Paranormal Erotic Romance Box Set (21 page)

“It is an office,” Alexander said. “Why do you move away
from me, Athena? Please tell me that the virtue has not infected you again.”

“I-I’m frightened of you, Alexander,” Athena said.

That seemed to please Alexander very much as he smiled.
Athena thought his smile was still charming, handsome, in fact, but now also
evil.

“You should be,” Alexander said as he reached under her
dress and gripped her thigh.

“But, I don’t care to do that again,” Athena said and
looked down at her dress. “I’m frightened.”

“Frightened seems to be the only big word you know,”
Alexander said and pushed his hand up her leg toward her undergarments. “But
you did not seem so frightened when I shoved myself into you on my land. In
fact, your sweet cunt dripped honey all over my cock, if I remember. Dripped,
Athena.”

“That was different,” she said. “That was before.”

“And this is now. Nothing different. I’ve already had you,
Athena and you cannot refuse me. There is no other man who will have you now
that you’ve been defiled by the Devil’s prick,” Alexander said and pushed
himself on top of his cousin.

“But, I said I don’t want to,” Athena said.

“And I do not care what you said,” Alexander said and
clawed between Athena’s legs.

“It hurts, Alexander,” Athena said. “Please stop. Perhaps
tomorrow--”

“No, there will be no tomorrows,” Alexander said and
sighed as he made up his mind.

Alexander eased off Athena’s body and Athena believed that
the assault was over. She relaxed a bit into the sofa.

“Thank you,” Athena said and closed her eyes.

“Do you know what Jesse used to say about the fright?”
Alexander said and stroked Athena’s legs over her dress.

“Who?”

“Jesse said that the fright was the only thing that was real.
Even though you couldn’t see it, if you bottled the fear and poured dye into
the bottle, you would see a huge red mass glowing bright and dancing.”

“I don’t understand,” Athena said and shook her head.

Alexander smiled and unbuttoned the small pearl buttons on
Athena’s blouse, exposing her corset. He jammed his hands into the top of her
corset and separated each hook from its eye, exposing Athena’s firm, tender
breasts.

“You said you would stop!” Athena said.

“Shhh,” Alexander said and kissed Athena’s breasts. “No, I
didn’t. As I was saying, Jesse was convinced that the fright was its own force
and I tend to agree. It’s the fright that does this.”

Alexander grabbed Athena’s hand and rubbed it back and
forth over his trousers. He was rock hard and Athena debated whether to scream
or will herself to faint--anything to end the fear.

“But the thing about the fright, well, once it comes, it
cannot be stopped. You see, if I stop it, it will destroy me and we can’t have
that, can we?”

“I don’t want to do this. I’ve been hurt,” Athena said and
closed her eyes. “I think I’m bleeding. You know, down there.”

Alexander leaned back and pushed the skirt of Athena’s
dress up over her waist and inspected her knickers. Athena thought she’d die
from the humiliation and Alexander reached up and pulled her eyelids apart.

“Yes, you are,” Alexander said and smiled. “It happens.
But don’t worry, the blood is not a hindrance for me and like the fright, it is
arousing.”

Alexander took off his coat, lowered his suspenders and
unbuttoned the fly of his trousers. He pulled his cock out of the opening and
stroked it. Athena’s eyes grew wide and she breathed rapidly.

“Alexander, please.”

“Don’t worry, you shan’t feel a thing. It’s better for me
at that last moment, when life is on its way out and the death convulsions
begin. It’s always been this way with me. Some may think it odd, but to me it
is natural. Of course, you leave me in a bit of a conundrum. What shall I say
to the family?”

Alexander pulled the beautiful silk ribbon on the top of
Athena’s knickers and ripped them from her body. When Alexander looked at
Athena, he revealed his true face and at that moment, she knew what was to
come.

“I will scream,” Athena said as she looked down her body
at Alexander.

“No, you won’t,” Alexander said and pulled his machete
from its sheath. “You won’t be able to.”

Athena opened her mouth to scream, but she got no further.
Alexander’s arm shot out and he nicked her jugular vein with the tip of the
machete’s blade. He dropped the knife to the floor and slammed himself into
Athena, forcing her eyes open. He loved seeing the life leave their eyes and
the blood that covered both Alexander and Athena created a spine-tingling
friction as Alexander thrust into Athena’s body. It took four beats from Athena’s
young heart before the death convulsions began. Alexander’s favorite part.

After he emptied himself into Athena, Alexander began to
clean her mess. And what a mess it was. Blood pooled everywhere and was even
splattered in thick strips across the plaster walls of the cottage. Alexander
looked up and smiled as he saw drops of Athena’s blood even on the ceiling.

He peeled off the rest of his clothing and set about to
dispose of Athena where he disposed of the others over the years, under the
floorboards and into the crawlspace. He amassed quite a collection of bodies
when he began doing this on his own after Jesse Pomeroy’s incarceration and now
the beautiful Athena would be added to his prizes.

The one thing that Alexander did not count on was Mr.
Whorley, the mail carrier on Elmwood Avenue, coming into the garden. Every
Wednesday when he delivered the Battle’s correspondence, Mrs. Battle left Mr.
Whorley a small cake and glass of port on the front porch atop a silver tray.
On that day, Mrs. Battle apparently forgot about him so Mr. Whorley went around
to the side gate hoping to run into Mrs. Battle so he could hand her the
letters personally and perhaps illicit his treats.

Mr. Whorley wandered through the Battle’s secluded garden
and was disappointed not to find the garden empty. But as he turned to leave
the garden, the quaint building in the back of the property caught his
attention. Mr. Whorley was alarmed as he saw a shirtless man who looked like he
was bleeding walk past the parted velvet drapes in the cottage.

When he pressed his face to the window of the cottage, it
took Mr. Whorley a moment to register what he saw. There, inside the office,
Mr. Whorley saw a naked Alexander Battle covered in blood. Worse still, Mr.
Whorley witnessed Alexander Battle dragging a nude and quite dead Athena Battle
across the wood floor. Mr. Whorley took two steps back from the window, rubbed
his eyes and walked back to the glass to make sure he wasn’t hallucinating.
When he realized what he witnessed, he ran from the garden and down Elmwood
Avenue leaving his mail cart at the garden gate.

Once back at his office, Mr. Whorley debated what to do.
At that time, life could become precarious for a person of lower class to
accuse the upper crust of a crime. Often, the lower status person who had the
audacity of accusing someone of wealth would find themselves turned into the
accused. It was very much a notion of the land that the upper class would never
do anything unseemly.

But Mr. Whorley was more disturbed by what he saw Alexander
Battle doing than his concern about his wellbeing and left his office and went
straight to the authorities. It took some convincing and the six officers who
walked with Mr. Whorley to the Battle home still questioned whether or not the
distraught Mr. Whorley was sober. However, as Mr. Whorley was a well-respected,
working-class man, they agreed to investigate his claims.

When Patrice Battle opened the door to the officers and
she was told they were there to investigate a strange happening in Alexander’s
office, she fainted. The officers stepped over Patrice’s unconscious body and
walked through the home, out the back door, through the garden and barged
through the door of Alexander’s office.

They drew their weapons on the nude man who was covered in
blood as he was stuffing the naked body of a young girl underneath the
floorboards. And as they surrounded him, Alexander Battle looked up at the
officers and smiled, as if they came to help him with his task.

“Good evening, officers,” Alexander said and bowed.

Alexander did not fight as the officers surrounded him and
even thanked them for allowing him to dress before they took him into custody.
Upon hearing the news, Alexander’s father bribed the jail officials to take his
son out of Middlesex County where they lived and detain him at the Charles
Street Jail in Boston.

In his first and last visit with his son, Mr. Battle
begged Alexander to do the right thing and plead guilty and waive his right to
a trial, hoping that the story would simply go away and minimize the Battle
family’s humiliation. Of course, the story did not go away. One could not pick
up a newspaper and not read of the details of the Battle family.

The bones and rotting corpses of twenty-three children
mixed amongst heavy layers of lime dust were eventually unearthed from under
the floorboards of Alexander’s office. Word spread quickly among the citizens
of Massachusetts and a bounty was put on Alexander Battle’s head as some of the
fresher kills were identified. Suspicion was immediately cast on Alexander’s
parents--how could they not have known what their monster of a son was up to?

For his part, Alexander Battle enjoyed his newfound
notoriety as he became something of a celebrity. Perhaps because Alexander was
an extremely handsome man, despite the viciousness of his crimes, many women of
questionable morals came by the Charles Street Jail hoping in vain to service
the Lascivious Lucifer, as he was named in the
Boston Globe
.

In Alexander’s name, many gifts, marriage proposals and
even offers from novelist Henry James to write Alexander’s biography were left
with the overburdened desk clerk at the Charles Street Jail.

Interest also escalated in the mysterious hotel on Cape
Cod that Alexander was building before his incarceration. Alexander’s father,
acting with his son’s Power of Attorney, told foreman Thomas Conway that it was
business as usual at the job site and to proceed on or ahead of schedule. Mr.
Battle was desperate for the Battleroy to be completed so it could start
generating income as a number of his lenders began to call in his loans after
the scandal. As his son also murdered his brother David’s only child, Alexander
Battle no longer had the luxury to call on his family for support and was quite
desperate.

While the younger Battle left Thomas Conway on his own to
build the Battleroy, the older Battle harangued the foreman and insisted on
daily updates on the smallest details. But Thomas Conway was no fool. He saw
how his kind friend Charles Pomeroy’s life was destroyed after Charles’ brother
Jesse’s scandal came to light and Thomas Conway set about to insure his future.

Knowing what he did of Battle’s precarious financial
situation, Thomas Conway was worried that he and his men would not be paid for
their work at the Battleroy. So, he set about to find anything he could to
present to Mr. Battle to ensure quick payment for services rendered. He found
it in the library in the curio box Alexander Battle place on the mahogany shelf
when he visited the site with his cousin Athena.

Thomas Conway told the senior Battle that he would sell
Alexander’s diary to the highest bidder, a diary which contained his son’s
detailed writings about his murders and his close friendship with the
detestable Jesse Pomeroy. As the pièce de résistance, Thomas Conway told Mr.
Battle that his son’s diary also included, quite curiously, details which
alluded to the fact that Patrice Battle knew that Alexander was a murderer many
years before he was caught.

Thomas Conway only expected to be paid his due and he was
shocked as he watched Alexander Battle whither into a pitiful old man in front
of his eyes as he fell to his knees at Thomas Conway’s feet and begged him not
to further humiliate his family. Thomas Conway left that meeting with Alexander
Battle not only with all amounts paid to him, but all land and property deeds
for the Battleroy site transferred into his name.

The former bricklayer and petty thief walked away with a
fortune. What started as labor in 1890, turned into a labor of love as
descendants of the Conway family continue to run the Battleroy Hotel today.

The newest celebrity guest was quite a handful for the
officers at the Charles Street Jail. Between the constant gift-givers and death
threats, they knew they didn’t have the resources to house Alexander Battle so
transfer talks began. Alexander, speaking as if he had a choice in the matter,
requested to be transferred to Charlestown Prison so he could reunite with his
old friend Jesse Pomeroy. Instead, Alexander was sent straight to the
Bridgewater Hospital for the Criminally Insane.

Life for Alexander was not good at Bridgewater, which
ironically was where he probably should have been all along. The conditions at
the prison hospital were abhorrent and inhumane. Many cell blocks lacked
toilets, the inmates were expected to sleep on stone floors and were not given
clothes. While it is true that the conditions at Bridgewater were repulsive
during that time, it was also true that Alexander never saw himself as either a
criminal or insane and therefore, was convinced he did not belong.

The inmates and guards detested him alike and all hoped
that someone would teach the spoiled rich man a lesson.

That lesson came on August 21, 1900 when Alexander was
relaxing in his weekly bath. Someone stabbed Alexander in the side of the neck
with a homemade chisel. Whether Alexander died from blood loss or drowning was
of no concern to anyone at Bridgewater and the perpetrator was never punished.

Patrice Battle read of her son’s death the same as the
rest of the population did and breathed a heavy sigh of relief. In the few
years since her son was incarcerated she and Mr. Battle went through much
heartache. Their family turned their backs on them, complete financial ruin was
imminent and she knew in her heart that her husband was months away from death.
In learning of his boy’s death, Alexander Battle took to their bed and refused
to move.