Authors: Dane
Or when your brothers follow to find your bodies! That from Dante, ever the optimist.
Almost paralyzed by claustrophobia and fear for Eva, Luc, and Mimi, Dane followed the trail of pages, one after another. Dante railed and Daniel begged as he zigzagged through honey-combed catacombs and areas of subterranean ruins, a fallen pillar here, a cracked marble slab there.
We remember this, don‟t we? he murmured silently to the two companions in his mind. The dank, close atmosphere of stillness where time means nothing. The frustration. The anguish.
Flashes of memories came, horrible ones tearing at him.
It had been Moonful, thirteen years ago. He‟d been sneaking through the night, curious to observe the mysterious event that occurred under the full moon, when all the adults disappeared into the wilderness and did not return home until dawn. Unknown to him, Luc had followed.
They‟d begun arguing. And then that mosaic door in the temple had opened. Cloaked figures had ushered them inside the tunnel. He and Luc had fought, but they‟d been boys, helpless. The next thing he knew he had been shown to his new quarters, an airless, windowless cell. And then the drugs. He‟d become an object, one with no rights. Not even to his own body or mind. And now, his abductors had stolen fresh prey.
These are secrets you don‟t need to discover.
Go back.
Pain lies ahead.
Nooo!
Let it rest.
Pleeease.
“How much farther? Is Luc down here?”he asked, mumbling to himself in the darkness like a crazy man. “When I find Eva, will I find him as well?”
When he would have answers, now the voices fell silent. Grimly, Dane pushed on, cautiously now, for he never knew when he might turn a corner and come upon someone.
Then suddenly, he drew up short, his eyes keening. Eva‟s little book lay at his feet. She must have dropped it here as some sort of final clue.
He was getting close.
At the sound of a door opening, he froze. Murmured voices. He moved stealthily, peering around the corner to see who awaited him. Eva!
Looking tired and vulnerable, but unharmed. And Mimi on her lap, and Gaetano standing beside them in the center of the room. And Serafina on the far side. With a knife.
Bonadeabonadeabonadea! Daniel shrieked in his brain.
“Promise me you won‟t ever tell him,” Eva was saying to Gaetano in what appeared to be a private conversation.
“What‟ll you do for me in return?”
“Anything,”she vowed recklessly. “And let Mimi go. If you do that, I‟ll stay here in these rooms with you without argument. I‟ll do whatever you want.”
The hell she would.
“Share my bed? Be Persephone to my Hades?” Gaetano‟s hand smoothed Eva‟s cheek, and a primitive urge to kill sent Dane surging forward a step. But his Special Ops training kicked in, halting him. The crime scene in progress wasn‟t volatile at the moment. The best way to protect her was to survey matters for now. Others could be hidden behind those doors, foiling any headlong attempt he made at rescue. It wouldn‟t help Eva or Mimi if he got himself killed.
“I hear you scheming and making bargains over there, mademoiselle,” Serafina threw over her shoulder. Setting the knife aside, she dumped olive pits in a mortar. “But has my son told you of his little difficulty‟?”
Gaetano‟s face mottled. “Don‟t, Mother.”
Crushing the pits with a pestle, she smirked at him. “Your little French puta should know what she‟s getting in her bargain.”She glanced at Eva. “He‟s impotent. Can‟t get hard enough to put himself inside a woman.”
“You just had to tell her, didn‟t you!” Gaetano exploded. “But we both know what caused my difficulty, don‟t we? Do you think I‟d forgotten what you did to me, Mama? You and your ladies‟?”
Brows raised, Serafina said, “Are you speaking of your occasional attendance at our business meetings as a boy? Innocent afternoons of family and friends with tea and cakes? That was years ago. You loved those little cakes with the lemon frosting back then, remember?”
Gaetano‟s jaw twisted and a wildness lit his eyes as venom came pouring out. “I‟m speaking of mothers. With sons. Fathers with daughters. Perversions. And you know it.”
She looked at him then with vague surprise. “The Daughters of Bona Dea must carry on the family traditions. I make no apology. It‟s why you need your own wife and children. To do the same one day.”
Crossing the room, Gaetano loomed over her. “Shut up!”
Foolishly, she didn‟t. “You are not so innocent in all this yourself,”
she went on. “While the Daughters are upstairs at our worship each month, don‟t forget who leads the Sons of Faunus down here to make use of these creatures.”
“Shut up, Mother!” Gaetano grabbed her, his eyes bulging with rage. The pestle clattered to the floor. His hands squeezed her throat.
“Shut. Up.”
Good, thought Dane. Let him kill her. Save him some trouble. His eyes went to Eva. Come on. Come on.
As if she‟d heard him, Eva suddenly jumped up and set Mimi on her feet. Tugging her along, she ran toward him. Serafina saw and raised a hand in their direction, pointing. But Gaetano was oblivious.
Eva burst into the tunnel, and Dane caught her wonderful weight in his arms and hugged her near. Pressing her face into his shirt, he whispered at her ear, “I left the pages you dropped as a trail. Can you find your way out?”
She nodded up at him. “But—“
“Take my lantern. Get Mimi out.”She might not go to save herself, but she would go for Mimi, who was strangely docile for once.
Eva put a hand on his arm, her face full of tenderness. “Your brother Luc,” she whispered. “He‟s here, alive. In the room with the door there that‟s ajar. There are others, held captive in the other rooms.”
Gladness and pain and longing twisted inside him, but he only nodded. “Go.” He pushed her off as he had Lena earlier. Her eyes were full of emotion and words she wanted to speak, but he wanted her out of here. Now. “Wait at the house with Lena. Wait for my brothers.”Wait for me.
“Please be safe and come to me soon. I love you,” she whispered.
And then she was gone, taking Mimi with her.
Across the room, Gaetano was still choking his mother, murmuring, his voice full of grief and hate. Dane picked up the small knife on the cabinet as he passed it and then was at Gaetano‟s side, the blade at his throat. “Open the doors. All of them. And I might let you live.”
Gaetano jerked, a comically startled look on his face. Serafina dropped at his feet, dead or close to it. “Sergio!”Gaetano shouted.
A blind guard ran out of one of the rooms and into the tunnel in the direction opposite the one Eva had taken, and was heard cursing in the distance as he banged into walls he couldn‟t see.
Dane gave Gaetano a hard shake.
“Do it yourself,” Gaetano railed at him.
A door creaked open. Luc. Taller now, but still Luc. “I‟ll do it.”
At the sight of him, Dane‟s heart threatened to crack. It was his brother‟s voice, yet older, and so tired. So many years lost to this godsforsaken place. “Luc.”He swallowed pain. “Lucien, I‟m sorry.”
Luc only smiled in return, an eerie, angelic curve of his lips. “It‟s all right, Dane. I knew you‟d come back for me.”
“You‟re cutting!”Gaetano screamed, craning back from the knife at his throat.
As they watched, Luc took the keys from a hook and began unlocking each door. Pulling out victims, one by one. The last door opened to reveal Odette lying ominously still on a narrow cot, a vial of poison in one hand. “She‟s dead,” Luc said with an unnatural calm. Gods, was it just the drugs or was something else wrong with him?
Volcanic anger surged through Dane, ready to blow, and he bodily threw Gaetano into one of the now empty cells. The ass-hole stumbled back and hit a beam support full force, knocking it a few inches back.
Dust drifted down on them.
“Why did you let me go all those years ago? Why not Luc as well?”
Dane gritted, stalking him. “Answer me!”He slammed his hands on Gaetano‟s chest.
“I didn‟t let you go! We have to exercise them.”Gaetano waved toward the seven wraiths gathered now out in the main room with Luc.
“That‟s how you escaped. We‟d tethered you too loosely and you were at the end of the line. You wandered off and somehow found your way to the surface.” His eyes went cruel. “Then only your brother was left to entertain us.”
With a mighty roar, Dane rammed him against the tunnel support again, so hard that he fell. Bits of tuff showered them.
“Are you insane?”Gaetano asked.
Dane‟s hands fisted with a rage to kill. “I‟m what this place made me.”
“No, Dane. It‟s dangerous.”It was Luc‟s voice, a voice without inflection. Luc standing beside him, calmly. Too calmly. Luc staring at Gaetano, and then higher above him, gazing fixedly at the beam overhead. The silver of his eyes seemed to glow brighter for a moment.
Then came a great groaning sound, that of rock and wood cracking and splintering. Luc put a hand on Dane‟s arm. “It‟s going to cave in.”
“Fuck!”Dane barreled into his brother, pushing him ahead and out of the cell. Gaetano scrambled to stand, but then screamed in horror as loose chunks of tuff began to crumble and rain on him, becoming a torrent.
The ceiling crashed in and the cell door burst off its hinges as a ball of debris and dust whooshed out into the main room.
“Let‟s get the hell out of here!”Dane yelled. He and Luc herded the other witless creatures ahead of them out into the tunnel, following Eva‟s path. Behind them volcanic rock caved in, crushing everything below in a great fall of tuff, mosaic, and marble. In seconds, Gaetano, Serafina, Odette, and their insidious evils were buried forever.
A blast wall of dust spewed into the tunnel, chasing Dane, Luc, and the others through the labyrinth, threatening to suffocate them. Fifty yards in, it eased up, and a few yards on, they met Bastian.
“What the hell?”Bastian said when he saw the dust-covered group.
“A cave-in.” Dane coughed. “Luc‟s with me. Eva?”
Bastian‟s gaze darted to Luc and emotion distorted his face. But all he said was, “Sevin has Eva. We met her halfway, and he took her and the child out. Let‟s go.”
Together, they led their precious cargo through the tunnel and out into sunshine, fresh air, and freedom.
Sevin was waiting for them in the temple.
“Eva?” Dane demanded again.
“At the house with her girls. Said to bring you up there the minute you came.”Then he did a double take. “Lucien? Gods, are you—“
“Home.”Luc smiled a beatific smile that encompassed all three brothers. “I‟m home.”
It was nightfall by the time all seven of the Patrizzi victims‟names and situations had been determined. They and Luc slept now under the care of the night servants, and their futures would be sorted out over the following days. Dane hadn‟t had the time he wanted with Eva yet and was itching to get his hands on her. To assure himself she was whole and well and his. But still he must wait while she insisted on putting her girls to bed.
Bastian and Sevin had joined him in his office, one of the few clean rooms in the house, and he sensed their intention to speak of things he didn‟t want to discuss.
To forestall them, Dane said, “Down there in that chamber of horrors today, Luc moved an overhead beam somehow, causing the cave-in that killed Patrizzi.” He had his brothers‟ immediate attention. “Not with his hands, but with his mind, or his eyes. I don‟t know. I‟ve never seen anything like it.”
“Damn. A talent?” Sevin ventured.
“Possibly,” Bastian said thoughtfully. “Though I don‟t remember it from before we lost him. However, he was only five, and—“
“Why don‟t we just get it out in the open once and for all. What happened to him, the way he is now—it‟s my fault,” Dane said with quiet certainty. “All of it.”
At that, both brothers sat forward. “The hell it is!” said Bastian.
“I knew it!”said Sevin. “You‟ve been blaming yourself all these years. But what of the night servants who were supposed to be watching over us? And Bastian and I were older than you. Why isn‟t it their faults or ours as well?”
But it was hard to relinquish a long-held guilt. “Luc wouldn‟t have gone out that night if I—Gods, if only I hadn‟t been so damned nosy.”
“It was a boyish prank,” Bastian insisted.
“Hell, if I‟d thought of the idea of playing at voyeur during the ritual, I‟d have done the same thing you did,” said Sevin. “We were all curious.”
“Just think of what our brother has been through.”Dane scrubbed a hand over his face. “The memory of that hellhole was what Dante and Daniel kept from me all this time. Dante took over my mind when I was sexually assaulted down there. And Daniel put himself in charge of the memories of who my abusers were and the location of the subterranean dungeon. Both only wanted to save me from pain and terror back then but didn‟t know how to stop doing so afterward when the danger had passed for me.”
“They aren‟t your enemies at all,” said Sevin. “They‟re your protectors.”
“Only a strong mind could have come up with such coping mechanisms,” said Bastian. “Others might have gone insane instead.”
Dane shot him a sardonic glance. “So you don‟t think I belong in an asylum?”
“No, though I sometimes have my doubts about Sevin.”
“I love you, too, brother,” Sevin replied with a sardonic grin.
Dane chuckled, as they‟d intended. Then his head swiveled to the door and he slowly rose to his feet. Eva was coming.
Seconds later, his heart leapt. She was in the room with him. Lena held her hand on one side and Mimi on the other, both in their long girlish nightgowns. Eva‟s eyes locked on him, full of an emotion he didn‟t yet understand. “The girls wanted to say good night before they—“