently, I dared not hurry. This was still the enemy’s domain, despite my trust in Finn’s ability to protect me. I wouldn’t allow myself to forget that. Reasoning that I was on a mission, I took several photographs of the strange objects within the glass cases and the layout of the corridor. The noise the camera shutter made was unnaturally loud in the gloomy silence, seeming to echo deafeningly down the length of the hallway in my imagination. I was certain I would hear pounding footsteps coming down the hallway at any moment but, despite the pressing urgency to hide, I remained motionless as a strange lassitude came over me. When no such event occurred, I took several unsteady steps towards the pooling light from the room ahead.
I’d almost walked to the end of the corridor before I noticed an unusually pungent smell hanging in the air. My mind was a fog. Stumbling clumsily, I had trouble focusing my eyesight. My eyelids drooped with weariness and my leaden feet dragged heavily on the patterned hallway runner. The corridor tilted at any impossible angle and swam before my blurry gaze. The smell was insidious, like a poison running through my veins. I stumbled again, this time into the pool of orange light. Somewhere at the back of my mind remained a single rational thought – I should have been avoiding it.
Standing at the threshold of the room opening onto the corridor, I was almost brought to my knees by the pungent smell. Dredging up the last bit of willpower to hold onto consciousness, I staggered into another of Satis House’s drawing rooms. Flames danced before my eyes as I became aware that I was staring into the enormous fire in the grate, burning hotly, spitting up its orange embers to cast a hellish glow about the room. I felt like I was burning up with fever. I reached out to the nearest object to keep myself upright, fingers gripping tightly to the back of a wingback chair, and slowly raised my heavy head.
Lifeless, soulless, dark eyes stared back at me. I reeled back in horror preparing to scream, though no sound escaped from my lips.
Nothing could have prepared me for the ghoulish sight of Ellen Jacobi. Eyes glazed, pupils dilated. Breathing shallowly. Bloodless – even her lips were bluish-white – she resembled a living corpse. I thought I was immune to such sights, being a fan of supernatural television series and horror films, but I’d never seen anyone so radically altered in such a short time.
My first thought was that she would cry out and denounce me to the Rephaim, but it was if she hadn’t seen me at all. Her eyes stared out from the dark hollows of her sockets; stared out blankly and blindly. She lay back semi-reclined against the settee in a catatonic state; the rotund belly of pregnancy already quite prominent.
A cold shiver swept through me, which was enough to clear my drug-hazed, befuddled mind – which was a lucky thing, as I detected faint footsteps treading on the stairwell, slowly approaching in my direction, and realised I needed to conceal myself immediately. The only hiding spot that lent itself to my purposes was an alcove tucked into the opposite wall from the fireplace holding a life-size, marble statue of an angel, standing in full battle armour like the statues of medieval knights one would expect to find in King Arthur’s Camelot.
Having not a second to lose, I squeezed my frame beneath the angel’s wing to crouch behind its bulk. But, as I did so, something fell from my pocket with a clatter and rolled across the floor, spinning on its rim like a beer bottle lid until it came to rest in the centre of the room, too far for my outstretched fingers to reach.
The lens cap! Bloody hell! I was certain it would be my undoing.
The toe of a black leather shoe appeared as I pulled back my hand and concealed myself behind the marble angel, cursing silently my ill fortune. It was followed as if in slow motion by the rest of the shoe, trouser cuff, a leg, and then Louis Gravois rounded the corner and came fully into view.
I had never been this close to the Rephaim before and there was no denying his pallid beauty. Up close, the lure of his looks was difficult to resist. He was tall and as slender as a wand with delicate, fine features. Aquiline nose, large, pale blue eyes framed by long, girlish lashes, offset against the military style of his platinum blond hair.
Louis approached the settee and I held my breath as he missed stepping on the lens cap in his path by mere millimetres. But he was focused solely on Ellen Jacobi. His lips were pressed together in derision before they parted to speak.
‘Ellen, you have hardly touched your tea. If you don’t drink it up immediately it will go stone cold. I would be forced to get you another and that would upset me greatly. Come now, you wouldn’t want for me to get upset. Now would you, my dear?’
It was a silky, mellifluous, piping voice. Not a voice to inspire fear or horror, yet, if it were possible, Ellen paled even further as her eyes flickered up to Louis’ impassive face.
‘Well, answer me,’ he demanded softly, again in that sinister, silky tone.
Ellen looked like she would faint. And then she did something that made me feel faint. Her eyes skittered briefly over to where I was concealed in the alcove – the smallest of movements, yet enough to arouse suspicion – and back up to Louis’ face.
Louis clicked his teeth together. His nostrils flared as if he was inhaling my scent and his pale gaze swooped in one swift movement to seize upon the marble angel.
Peeping out under the scallop of one wing, I didn’t dare breathe. Inside, I was quaking in fear whilst, outside, I remained as frozen as the marble statue I crouched behind.
‘Leave her be.’ Another voice, one I knew too well, intervened.
Finn stepped into the room, distracting Louis from his inspection of the alcove.
I watched as he strode fearlessly towards his brother, coming to stand between the Rephaim and my hiding spot. As he did so, he angled his foot so that his shoe lightly rested upon my lens cap, covering it from view.
‘Can’t you see that Ellen is tired from her journey? It would be better if you let her rest,’ Finn said icily, ‘Even you, favoured as you are, would not be spared if she were to lose her precious cargo.’
As Finn blocked Louis from my view, I could only imagine his expression, but his words were enough to alert me to his anger.
‘You dare to threaten me, little brother? Over this pathetic creature? Do you really believe I would be held accountable for her failure ... and yours?’ His voice was laced with cold venom. I was taken aback by his vehemence, and Ellen actually flinched as if he was directing the words at her rather than Finn.
‘Neither of us have failed,’ Finn reminded his brother.
‘Yet.’ There was an implacable certainty in Louis’ tone. ‘But you will. You are as weak as she. It is merely a matter of time. And when you do fail, I hope to be there to witness your suffering.’
But Finn ignored his brother’s words and, instead, reached over to gently touch Ellen on her forehead in a gesture that was oddly reminiscent of the way a veterinarian might touch a skittish animal in an effort to calm it.
‘Sleep,’ he murmured.
The effect was immediate. At Finn’s gesture, Ellen’s eyelids fluttered closed and on a sigh, she surrendered to sleep.
Then turning to Louis, Finn said with disdain, ‘You underestimate them. They are resilient. The human spirit is strong. You would do well to remember that. After all, you are forgetting that you are half-human yourself.’
‘Fool! I choose to forget,’ Louis snarled. ‘Why would I wish to be reminded of such weakness? Such imperfection? Looking at you both – you and this stupid, fragile vessel – makes me sick. Bastard brother, I am Rephaim. I belong here. Go back to your humans, where you belong.’
Louis stormed off without a second glance at the alcove but, as he moved past Finn, I looked into his hard, merciless face and what I saw there in his expression made me desperately afraid.
Several seconds ticked over in the silence of the room, while Finn continued to gaze upon Ellen Jacobi’s inert form. She was sleeping peacefully now. Her breathing normal, not laboured like before. A little colour had even returned to her face, enough to make her complexion the palest shade of pink. In repose, she looked too vulnerable – as fragile as a Dresden figurine – and perhaps, it could be said, even pretty.
From outside the manor, I heard a car engine revving, and then followed the sound of tyres crunching on gravel. The thin beam from its headlights passed by the French doors like a strobe in a prison or concentration camp and just as quickly vanished. I held my breath.
‘You can come out now. He’s gone,’ Finn said flatly.
Scrambling out from behind the cover of the marble angel, I made my way over to where Finn was standing beside the settee that held the sleeping form of Ellen Jacobi.
‘Well?’ Finn enquired grimly.
I shivered violently. Knowing he was a powder keg ready to explode and all it would take was one little spark, I did what came naturally. I lied.
‘Sage practically forced me to come here to return to you your way too generous gift. If I’d known it was a first edition of Frankenstein and worth millions, I’d never have accepted it in the first place.’ My hyperbolic statement was overdoing things but I had no other excuse to be here.
He looked at me properly then, tearing his gaze away from Ellen to peruse my anxious face.
‘Sage forced you? Of course,’ he murmured, a tone of disbelief in his voice. ‘And you always do as your sister tells you.’ I opened my mouth to protest but he continued without pause. ‘So where is it?’
Damn! Why hadn’t I anticipated that? I gave him a cross look.
‘I left it in the car.’ The lie trickled off my tongue.
There was a speculative gleam in his eyes but he nodded.
‘Ah, all right. Have you had an opportunity to read it yet?’ he asked mildly. As I shook my head in response, Finn bent gracefully to scoop up my lens cap, offering it to me. ‘Why don’t you keep it then until you’ve finished with it? Let’s call it a loan, shall we?’
Realising he was offering me much more than my lens cap but an opportunity to extricate myself from the lie I was caught in, I gratefully seized upon it.
‘Really? That’s great. Thanks.’
Having no more use for me, Finn returned to his study of Ellen, ignoring my presence. He knelt beside her sleeping form and touched her forehead in the manner of a doctor examining a sick patient.
Curious, I asked rashly, ‘What’s wrong with her? And what’s that horrible smell? And what was in the tea Louis gave her? You’re drugging her, aren’t you?’
My last query came out more as an accusation, causing Finn to look up in anger.
‘Listen to me, Saffron. I told you before that there are forces at work here you cannot understand.’ He gave me a guarded look. ‘It is enough for you to know that I am no enemy to Ellen Jacobi or to you. Or to your interfering sister and friends, though you have all caused me a great deal of trouble – you especially – with your suspicions and your endless questions and your curiosity. At every turn you fight against me.’
‘You told me not to trust you ... You told me I should think of you as the enemy ... I thought that was what you wanted...’ I stopped, confused.
Finn raised his bright blue eyes and stared at me for a long moment, and when he spoke, his words were weighted as if he had chosen each one with care and deliberation.
‘It’s civil war in the heavens, Saffron. Brother against brother. You have the luxury of a distanced gaze, but it’s a more complicated world morally than you choose to acknowledge or appreciate.’ He gazed down at Ellen Jacobi with unseeing eyes. ‘We are exiles from our homeland. Like refugees we wander amongst strangers in a foreign land. Many of my brothers hate your kind. Many of them despise the Anakim for their betrayal. And make no mistake, Saffron, that is exactly how they choose to see it. Have you heard of the Janissaries? No? They were Christian boys captured by the Ottomans and trained to be soldiers in a Muslim army. At the time, the Ottoman Empire had the greatest army in the world. The Janissaries were ferocious warriors and utterly loyal – they had fought to erase their own civilisations, so they had nothing else, no home to return to.’
I thought I understood. I had studied Othello for school in Year 11. It sounded similar – he was forced into slavery at the age of seven and eventually became a mercenary then the general of the Venetian army. But he was stateless, without a home to return to and was also unable to find a sense of belonging in Venice.
‘Like those disenfranchised,’ I commented sympathetically, as if Finn were the one I was discussing, the one who was hurt.
‘Yes, somewhat similar,’ he agreed. But as he was facing away from me, he failed to notice my expression of sympathy. ‘The Janissaries were always taken in childhood, you see. If they had been too old, it would have been far more difficult to indoctrinate them into their adopted empire so that they would devote themselves to its ideology – especially if they had memories that they could never forget.’
I thought I understood. Louis had grown up always knowing his path as a Rephaim, devoted to the Grigori. But not Finn. Instead, Finn had been raised by his mother and her tribe. It was only upon her death and the demise of his entire tribe that the Nephilim had found him. They had attempted to turn him into one of them, like the Janissaries, but they couldn’t fully erase his humanness as he was too old by then to be fully converted. Who knew where his loyalties truly lay?
Finn turned away from Ellen with a rueful smile and speculated no further on the subject. But I could tell from the expression in his eyes – so lost and poignant – that he felt the subject deeply.
Shaking my head as if to clear it, I asked instead, ‘So why are y
ou drugging her?’
‘Drugging her is a necessity,’ Finn said curtly, his tone shifting dramatically, ‘We do it for her own good. It keeps her sedated, calmer.’
‘Why would that be necessary?’
Finn sighed. ‘The child she carries is one of us. Nephilim. Her pregnancy is not progressing as smoothly as it should. She may lose the child. And we may lose her too.’
His grave tone made me apprehensive, and another thought filled my mind entirely.
‘Are all Nephilim pregnancies like this? Like your mother’s? Like Ellen’s?’ I asked querulously, my voice filled with anxiety. Finn looked at me searchingly. ‘My sister, Sage ... If she should...? Will she...?’
‘No.’ There was certainty in Finn’s response.
‘But, how do you–?’
He cut me off. ‘Trust me. This much I do know.’
His voice rang true and I nodded in response, feeling some slight relief. He stood abruptly, towering over me.
‘You worry for your sister and I have seen that she worries for you. I envy you your affection, your closeness to one another. I have only a half-brother and there is no love between us. He despises me and, in turn, I feel nothing for him. Not love, nor hate. There is nothing between us.’ Finn inhaled sharply. ‘You must think me an unfeeling monster to believe I would hurt Ellen while she is in such a vulnerable state. But I do not lack compassion, even though I am Emim.’
I tried to justify my response. ‘I never thought–’
But Finn continued without pause, overriding my words.
‘You asked me about love. It is a question that has plagued me ever since you voiced it ... It is true that I have cared for few since the death of my mother. My life has been filled only with anger and cold purpose...’
His mellifluous voice, so heartbreaking, faded, and I craned my neck to look up at him searchingly. For a long, tense moment he said nothing at all, only stared into my eyes with his probing lapis lazuli gaze. Then he bent closer until his sweet breath, still scented with spring and ripe apples, fanned my flushed face.