0.5-The Asylum Interviews: Bronx: An Asylum Tales Short Story (6 page)

“Thanks,” I said with a sigh. I pulled the key out of the ignition and sat there, staring into the darkness. “I appreciate it, but I have a feeling that she’s going to want me. We’ll tell her that we want to make a trade. She can feel the weight of our secrets before we tell her anything and then she can choose which would be fair. They might be nasty bitches, but they are bound by magic to be fair.”

Bronx nodded, his expression grim. I didn’t know how much he knew about the Vestal Virgins, but he seemed to understand what was at stake here. I’m sure he had his share of secrets, but I had a feeling that regardless of what he had done in the past, Aemilia was going to want me. I had never heard of a warlock or a witch visiting the Vestal Virgins, but I did know that they were one of the few groups safe from the Ivory Towers. No one had ever stolen a secret from the order. All the virgins had died in the process of trying to rip the secrets free, and the Ivory Towers had decided to let them live in the hopes that one day they would be able to find a way to pull the secrets free.

Standing next to Bronx at the foot of the stone stairs leading to the front door, I looked over at my companion. “If things go bad, I want you to take the tears I get and use them to tattoo Parker. Considering that trolls don’t seem to be as oversexed as humans, you might be able to get it done after only one or two tries. Just draw and color in a drop of water around the flames engulfing the heart.”

“You think it’s going to be that bad?”

“Possibly not.” I shrugged before beginning up the stairs to the front door. “I’ve lived this long thinking that everything is going to go to shit when you least expect it and it’s served me well. It doesn’t hurt to plan ahead.”

The truth was that I didn’t want to think about being laid low by some pissed-off possessed virgin chick. There were far worse things in this world and it was hard not to lose your self-respect when you were turned into a quivering mass by some retro-Roman psycho.

C
HAPTER
S
IX

I
t was only when I was standing in the opulent room with its tall ceiling and prerequisite marble columns that I remembered that I had been stuck in the same dingy jeans and ragged Pixies T-shirt for two days. And I doubted waking up in the women’s bathroom had helped either. I hadn’t a clue as to what my hair looked like, and my teeth were starting to feel a little fuzzy. Yeah, this was how I always imagined meeting the head of the local order of Vestal Virgins. Of course, I could have happily gone through my life without that prestigious honor.

Aemilia lounged on a plush sofa with thick red cushions next to a blazing fire in a hearth that couldn’t have fit in the lobby of the Asylum. One long, pale arm dangled off the end of the sofa, holding a crystal wineglass. She was garbed in a white toga that seemed to barely cover the essentials, while her hair was twisted up and piled on the top of her head. For a chaste group, you’d think these women would be dressed a little more modestly. But then the dozen men scattered around the room, armed like they meant to take on the nearest country alone, kept visitors from being too aggressive.

Beside me, Bronx bowed to Aemilia while I shoved my hands into my pockets. She hadn’t done anything yet to warrant such respect from me. The Vestal Virgins were little more than perverted voyeurs that got off on people’s guilt, remorse, and fear.

“You must be Gage,” she purred in a deep, luscious voice that seemed to strike straight for my groin.
Fantastic.
This is what I needed. A chaste little sex kitten that wanted to play. Aemilia swung off the sofa and placed her wineglass on a nearby table as she padded closer on bare feet. When she was standing a few feet away, I saw that she was older than I had initially thought—appearing to be in her mid- to late thirties at least, if not a little older. Apparently the Vestal Virgins weren’t kept eternally young by the creature that inhabited their bodies.

“I’m Gage Powell and this is my friend Bronx. We came for a trade,” I said tightly.

Aemilia’s thin brow arched and she smiled, appearing amused by my discomfort. “A trade. Well, now that is highly irregular. What is it you want from me?”

“Your tears,” Bronx replied.

The Virgin’s laughter was like the soft tinkling of fine china in a tea shop. “Oh, then I hate to disappoint you. We don’t cry. We don’t feel much of anything anymore, except maybe hunger.”

“So you’re not human any longer?” Bronx inquired. Between his conversations with Parker and now Aemilia, I was learning that Bronx was a very curious creature, as most questions made him sound as if he was studying the person under a microscope.

Aemilia gave a little shrug. “Not much.”

“Don’t worry. I can make you cry,” I said.

Her expression turned arctic cold when she looked over at me. “If you think physical violence can bring me to tears, you’re sorely mistaken. Even if by some slim chance you could get past my guards, you would never break me or any of the Vestal Virgins.”

I took a step closer to Aemilia and smiled. “I’d never physically harm you. I don’t get off on hurting women. No, I’ve got other means of wringing tears from you.”

She stared at me for a moment longer, a curious smile answering on her own full lips. “And what are you willing to pay for an attempt to capture my tears?”

“A secret from one of us.”

“Only one?”

“It’s a fair trade,” I replied. “Test the weight. I’m sure one of us has a secret that would be worthy of such a trade.”

Aemilia took a step backward and held out a hand toward Bronx and me, placing it just in front of our chests over our hearts. We had to wait only a second before her eyes flared and snapped to my face. There was no mistaking the hunger that filled her wide blue eyes as she looked at me.

“You stay,” she commanded, then looked at Bronx. “You may go.”

Bronx turned to look at me, waiting for me confirm that it was all okay. I nodded. “I’ll meet you in a few in the entryway. Just be careful not to talk to anyone out there.” The troll made a sound like a snort as he walked away and shut the door behind him.

“Now send away the rest of your men,” I said, stepping closer to her.

“My guards are trusted and loyal.”

“Send them away. I’ve already sworn that I won’t hurt you.”

Aemilia flashed me an evil grin as she lowered her voice. “Whisper it in my ear. They’ll never know.”

Closing the distance between us so that my T-shirt brushed lightly against her bare arm, I bent my head down so that my breath danced across the soft shell of her ear. “I’m not going to tell you. I want to show you.” Gently wrapping my fingers around her wrist, I pressed her hand against my chest over my heart. “Feel it. Feel the weight of my secret. You’ve been here for years and one of the best secrets you’ve ever encountered is right at your fingertips. You’ll feel so good when you get this secret, and all you have to do is send your men away. Be alone with me. I swear, no harm will come to you.”

Her fingers trembled where they rest on my chest and her breathing had become more ragged as I spoke. On a bet, I had seen Parker send a woman spiraling into an orgasm without touching her, using only words. This conversation was much more sedate, yet it had me wondering if maybe my initial plan of wringing tears out of Aemilia from sexual frustration was a bad plan.

“Everyone out!” she announced in a hoarse voice that cracked.

“But—” one guard started to say.

“I said out!” she yelled, clenching her fist in my shirt as she pressed closer to me. Without thinking, I wrapped one arm around her waist, holding her as if to protect her and maybe I needed to. The only thing standing between me and Parker’s cure at the moment were the armed Boy Scouts who were reluctant to leave me alone with the Virgin. Several of the guards frowned at me, but left without further argument.

Even after the door closed, I looked around the firelit room, staring deep into the shadows, reassuring myself that we were truly alone. I had a feeling there were cameras discreetly stashed in a couple corners, but it would be video only. The guards watching wouldn’t be able to hear anything that was said.

“We’re alone now. Tell me!” Aemilia demanded, leaning against me until she was practically riding my thigh. Her breasts were pushed against my chest so that I could feel her nipples through the thin material of her toga. There was a flush of excitement to her cheeks and her eyes sparkled.

“In this trade, you give me the tears first.”

The Virgin angrily shoved away from me, her expression twisting, becoming ugly. “You can’t do that! You promised me a secret.”

“And I’ll deliver but only if I get my tears.”

“I can’t cry,” she snarled in frustration.

I frowned. She might not feel sad any longer, but she definitely still had the ability to get angry. “Then you’re just going to have to let me help you.”

Closing the distance between us again, I slid my hands into her hair until I was cupping the back of her head. I held her against me so that I could whisper in her ear. She was stiff in my arms, but she didn’t yet push away from me. The temptation of my tightly held secret had her willing to play along for a little while. My eyes fell shut as I whispered an old spell I had learned years ago, but remained fresh in my mind.

I needed to pull Aemilia’s memories to the foreground. The spirit that now occupied her body may have killed off all feelings of compassion and tenderness, but she hadn’t always been possessed. Most girls lived with their families until they were at least ten or eleven, and didn’t get initiated as a full-fledged Vestal Virgin until they hit puberty. That’s plenty of time to form a bad memory or two. I just needed to find one; a strong one. I didn’t care what it was. A sick grandmother, a dead pet, or even a lost toy.

Aemilia gasped and every muscle in her body suddenly stiffened as her heart went racing off as we neared a particularly dark memory. I didn’t care what it was. I plunged us both in, desperate to wring a few tears out of Aemilia.

My own consciousness was dragged into the memory, enveloping us both. With a shuddering breath, I looked around to find that I was standing in a dark hallway with a young girl who looked to be somewhere between eight and ten years old. Her little hands were clenched before her stomach so that her white knuckles nearly blended in with her white nightgown. I frowned. Was this a monster-in-the-closet memory? I really didn’t want to see a little kid traumatized by some creature that managed to sneak past some basic wards to hide under her bed.

But as soon as the thought occurred to me, I heard the sound of soft crying farther down the hall. Something in my stomach knotted while my brain instinctively screamed to pull out of this memory. I didn’t know what I had called up for Aemilia, but every fiber of my being shouted that this was darker than I had meant to go. She didn’t need to relive this.

Even as my brain was shrieking warnings, I found myself turning toward the noise while the little girl beside me moved to the closed door on my left. Her hand was shaking as she reached for the old iron doorknob. I wanted to lay my hand on hers and open the door for her, but I couldn’t interact with the memory in any way. Hell, I wanted to stop it, but I couldn’t. The spell only pulled up and kicked off the memory. The person the memory actually belonged to had to end it.

Standing behind the little girl, I looked in the room as she pushed open the door, catching sight of a large man climbing out of a small bed draped with rumpled pink and purple covers. My eyes darted from the man with salt-and-pepper black hair as he refastened his pants, to the bed, where I saw a young, tear-streaked face that didn’t look to be more than a year or two older than the child Aemilia.

“Daddy?” the young Aemilia whimpered.

The horror and revulsion that surged through me was quickly replaced by mindless rage. I tried to lunge forward to grab the man, but I was yanked out as Aemilia shut down the memory as the horror of the image gripped us both. I stumbled backward, my stomach churning. Bent over in pain, Aemilia gripped the back of a chair in an effort to hold herself upright as tears raced down her face.

Staring at her, I realized why she had been sent to become a Vestal Virgin. It wasn’t some great honor bestowed on her. She had her father’s dark, dirty secret that she had to carry. By making her a Vestal Virgin, he was hoping that his secret would be protected, and she did protect it. But there was a loophole. I was willing to guess that she couldn’t protect her own secrets the same way and that’s how I had gotten to the dark memory.

“You pulled free the tears you wanted,” she said in a horrible voice, dragging my thoughts out of Aemilia’s past. “Collect them before I wipe them all away and you’re screwed, because you’re not getting another shot at this.”

With more than a little self-loathing, I pulled a small glass test tube out of my pocket and stepped close to her again. Holding her chin with my thumb and index finger, I carefully collected several tears in the container as they streaked down her cheeks.

“I’m sorry about that,” I murmured, drawing her downcast eyes back up to my face. “I was hoping for something a little more innocuous. You know, lost toy or skinned knee. Maybe lost in the grocery store.”

“Doesn’t matter,” she said roughly.

“It does,” I pressed. She looked away from me, but I placed my hand gently against her jaw, turning her face back toward me. Her wounded blue eyes hesitantly flicked back up to my face and I could see an echo of the little girl from the hall. “I never meant to hurt you like that. I would have preferred happy tears, but those are extremely hard to come by. I would have preferred one small tear over a lost teddy bear or maybe a favorite sled.”

A wobbly smile skimmed along her lips as she struggled not to giggle at my stupid movie reference.

I released her face and took a step back again, giving her some breathing room. As she straightened again, pushing her goddess complex back into place, she looked at me with a furrowed brow. “How did you even do that in the first place?”

I slipped my hands into my pockets as I waited for the realization to hit her. It didn’t take long. Her eyes suddenly widened and her lovely mouth formed a perfect O as she pushed away from the chair. “You’re a . . . But—”

As the full depth of my secret washed over her mind, her head fell back as the hot flush to her cheeks returned. A deep moan rumbled up her throat while her eyes fluttered closed. I lurched forward and swept her into my arms as she started to crumple to the floor. I quickly deposited her on the sofa as she continued to writhe and scream in my arms.

Standing back near the fireplace, I watched her, more than a little confused. I knew that the spirit residing in the Vestal Virgins fed off the secrets, but the noises she was making weren’t yummy-this-is-good noises. She was . . .
Holy shit!
She was coming. And by the looks and sounds of it, it was a damn good orgasm. Dropping my head back, I closed my eyes. Well, hell, the Ivory Towers certainly had this part wrong about them. The Vestal Virgins were chaste because they didn’t fucking need sex. Give them a good secret and they’d shatter without a single touch.

When Aemilia grew quiet again, I breathed a sigh of relief and opened my eyes, resisting the urge to adjust myself. Beautiful woman moans and writhes on the couch in a skimpy outfit and see if you don’t get a little hard, regardless of the circumstances.

“Was it good for you?” I asked with a smile. Only one of us had enjoyed a release, but I couldn’t be too bitter considering the ugly memory I had dragged to the foreground of her mind.

Aemilia gave me a little smile as she rolled over onto her stomach. Her eyes sparkled in the firelight as she looked up at me. “How many know?” Her voice was low and husky, sending a jolt through me.

“Outside the Towers?” She nodded. “One. Maybe two. If anyone finds out, I’m dead and it won’t be just the Towers hunting for me. Everyone will be demanding my head.”

Aemilia arched her back, pressing her pelvis into the cushions as she dropped her head back and softly moaned as if a fresh ripple of pleasure was rushing through her. Yeah, that seemed fitting. The more danger my life was in, the more she got off.