“Sweetie, you look just like him,” I said, pointing out the obvious. “No wonder Lady Lily thought she recognized you. I wish she’d told us it was her husband you resembled, but I guess if she hadn’t seen him in several hundred years, she probably forgot just what he looked like.”
“It doesn’t matter. This situation is due to genetic coincidence, nothing more. Ah, this one is open.” He stuck his head into a room, reaching around for a light switch. Dim light flooded a room empty of all furniture, but containing several boxes of what appeared to be dry goods for the restaurant located on the main floor. “This looks promising. Where would the privy be, do you think?”
“Lily said there was one connected to the bedroom. You aren’t seriously thinking of destroying the stone, are you? I know we told Lily we were going to, but that’s before we met Alec and Grizel. He doesn’t seem at all like the sort of person to coldbloodedly murder his wife. Not to mention I’m more than a little bit concerned about what destroying it might do to you.”
“I’ll be perfectly safe, sweetheart. Do you see anything that looks like a privy?”
With much foreboding, I pointed toward a small alcove off the main room. As privy’s went, this one was fairly small, more a tiny little closet with a long open shaft in the center of the floor. A board had been laid across it for safety purposes, which Raphael skirted as he squatted next to the back of the stone wall. “Five up, five in, five over,” he murmured to himself as he tapped on stones. One of them made a dullish sound, which turned into a low rumble when he put all his weight into pressing on it. “Et voilà! Your secret passage, milady.”
The air that swirled out of the passage around us didn’t smell foul or unclean, but my nerves were still all on end. “I doubt there are lights down there.”
“Stay here,” Raphael ordered as he got to his feet. “I’ll get a torch from the car.”
I used the time it took him to run down to the car and back to form plausible arguments why he shouldn’t go into the passage, but they fell on deaf ears.
“I’ll be fine,” he said firmly, giving me a pat on the behind as he shoved one of the boxes from the main room into the doorway to keep it open. He switched on a powerful flashlight, the light showing dark stone steps eerily leading down to inky blackness.
“I don’t suppose you’d consider letting me go first?”
The look he gave me spoke volumes.
“All right, but don’t say I didn’t warn you when this curse or whatever it is bites you on the butt.”
“You’re the only one I allow to do that,” he said with a leer before doubling over to get through the four-foot-high doorway. “Besides, I don’t believe in centuries-old curses.”
I grabbed the back of his shirt and followed. “You believe in vampires.”
“I would prefer not to.”
“And ghosts.”
“Again, not by choice.”
“And werewolves and imps and all other sorts of things we’ve seen.”
An indignant snort was my answer to that. “I may be forced to believe in vampires and ghosts, but that doesn’t mean I buy into every supernatural idea out there. People do not turn into wolves, Joy. It’s physically impossible.”
“Uh huh. Watch your—ow. Sorry.”
Raphael rubbed his forehead where it had hit a low overhanging stone. The staircase we were on was a miniature version of the grand staircase, a narrow stone spiral that seemed to go on forever. “I think this is the bottom,” Raphael said as he moved a few steps forward. The light pooled around an iron-banded wooden door.
“Bob, wait,” I said, grabbing his arm as he was about to open the door. “We can’t just up and destroy the stone and Sir Alec. It’s cruel.”
“Cruel? Didn’t he starve his wife to death?”
“Yes, but… well, after meeting him, I’m not too sure about that. I think we should talk to Lily again. Maybe things weren’t quite as she remembered.”
His lips were warm on mine as he gave me a swift kiss. “Let’s take a look at this tamed laird’s stone. If it’s small enough to move, perhaps we can just hide the thing, and tell Lily it’s gone.”
“I don’t see what good that will do, but it’s better than nothing,” I grumbled.
He laughed and slid back a solid slab of wood which barred the door, swinging it open. It had suitably creepy squeaking hinges, but nothing rushed out of the room at us when Raphael shone his light inside.
“Rats?” I asked, peering over his shoulder.
“Not that I can see. It’s just a small empty room.”
And so it was. There was a slight musty odor, but as Raphael said, it was a small empty stone chamber.
Empty except for a plinth, upon which sat a greeny-gray chunk of stone approximately the size and shape of a large wheel of cheese.
“That’s gotta be it,” I said, eyeing the stone carefully as Raphael shone the line around it.
“I’d say so. Hold this while I see how heavy it is.”
“Sweetie—,” I started to say, but my words stopped as Raphael reached out to grab the stone. A blinding flash of light startled me into screaming and dropping the flashlight, which promptly went out. I scrabbled around on the floor until I found it again, quickly switching it on. “Oh, my God, what was that? Are you all right?”
I shone the light to where Raphael had been standing, my jaw dropping as I blinked in absolute stupefaction at the thing that stood in his place.
A lion, golden, tawny-eyed, complete with mane, fuzzy ears, and an almost comical expression of utter disbelief, stared back at me.
Chapter Four
“OH MY GOD,” I SAID, MY SKIN CRAWLING as I reached out to touch the tip of the lion’s nose. His eyes crossed as he followed the movement of my hand. “Oh my God! I knew it! I knew something like this would happen if you tried to destroy the stone! OH MY GOD! You’re a werewolf.”
The Raphael lion rolled its familiar amber eyes and opened its mouth as if it would speak. All that came out was a guttural grunt.
“All right, then, you’re a werelion! Same difference, Bob! Oh, my God, what are we going to do?”
Frustration filled Raphael’s feline eyes as he made the same guttural noise a couple more times.
“Don’t swear, sweetie. We’ll figure something out,” I said, patting him on the top of his furry head. “That’s what that beast within bit from that curse must have meant. That’s all fine and well, but I am not going to spend my honeymoon with an animal. Let’s go find Sir Alec and see what he has to say about this. It’s his stone, maybe he knows of a way to break this transformation.”
Raphael didn’t object when I hefted the stone and marched toward the stairs, although he did give the back of my hand a swift lick with his bristly tongue.
By the time we made our way back to the first-floor hallway where Sir Alec and Grizel had been romping, it was obvious that a shouting match was going on.
“How dare you! I’ll go anywhere in this castle that I please, and you cannot stop me!”
“Ye’re confined to the upstairs. Grizel and I have the lower floors. That’s how it’s always been, and that’s how it’ll ever be!” Sir Alec roared.
Lily didn’t appear to be threatened despite the fact she was staring her murderer in the face. “I came down to see that you don’t harm that dear Beloved and the one who I see now is some relation of yours, the poor man. And don’t you threaten me, you murderous whoreson! You were a horrible husband when you were alive, and you’re a worse one now that you’re dead! Running around the castle flaunting your trollop in that manner. Have you no shame? No sense of dignity?”
“Now there’s a pot callin’ the kettle black,” Sir Alec yelled. “Ye had yer skirts up for any man who caught yer eye!”
Lily gasped. “Oh! I did not!”
Sir Alec leaned forward, all three of them so obviously focused on the argument they didn’t notice our approach. “I’ve three words to say to that: Sir Roderick Langton.”
Lily opened her mouth to protest, but quickly snapped her teeth closed.
“Aye, I thought that would shut ye up,” Sir Alec answered with satisfaction. “Ye can’t be throwing out accusations about Grizel and me when ye were up to the very same thing with that pasty-faced bastard.”
“Roddy wasn’t a bastard! He loved me! He wanted to take me away from your cruelties!”
“Cruelties!” snorted Sir Alec.
“I’m sorry to interrupt, but there’s a situation I’m going to need your help with,” I said, plopping the stone down onto the nearest table.
“Just a minute, lass,” Sir Alec told me without glancing our way. “I’ve taken enough from this she-devil. It’s time she face the truth rather than the pack of lies she preferred to believe. Was it cruelty, then, to give ye everything ye wanted? Ye had the finest cloth, jewels, the best of my bloodstock—”
“Trivial things,” Lily yelled, waving her hands. “You thought to buy my affections with your gold! I saw through that in an instant, though. I knew what sort of man you were—a murderer, a thief who would steal his own wife’s jewels to give to another. You drove me to Roddy’s arms! You and your damned harlot!”
“I realize that this is a heated subject, but I really do have an emergency on my hands here, and I’d appreciate a little help,” I said, but the three ghosts ignored me.
“Ye’ll not be talking about my Grizel that way!” Sir Alec shouted back at Lily. “She’s worth a whole castle full of the likes of ye, not that ye’d know how a proper wife behaved, lockin’ yerself away in the tower as ye did for months on end! And as for yer precious jewels—ye’ll be needing to talk to Sir Roderick about them.”
Lily gasped again, her eyes blazing. “How dare you impugn his name! He was a saint! A god among men! You were not fit to lick his boots!”
Despite the urgency of the situation with Raphael, I was oddly drawn into the argument. “Wait a sec—did you just say that Lily locked herself into the tower? I thought… er… well, I thought you did that because she had a daughter instead of a son?”
Lily lifted her chin and looked away. Sir Alec shot his first wife a nasty look. “Oh, aye, that’s what she wanted everyone to think. But the truth is different from legend, isn’t it, Lily? Go on and tell this lass how ye locked yerself in the tower in a fit of temper. Tell her how ye had that ball-less whoreson bringin’ ye food and wine on the sly, while ye let everyone think ye were up there starvin’. Ye tell her that, and I’ll tell her how Sir Roderick disappeared once he finally got his hands on yer jewels and gold, and how yer own stubbornness kept ye in the tower rather than admit what had happened.”
Raphael bumped my hand with his nose.
“Just a sec, sweetie. I think we’re finally getting to the truth,” I murmured to him.
“He didn’t disappear!” Lily bellowed. “You killed him! Just as you killed me!”
“I did nothing of the kind! He strung ye along as long as it took to get the key to yer strongboxes, then he up and left ye to starve to death in yer tower. Ye have no one but yerself to blame!”
Raphael bumped my hand again. Absently, I patted him on his head, relieved to know that my gut instinct about Alec hadn’t been far off. But how were we to resolve the situation?
“You killed me!” she repeated, and was about to fly at Sir Alec when Raphael had evidently had enough. He tossed up his head and let loose with a roar that came close to shaking the windows. The three ghosts spun around in unison and stared at Raphael.
“Ah, lad,” Sir Alec said, shaking his head. “Ye just had to see the stone, didn’t ye? And now ye’ll pay the price for yer curiosity.”
“We are not amused,” I said loudly, leveling a stern look at Sir Alec as I pointed to Raphael. “This is our honeymoon. That is my husband. He is a lion. Which of those three statements does not belong?”
The three ghosts blinked at me.
I took a deep breath. “I want him changed back, and I want him changed back right now!”
“ ‘Tis nothing to do with me.” Sir Alec shrugged. “He did it himself. I warned him not to go into the Stone Room.”
“You didn’t say there was a chance he would be changed into an animal!” I yelled, overcome with frustration. “How the hell did it happen anyway? All he did was pick up the stone!”
“I told ye that’s all it would take. The men of Fyfe were cursed long ago, ye ken. Cursed to be therianthropes—to change into animals—when they touch the laird’s stone. Yon laddy… well, ye can see what happened. He’s a very nice-lookin’ lion, though, don’t ye think, Grizel?”
“Very nice,” she agreed quickly. “Just like a great big kitty. Does he purr if you stroke him?”
Raphael growled low in his throat. I patted him again. “Calm down, sweetie. We’ll get this figured out.” I took a deep breath and skewered Sir Alec with a look that would have scared the crap out of a mortal man. “Given the evidence before us, I’m willing to accept the story about the stone. You have yet, however, to tell me what it is we need to do to get Raphael back.”
Sir Alec shrugged. “He must learn how to shift back to human form by himself.”
“Well, surely you can give him some help!” I said, clutching my hands together to keep from shaking the annoying ghost. “You must have some experience with this!”
“Nay, none,” he said, shaking his head.
“But… but… it’s your stone!”
“Aye, and the men of Fyfe were well warned not to go near it. None of us did,” he said with irritating righteousness.
I stared at him in outright surprise. “Do you mean to say that you have this horrible stone in the castle, one that can turn any male family member into an animal if he so much as touches the damned thing, and no one ever did so?”
“Aye, that’s what I’m tellin’ ye. We had the warning, ye see. We knew that to touch it would bring down the curse upon our heads.”
I turned to consider the stone. “Then what are we going to do? If we put it back, will it change Raphael back?”
“I’m afraid not, lass. He’s therian, ye see. All of us men of Fyfe are, but only those who touch the stone trigger the change.”
I looked at my husband. His eyes peered back at me, filled with a heart-twisting mixture of hope, trust, and sadness. “Don’t worry, I won’t let you stay this way. We just need to think… There has to be an answer. If there’s one thing I’ve learned the last few years, it’s that nothing is absolute.”
“We’d help ye if we could,” Sir Alec said, pulling Grizel to his side. “But I’m afraid that there’s no solution. It’s as the curse says: The Thane of Fyfe shadowed be, thrice around the stone bound; in its light, the devil can see, and the beast within be found.”
“Thrice around the stone bound,” I murmured, eyeing the stone. “I wonder… Bob?”
Raphael looked thoughtful for a moment, clearly thinking the same thing I was. His head jerked up and down in an awkward acknowledgment.
“Are you sure?” I asked, my heart weeping at the sight of his eyes, so familiar, so human, bound in a body that was nothing more than a furry prison.
He nodded again.
“Right. Here goes nothing.” I picked up the stone, grunting a little at its weight as I lifted it over my head.
“What are ye doin’?” Sir Alec yelled, leaping toward me.
I lowered the stone and took a couple of steps back, just in case he had any funny ideas about trying to snatch it from me. “The curse revolves around the stone. You guys have been protecting it all these centuries, believing it made you happy.”
“Aye, it has! So long as the laird’s stone is safe, all will be well.”
“The laird’s stone, the laird’s stone,” Lily muttered before jabbing a finger in Sir Alec’s direction. “Ask him what he’s done to the lady’s stone!”
Sir Alec looked abashed for a moment.
“He destroyed it, that’s what he did!” she crowed. “He couldn’t stand to see
me happy, and he destroyed it, damning all women in the family to eternal sorrow!”
“I didn’t even know ye, ye daft woman!” Sir Alec answered. “I dropped it down the privy when I was a lad!”
I raised an eyebrow.
He cleared his throat, embarrassment plainly written on his face. “ ‘Twas an accident. I didn’t know it was the lady’s stone. I used to play in the passage leading to the Stone Room. I never touched the laird’s stone—even then I knew what repercussions that would have—,” he said, looking at Raphael. “But the lady’s stone was different. It was smaller, and pretty. I used to carry it about with me, and it… er… well, it was dropped into the privy by mistake.”
“A likely tale,” Lily snorted.
“What happened after that?” I asked, glancing from the stone in my arms to Raphael.
His eyes pleaded with me to do something.
“What do ye mean?”
“Was there any repercussion for destroying the lady’s stone? Did something happen to your mother?”
“Nothing happened to her, although she proper tanned my arse for playing in the privy,” he said with a rueful grin as he rubbed his behind.
I smiled at him. “I’m sure you deserved it.”
“Aye, but that didn’t make it any easier to—nooo!”
I lifted the stone as high over my head as I could, and slammed it back down toward the solid marble floor. A shock wave knocked me back off my feet, against Raphael. We fell to the ground in a tangle of human and lion limbs, the explosion as the stone shattered into a thousand pieces echoing painfully along the hall. Beneath us, the ground trembled for a moment, easing as the horrible sound faded into nothing.
A dense cloud of dust choked the air, making me cough as I pushed my hair out of my face and sat up.
“Bob!” I yelled in delight as I flung myself on a familiar man-shaped form.
“Blessed Virgin, what have ye done?” Sir Alec asked, his figure barely visible in the dense, dusty air. He helped Grizel to her feet, ignoring the nasty look Lily shot him as she rose from where she’d been knocked back.
Sir Alec stood looking at the pile of rubble that was formerly the laird’s stone.
My Big Fat Supernatural Honeymoon Page 25