Yes, love.
Oh, God. Too good to be true. Too good for words. Can you feel?
Everything. Give yourself to me.
She’d already done a lot of giving for a woman who always kept herself strictly under control, guarding against the spirits that thronged this place and against her father’s influence. Now he felt the last threads break as she yielded herself up to him.
Use me. Love me.
He flowed through her like warm honey. Her delight intensified, flared from her lips all the way down. He felt the pure want that roused in his wake, danced between her legs, and ripened her breasts.
Her body, his. Her being, his—if only for a few moments.
Please, Rom, I can’t stand…
He smoothed one of her hands up her belly and cupped a breast. Ah—the delightful weight and softness of it, tipped with that bud of aching sensation. He used her fingers to do what his could not and experienced the staggering dual pleasure, his and hers combined.
She gasped and arched her strong, glorious body, whispering to him soundlessly of what she wanted, what she needed. He commanded control of her other hand and the fire inside her became a conflagration.
Ah, God, why didn’t this flesh of hers set the sheets aflame? Her spirit already consumed his as even the torture had not. When this finished, he’d surely be ashes.
But worth it. Worth it all.
In command now, her spirit totally in his ghostly hands, he abandoned one breast and moved her hand downward. As if they were his own, he used her fingers to plunder her wet heat, delighting as much as she in every stroke and every plunge.
Mine. You’re mine, he told her, and she gasped in helpless agreement—and erupted into wave upon wave of pleasure.
He went with her, his spirit almost entirely indistinguishable from hers. He shuddered with her, broke apart into separate, dancing particles, and came together again, unwilling to separate from her any more than had they been joined in the flesh.
The pleasure ebbed slowly, bringing languorous contentment in its wake.
That, she still spoke in her own mind, is the most intimate act I’ve ever experienced.
And me.
Don’t leave me. Please, Rom. Don’t go yet. Can we do that again?
Greedy woman. I think that was born of my extreme longing and your extreme desperation.
I can get desperate again. Rom?
Yes, love.
She drew a breath, pondered long before she spoke the next words. I’m not sure I can live without you now. She gave a hard laugh. I—who swore to maintain my independence above all things. So swiftly, look what you’ve done to me.
He stirred, left her body, and spread out like a spectral blanket, caressing her skin.
I would stay with you if I could. Believe that. But I’m not sure how I escaped my body. How can I guarantee I won’t be called back again?
“We absolutely have to get you out of there.” She spoke it aloud into the silent room, a vow. “Whatever it takes.”
Chapter Ten
“Rom, I’ve been thinking about what you said. Are you sure there are corpses in the cellar? Could you go look and make certain?”
“Do you think that’s a good idea?” he asked, his voice a caress in her mind.
“Probably not. But I’m intrigued by the idea of you appropriating a body that won’t interfere with us. Even though I don’t like to think what my father could be getting up to that would require the presence of dead flesh.”
“Well, I’m fairly sure I can go most anywhere. But I’d rather not leave you.”
The energy of which he was made flickered and broke apart into separate particles like muted light. These shifted and moved to touch her, arousing her all over again. He brushed her throat, caressed her cheek, and slid inside her bodice.
“Oh,” she breathed.
Nice—titillating, in fact—but she couldn’t let him distract her again. Wanting this man who wasn’t a man could drive her out of her head.
“You’re a goddess, Topaz Hathor.”
His energy still danced across her breasts, and she narrowed her eyes before she answered, “I look like an overgrown gypsy.” She might believe that, but she’d take any compliments he cared to dish out.
“You’re the most arousing, fascinating woman I’ve ever known.”
She pushed herself up in the bed, and he returned to the pillow beside her, a dim form through which she could see the bedspread. “If you’re going to look in the cellar, we’d better do it now, while everyone else is asleep. Do you fancy acting the part of investigator?”
He contemplated it and replied thoughtfully, “No acting required there, love. I suspect in truth that’s what I am.”
****
The big house felt eerie with the lights muted, all the human inhabitants sleeping and most of the steamies shut down.
Romney trailed Topaz down the corridor like smoke, past closed doors through which he could sense life, or emptiness. She paused momentarily outside the door one down from her own and mouthed, “My brother.”
Sapphire, that would be, with whom Romney had observed her speaking. Two energies occupied the room. Sapphire did not lie alone.
Lucky bastard, Romney thought bitterly, watching the twitch of Topaz’s robe across her rounded bottom as she moved on.
At the head of the stairs, she paused again outside another door and mouthed, “My father.”
Did her parents not sleep together, then? Rom sensed only one soul within. But what a soul! Even at rest and acquiescent it shimmered with power, and the spirits who, like Romney, had been drawn to this house teemed around it.
The man possessed genuine ability, like Topaz’s only a hundred times stronger, and well developed.
Romney skittered away, half afraid the man might sense him. What then? Would Hathor emerge and banish him? He didn’t want that to happen for more than one reason: he wanted Topaz’s help, and he wanted her.
Would Hathor be able to isolate his—Romney’s—spirit among the many that flocked to this place?
He descended the wide, curved staircase ahead of Topaz and waited for her at the bottom.
“What’s the matter?” she hissed.
“I didn’t want your father to sense me.”
“Right. Mind the steamies, now.”
A unit on standby waited beside the grand front door. Romney knew it would switch on if anyone drew near enough. Topaz led him along the side of the staircase to the back of the house.
“The cellar door opens off this hallway outside the kitchen. Don’t look in there.” She indicated that room. “It always gives me the shivers.”
The kitchen, lit by one muted lamp, looked like a forest of steam units, all shut off and staring with blank, sculpted eyes. It took many mechanical hands to feed a household this luxurious.
He examined the cellar door even as Topaz whispered, “It’s locked.”
“No barrier to me. But I’ll have to go alone.”
“Yes.” She looked at him with concern. “I’m not sure what you’ll find down there, but it might be dangerous. Are you sure you can get back out when you want to?”
“If I can move in, presumably I can move out.” But if he did find a usable body, it wouldn’t be much good to him unless the door could be unlocked from the inside and he could force that body’s fingers to work the latch.
“Presumably,” she echoed. He could feel her emotions, a mix of excitement, worry, and desire. A woman of flagrant courage on her own behalf, she nevertheless feared for him.
“Don’t do anything stupid. Just see what’s down there. And look for a body. We don’t want to attract my father’s attention.”
But who knew what might do that? Romney could still feel Hathor’s power one floor down. What might Hathor feel?
Moving softly, he shifted through the door. Immediately sensation rushed at him, nearly too much to handle in his disembodied state: the typical scent of a cellar overlaid by a myriad of
other things. Chemicals, new wood, burning, decomposition, and blood. The energy of which he consisted twitched in response; whatever took place down here, he didn’t like it.
He forced himself to move on anyway. A series of dim lights illuminated the stairs and a hallway that led from their foot straight onward. Doors—all closed—lined the hallway. The things he could smell lay behind them.
He drifted down the stairs and halted, sudden memory, like déjà vu, flooding over him. Abruptly he transported, via memory, to another place.
A corridor not unlike this one but above ground, lined with closed doors, each secured by a lock. Hard hands hustled him along even though he was trussed like a goose in the market stall, arms bound tight to his body in a cloth shirt. His emotions nearly choked him and made it hard to breathe: anger, intense frustration, and a healthy wallop of fear.
“You can’t do this to me,” he told the two men leading him along—orderlies wearing gray coats. Gray. Just like that, he knew where he was; he remembered. “Someone will come looking for me, and once it’s discovered I’ve been held against my will—”
One of his minders struck him, a blow that took him in the mouth and rocked him on his feet.
“Keep quiet unless you want your feet in a bucket and a wire down your back.”
Quiet? The place was anything but. He could hear moans, cries, and screams coming from behind the locked doors. They had paused before a room, and his keeper swung that door open. Romney balked, knowing if he went in he’d never get out under his own power and would soon be screaming just like the rest.
He fought as hard as he could with his hands secured, kicked out with his feet and shoved with his shoulders and head. He knew himself to be a doughty—and dirty—fighter when in possession of all his limbs.
Now, though, the two keepers subdued him summarily, and brutally, using fists and a rubber cosh. They thrust him into the cell, and he fell to the floor, where he lay bleeding, still convulsed by rage.
He came to himself in Hathor’s cellar, the images now bright in the field of energy that passed for his mind. As if a sluice had opened, he recalled scene after scene: the days of being locked away that brought him to the edge of madness, the frustration and helplessness that beat at him ceaselessly, and the long, repeated sessions that had finally separated spirit from flesh.
He had been driven to madness inside Grayson Asylum. And his body—would it be any good to Topaz if he got it out of there?
They wanted to break him because—he groped for it—he knew too much. They dared not kill him outright, but destroying him mentally proved an effective tool for assuring his silence.
Only he had escaped. Into Topaz Hathor’s bedroom.
He hovered in the dank air of the cellar hallway, reluctant to go on and unable to turn back. He thought of the woman waiting outside the cellar door, and even now desire flared. He had never felt for any woman what he felt for Topaz Hathor. For her sake he needed to move on.
He drifted through the nearest door. No light illuminated the space, but it seemed spirit didn’t require light. He could see it was an office equipped with chairs and a desk stacked with papers. Those would no doubt warrant perusal at a later date.
He moved through the wall into the next room, a larger space that felt cold and contained several bodies stretched out on slabs.
Jackpot, he thought, and drifted over to look.
Three corpses, two male and one female, all completely devoid of spirit. They must be fresh, for they smelled of death but not much decay. He examined both the male bodies closely, considering appropriating one of them. Both were middle-aged, one with graying hair and a neat beard, the other black-haired and with a livid steam blast through the center of his head.
Murdered? He couldn’t tell. But if so, why?
Why would Topaz’s father have freshly-killed corpses in his basement?
He hovered above the corpse with the beard, wishing he could communicate with its occupant and obtain some answers, but its spirit had definitely flown.
Frederick Hathor might be able to call the fellow’s soul back; Romney could not.
Could that be what all this was about? Did Hathor’s wealthy clients pay the man to recall the souls of their dearly departed, reanimate them somehow? But how? Dead flesh remained dead, right?
He abandoned the three corpses and drifted on through the rest of the huge cellar. One room contained high quality steam units, nothing as sophisticated as Patrick Kelly but finer mechanicals than Romney had ever seen. Still another room, farther back, looked like a torture chamber rigged with metal tables, a large steam plant, and what he recognized as electrodes.
Memory nearly drove him against the wall. Quite suddenly he recalled his bare feet drenched with water and an identical electrode thrust against him. And pain that shattered him into a thousand pieces.
He came apart now in response, the separate bits of energy of which he was composed flying from one another in his distress, scattered into the gloom of the cellar beyond his recall.
Chapter Eleven
“Romney?” Leaning against the locked cellar door, Topaz whispered his name. Part of her awareness—seemingly bonded to him—had accompanied him through that door and down the stairs. She’d half sensed his progress as he moved steadily away from her, and now she sensed something that made her heart leap in her chest.
He had vanished.
Alarm widened her eyes and made her press her palms against the panel. How could he just disappear from her awareness that way?
Panic flooded her, swift and hot. She couldn’t have lost him…no. For in only three short days his spirit had become part of hers; the sudden loss now stunned her.
Could she reach for him? Would the latent ability inside her stretch so far? Leaning against the panel, she considered the question. She had never wanted to utilize the talent she knew lay within. Fear and a certain level of decency prohibited it. Yet dealing with Romney Marsh had limbered it, freed it, and she would risk far more to assist him, were he in trouble.
To reach him.
She closed her eyes and for the first time in her life opened all her senses. She quested for him.
Beyond the doorway, down the stairs. She knew how the cellar looked; she had been there in the past, though not recently. A hallway led straight from the stairs, lined with doors. Tiny sparks of light led her along like breadcrumbs, shed as it seemed by Romney’s spirit. But beyond that—nothing.
Desperation caused sweat to break out all over her body. Where was he? She needed to find him. She unfurled all her power and tried again.
“Topaz?” Her father’s voice, close beside her.
She started violently; she hadn’t heard him approach, far too distracted to notice even his ever-present cortege of spirits.
Yet he now stood at her elbow, clad in his dressing gown of golden silk, a curious look in his eyes.
“Daughter, what are you doing?”
Hastily she withdrew her questing senses, wondering how much her father could feel. He watched her steadily, awaiting an answer, so she said, “I thought I heard something.”
His black brows lifted. Never a man to speak in haste, he pondered before replying, “You heard something all the way upstairs?”
“No, I—came down for a bite to eat after being out.”
His dark gaze never wavered from her face even though he nodded at the kitchen beyond. “And why would you not request something from one of the units?”
“They’re all on shut down at this hour.”
“And they exist for our convenience, only that.”
“Of course. But I’d just as soon prepare a sandwich for myself. I’m sure I heard something behind this door.”
And was that a tactical error? Would her father send his acute senses there and, being much better refined than hers would they detect Romney’s presence?
Something flickered in his dark eyes. Topaz felt his energy—always so focused—shift momentarily. But he sa
id nothing.
Did that mean Romney was truly gone? But where? How? And how would she bear it?
“Father,” she said, “what is down there?”
He placed his warm hand on her shoulder. “Nothing to worry you, Topaz.”
“Then why do you keep it locked?” She wanted to break through that door so badly she nearly foamed at the mouth.
But he shook his head. “You know the kind of work I pursue. No sense letting the servants stumble on our projects.”
“Projects? But you—”
Calmly he said, “I coax willing spirits into manufactured bodies at the requests of their loved ones. You are already aware of that.”
“And—into animals.”
“Yes, sometimes.”
“Perhaps that’s what I heard, an animal in distress. We should go down and see.” Anything to get her nearer Romney.
Her father frowned. “Is that how it sounded? Like an animal?”
“Perhaps. Yes.”
“But there are no animals on the premises at this time.”
“Just mechanical units? Nothing alive?”
Frederick Hathor smiled. “Nothing alive, I assure you.”
Dead bodies, Romney had said. So her father did not lie. But why would he have corpses in the house? What possible reason could there be?
“Father, I wish you would tell me more about your work.”
“Really? Why now? For years I have been trying without success to get you interested in my work. ‘The work of the Devil,’ I think you called it. Let souls go where destined at death, you said—yes, I am sure that’s what you told me.”
“Yes, but…” Agonized, Topaz turned her eyes back to the cellar door. Still she sensed no hint from Romney. Nothing…
She fought back her panic and struggled to master her thoughts. “I remembered you saying you had some intriguing experiments ongoing in conjunction with your new colleague, Danson Clifford. Tell me about those.”
Frederick put his arm around her and turned her firmly away from the cellar door.
“If you’re truly interested in my work, Topaz, you should agree to become my assistant. I have been asking you this last year or more.”
Sheer Madness Page 6