Victoria's Demon Lover (20 page)

    
It wasn’t nice.  Lord
Brigayne’s men dropped her unceremoniously off in front of the cottage.  Jack
saw their horses as they trotted around the bend in the road and left his
forge.  His eyes were angry and sad and his mouth was in a firm line that told
her he did not want to talk about it.  Then he saw her bloody skirts.

     She had guessed right.  His
face darkened and without a word to her he turned and strode to the barn. 
Victoria was watching now.  Maggie cried for him to stop, but she did not go
after him.  Instead she limped into the cottage and closed the door.   The barn
doors opened and the big cart horse leaped out wearing only a bridle and Jack
on his back.  Victoria followed him.  She was like a ghost flying through the
air over his left shoulder.  She tried to reach out and touch him but could
not.

     She followed as he galloped to
the manor house.  She was there when he leaped from the horse, and when he
dropped the reins as he landed and let the animal run down the road.  That is
when she realized he knew he would not be going back to the forge or to
Maggie.  Victoria wondered if she were watching events as they happened or if
this was like a memory play-back.     He took the steps three at a time and
drew a sword from his belt.  Victoria knew this blade was another he had made
for another man, a marquis who lived in the next county.  The first two servants
who tried to stop him from entering the house were slain with a heavy backhanded
blow from that sword.  The next one tried closing a door on him.  He was
knocked down.  The next held a chair as one would fend off a wild animal.  And
Jack was wild.  She saw it in his eyes.  She saw it in the way his hair stood
on end and the way he waved the sword.  He was breathing through his teeth with
a loud hissing sound and his jaw muscles bulged.  The chair was splintered and
the servant fled as Jack made his way to the second floor up the grand
staircase.

     Lord Brigayne met him, sword
drawn on the mezzanine.  He held the scabbard in his left hand like a shield. 
He fell into a practiced
en gard
and the smirk on his face told her that
he had no fear of the blacksmith.

     “You made this fine sword,
John.  You did not expect you would have to battle it.”

     Jack waved the sword in his
hand as one would swing an ax or a scythe.   He had no training in swordplay.

     “I’m sorry about Maggie,
John.  Truly.  I did not mean to harm her.”

     Jack did not answer but his
face purpled with rage and he charged.  Victoria put a ghostly hand to her
throat.  The battle was one sided at first.  Lord Brigayne easily dodged the
attack and slapped Jack on the back with the flat of his blade as the bigger
man sped past.  He was playing.

     Jack was not.  He turned at
the end of the walkway and raised the sword.  Lord Brigayne raised his and they
stepped together.  The two blades clashed with the ringing sound of beautifully
worked steel.  Brigayne stepped neatly to and fro, avoiding Jack’s murderous
sweeps easily.  He would touch Jack here and there with the tip, ripping his
tunic and breeches with little laughing snorts.  Jack bled from many minor cuts
and did not seem to be winning this fight.  Victoria was puzzled.  He was
supposed to be winning.  Brigayne kept Jack moving backward which Victoria knew
from watching the Olympics was very disadvantageous.  Had this been a sporting
event Brigayne would be racking up the points while Jack was clearly out of his
league.

     Out of his league in skill,
but not strength.  She watched his face and saw when that realization came over
him.  He relaxed his jaw and started to use his body instead of his arm.  He
turned and twisted to dodge Brigayne’s thrusts and used his longer legs and
greater strength to his advantage.  She saw that he was no longer trying to
beat him with the steel, but to disarm the lord.  It happened in a flash. 
Brigayne’s sword missed a stab at Jack’s chest and passed harmlessly under his
arm.  At that moment Jack turned and brought his sword down as one would swing
a golf club.  His blade met Brigayne’s at a right angle, the force of the blow
knocked the hilt from the lord’s hand and sent the blade clattering over the
rail of the mezzanine and to the floor below.  Jack threw his blade after it.

     This act surprised both Brigayne
and Victoria.  But just for a moment.  Jack was on Brigayne in two steps with a
wicked upper cut.  The lord went down on his back, surprise in his eyes.  He
had probably never been struck in his life.  Jack danced backwards, his great
fists balled up like boulders.  His shoulders moved back and forth as he
evaluated his enemy.  Brigayne did not want to play any game he could not win,
and now his face held none of its previous arrogance.  He got to his feet and
put his hands in front of him in the universal gesture of a time out.  His eyes
darted over the servants gathered on the floor below, watching this drama.

     “Go for the sheriff’s men,” he
shouted at them.  Make sure they bring a pistol.”

     A pistol.  The great
equalizer.  Then this was at least seventeenth century, probably eighteenth, the
historian in Victoria noted.  Jack swung at Brigayne and missed.  The lord
ducked and danced away, reluctant to engage those huge fists and arms.  Jack
outweighed him fifty pounds at least.  Brigayne shouted at the servants to get
the groundskeeper and “have him bring a shovel!”   Jack swung again and this
time connected with Brigayne’s chest.  The lord staggered back and put his
fists up.  He glared at Jack.  “How dare you, ruffian.  How dare you strike
me.  That blow was your death.”

     Jack sneered at him and threw
another punch, then bounced back on the balls of his feet.  He ducked, weaved
between Brigayne’s arms and connected a heavy straight armed blow directly on his
nose.  The lord’s head snapped back and Victoria could hear a popping sound. 
There would be a broken nose and a concussion from that strike.  Jack  did not
stop, but followed up with mini jabs at Brigayne’s’ neck and chest before
landing another powerful punch on the lord’s jaw that snapped his head back so
far his nose pointed straight up.  Brigayne went down and was still.  One leg
twitched and Victoria watched from over Jack’s shoulder as a puddle of piss
formed under Brigayne’s buttocks.  That’s when she knew the lord was dead. 
Jack knew it too.

     He put his fists down and
leaned over the mezzanine’s rail.  All the lord’s servants stood looking up at
him in horror.  The groundskeeper was there with his shovel, but he didn’t come
up the stairs. Jack turned his head.  All the doors on the next floor were
closed and bolted.  Outside they all heard the sound of galloping horses and
shouting men.  Victoria wondered if she needed to stay to watch any more of
this.  There was no place for him to hide, no place to run to.  He had murdered
Lord Brigayne in broad daylight in front of a dozen witnesses.  She watched his
face.  She saw no regret.  He then turned sad eyes down to the floor and she
knew he was thinking of her.  Of Maggie.  Victoria tried to touch him.  Her
ghostly hands went right through his sweating body.  As the sheriff’s men
barged in through the front doors with rope and swords and one heavy pistol,
Jack put his hands up and surrendered.  Victoria covered her eyes.  She did not
want to see the rest.

     But she had to. Even with
ghostly eyes closed, she stood before the gibbet with every member of the
village as Jack swung back and forth over the wooden platform.  She tried to
turn around, but he hung there everywhere she looked, hand and feet tied, but
no hood covered his purple death face.  Victoria turned away.  Sedatives could
not help her here.  Jasper and Mr. Magnus had been right.

     They were both looking at her
when she opened her eyes for real.  “Ugh,” she groaned.  “That was a really bad
trip.”  She moved her hands and feet.  They hurt.

     Mr. Magnus steadied her as she
tried to sit.  “It can only get worse unless you listen to me.”

     She winced and touched her
forehead where a flamenco headache was forming.  “I’m listening,” she
whispered.

     “He is not dead.  We will
start with that.”

     She looked at him, then at
Jasper.  She frowned, then thought better of that.  “This is why I do not
listen to you.  I saw him die.”

     “Everyone dies.”  Mr. Magnus
sat on her bed.  “Many times.  It is an inescapable fact.  The first thing you
must do is stop thinking that death is a ‘bad thing’.  We can’t go any further
while you are still under the impression that the worst thing that can happen
to a person is for him or her to die.”

     She took a deep breath. 
”Okay.”

     “You are humoring me.  Let us
pretend that it is true.  That may be easier for you at first.”

     She nodded, then winced. 
Jasper handed her a glass of water and she drank it gratefully.

     Mr. Magnus continued.  “Pretend
then.  Pretend all of life is a video game, and that you must learn the rules
as you go.  There are no cheats.  Are you following me?”

     She handed the glass back to
the monkey demon.  “I am.”

     “When you die you get a
re-start.  Sometimes back to the beginning, and sometimes further along.  What
do they call those?”

     “A save-point”

     “Fine.  Then we will call that
a save-point.  You do have a mission, just as in the game, and every time you
fail to complete that mission you return.  Sometimes in a different century,
sometimes in a different country, always in a different body but some things
remain the same so you can recognize them in the cloudy mists of eternity.”

     “His scar?”

     “Exactly.  He is trying to
contact you and get you to remember him.  You resisted at first because the
memory was too painful.  You made up all kinds of fantastic reasons that this
could not be Torgal or Marcus or Jack.  You formed him into a demon and an
incubus.  You told yourself you might be crazy.  You took the sedatives. 
Anything to keep from facing the truth, Victoria.”

     She wanted something stronger
than a glass of water before she must ask him the inevitable question.  Jasper
grinned and help up a smaller glass.  She sipped and recognized a gin and
tonic.  She smiled back, but her eyes were leaking tears as she asked, “What is
the truth, then, Mr. Magnus?”

     “You are not responsible for
his deaths.  None of them.  We each die our own deaths for our own reasons.  Your
guilt and erroneous beliefs are what are imprisoning you.  Wake up and see the
bars of this prison, Victoria.  Shake them with both hands and then turn the
lock and let yourself out.  I can’t turn that lock for you.”

     “Where is he?”

     “He can’t come to you until
you have jettisoned this tremendous guilt.  You have told yourself for
centuries now that you don’t deserve a lover.  You don’t deserve to love or be
loved.  You don’t deserve happiness.  You need to be punished forever.  These
beliefs become real and you have now found yourself in Hell.  A Hell of your
own making. These beliefs have formed a great barrier that he cannot penetrate.
He is trying to get you out.  He has been trying for a long time.  He loves you
so much.  He will never give up trying.”

     Victoria sniffed.  “Which
one?”

     Mr. Magnus patted her
shoulder.  “All of him.”

     “How,” she paused, thinking,
“how can I stop?”

     “You just stop believing you
need to be punished for these imagined crimes.”

     Victoria drained the gin and
tonic and handed the glass back to Jasper.  “I stop believing.”

     “Yes.”

     “Just like that?”

     “Yes, Just like that.”

     “Impossible.”  She remembered
Jack’s eyes when he saw her bloody skirts, and Torgal’s eyes as he slowly bled
to death in the woods.  And Marcus.  Her guilt for his death was worse, for
when she had been the little slave girl she had been the only gentleness in his
life.  He had nothing but his body and his weapons.  She saw the miles and
miles and miles he marched in his sandals thinking of her.  Seven years he
lived in poverty, saving his meager salary for the chance to buy her one day.  Every
time they made love, the episode was re-run in his mind for months until he
returned to her again.  When he was not on duty, his mind was with her.  She
was like a lifeline for him.  A lifeline of tender beauty in a brutal world of
death and war.  Victoria’s lips twisted and hot tears ran down her face.

     Jasper handed her a tissue. 
She blew her nose.  The monkey demon said to Mr. Magnus, “She’s doing it
again.”

     “Victoria.  You see how these
thoughts affect your emotions?  You flail yourself with them.  Stop.  Let’s
pretend something different.  Remember Marcus.  Remember him.  Now change the
event so you save him instead of condemn him.  Do it now.”

     That was intriguing, and the
thought that she might step in and save him made her take a deep breath and
blow out the sad thoughts.  “I can do that?” she asked.

     Mr. Magnus nodded to Jasper,
who took the tissue form her hand and she found herself in Rome.  She looked
down to see the beautiful collar of coral and lapis.  She was perfumed and oiled
and dressed in her veils and jangling ankle bracelets and a beaded belt.

     She bent her head to see her
long black hair fall over her little breasts.  Footsteps in the corridor.  She
backed against the wall.  The door opened and Marcus was there, backlit against
the oil lamps in the hallway.  He closed the door behind him and whispered,
“Alana?”

     She stepped into his arms. 
His kiss was gentle and he held her like she was a great treasure, like a
songbird.  He breathed a long sigh into her neck and caressed the curve of her
back and over her buttocks.  Alana responded with her own sigh.  Victoria knew
Marcus would lay Alana carefully on the cushions.  He would stroke her with
wispy feathery touches and whisper his love for her.  When his cock could no
longer be ignored he would slide it gently into her and nuzzle her neck as he
carefully stroked inside.  He was her most attentive lover.  He worshipped her
body with his own.  And that would be how they were caught.  Too much
foreplay.  Victoria knew this though Alana did not.  She took Marcus’ hand and
made Alana say, “We should go to a different room.  This one is too dangerous.” 
She knew that they would be caught if they stayed.  Alana would be dragged to
the bathhouse and bent over a massage platform and raped by all of Cestius’ men
until she died.  Marcus would be in chains for thirty days and then sent to
Gaul.  He must obey her.  She must make him stop.