Seduction: A Novel of Suspense (44 page)

I had so many questions. And I had a true and real sense that this was my last chance to learn from him. Or from any of them. No matter what happened, after tonight this chapter of my life would come to an end.

The ancients had instincts and abilities that are lost to civilization today. Magic was real. It lived inside the shamans. Inside the priests. They passed it on from generation to generation. You have the dregs of that power in you. It is not the strength that it was, but you can access it. But to do so you must be willing to travel deep into your own darkness and be open to risk. To pull from the earth’s energy.

I shook my head. “Utter nonsense. I have heard enough. You need to release me. I need to get up, to carry Fantine out of here, and get her help.”

No, Victor, it’s not nonsense. It is not. You asked me about the ancient truth and I have given it to you in good faith. Now let us finish what we have begun. Free this child and regain yours.

It was the first time he’d used my Christian name, and he’d said it so tenderly and with so much compassion, I felt like a young boy again at my mother’s knee. My father was off fighting and she called me to her and told me she’d had very bad news she needed to share with me.

Had Papa been hurt? Captured?

I must have been only four or five and began to cry. She scooped me up and gathered me on her lap, putting her arms around me. She soothed me and solved half the world’s problems with that sour and sweet, lemon and sugar embrace. I remember holding Didine like that and comforting her when she was small. And now, here in this ancient ritual cave, the Shadow was offering me that same solace. His words were my mother’s arms. He was conjuring the scents and filling the cave with them: sweet and sour, lemon and sugar.

Oh, Fantine, I do not know if you believe what you are reading. If you heard through your dreams that night, if you today remember any of what came next. I can understand if you are thinking I was mad . . . intoxicated by fumes of the hashish and of the bits of amber
that burned in the fire. But I do not believe outside influences were affecting me. I was not imagining the incident; the episode was as real as the paper in this book.

I am writing to you now, explaining what happened, as part desperate apology and part plea. I hope that you will forgive me, but even more that you will keep our secret, because no one must ever raise the Shadow of the Sepulcher again.

What he offers is too tempting for mortal men. It was in the end too tempting for me.

Victor?

The Shadow whispered my name. He stroked my cheek. I had never lain with a man. Never wanted to, but this was not sexual lust. This was beyond passionate physical yearning. This was beyond man, woman, skin, lips, tongue, fingers, breasts, loins. He was neither man nor woman but was all: parent, lover, wife, child, husband. All that can be between any two people, he was. Whispering promises, he put his lips to my forehead and sealed those pledges forever. His hair was soft against my skin. His touch intoxicating.

I wanted to give everything and anything to please him. I wanted to fulfill his request so he would fulfill mine.

I was pressing up against flesh. Pleasure and pain and yielding flesh. Not his flesh, though. Not anymore. It was you I was holding. You I was touching.

Somehow, I cannot explain how, he had merged with you. It was as if he had walked into your sleeping form and become you. He was speaking again, but now his words were coming from your lips, even as you continued sleeping and while I made some kind of desperate love to you.

Take me, Victor. Put your hands around my throat. I want you to so very much. I am waiting for you to liberate me. Your daughter is waiting for you to liberate me, waiting for you to bring her back.

I was high up inside you. My fingers were wet with your blood and around your throat. As I felt your faint pulse, I felt your womb throb around me.

Take me.

I would never have imagined it would be as easy as it was to squeeze the life out of someone.

I will not suffer.

He left your body then and entered me. His fingers were inside mine, and he was squeezing your throat. I fought but was losing my battle with his strength.

Put pressure here on her throat. She will feel nothing. Will not suffer. Let her go, Victor. Give her what she wants. Let her go, and as her soul departs her body, Leopoldine’s will enter. Fantine’s body. Your daughter’s self. Put pressure here. And here.

I looked down at you as if from a great distance. Half asleep, half dead. Halfway to where you wanted to go. And then you gasped. It was a small noise. A cat might not make one any louder. Not a sound of defeat but of resistance. Was it an automatic response or an emotional one? I had no idea, but it was the sound of a living being fighting for breath. It shuddered through me and shook me. I spilled myself inside you with a great huge shiver. You were not my child. She had stopped breathing. You had not. You were the future.

I found the strength to loosen my grasp, horrified by what I had done. Shocked. And then I knew something the Shadow didn’t. I knew it in that instant. You had life in you. If I took you and that life too, the devil would own me forever.

It wouldn’t matter if I had Didine back. I would not have my self, my sanity, and I would not have my soul. What good would I be to my daughter, or to anyone, then?

You are a coward,
the Shadow said, but his voice was weaker, harder to hear.

Fantine, you were breathing deep breaths by then. Your color was returning. You were moving, returning to us.

Yes, coward,
the Shadow cursed me.

“All this was about you wanting to own me, wasn’t it? To add me to your list of men who have fallen under your spell. You wanted to seduce me into becoming yours. What you’ve done to me—almost made me do—was monstrous.”

The Shadow said my name twice, first as a prayer and then as a curse.

Victor. Victor.

And then your voice joined his.

“Victor.” Both voices harmonized.

You opened your eyes and looked up at me. I saw fear there. And pain. Both tore at me.

“Victor . . .” His voice had disappeared. Only you were speaking. “Victor, why are you crying?”

 • • • 

Victor Hugo

October 30, 1855

Jersey, Great Britain

For Fantine and the child who will be mine.

Ash had found the cave with Eva’s help and climbed down. In the first tunnel he smelled sweet smoke and carefully continued further inside. Jac’s voice grew louder the closer he got to the innermost chamber.

He stopped on the threshold and stood, captivated by the words she was reading. The story that was unfolding. A mesmerizing tale.

As Ash stood there breathing in the scented air and listening to her hypnotic voice, he felt as if he were falling into a dream. Something was making him dizzy.

He had to hold on to the wall to keep himself upright.

Lucifer’s words were so enticing. What an astounding idea to trade one soul for another. Especially with one who didn’t have any desire to live. Was it possible? Had Hugo done it?

Ash thought of Naomi while he listened to Jac reading. He pictured his brother’s beautiful, sad wife, who’d hated this island. Who’d wanted only to go back to London. Who needed his help. Needed Ash to help her make her escape.

How Ash hated Theo for not taking care of what he was so lucky to
have. For causing her such distress. Theo didn’t deserve her. Couldn’t be trusted with someone as special as Naomi. Hadn’t done the right thing.

And now she was gone. And it was all Theo’s fault. Always his fault. Always.

While Jac had been reading, Theo had kept the fire burning, and fragrant and sweet smoke had filled the cave. Was she getting drunk on the smell? More than once she’d felt reality waving away and had managed to keep in the moment only by touching the scarlet-threaded bracelet on her left wrist, letting go just to turn a page. Now, without the book to concentrate on, she rolled the silk against her skin and tried to focus on what Theo had just said.

“I’m sorry, what?” she asked.

He’d been leaning over her shoulder, looking at the pages. Now he was standing, his body shaking, swaying slightly. The fire flared just then, and in the light, Theo’s eyes burned brighter. Had she ever seen a face so twisted with pain and desire at the same time?

“Is it . . . is it possible? What Hugo wrote?” he asked, speaking slowly.

“You mean was the Shadow real? Victor Hugo thought he was.”

“Would you be able to resist that offer, Jac? If you had the chance to bring someone you loved back from the dead?”

The book was still open in her lap. She couldn’t close it, not yet: she was too moved and confused to know how to react. In the shadows of the cave, farther back than they had yet explored, she could sense, no,
she could see shapes moving, circling around another fire. She could hear far-off keening, and chanting. A woman crying. A man shouting.

Jac pushed the thread up an inch on her skin and then down.

“Imagine if it was possible,” Theo was saying, “to bring someone back from the dead. If the Shadow really talked to my ancestor . . . if he really talked to Hugo . . . if the Shadow is real . . . just imagine!”

The smoke grew heavier. The scent sickly sweet now. Jac coughed. It was hard to breathe.

“The Shadow is real,” a different voice said from farther away.

Jac recognized Ash’s voice. How had he gotten here?

“And he’s here. The Shadow is here.”

Ash was coming closer to where she and Theo were sitting.

“Can’t you smell him? He’s real.” Now Ash was so close to Jac, his breath was warm on her skin.

Why was she shivering? It was so warm in the cavern, how could she be cold? Ash’s breath was warm. The fire was warm.

There was a moment of quiet. And then Jac felt the slightest breeze as Ash reached out for her. She thought he was going to embrace her. Wasn’t sure why here or why now in front of Theo, but his hands were coming closer, his fingers outstretched.

“The Shadow is going to bring Naomi back from the dead,” he said, and then Ash’s fingers went around her throat, not to pull her, not to kiss her, but, she was sure, to kill her.

The fire blazed. The scene was waving and she felt herself slipping into a hallucination of smoke just like this smoke. Of a cave just like this cave. But not in the present. She was going into the past.

Behind her, Theo was shouting, “Stop! Stop!” She heard it doubled. Was it two men shouting the same words? Or were the words echoing through the cave? Despite the pressure on her neck, Jac held on to the red thread and kept herself where the pain was, where it was hard to breathe, in the present. She knew that if she didn’t, she would be lost. Finally and completely lost.

And then the hands lifted. No fingers were gripping her neck. She touched the place where it burned, where he’d been twisting her skin, and gulped for air and started to cough.

“What the hell were you trying to do, you idiot?” Theo was screaming at his brother.

Jac turned around.

Theo had pulled Ash off her and had him pinned up against the wall.

“Are you crazy? Trying to reenact a drugged man’s ramblings? Hugo was mad when he wrote that journal!” Theo screamed.

“Don’t interfere. Don’t you dare. Not again,” Ash shouted, and he pushed back at his brother and threw him off. “Naomi wouldn’t be dead if you hadn’t been so pitiful. If she didn’t feel so sorry for you, she would have left you sooner and she’d be alive now. Alive and living with me. Happy. I don’t destroy people, Theo.”

He punched Theo in the face. Theo threw the next punch, but Ash got out of the way and then reached out and grabbed Theo. Locked in an angry embrace, the two of them wrestled, pulling and pushing at each other. On the walls of the cave, their shadows fought as well. Leaping and springing forward and back.

Jac was trying to understand. Had Ash been lying all this time? Had he actually been in love with Theo’s wife, not just helping her? Had he been having an affair with her?

For all Theo’s psychological issues, had he been right in his suspicions? Had Ash seduced Naomi? Had Naomi betrayed Theo?

The brothers were an even match. And each time one of them got the advantage, the other managed to turn it around.

Ash grabbed Theo, spun him around and threw him against the wall again. Theo pushed him off with so much force Ash stumbled backward and fell.

Theo jumped on top of Ash and kept him pinned to the ground.

Ash’s head just missed the pyre. The fire was raised off the floor but only by six inches.

Ash broke free and rolled to get away but moved dangerously closer to the flames. Ash’s hair caught fire. Feeling the heat, his energy surged. He rolled in the other direction, batting at his head, extinguishing the charring, and then, getting to his feet, he threw a punch. This one caught Theo by surprise, and he stumbled.

The two of them struggled for the next few minutes, neither gaining an advantage, first one in control, then the other. Then Ash pushed Theo far enough away to take off, running farther into the cave, into the unexplored next chamber where Jac had thought she’d seen people in robes. Where she thought she’d seen a woman standing, crying over a burning bier.

Theo followed Ash.

Jac ran after both brothers, into that innermost, deepest chamber.

The enclosure was smaller than any of the other rooms. The ceiling was barely six feet high. The walls curved inward and were smoothed to a polished finish. Every surface was decorated with paintings. The processions that had begun in the outermost entranceway to the cave with the half-man half-cat culminated in this room.

The two brothers tumbled over one another.

Jac hovered by the door, wanting to go in, to break them up. Not knowing how she could.

Ash was on top of his brother now, his hands pinning him down. Bucking, Theo threw Ash off, then jumped on him, pinning him with a firm grip. Finally subduing him.