The Darkly Luminous Fight for Persephone Parker (3 page)

The Whisper-world was in a state of unprecedented chaos. Not that Darkness didn’t like a certain amount; he thrived in it, enjoyed creating it. But everything has a scale, and every scale must have a fulcrum. Darkness fancied chaos of his own making, carefully orchestrated and meticulously controlled, with crafted conflicts, builds and climaxes, a wellmade play that he, as director, could change at will. There
was an art to chaos. Not this. This was not his, and this was not art.

The battle cries of his sworn enemies echoed down the endless halls, they having escaped their prison tower. He would, of course, round them all up again. But it was surely
her
fault.

He glided through the careening forms of once-human energy, spirits too agitated to obey him or offer appropriate deference. His shadow reached out as he passed, black phantom limbs that lengthened to shove spirits out of his way while his body remained gracefully still and erect, tossing spirits toward the river to drown, smashing their fragile heads against stone. His jaw ground with pleasure as he heard each satisfying crunch of bone and gorgeous keening that was the last of a humanity draining away, a pathetic cry of pain and dust, its owner never to plunge from these purgatorial shadows deeper into hell, or even to cross into the mysterious Beyond.

He glided toward a rectangular slate door that hissed, molten liquid bubbling around its edges. The haste and force with which the portal had been closed was evidenced by a few finger bones caught in the corners. Ash was everywhere. It filled what served as Darkness’s nostrils as he moved to touch the door still rumbling with residual tremors.

The Groundskeeper appeared, cursing the mess everyone was making of his riverbank, his gravestone gardens, his fountains of mist and trellises of bones. At the mouth of the corridor, he paused, staring into the inscrutable shadows that rose tall and smothering: the lord of the land, himself. The Groundskeeper bowed and scraped, his long coat brushing the wet ground. “Ah, hello, Master,” he sputtered. “The crash sent me runnin’. Something dreadful’s gone…” He stopped and bent down to examine a heap before him, some of which became discernable as body parts made of ash, still hissing with vanquished heat. He cried out, voice cracking, and raked hands through his shock of calico hair.
“Oh, no! My sweetie-snaky-lassy, my Gorgon-girl. What’s this? What’ve you gone and done?” His voice shifted accents as he spoke.

Darkness stepped back, repulsed. This pile of ash was what remained of the Gorgon that had been his spy, his emissary and best soldier. And where was the
dog?
If the dog were in pieces, this place had not yet seen his anger.

“I’ll put you together again, my lovely,” the Groundskeeper crowed. “You’ll be as good as new, just let me just bottle you up! Indeed, Master?”

“Indeed,” Darkness replied. “But you’ll have to commence another Undoing. The seals must be open. Pour the restless onto the earth until they drag her back!”

“But, Master.” The Groundskeeper trembled. “The pins between worlds are sealed fast again.” He held up fingers blackened with blood.

“
Undo.
Them. Again,” Darkness growled. “As often as it takes.”

“But Master, my lovely needs me! The longer she’s in pieces, the less of her I can—”

Darkness’s shadow arms pounced, twisting the Grounds-keeper’s wrist and binding with his royal crimson cloak the creature congealed from a hundred spirits who’d once served human masters. Clutching the bloody and sore patches of his servant’s hands with one preternatural grip, he held a razorlike nail to his throat with the other. The Groundskeeper squealed like an animal as the nail cut deep, and the sound was caught up in the vast stone chambers and amplified, a warning that the Master was not in a mood to be trifled with.

“Why do you punish those loyal to you?” the Groundskeeper gasped, pleading.

“Because I can’t get my hands on who dearly deserves it,” Darkness growled. He threw his servant to the floor and kicked his pathetic form for good measure. “Put my best soldier back together. Then. Undo. The. Seals!”

“Yes, Master, of course,” the Groundskeeper sniveled, crawling off to procure supplies. As he did, he began an awkward singsong rhyme: “Lucy-Ducy wore a nice dress, Lucy-Ducy made a great mess…”

Darkness stared at the sealed door. Anger stung his narrowed eyes and scarlet fire leaped from them. A sharp female voice scolded, “It won’t do to light up the whole Whisper-world in one of your tantrums.”

Growling, Darkness whirled to face a tall woman wearing the greyscale of death. Her clothes were the sort of layered, stiff Western fashion that his assistant had taken upon her mission to England, along with the name Miss Linden.

“Who. Are. You?” he demanded, keeping himself cloaked in shadow so only the red light of his eyes could be seen. The woman set her jaw, and her eyes, perhaps once a magnificent blue, flashed with pride. If she were terrified she did not look it, but he caught a whiff of fear off her freshly deceased flesh, and the scent of it was tantalizing, delicious. He wanted more.

“My name is Beatrice Tipton, and I led The Guard until the post was ably taken up by my successor. It is my duty to tell you, sir, that all this nonsense between you and my lady
will
come to its inevitable, blessed end, and you will free the noble souls you’ve taken hostage—”

Darkness roared, and the ghost winced. “You and that damned Guard! I will wage war for her, you know.”

“Indeed,” Beatrice breathed, trying to sound confident, but again he caught the intoxicating perfume of her fear. The ghost continued, narrowing her eyes: “Pity you can’t cross over to the living realm to find her yourself. Perhaps a higher power indeed gave us that advantage. The doors have been blown wide, and your enemy aches for a fight,” she warned, nodding to the corridor behind them.

A sudden racket prevented Darkness from questioning her further; a host of separate battle cries in every tongue and custom coalesced into a thunderous shout. He turned
to behold a mob of grey spirit bodies in all manner of dress, a tumbling, angry sea of Guard. While their service was long since spent, it seemed they remembered their pasts. They invoked their sacred rites against him as they’d done for eons, disparate cultures made one with a binding language. Music rose in the air. There was enough magic left in them yet to try a fight. But the fact remained that they were trapped in
his
territory.

Darkness chuckled. He raised a fist. Water and shadows leaped to life in the form of dread horses, dark with gnashing teeth. The beasts charged, stampeding, wet and chomping for scraps of dead flesh. The Guards’ battle song was drowned by thunderous hooves. Their advance halted, the spirits were driven mercilessly back. Squeezing his fists, Darkness pressed forward the suffocating shadows until voices cried out in agony. This restored a momentary, soothing sense of control, and he reveled in it.

A tapping drew his attention back to the nearby spirit. Desperately chanting something foreign, she rapped upon the heart of the seal between mortal and spirit world. A circle of blue fire flashed against the stone. Looking over her shoulder with enough smug triumph to infuriate him, she stepped nearly through to the other side. With only her head remaining, she hissed, “If you’ll excuse me, I’ve work to do. Have a lovely time cleaning up your mess.” Then she vanished along with the fire she’d created.

Darkness whipped shadows forward in a vicious blow, but these fell uselessly against the stone. Damn them! Damn
her.
War, indeed. He’d make it all come undone—every last mortal mind—and bring his rebellious prize home screaming. He’d break her divine body to his eternal will for
every
season.

Beatrice Tipton forced her essence back into the colonnaded, circular room that she recognized well, this sacred space where everything had very nearly gone wrong just
hours prior, and murmured thanks to the Phoenix fire for facilitating such coming and going. Free of the oppressive terror that was Darkness, grateful he could not follow, she prayed that Ibrahim would be spared pain if he were again taken hostage. Darkness would not punish him further, as they’d not been seen together, and for that she was grateful. Aodhan had been more help to her than she’d known. To have a friend in the daunting tasks ahead was a comfort she dared not take for granted.

She beheld the sacred space and scowled. “Good God, all of you made a right mess of it in here, didn’t you?” There were cracks in the walls and ash in the stones; the stained-glass ceiling of the burning-heart bird showed hairline fissures in its beautiful panes.

At the centre of the floor, Beatrice bent over the great feather in the stone, blowing dust and grit aside. She touched her locket and opened her opposite hand. Blue fire leaped from her fingertips. Hurling it at the feather’s tip, she saw a wisp of blue smoke curl up from a keyhole. “The groundwork is laid. The first key ready to reveal its mysteries. Now, to knit the worlds. Ibrahim, don’t worry. We’ll free you as soon as we’ve the advantage.” Then she flew from the floor, heaving a sigh. Blue fire coursed over her body, invigorating her, inside and out. “I hadn’t thought it would feel so refreshing to be at Work again! Come now, my lady. To war!”

Miss Persephone Parker lay deep in the honeyed thick of dreams, shifting between terrible vision and wonderful memory.

The terrible vision began beautiful but ended in horror,
she recalled. She was young and powerful, standing in an endless field of perfumed flowers. The sky was what she imagined of heaven. Eternal and wondrous, a beautiful blackhaired man held her tightly in his arms, and his great wings encircled their clinch, grazing her satin skin, which ached for his touch. Phoenix was more than man or angel; he was a God, a being of sense and light, reason and truth. He was the perfect complement to her life force of beauty, kindness, sensibility and love. Their mutual fellowship of light was blinding. Never had two beings been so suited. They loved each other not because it was destined but merely because it was right and mutually joyous. Their respective divine forces fit together as a puzzle, interlocked and stronger for it.

But jealousy set the God aflame—literally. Darkness set Phoenix on fire, and her lover died before her heavenly eyes. Screams shook the earth. Tears enough to drown the world flooded the ground. His great form crumbled to dust, and the vendetta was born.

She turned back to the cave from whence came murder. Red eyes burned from the shadows. Vengeance flared in her heretofore peaceful breast, fueling a hallowed blue fire forged from the remnants of her one true love—and somehow the girl that was now Miss Parker knew that what she viewed here was a score she would unfortunately have to settle herself.

The scene shifted from nightmare to memory. Here she recognized herself and remembered that friends called her Percy. A distinguished professor held her in his arms. Her body was corseted, swathed in satin, wreathed in heather. He wore a fine frock coat and waltzed with her by moonlight. His black hair lustrous in shafts of silver light, his dark eyes bright and compelling, this was her one true love. Acutely aware of the press of his hand and the curve of his lips, here was her destiny, the man who understood her, who unlocked her eerie visions and made everything strange about her beautiful.

The handsome, stoic face of Professor Alexi Rychman suddenly shifted, and in its place flashed angry red eyes—fiery, terrible eyes—and she heard the all-too-familiar hissing of snakes. She bolted upright, launching herself toward consciousness before those eyes could seek her out.

Percy awoke in a large room she did not know. Upright in a strange bed, thin nightgown askew upon her shoulders, a black cloak that had been wrapped around her body was cast back against the sheets. Tiny flecks of ash remained lodged in the cuffs of her meagre sleeves. She squinted, her pale, sensitive eyes straining against bright light. French doors covered in lace curtains led onto a terrace. Beyond, a few trees and chimneys were visible in the dense morning fog. The room was full of rich furnishings, fresh flowers and finery. Percy had never set foot in a room so regal. All that she recognized in the moment was her own colourless flesh. That, she was sure, was uniquely of her own time and peculiar existence in the year she knew to be 1888.

A tall clock near the bed chimed eight in echoing tones. Works of gilt-framed art on the walls seemed illuminated by their own paint, the distinct style of Miss Josephine Belledoux, a friend of her dear prof—Her heart seized. Where was he?

“Alexi!” Percy gasped, batting locks of ivory white hair out of her eyes.

“Percy,” came a rich voice from behind her.

With a rustle, the thick velvet duvet was tossed aside. Percy turned to behold a formidable man who was older than she, singularly breathtaking, and…sharing her bed. Her veins flooded with incapacitating heat.

Alexi groggily rose to a seated position at her side. His striking figure, ever clad in various fabrics of black and the occasional grey, was in a state of uncommon disarray. A delectable sound escaped him as he reached for her hand and brought it to his lips, kissing the ring that had so recently betrothed her to him. It wasn’t a dream. True, they’d just
survived a nightmare, but she’d emerged from the other side victorious—and
his.

The line of his sternum, the graceful curve of his collarbone, was a fresh sight Percy glimpsed through the open neck of his clothing. This heretofore hidden treasure heightened her feverish temperature. The hem of his signature scarlet cravat clung limply to his collar like a stream of stage blood. The purpling bruise around his neck reminded her of the night’s horrific events. She’d never seen him so disheveled, and she’d never allowed herself such an intense flood of emotion at the sight of him.

She choked, overcome. Mere months ago, she could never have imagined this strange fairy tale: to have gone from an awkward student, trembling in this man’s presence, to waking beside him as his intended. She found her awkwardness now layered with smoldering heat, making her feel all the more constrained and breathless; delicious torture.

“Do forgive the bold act of lying next to you, Percy,” her beloved murmured. “But after last night I was too exhausted to keep watch and, dare I say, too covetous to be out of reach.”

“If I’d awoken alone, Alexi, I’d have screamed for you something terrible.” She glanced about the room. “Where are we?”

“The grand estate of Lord Elijah Withersby.”

“Ah. Are the others here? Your…
Guard?
”

“Yes.”

“Oh, goodness.” Percy felt her face flush a mottled pink. “They don’t suppose you and I have…?”

“No, dear.” Alexi could not hold back a smirk. “They do not imagine your modesty in jeopardy, if that’s what concerns you.”

“Ah. I…well, I wasn’t sure if I ought to be embarrassed before your friends.” She gave a nervous laugh.

“No, but…As the pleasures of holding you close are such a recent revelation, might your fiancé indulge his newfound
heaven again?” What started as a polite request finished more as a demand.

Percy bit her lip, hard. “Please,” she breathed, and collapsed against him clumsily. He wrapped his arms around her, breathing slowly in as she relished his nearness. She dared to press her pale lips to the bared portion of his breast.

He shuddered in response, murmuring, “My love. As much as I’d like to forget recent terrible events, I must say it is The Guard who are embarrassed for having so courted danger. I did insist that Prophecy meant
you.
Please believe me. But they wanted none of it; instead, that horrid woman—”

Percy eased back to look up at him, stilling his mouth with her fingertips. “It’s done, Alexi. While I barely survived the heartbreak, and
wouldn’t
if it were to ever happen again”—Alexi started to make protest, but Percy continued—“we must move forward, you and I, and your Guard. Together.” She grimaced and added, “You may apologize, however, for having been very cruel.”

“I’m so sorry,” he declared, cupping her white cheeks in his hands and staring unflinchingly into her eyes.

She was not inclined to doubt his sincerity. “Apology accepted,” she murmured.

He drew her in, greedy. Her body thrilled everywhere at his touch, trembling deliciously in the throes of this foreign intimacy after so many years of thorough loneliness, an odd orphan hardly touched. Newfound heaven, indeed. But then her eyes clouded suddenly in the familiar onset of a vision: A large, black, open door. A long, stone corridor shimmered in the dim beyond. Beckoning. Demanding. The sound of a river…

The vision blinked away. “Damn,” Percy muttered, rousing from it. More doors.

Alexi brought her eyes up to meet his. “You curse at my embrace?”

Percy shook her head, laughing nervously. “No, a vision. I assure you, I’ll never tire of your embrace.”

“Visions. I was hoping you’d be done with those. Unless it was a vision of us entwined…? For I assure you, that’s in your future,” he purred, dragging a finger down her cheek and tracing the hollow of her throat.

“Alas,” she sighed after a momentary shiver of anticipation. “It was a door.”

Alexi pursed his lips. “I was hoping you’d be done with those, too.”

A dreadful, high-pitched shriek that only Percy could hear came through a painting, splintering a pane of glass. A ghost dressed in seventeenth-century foppery swept into the room and lurched, as if hoping to fright them. Alexi, who shared Percy’s ability to see the spirit, evaluated both her wincing reaction and the split windowpane; he grimaced.

“Shriekers,” he muttered. “My least favourite spirits. Fitting, that a Withersby antecedent should be a noisemaker.”

“Shh,” Percy commanded. The spirit hung its head and, defeated, vanished through the closed terrace doors just as the bedroom door was flung wide and a boisterous French accent filled the room.

“Lord Withersby! You let them be!” Josephine stopped up short, realizing the spirit she chased was nowhere to be seen. Sheepishly, she turned to the couple who had tastefully disentangled themselves. “Forgive my intrusion,
mes amis,
I thought Great Uncle Withersby might have been after you. He likes to remove covers and do other unmentionable things, and I thought that might be a bit, well…Ah. Yes. Indeed. Hrm. Well, I’d better let you both dress for breakfast. All are assembled. Miss Parker, you’ll find a change of clothes in the wardrobe. Alexi, you’re far too tall for Elijah’s clothes, so—”

“I’ll continue to look like hell, Josie, thank you. We’ll be down in a moment.”

The woman nodded and disappeared.

“She seems awfully nervous,” Percy noted, feeling her own unease.

“Our lives remain in your debt. If you hadn’t come to the chapel, we would have died.” Alexi looked away. “I’d have been the downfall of mortal civilization. Me, a
leader,
” he spat.

Percy reached out and touched his cheek. “Whatever power lay dormant within me might never have woken without such cataclysm to bring it forth. And I’d have died if you hadn’t been able to rouse me. Your light met mine and woke me from death’s kiss. My God, though, Alexi…It was terrible in the making—all of it. It was as if something were eating me alive from the inside out.”

“Your waking powers, surely, pressing against the limits of your mortality. Is that what drove you into the storm?” he asked.

“I tried to warn you,” she murmured. “But I was burning up, maddened by whispers and fever, my body so weak.”

Alexi glanced at her. “It wasn’t just my…rejection that incapacitated you?”

Percy looked at him and raised an eyebrow. “Are you gauging the extent of your guilt or my womanly weakness?”

Alexi appeared surprised by her directness. “Perhaps both.”

Percy set her jaw. “While you devastated me, Alexi, my condition was compounded by having vomited pomegranate seeds that I never ingested.”

Alexi’s eyes widened. “Oh, my.”

“Perhaps your guilt and my weakness are each given a bit of credit in the face of such inexplicable supernatural phenomena.”

“Indeed,” he murmured. “You’ve accepted my apology. But do you forgive me?”

A mere month ago, she might have blurted a silly schoolgirl’s words. But harrowing circumstances had tempered
Percy. He had been quite terrible while their destiny was misunderstood. But she stared at him now, at the love in his eyes, at the way his striking face was drawn with anxiety. She cherished the firm way he held her, and knew that he was unequivocally hers and helplessly under her spell—which was all she needed to know, for she’d long ago been under his.

“Yes,” she murmured. He released a kept breath, and his body eased. “But I remain overwhelmed!” she continued. “I wake from fever only to find an entire other world accessible via the chapel of Athens Academy—a world from which such powers and terrors might come to hold court.” She offered him a dazed smile. “I’ve much to learn.”

“I’ve much to teach,” Alexi murmured, his tone indicating not the Grand Work but instead something far more intimate. He seized her in an eager, questing kiss. Gasping with pleasure, she drew back. His eyes widened as her thin gown gaped open. The phoenix pendant around her neck dangled in the air between them, but the item of recent keen prophetic interest was overshadowed by bare skin.

His gaze might have set the room on fire—literally—had Percy not righted herself, her entire body flushing with rosy-patched colour. “P-perhaps I’d best dress myself.”

“Yes, yes.” He turned away, clenching his fists in the bedclothes as she rose and moved to the side of the room. “But I’ve gone a lifetime waiting. I shan’t wait much longer.”

Percy turned to him, her hand on an ornate oriental dressing screen. She smiled, cultivating a never-before-used quality, the feminine wile. “I should hope it won’t be long,
Professor,
else our tutorials in your office shall take an entirely distinct turn.” His subsequent growl informed her he could well imagine it.

She dressed herself as Alexi attempted to straighten his appearance. The best he could do was retie his cravat, adjust his shirtsleeves and smooth his waistcoat and hair. She glanced over the top of the dressing screen to find him, to her
delight, straining to catch a glimpse of her profile, his attempt to be a gentleman failing.

Emerging in a layered, lace-trimmed muslin dress of her favourite light blue, she felt positively regal but unfinished. “Would you clasp the buttons up my back? I’m not used to such elegant trappings that require aid,” she admitted, breathless as he approached with smoldering eyes. Life with Alexi might make the mottled blush upon her cheeks a veritable tattoo.

He clasped each pearl button slowly. As his fingers fumbled over the last, at the nape of her neck, his hands trespassed up into her snowy hair. He pulled her against him and mused, “I wonder if Science is disappointed in me. Reason and moderation fly when my hand encounters you.” Clearing his throat, he continued, affecting his instructor’s voice surely as much for his sake as hers, “Miss Parker, now you must pull yourself together. My fellows expect much of you. And me. Hide your beguiling eyes, for if I show evidence of distraction Lord Elijah Withersby for one will never let the matter alone. I’m sure they’re all heartily gossiping as we speak.”