Dark Studies (Arcaneology)

by C. P. Foster

  Angie raised one of his hands to her lips. “Thank you.”

  Aaron brushed the backs of his fingers across her cheek, then stretched his arms over his head, pulling her down to him.

  Ron followed about a mile behind them as Joseph and Angie drove to Benjamin Lockhart’s estate. She never caught sight of him, but Joseph assured her he was there. He would hide his car off the road a little ways from the main gates and do some reconnaissance while they went in.

  The two of them stopped at the gate and identified themselves to an intercom and camera. After being buzzed in, they drove up a road that wound through unkempt trees and shrubs. It looked as though no one had tended the grounds in some time, allowing the landscaping to grow out of control. Joseph parked on one side of the drive that curved in a half circle past the front door. Before she got out of the car, he slipped a small device into her hand.

  “That’s a panic button,” he said. “If you get into trouble, press it and I’ll come running.”

  “Do you really think I’ll need it?”

  He shook his head. “I have a bad feeling about this place. Lockhart’s a billionaire. He should have more extensive security, and the grounds should be in better condition. Something’s not right.” Seeing her expression, he added, “Don’t worry. We’ve got your back.”

  Angie took a deep breath. “Wish me luck.”

  He nodded and got out to lean his hips against the hood of the vehicle, arms folded over his chest. She left him there as he studied the place, no doubt seeing things invisible to her uneducated eyes.

  The bell rang throughout the house in deep, sonorous tones. It took several moments before the door swung open and a man dressed in a polo shirt and khaki pants ushered her inside. “Good morning, Miss Clark. I’m John Abernathy, Mr. Lockhart’s assistant. He will be down shortly. Please make yourself comfortable.”

  The interior of the place was all marble and polished wood, with high ceilings and elaborately dressed windows. This early in the morning, sunlight flooded in so brightly no lamps were needed. It highlighted the dust that had collected on the surfaces of the furnishings. Angie sat in an armchair to wait.

  The man who came down the stairs did not look like any businessman Angie had ever met. His hair was short, as if he’d shaved his head a week or two ago and then let it grow out. He wore expensive clothes, but the pants needed hemming and the shirt was wrinkled.

  “Hi.” She stuck out her hand. “Angie Clark. Thank you so much for seeing me.”

  “Benjamin Lockhart.” He shook her hand a little too hard before sitting on the couch facing her. “I’m afraid I can’t talk long. I’ve got a conference call in a little while.”

  “I’ll get right to the point, then. I’m doing my doctoral dissertation on the Fallen, and when I heard about the Journals of Iphra-El, I knew it would be the perfect source material.”

  “They’re extremely valuable. I don’t usually let people see my collection.”

  “Surely the value is in what we can learn from them,” she protested. “I have reason to believe that’s why this Fallen left them behind instead of destroying them before he passed on.”

  Lockhart went still. “What reason is that?”

  “I’ve spoken to a friend of his.”

  “A friend.” He drew the word out, his attention focused on her like a bug pinned to a display card.

  “Another Fallen who was kind enough to grant me an interview for my research.”

  “You’ve actually met one?”

  “Yes. There’s so little known about them, my research will have to consist of interviews—unless, of course, you’ll allow me access to the journals. So far I’ve only spoken with Aaron, but he is arranging for me to talk with others.” She paused. “He’s here with me in Denver, actually.”

  The man’s breathing quickened. “I would very much like to meet him.”

  Angie pursed her lips in thought. “Well…the only reason he came was so he could have a look at his friend’s journals. He likes the idea of someone publishing accurate information about the Fallen, so he wants to help me understand the material.”

  The billionaire smiled, and for the first time she got a sense of how charismatic he could be when motivated. “Perhaps I could give you a few hours.”

  “I understand there are over a dozen journals, spanning centuries of Iphra-El’s life. A few hours will barely allow us to scratch the surface. Aaron won’t be satisfied with that, and trust me, you don’t want to see him unsatisfied.”

  She dangled the double-entendre like bait and watched his reaction. Lockhart’s lips parted. He shared a look with Abernathy before sitting up straighter and adjusting his cuffs.

  “Do they live up to their reputation?” he asked.

  “Sure.” She lifted one brow and smiled. “They’re the source of incubus and succubus myths, you know. He can drain you body and soul if he wants.”

  “You’ve experienced this.”

  Damn it, was she blushing? Even talking about Aaron made her feel like a schoolgirl. “I don’t see how that’s any of your business, Mr. Lockhart.”

  His mouth quirked to one side, not quite sneering. “Of course. My apologies.”

  “He wants at least two days to go over the journals with me, preferably more. Will you allow us that much access?”

  Lockhart checked his watch and got to his feet. “Abernathy will make the arrangements. I need to get to my conference call.” He nodded to his assistant. “You can have them start tonight.”

  “Thank you.” Angie stood and shook his hand. When he would have drawn back, she held on, ensuring his full attention. “What is your sexual orientation, Mr. Lockhart?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Aaron can make people do things they normally wouldn’t. I don’t want him to violate any boundaries, so we need to set them.”

  His eyes widened. He actually seemed at a loss for words. Finally, he said, “I don’t think there will be a problem. I look forward to meeting this…being.”

  “Good.” She nodded. “Thank you for your time.”

  Lockhart stared at her a moment longer, then swung around and left her with his assistant to work out the details.

  Chapter Seventeen

  People fear what they don’t understand. Especially when it can kill them.

  —Annette Zimmerman, MA, psychology

  The sun was sinking toward the horizon when she and Joseph returned to the mansion, this time with Aaron.

  “Be careful,” Joseph said before they got out of the car. “You’ve still got your panic button?”

  Aaron looked at Angie. “Panic button?”

  “Yeah.” She lifted the edge of her shirt to show him the gadget where it dangled from a belt loop. “If I’m in trouble, I push the button and Joseph comes running.”

  The Fallen studied her for a moment before turning to Joseph. “She’s in a great deal of danger, isn’t she. More than she lets on.”

  “I don’t think Lockhart has anything to do with the reason she hired me, but she does have a knack for diving into the deep end.”

  Angie grabbed her backpack and got out of the car. She didn’t like being talked about as though she weren’t there, and the quickest way to put a stop to it was to walk away and ignore the conversation. Aaron caught up to her after a few steps while Joseph took his favorite position, leaning against the hood of the car.

  Benjamin Lockhart answered the door himself this time. He stared at the Fallen while Angie performed the introductions. Then he stepped back to usher them inside, asking whether they would like something to drink.

  “Nothing for me, thank you,” Aaron said. “Angie?”

  “No, I’m good. I’m just eager to get started.”

  “Of course.” Lockhart smiled. “I hope you’ll spare me a little of your time, Mr. White. I’ve never met one of you before, and I’m curious as hell, if you don’t mind my saying so.”

  Aaron smiled back. “I would be delighted to satisfy yo
ur curiosity, Mr. Lockhart.”

  With his attention came a certain amount of heat that Angie had adjusted to, but it was new to Lockhart. The man froze, his eyes glazing over. Then he blinked and said, “Excellent. I’ll show you to the vault where I keep the more delicate items in my collection. Some of the journals are quite old, so they need special care. Oh, and may I have your backpack, Miss Clark? I’ll want to examine its contents before I leave you alone in the vault. No offense.”

  She didn’t like handing it over but had no excuse to refuse. Angie let him take the pack, which held her laptop, notebooks, digital camera, and a few other odds and ends.

  The billionaire led them down a long hall, around a corner, and to a staircase that descended into the depths of the house. Unlike the main floor, this was plain, the walls made of smooth concrete with no decoration unless you counted security cameras. Lockhart went down around a corner, to another hallway, and finally stopped at a heavy door with an electronic lock. He bent forward, presenting his eye to a scanner, and a second later the lock clicked open. He gestured for them to precede him inside. Lockhart locked the door behind them and crossed the room to another one, which looked as though it were made of steel. The door was just a blank rectangle with no handle, and a black device about the size of a playing card was set into the wall next to it. This time he gestured for them to stand back.

  “Voice recognition software,” he explained. “It’s a little glitchy. Other noises can throw it off.”

  Leaning close to the microphone, he said, “Security code Lockhart alpha two foxtrot. Initiate.”

  The door opened. He slipped through it, and before Angie or Aaron could follow, he closed it behind him, and the lock reengaged.

  At first, she thought it was a mistake. Or a bizarre joke. But the door remained shut, trapping the two of them inside. Angie reached for the panic button and pressed it repeatedly.

  “What is that?” a voiced asked. It took her a moment to recognize it: Abernathy. She and Aaron searched for its source and located a speaker set into in the high ceiling. “Some kind of security gadget? I didn’t realize we’d made you suspicious. It won’t work here, though. No cell phones either.”

  “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Angie demanded.

  She still couldn’t believe it was happening. Striding to the door, she pushed, but it didn’t give. Her pulse picked up speed as she hurried to the other door and got the same result.

  “Go ahead,” Lockhart’s voice said. “I know you’ll need to exhaust all of the possibilities before you believe you won’t be getting out of there.”

  He seemed awfully sure of himself, which only made her more determined to prove him wrong. Angie went over the room one inch at a time. Solid concrete everywhere, not a crack. Wait, was there a hairline gap along the seam of one wall? And on the adjacent corner, the same thing. As though it had not been molded all of one piece like the rest of the room. She pressed at it, tried sliding it one way, then the other, but it didn’t move so much as a molecule.

  Aaron stood in the center of the room while she conducted her search. He looked directly at one of the cameras.

  “I take it you don’t just collect supernatural objects, Mr. Lockhart?”

  “You catch on quickly, Mr. White. I suppose you should after…how many thousands of years?”

  “A few.”

  Angie stopped her frantic efforts and turned to stare at Aaron. She had led him into a trap.

  “Oh, God,” she said.

  Gently, he told her, “You couldn’t have known. I should have guessed, but I was too focused on the journals.” Looking back at the camera, he asked, “What do you intend to do with her? She’s human. Not exactly an item for your collection.”

  “Well,” the man drawled, “we do need someone to feed you.”

  Aaron tilted his head. “You could always do that yourself, Mr. Lockhart. I promise you would enjoy it a great deal.”

  “No doubt. That’s not why I want you, though. You see, I’m like Angie—a researcher. I observe and record.”

  Disbelief and horror merged, an uneasy union that made her stomach clench. The man intended to keep them here. To watch them. He wanted to study supernatural creatures, and she’d handed him Aaron on a silver platter. It would be hours before Joseph got suspicious.

  She had been locked in a basement before. The memory was not exactly pleasant. Angie shook off those thoughts, trying not to get distracted by the feelings of panic they inspired. These were humans, not vampires. That was a step up from what she’d already survived. She’d survive this, too.

  “I fed while you were out today,” Aaron murmured, “so I’ll be able to control it for a while. But if we’re in here more than a few hours, I’ll start slipping. Longer than that, and it will become overwhelming.”

  Angie understood now what was going to happen, and there was nothing either of them could do about it.

  “I collect information which may save humanity from these monsters one day,” Lockhart continued. “We have to know their strengths and weaknesses, what drives them, what behavior to expect. Know your enemy.”

  “We’re not your enemies,” Aaron said.

  “You feed on humanity, Mr. White. That makes you a predator, at the very least. We have to learn how to protect ourselves.”

  It almost sounded reasonable. If she hadn’t been locked in a concrete prison with an incubus and a couple of cameras, Angie might not have dismissed it out of hand. Under the circumstances, however…

  “I’ll stay as far away from you as I can,” Aaron said. “It will help us hold out longer.”

  “We’re not putting on a show for these bastards.”

  “No. We aren’t.”

  Bravado. She knew they could not fight his nature forever. That didn’t mean she wasn’t going to try. Aaron went to one corner of the room and sat on the floor with his forearms resting on his knees, and she went to the opposite corner. Perhaps if she could get Lockhart to see her and Aaron as people, not subjects of an experiment, he might reconsider and let them go.

  “What was he like? Your friend, Iphra-El.”

  Aaron looked toward the camera that faced him. “He was one of us. Aren’t we all the same? Sexual predators, feeding on humanity?”

  “No.” Her voice sharpened. “You are more than that. Tell me about him. Please.”

  Aaron leaned his head against the concrete and thought for a while before answering. “He was older than me by a few centuries. We met in Rome, not quite two thousand years ago. He laughed a lot. When we ran into each other about a hundred and fifty years later, I recognized him by that laugh. He’d changed his appearance significantly in order to please a young man who liked a certain look. They stayed together for a long time, until his lover died.” He focused on her with a sad smile. “It’s rare that one of our lovers stays with us that long. However much we may care for them, what we have to offer is limited.”

  “I think you may underestimate yourself,” she said softly.

  “You’ve met me in my waning years, Angie. For the vast majority of my life I have been little more than a shark swimming in the waters of lust, constantly moving from one lover to the next to satisfy my hunger. Only within the last two centuries has that changed.”

  “Maybe. But underneath the hunger, there is still something more.” As she said it, she thought of her theories about vampires. Both species were born ravenous, mindless with needs they could not control. Hadn’t she speculated, recently, that perhaps vampires retained their humanity beneath the terrifying sense of starvation? Buried under the constant, overwhelming need for pleasure, the Fallen might also have another nature waiting to escape.

  “You look below the surface,” Aaron told her. “It may be the thing I like most about you.”

  “What was below Iphra-El’s surface?” she asked.

  “I had only glimpses. That’s one of the reasons I wish to read his journals. I want to see whether he felt and thought as I am
beginning to.”

  Was Lockhart listening? How could he hear this and not see Aaron as a person, someone he could identify with and feel compassion for?

  In the concrete cube, with no outside stimuli, she could not hold on to any sense of time. They talked, fell silent, talked some more, the cycle turning around and around as if it might never end. It lulled her into a false sense of security. She had been staring at him for a while before she realized she’d shifted her weight several times in the last few moments. Angie’s skin flushed, and she knew it had begun. His control was starting to slip.

  They shared a moment of understanding, then went on talking as though it was not happening. The conversation continued to flow, at first, but eventually faltered. A lost word here and there, a sentence that trailed off, a thought that slipped away before it could be articulated. Angie became more conscious of her own body with each passing moment. She felt the way her flesh had settled against the concrete walls and floor. The strands of hair that tickled her cheek. Each time she spoke, she grew more aware of the way her lips and tongue moved. She wanted to crawl across the floor to him. The only thing stopping her was the knowledge that they were being watched. Every time her muscles shifted in preparation to move, she looked at the flat glass eye of the camera, and revulsion swelled to dampen the arousal.

  Angie stopped asking questions, afraid the rich tenor of his voice would erode her determination further. He fell silent. When she risked looking at him, he sat with his head bowed and his eyes closed. God, she thought, he was so beautiful. The contours of his face, his silky black hair…She jerked her gaze away to stare at the wall. The camera. Anything but him. Searching for some way to distract herself, her mind wandered to Steffen. His determination to protect her had caught her off guard, and she still didn’t know what to make of it.

  Surely he understood she was just an actress playing a part for him. Yes, it felt very real, and on some level perhaps it was, but he should be able to separate the fictional Grace Hamilton from Angeline Devereaux. Yet could she honestly say the sessions had not affected her as well? Whenever she remembered the way he touched Grace, the intimate pillow talk, the passion that gripped them both in their pretend world, she couldn’t help but feel something for him. She needed to examine this more closely, but instead her thoughts slipped back to tangled sheets, the swell of muscle shifting against her, the sharp pain of his fangs piercing her throat, followed by his mouth pulling sensuously at the wound…