The Descent (30 page)

What I really wanted, I realized, pacing around the room with tears sprouting from my eyes as I grasped the seriousness of my situation, was Adair. I was in way over my head and he was the only person even remotely capable of dealing with this realm. By magic or sheer force of will, he could do something about this; he could make it go away. I knew in this moment that I trusted him implicitly and despaired that I couldn’t tell him, that I might never get the chance to tell him.

Oh, it was weak of me to think like this, to want to be
rescued, and I hated to give in to such weakness. I also knew this feeling was only temporary. I allowed myself to indulge in this momentary despair because I’d come so close—I’d made it to the underworld, I’d made my way to Jonathan—before it was snatched away from me. I was exhausted.

I was sitting on the threadbare blankets in my cell, ready to cry myself to sleep, when there was a soft knock at the door. It opened abruptly and Jonathan strode over to me quickly, cradling my face in both his hands as he kissed me on the top of my head. I must’ve looked cold because he slipped off the robe he was wearing and gave it to me. “Lanny, Lanny—what in the world are you doing here?”

“Believe it or not, I came for you,” I said weakly, knowing how ridiculous it sounded.

He chuckled darkly. “I was afraid of that.” He led me over to the plank bench and we sat, him cradling me on his lap. My cheek pressed to Jonathan’s chest, I explained why I’d come after him. I told him how I’d dreamed that he was in trouble and needed me. As much as it sickened me, I told him about the dungeon, too, and how it had mimicked the basement of Adair’s own fortress and how the nightmares had seemed to hound me. I told him how I’d begged Adair to send me into the underworld.

He twined our fingers like we were children. “That was brave of you, Lanny, but very foolhardy. I hope you see that. I may not be happy here, but I’m not being tortured—though even if I were, you shouldn’t have risked your safety to come after me. There are limits to what anyone can do for another person.”

I closed my eyes. I didn’t want to believe that. There were
some people in my life for whom I would go to any lengths, and Jonathan was one of those people.

“Are you listening to me, Lanny?” he said, nudging my chin. “You needn’t worry about me. I can take care of myself. And I have as good a deal as anyone could hope for in the afterlife.”

“Really? This queen seems to have made you her sex slave.”

His cheeks reddened and he ducked his head. “I prefer the term ‘consort.’ She was taken with me and insisted I remain. The day will come when she tires of me, I’m sure, and then she’ll let me go. She seems to tire of things easily.”

I lifted my brows. “But you don’t
want
to be here, Jonathan. Do you?”

“She’s the ruler of the underworld—it’s not as though I have a choice,” he replied. “What’s the alternative? Do you know what happens to your soul after you die, Lanny? You come here to the underworld, knock around for a few days—apparently to loosen the bond to your past life—and then you are dispatched, jettisoned, into the void. Returned to the great, wide cosmos from which we came, broken down into elemental particles and energy. Recycled for parts.” I thought of Luke’s last moments—when he realized what was happening to him, that the finale had finally come, and how the endless void of space had opened up to receive him—and shivered.

“That’s what Adair was trying to spare us by making us immortal,” I said softly. “And look what I’ve reduced you to by taking your life—I’ve made you a gigolo.”

Jonathan tutted and butted his forehead against mine playfully. “Have some respect. At least I’m gigolo to the gods.”

Gods. I still couldn’t wrap my mind around that. I leaned
in conspiratorially. “What do you know about them—the gods? Have you seen any others, besides the queen?”

He shook his head. “No. I’ve heard her refer to them. But no, I don’t know where the others reside except ‘elsewhere.’ I get the feeling that once you’re in the underworld, you stay here. There’s no coming and going.”

“So no one has escaped from the underworld? That can’t be strictly true. After all, you did, once. When Adair brought you back to life.”

“Right. You can’t imagine the excitement
that
caused. Here, it only seemed like I was gone for an instant, because time is so much slower here. And I think they already had their antennae up because of the tattoo. But apparently I wasn’t the only one to ever disappear from the underworld: I’d heard that one other soul did it a long, long time ago. They still don’t know how he did it, but they caught his accomplice and put him away under lock and key,” he said.

“I wonder who it was who escaped,” I mused. But I knew; I felt it in the pit of my stomach. Jonathan, too; he gave me a strained look.

He wrapped both his hands around one of mine. “There’s more I have to confess to you, Lanny . . . I’m afraid that your being here is all my fault. You see, I’m the one who told the queen about Adair. It’s because of the tattoo. When she saw the tattoo, she wanted to know how I’d gotten it and I told her about Adair, and you. . . . She must’ve sent you the dreams in order to trick you into coming to the underworld, Lanny. She’s been using you. I’m so sorry.”

“It’s hardly your fault. How were you to know?” He hugged me tighter against him, wrapping both arms around me. I continued,
“What I don’t understand is
why
trick me into coming to the underworld? Why not go after Adair, if he’s the one she wants?”

“Because he would never come without a reason. He needed an incentive—and that’s you,” Jonathan pointed out.

“He’d come after me, you mean?” I started upright. “I hadn’t thought of that—do you think he would do that?”

“Silly girl—what do you think?” he chided gently.

I was swamped by a wave of guilt. I hadn’t thought
he
would be in danger, never. He hadn’t offered to come with me to the underworld after Jonathan and it was plain that he feared the underworld more than anything he’d feared on earth. For that reason alone, I never considered that he might come after me. I thought I would be sick. “But why—why is she interested in Adair? What could he have possibly done?”

Jonathan shook his head. “I can’t tell you that. I don’t know. The queen has been careful not to say anything about Adair in my presence. I doubt her guards know, either. I get the sense that she plays her cards close to her vest. She’s a lonely woman. Something has made her very unhappy, but she never talks about it.”

Our foreheads bowed together, we contemplated this troubling mystery: the queen was unhappy and Adair had something to do with it . . . but I couldn’t begin to imagine what that might be. Perhaps he’d stolen the wrong soul, the soul of someone important to her. Or perhaps it had to do with one of his companions, someone he’d wronged horribly. Then I thought of what she had done to Dona, how she didn’t seem to feel compunction or sympathy for anyone. Whatever was between her and Adair, it was most likely personal.

I thought again of the vial. I could still feel its shape in my palm, a phantom, and wondered if our little trick had worked, if Adair had tried to bring me back and failed. I wished there was a way to send a message to him now—
don’t come after me, don’t
—but I supposed that power resided with the queen alone.

“What comes next, do you think?” I asked.

He ran a finger over my brow, brushing hair out of my eyes. “We wait for Adair to show up. I think you’re safe, for now. The queen has no reason to hurt you—as far as she’s concerned, you’re bait and nothing else,” he said, and I was just about to say that I’d never been so happy to be overlooked in my life when the door flew back, and a pair of demon guards rushed into the room—followed by the queen.

I almost felt sorry for her, to see the look on her face. She was jealous, it was plain—jealous and frustrated. I sensed no love between her and Jonathan, but the look on her face was frozen, hard, murderous—as though she could have obliterated me at that moment with a look, and yet she was holding back . . . with great effort.

She raised a hand and pointed at me, and I flinched. Then her finger started to tremble and she croaked over her shoulder at the demons: “Apparently this slattern cannot be trusted, not with any man. Take her from my sight! Take her away—and throw her in the pit.”

EIGHTEEN

T
he island did not suffer the ill effects of the deluge for long. Adair quickly surveyed the grounds and found that the sun and brisk sea winds had gone a long way toward stripping away the excess moisture and drying things out. The floating dock had been lost and would have to be replaced. Only time would tell if the trees would grow back. The goats were gone, of course, and Adair decided he would not replace them.

Terry and Robin, too, appeared to have been swept out to sea—there was not a trace of them on the island. He was certain that those vindictive witch sisters had possessed them, and although he wished things had turned out differently, he would not beat himself up over it. What was done was done. Whether the powerful witch sisters, Penthy and Bronwyn, had been taken care of, he wasn’t sure. They could be looking
for another pair of vessels to take over. The whole incident made him uneasy, so Adair resolved not to think about it, not for now.

He decamped to the study, where he felt most comfortable and at his strongest. He built up a luxurious bed for Lanore directly on the floor, a feather mattress bolstered by a wall of pillows, and laid her out there, covering her in a blanket of fine cashmere, the color of moonbeams. He’d checked her hand earlier, hoping against hope that she’d managed somehow to hold on to the vial, but it was gone, undoubtedly lost to the sea.

A strange occurrence happened to him that night: he had a dream. Adair rarely dreamed. He didn’t really need to sleep, and did only because it was a bodily pleasure, as enjoyable as smoking or eating. There were times, when he was upset or depressed, when he would seek the sweetness of oblivion, too, and this was why he slept now. Since sending Lanore to the underworld, Adair would hibernate around the clock if it meant time would pass more quickly and would hasten the day when she would return to him.

He hadn’t dreamed any of the other nights since sending her to the underworld, but that night, he dreamed. It was one of those odd dreams, the kind that made him conspicuously aware that he was dreaming, and he had been so distracted by this very conspicuousness that he now could remember very little of it. As a matter of fact, he remembered only one crucial moment, and the vision had been so horrible that he had been thrown out of sleep and awoke sweating; he had to touch Lanore’s hand to reassure himself that she was still with him, that no one had snatched her away while he was asleep.

In this dream, he’d been brought to a chamber, a squalid stone room with a dirt floor, a dank prison cell not unlike many he’d seen with his own eyes. In an odd twist for a prison cell, instead of a cot or pallet, there was a fully dressed bed in the center of the room, taking up nearly all the space. Lanore was on the bed, her hands bound, her eyes blindfolded. She struggled against her restraints. Naturally, he tried to rush to her side but was prevented by an invisible wall. He was helpless, being forced into the role of an observer. He knew, by the twisting of his gut and the terror expanding in his chest, what would happen next.

Within a minute, the door opened and a dark figure, huge and hulking, slipped into the room. Adair couldn’t make out what this figure looked like until it came closer to the bed, and then he saw that it was a demon of some kind, a horrible monster worse than anything he recalled being described in mere stories. This creature was bestial, an animal with only vestigial traces of man. It was as large as an ox, with a broad, strapping back. Its muscle-bound haunches were as massive as boulders; its hocks were like pistons. Long threads of saliva dripped from its maw. It hovered over Lanore, its shadow eclipsing her, swallowing her up so that Adair could no longer see her, he could only hear her whimper in distress.

In a panic, Adair threw himself at the unseen barrier again and again, but whatever it was held as firmly as the accursed wall in the basement of the Boston mansion, the one that had held him for two hundred years. The beast put its hands on Lanore’s shoulders, pinning her to the bed. He began to shift his weight over her, to climb her in preparation for mounting her, and Adair thought he would lose his mind. He tried to
force himself to wake up. He couldn’t watch what was about to happen.

He snapped awake on the floor next to Lanore, drenched in sweat, feeling as though his stomach had been ripped out. Now he understood why Lanore had been so desperate to go after Jonathan. No one would be able to endure such scenes, not about someone you loved. Even being fully aware that it was only a dream hadn’t kept him from being completely consumed with horror. The dreams were exercises in torture, and he couldn’t believe that a dream like that had come from his subconscious. He fully believed that the dream was a message.