An intense sense of déjà vu made Giselle want to leave the concealed dungeon at once. Ursula danced beneath the swaying cage, raising the torch again and again as she grinned and giggled at Gwendolyn’s tears and cries of pain. The delight she took in her adversary’s pain made Giselle think about vulnerability again.
The smart thing to do would be to eliminate the potential threat engendered by her feelings for Ursula. Kill her. Or cast her out to the slave city, which might be even worse for her. But even as she considered these ideas Giselle knew she would not harm her lover. There were other, less lethal precautions she could take. They weren’t as foolproof as death, granted, but they would be better than nothing.
“Ursula.”
“Yes, Mistress?”
Giselle kept her voice even and her face expression less as she said, “There are some things I must attend to. In the meantime, I’ll leave you to play with your toy. I’ll leave the door open in case you need to leave, okay?”
Ursula nodded.“Okay.” She smiled. “Thank you again. I can’t tell you how much this means to me. I…love you.”
Giselle’s heart raced. “I love you, too.”
Then she turned away from Urusla and strode out of the dark place. Back in her quarters, she hesitated a moment, considering whether she should simply close the door and seal Ursula inside forever.
But the girl’s words came floating back to her: I…love you.
And Giselle again was unsurprised to find she still lacked the will to implement an obvious solution to her dilemma. She would instead summon Schreck and have some simple restraints affixed to the big bed.
But something else caused her to delay summoning Schreck. It was the other thing that worried her and which she strove not to think about. An inexplicable thing. She approached the full-length oval mirror that stood next to her wardrobe and stared at her reflection for a long moment, her hands clasped tightly just below the sash. The pink bathrobe didn’t look good on her. She was meant for darker shades. But that, of course, wasn’t the thing that was bothering her.
She sighed. Oh, just do it!
She untied the sash with fingers that trembled slightly and pulled the front of the robe open. She stared for a moment at her full breasts and flat stomach, then she turned to her side and allowed the robe to slide down her arms to her elbows.
It was still there.
A month ago her back had been a smooth expanse of pure white. But now much of that flesh was covered with a large and intricate tattoo of a dragon. The same tattoo she’d seen on Ms. Wickman’s back. She’d seen it the morning after Ms. Wickman’s death, glimpsing it in a mirror after her bath. The sight of it, unexpected as it was, had almost stopped her heart then. And it still scared her. She had no idea what the tattoo’s appearance on her flesh might mean. It didn’t seem to be affecting her in any obvious way, but, as always, it wasn’t the obvious things that worried Giselle.
She abruptly pulled the robe back over her shoulders and tied the sash. There was nothing to be done about it. It was probably a harmless consequence of having devoured the dead woman’s magic when she ate her heart.
She turned away from the mirror and summoned Schreck.
Somewhere on the other side of the world, a slim woman wearing a black shirt and black slacks entered a dimly lit room. Her bare feet whispered across carpet as she approached a man who sat cross-legged on the floor. The man’s eyes were closed. He was meditating. The woman waited in respectful silence until the man’s eyes opened and he acknowledged her presence.
She bowed her head and presented him with an envelope, which he accepted with finely wrinkled fingers as dry as crepe paper. The man flipped the envelope over and saw that it bore the seal of the Order of the Dragon. He winced slightly at the sight of it. The Order normally preferred to conduct its business in more subtle ways. The arrival of this letter could only be a portent of darker, more dangerous times to come. He didn’t need to read the letter to know this.
He nonetheless tore the envelope open, unfolded the single crisp sheet of paper it contained, and read the two paragraphs with mounting fury. The intent of the letter was twofold—to serve as a summons and to inform him of the passing of a member of the Order. The old man stood and moved to a table upon which was an ornate sword in a scabbard and a single flickering candle in a silver holder. He fed both letter and envelope to the flame, watched as they turned to black ash and fell to the table’s polished surface. Then he removed the sword from the scabbard and held the blade upright before him. He ran the ball of a thumb along the edge of the blade. The sharp edge nicked his flesh and a thin stream of scarlet ran down the blade.
The anger coursing through his body invigorated him, made him feel like a much younger man. He turned away from the table and quickly crossed the room. The other man in the room cringed at his approach, but he could not get out of the way of the doom bearing down on him. This other man was tied to the only chair in the room. The rubber ball in his mouth muffled his screams as he watched the long, flashing blade arc toward him. And then he felt nothing as the blade separated his head from his body.
The old man watched blood erupt from the neck stump and felt nothing. The anger that had possessed him a moment ago had deserted him. Nor did he feel remorse for the life he’d taken, which was only the latest of hundreds. He summoned servants to dispose of the body. The slim woman in black returned and asked if he had any orders for her.
He did.
Beginning with the scheduling of his first trip to North America since World War I.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
The lighting in the dingy gas station bathroom left something to be desired. The single low-wattage bulb in the exposed ceiling socket flickered and buzzed. Marcy leaned over a sink covered with mildew and studied the dye job Ellen had helped her with in a fleabag motel outside of Newark the night before. The jet-black shade made her vaguely resemble Dream. She didn’t have the supermodel face and figure Dream possessed, but she didn’t look bad. She could almost pass for Dream’s slightly less-blessed younger sister. The important thing was she bore little resemblance to the high school era pictures of herself that had appeared on CNN and the front pages of newspapers across the country.
Now she touched up her eyeshadow and applied a dark red lipstick. She returned the lipstick and eye-shadow to her purse. Then she moved to the bathroom’s single toilet, dropped her jeans, and squatted on the cold seat. As she relieved herself, a fat cockroach moved across the blue-and-white floor tiles. The place was a pit, but she’d become inured to unsanitary conditions during her month and a half on the run. You couldn’t very well stay at the Hyatt when you were trying to fly under the radar.
Alicia was waiting outside when she exited the bathroom a moment later, shifting her weight from foot to foot. She glared at Marcy as she barged past her. “What were you doing in there? Counting the fucking tiles?”