Echoes in the Darkness (20 page)

I removed the key from my pocket and turned it thoughtfully over in my hand. Perhaps I should go straight to Cad, or even Tynan, with my fears? But what were they? I couldn’t express myself coherently in my own thoughts, let alone speak the awful words aloud to another. Decisively, I slid the key into the padlock and, with a nervous glance over my shoulder, turned it. The lock snapped open easily in my hand. That should have been my cue to run. Until that moment, I might still have been wrong.

The door swung inward, and the dark sweep of the stairs dared me to descend. I hesitated. A slight sound—was it a groan? Or the old house settling?—from the gloomy depths, reached my ears.

“Eleanor?” I called her name and another groan, louder this time, shocked me into action. As I set my foot onto the top stair, a hand—shoved hard into the small of my back—sent me tumbling into the dungeon-dark nothingness beyond the stairs. I hit the stone floor hard and the breath left my body with a loud hiss. Searing pain shot up from my wrist to my shoulder. Looking up, I saw a man’s tall silhouette framed briefly in the light of the open doorway before the door slammed and the padlock clicked shut again with awful finality. Darkness as black and silent as a crypt enveloped me.

Chapter Thirteen

Grinning, gibbering insanity claws and rakes at him with the poisoned nails and glistening fangs of his murderous, long-dead ancestors. Fiends of hatred snarl and bite, their savage jaws drawing the blood that surges behind his eyes in tides of dark crimson.

The sour wine of age-old evil has hardened his heart to stone. He is at home only in this night of fathomless blackness. Pleasure exists only in that perfect instant when he paints the cobbles red with his hideous signature. When another girl, another damaged rose, withers and dies.

With the tongue of madness he has come to love, his master speaks. “It is her turn now. It is time to write ‘the end’ at the bottom of the page.”

* * *

A soft croaking noise from across the room roused me from my shock. My eyes began to adjust to the gloom somewhat. The only sources of light were a narrow rectangular strip under the door and a similar, wider strip at one side, at roughly the height of the low ceiling. A coal chute, perhaps? Motes of dust danced in the narrow beam of light. Testing my limbs cautiously, I found my legs shaky but uninjured, and I stood up. My left wrist was on fire and every movement sent shards of pain shooting through to my shoulder. I cradled it against my chest and, with my other hand outstretched in case of obstacles, moved toward the sound of Eleanor’s muted cries.

I was able to make out her shape in one corner of the cellar. She was lying on an old mattress that had been placed on the floor. It felt stiff with dirt when my hand encountered it, and a foul odour of mingled mould and stale sweat rose from its surface. Eleanor’s hands and feet were tied tightly with twine, her eyes were wide pools of terror in the pale oval of her face and she was gagged. Even in the dim light, I could see the deep bruise that marred her left cheek and blackened the skin under one eye.

“Hush, Eleanor dearest. I’m here now.” I sat down on the floor beside her. Her pitiful cries made sharp tears of hopelessness sting the back of my eyelids. I blinked them away. “I’ve hurt my arm, so I’ll be clumsy. But let me get that gag off first.” I’d underestimated not only how awkward I would be, but also how much pain it would cause me to attempt any movement of my injured arm. Breathing hard with the effort, I managed to undo the strip of cloth that had been tied at the nape of Eleanor’s neck and gently remove the handkerchief that had been stuffed into her mouth. She drew great noisy gusts of air deep into her lungs with a horrible rasping sound, while I ineffectually patted her back with my good hand.

It took me much longer to untie her hands. The twine was so tight it had cut into her wrists and every fumbled effort of mine to untie the knots only succeeded in hurting her. In between my frustrated muttering and Eleanor’s occasional yelps of pain, she told me what had happened.

“Oh, Dita,” her voice was strained from crying. “I wanted to go away with Sandor so much. From the minute I saw him, I just knew he was the answer to my prayers. And he said he felt the same.” I decided there was nothing to be gained from telling her the truth about Sandor at that time. She would find out soon enough, assuming we managed to escape from this cellar prison. “He told me that he was an impostor, he wasn’t really a baron. I didn’t care. I loved him. I even told him about Tristan, and he said we would send for him to be with us. But, of course, we knew my parents would never approve, so we had to steal away in the middle of the night. And it was such an exciting adventure, Dita!” She sounded even more childlike than usual. “We arranged to meet by the little pergola at two in the morning. I was a few minutes late and surprised to find he wasn’t already there. I waited and waited, and then I heard a footstep. I turned to greet him—I was laughing because I wanted to tease him for being late and say it was supposed to be the lady’s prerogative. But it wasn’t him.”

“It was Eddie,” I supplied for her, and she began to cry weakly.

“It was. But he didn’t look like himself. He looked—oh, Dita, I don’t know how to explain it!—he looked like an animal of some sort. A ferocious, snarling creature. But he was smiling as well, as though he done something that gave him great pleasure. It was horrible! And when he spoke he was so calm. He said ‘I can’t allow you to do this, Eleanor’ as though he was caring for me. But, Dita, when he held out his hands toward me, they were bright red with
blood!
” The tears flowed faster now. “I tried to run, but he caught hold of me. He—” her voice trembled “—he hurt me, Dita. I remember seeing his fist come toward my face and then nothing until I woke up in here. I’ve counted two nights since that one. Eddie has come in now and then to bring me food and water. The pain in my head is so bad sometimes it makes me sick. I kept thinking ‘Sandor will come,’ but he can’t, can he? Oh, Dita, please tell me I’m wrong! Tell me it was
not
Sandor’s blood on Eddie’s hands!”

“I’m sorry,” I said quietly, and, interpreting my words correctly, she burst into such a prolonged storm of weeping that I began to fear for her sanity. Eventually, I felt the first fraction of give in the knot at her wrists, and, although the light was so poor, I bent my head closer over my work. When her hands were finally free, Eleanor threw herself into my arms, causing me to cry out in pain. Begging my pardon, she set to work freeing her legs, which proved an easier task. We sat on the odorous mattress, leaning against each other.

“Will he kill us, Dita?” Eleanor’s tearful voice prodded into life the dark, poisonous snake of fear that lay coiled in my stomach.

“No, because we will find a way out before he returns.” I tried to infuse the words with a bright confidence I didn’t feel. I struggled to my feet and gazed around, trying to focus on the dim shapes I saw around the room. I noted and discarded the usefulness of a table, an old rocking chair, a mangle that appeared to have no handle and a dolly tub. There was an abandoned jumble of garden implements in one corner. An idea began to form. I felt my way carefully through them until I found what I was looking for. The hoe was rusted, but intact. I unwound the scarf from my neck and looped it through the head of the hoe. I wanted to tie it in place, but I couldn’t manage it with one hand. I took my makeshift flag back to Eleanor, and together, we achieved a reasonable knot that secured the bright strip of material in place. Although the coal chute had not been used for some time, that part of the cellar was still redolent with the scent of black dust. The entrance to the chute from the outside world was several feet above my head, but I managed to push the handle of the hoe upward and rest it on the steep slope of the brickwork. It stood upright with the tip onto which my scarf was tied, just poking out into the wintry sunlight above. I knew Cad would recognise it as my scarf if he saw it, but surely anyone who noticed it would find it strange and consider it worthy of further investigation. I pinned my hopes on that.

Eleanor drifted in and out of sleep, a circumstance that worried me. It seemed to indicate that Eddie’s blow to her face could have caused more damage than just bruising. I sat down next to her and commenced the long wait for something to happen. The sensation of being hidden away here, below a world that was turning and living and breathing without us, sent a trickle of fear down my spine. A pipe dripped somewhere beyond the range of my vision, the insistent noise branding itself into my brain. Maddening, infuriating, but, nevertheless, comforting because it reminded me that I was still part of that world.
Cad will miss me,
I told myself firmly.
He
will
come.

But will he find you before Eddie gets back?
Another voice, this one sly and insidious, nudged insistently at my consciousness with the question.

* * *

I sensed Eddie’s return even before I heard him. When footsteps rang out above my head and approached the cellar door, I did not allow myself to hope that rescue had arrived. I knew it was him. He stood at the top of the stairs, looking down into the gloom. He held a branch of candles aloft in one hand and their amber haze threw twisted, dancing demons into the depths of our prison. Grainy light played across Eddie’s features, lending them a harshness I had never seen before. The lines and planes of his face were thrown into sharp relief, almost as if he wore a mask, a caricature of himself. Fear rippled through my nerve endings and settled in the very marrow of my bones. He kicked the door closed behind him and descended the stairs. When he reached the bottom, he set the candelabra and a pitcher of water down on the table and turned to me with the same mischievous grin he always used in greeting. I was more frightened by that than by anything else he had done before.

“Has she been crying again? She never bloody stops.” He jerked his thumb toward Eleanor. I noticed, with a sinking heart, that he wore my scarf knotted around his neck in place of a cravat.

“I think she is seriously hurt, Eddie,” I tried to keep my voice calm. “The injury to her head seems to have caused this incessant sleepiness. It worries me.”

He sighed and came to sit next to me on the floor. Leaning back against the wall, so that our shoulders almost touched, he bent his long legs and leaned an arm across his knees. “This is a mess, Dita,” he said with a sad little shake of his head.

“It needn’t be, Eddie.”

“You have no idea. You couldn’t begin to comprehend what it’s like inside my head,” he said quietly.

“Tell me,” I urged. “I might be able to help.”

He chuckled. “Can you stop him? Because that’s the only way to help me. Get him out of my head.”

“Who?” But I knew the answer.

“He is my master, Dita. He controls me. I hear his voice. He tells me what to do. Dear God, Dita, the
things
he tells me to do! I think sometimes my head will explode.”

“Whose voice do you hear, Eddie?” The candles flickered miserably in the musty gloom, trying to stretch their meagre fingers into the dark corners. “Uther Jago’s? Or is it Arwen Jago who speaks to you?”

“Does it matter?” he asked petulantly. “They are one and the same, after all. And now, they have claimed me, as well. They have managed to keep the chain of evil going. My master is always with me. Behind me and beside me. Urging me on. Willing me to do more. Although he speaks with my mouth, his words impart the venom of two hundred years of hate. I have become nothing more than a guest in my own body.”

I wanted to ask why he had not fought to be rid of this unwelcome presence, but when I remembered the tortured look his face often wore, I knew he battled hard every day. Eddie was weaker than the master he spoke of. He had lost. And while it was long-dead Jagos who planted the seeds of festering madness inside him, it was Eddie himself who, with his hatred of his family and his name, fed them and allowed them to grow.

“Why have you taken Eleanor?” I asked. “What has she done to make you hate her so?”

He started to laugh then. Genuine laughter that shook his whole body. “Oh, you
don’t
see, do you, Dita? Eleanor said you did, but you don’t.”

“See what?”

“I don’t hate Eleanor,” his voice was quiet again now. “I love her. But not as a brother should love his sister. Ours is not what the world would call a ‘natural affection.’”

I closed my eyes briefly. “It was you,” I whispered. “You were the man Lucy found Eleanor with.”

“I went away,” he explained, his voice still soft. “She told me I must. My dear mama sent her son and heir packing. She told us both that we carried the Jago taint and that it was always stronger here at Tenebris. She said I must stay away for as long as I could. My father must never find out. Eleanor would be sent away to a school that could help her to see what was right. She is not very strong—mentally or emotionally.”

“I know. I didn’t see it at first. I thought her immature and didn’t know that there was more to it. She has all the sweetness of a child, but it means she cannot be held responsible for her actions.”

He slammed his right fist into his left palm in sudden fury. “You sound like
her!
That is what
she
said! My own mother blamed me. She told me that Eleanor could not bear any blame for what happened. The fault was all mine.” He buried his head in his hands. “She was right, of course. But I couldn’t help myself.” He turned pleading eyes upon me in the gloom. “After all, Uther himself bedded his own sister.”

“You cannot make Uther your excuse! Or your example,” I scolded, forgetting, for that instant, the danger I was in. “If you love Eleanor as much as you say, why have you done this to her? Imprisoned her here, hurt her?”

“Because she was planning to run off with Karol, of course,” he said, turning to look at the prone figure on the mattress. “They were together on Montol Eve.”

A memory resurfaced. “But I saw her kissing
you.
” I had refused to believe the evidence of my own eyes at the time. And, of course, I had been somewhat distracted by subsequent events.