House of Dreams (49 page)

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Authors: Brenda Joyce

BOOK: House of Dreams
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Isabel stared at the fagots of wood carefully placed about her legs and feet. As she stared, she watched two men adding kindling to the pile. Her hands were tied behind her back and she was bound to a stake.
A crowd had gathered to watch her die. Men, women, and children, lords and ladies, merchants, gentry, yeomen, apprentices, servants, and even monks, friars, and priests encircled the pyre where Isabel was, and
they jeered at her loudly, profanely, calling her “whore,” “heretic,” “Spaniard,” “bitch,” and worse. Their curses and cries only made her more numb, more dazed. Isabel felt as if she had been drugged.
One of the men stoking what would become her funeral pyre suddenly touched her legs. Isabel flinched.
“Believe me, you want this, milady,” he said almost apologetically.
Isabel saw the sheep bladders he held in his hands.
“Filled with gunpowder,” he told her. “Otherwise you'll live while your body burns to a crisp.”
Her heart suddenly skipped and then it seemed to beat as if it were a living thing. Isabel watched him attach the bladders to her thighs.
“Oh, God, have mercy,” she heard herself whisper. And suddenly she was afraid. “God have mercy,” Isabel cried.
Soldiers ringed her pyre. They had appeared from nowhere. Isabel stared at their unmovable faces, and it dawned on her that the time had come. She was about to die.
And she watched one of the two men light the kindling encircling her feet.
The flames hissed and caught.
Terror overcame Isabel. “Oh, God,” she screamed. “I don't want to die!”
Too late, too late, she realized she did not want to die, and not like this, for she was a coward, and as the fire rushed along the kindling, she thought about her child and Douglas—she would never see Douglas again, never see or hold or kiss her son, never watch him grow to manhood. “I repent!” Isabel screamed as some of the faggots burst into flames.
The crowd hissed and jeered and booed her, and Isabel knew no one had heard. Worse, she felt the heat touching her heels, her toes. It was so hot …
“I repent!” she screamed at the soldiers, but if they heard her, or cared, they gave no sign.
And then she felt the fire as it scorched her toes—and then all of her feet.
Isabel screamed and screamed.
And suddenly she saw the horseman riding through the crowd, wielding his sword, cutting down those in his way. She saw his blazing blue eyes and his curly dark hair and she screamed for Douglas, again and again.
He had come to rescue her, and as her flesh burned, she felt the surging of hope.
“Isabel!” he shouted, driving his steed forward.
And simultaneously two arrows pierced him front and back, but still he rode toward her.
He was going to die because of her, and Isabel knew he must not die—because she loved him and because he was too good and honorable to die and because he must care for her son. But there was no way she could stop him, and then another arrow found its mark and he fell from his horse, which wheeled and galloped away.
“No!” Isabel screamed. “Douglas!”
And then she screamed again, because the fire was burning her feet, and she felt the heat on her legs, then her gown caught, and it went into flames.
She was engulfed.
Isabel stared and suddenly she saw Sussex there in the crowd. Behind him she saw Rob and de la Barca. And someone had dragged Douglas away from the pyre; he was sitting up, he was alive.
And the terror was gone. There was only the pain of hell, indescribable, and through the haze of the flames, there was red, red rage.
“Remember this! All of you!”
The hell worsened, but there was more. And she cried, “I will never let you forget!”
The bladders exploded.
For one split second Isabel felt her limbs tearing away from her body, and then she felt nothing at all.
The two last windows in the bedroom slammed shut in such quick succession that it was almost simultaneous. And then there was silence.
Cass was paralyzed. She stood unmoving, bathed in sweat, her heart thundering in her ears, stunned and afraid.
The silence did not abate.
Now Cass could only hear her own deafening heartbeat.
Slowly she inhaled, struggling to see. She was reminding herself that Tracey could not walk through walls—but Isabel could. And then Cass moved.
Without thinking, she ran to the closest window and tried to heave it upward. Her intention was to leap out. But even as she struggled to lift it, the locking lever snapped around in front of her very eyes, clicking into place.
Cass cried out and backpedaled, and then stood in shock as the levers on all the windows in the room snapped into the lock position.
Locked in. Isabel had locked her in.
The question was, why?
To hurt her, isolate her, what did it matter? Isabel intended to destroy them all, and right now Antonio and Gregory were badly wounded and as vulnerable as infants. Cass no longer cared how Isabel was accomplishing her feats. All that mattered was that she was capable of real, live action—action meant to destroy them all.
Cass panted, facing the door, expecting to see Isabel materialize at
any moment. The door remained closed, a paler shadow in the shadowy room. Cass had to get out.
Then it clicked in her mind that possessed or not, Tracey stood outside that door, Tracey, her sister.
“Trace!” Cass cried, rushing to the door and wrenching on the knob, to no avail. “Trace? Can you hear me?”
“I can hear you,” Tracey replied very calmly.
“Please, Tracey, you have to fight her, you have to fight her and help me. Let me out!” Cass cried, her cheek against the wood, a wetness streaming down her face. “Please, Tracey, please!”
“No.”
Cass stiffened, hating her sister's strange, detached tone, which was so goddamned final. Then she banged on the door, once, with despair. “Tracey! Tracey, snap out of it! Get that witch out of you! Please, Trace, please!”
There was no answer.
Cass choked back a sob, an image of Antonio lying unconscious on the floor assailing her, and suddenly she was even more terrified. She could not let anything happen to him, she could not! “Tracey!” she screamed, beating on the door.
A whoosh of air sounded behind her, loud and stunning.
Cass whirled, her spine to the door, expecting to see Isabel. Instead, she saw a fire sparking in the fireplace. And before her very eyes, she watched it rapidly grow in size. Within three seconds, two tiny matchlike flames had become a full-sized, roaring fire.
Cass was trying to understand how this had happened, what it meant, when the fire became so strong that flames began licking the sides of the marble hearth. She was mesmerized, thinking marble could not burn—when suddenly flames leapt across the space between the hearth and rug, and instantly the Persian rug was aflame.
“Tracey!” Cass screamed, turning, beating on the door. “Let me out, please, I beg you!”
“No.”
Cass sank to the floor, sobbing, despairing, her entire life flashing through her eyes. Their mother's funeral, tea after school with Aunt Catherine, hours and hours spent alone in her bedroom, lost in a good book; Tracey and her boyfriends, one after the other, Cass watching, wishing, from the sidelines, until there was Rick Tennant. Cass remembered holding Alyssa in the hospital just after her birth, when she was
red faced and funny looking, and as clearly, suddenly, she recalled the very first time she had laid eyes upon Antonio, when he had first walked into the lecture hall at the Met, clad in a black sport jacket, a black turtleneck, and black slacks, his notes under one arm.
Oh, God.
What had happened to Alyssa and Eduardo? And what about Antonio, who was unconscious?
“What do you want?” Cass sobbed. “Isabel, damn you!
What do you want?”
“You know what I want,” Tracey said very calmly from the other side of the door.
And Cass did.
The heat of the fire behind her was so intense it was starting to burn her bare back. Cass jumped to her feet—but there was nowhere to run.
Isabel intended to burn her alive.
Just as Isabel had burned to death.
 
 
Tracey had the feeling she was on a train, one speeding along at hundreds of miles an hour, uncontrollably, passing stop after stop. She wanted to get off. She wanted the train to stop. But the train wasn't even slowing down, and there was no way she could get off.
It was like a dream. A horrible, frightening dream that refused to end. The kind of dream where you had to run or you would die, but your feet refused to obey the commands of your mind and would not move, bringing death close and closer still. Was she dreaming? Tracey wanted to wake up.
Was that Cass, her sister, screaming at her? Begging for her help?
But her voice sounded far away, and anyway, it was only a dream, wasn't it?
A dream—the night—that woman—Isabel.
Cass's cries for help continued. Tracey stared blankly at the door as the odor of burning wool assailed her. She should open the door, she somehow thought. Instead, her body turned and her feet moved and she began walking downstairs.
No, Tracey thought, suddenly touched with a surge of panic.
I must go upstairs, I must let Cass out.
No
, she replied to herself.
Everything is fine, you must go downstairs. Peace is death.
Peace. Tracey closed her eyes briefly as she entered the corridor, which was nearly black. Peace is death. How she wanted peace.
“Tracey!” Cass screamed from upstairs.
Tracey stumbled even though her legs refused to stop carrying her forward. More panic filled her—she wanted to turn around and go back upstairs.
No. Everything will be fine. Trust me
, Tracey heard herself think.
Tracey wanted to trust herself. She wanted peace. God, she did. Then why didn't she trust herself? Her legs would not obey her mind anyway. She could not seem to stop her body's forward motion just like she could not get off the train …
Trust me … Peace is death
…
There was calm in the mantra. Tracey reached the great hall, the panic subsiding. She could do this, she could. As long as she trusted herself.
Yes. Trust me
.
The words washed over her, a soft, seductive whisper.
The tapers that had been left burning in the hall had all gone out except for two, and most of the hall was in shadow. Tracey stared at Antonio, lying on the floor. He appeared to be dead. Then she stared toward the shattered glass door, at Gregory's equally prostrate form.
A part of her mind managed to think.
What a shame
. And with that thought, as her hand tightened on the knife, as her body moved forward again, toward that door, the panic came.
No! I don't want this!
Trust me … Peace is death
…
The panic ebbed. Tracey stepped outside.
 
 
Gregory moaned. And he heard himself as he did so. The sound was huge, laced with pain, and he could hardly believe that it had come from himself.
Jesus
. He hurt more than before, everywhere, and he couldn't seem to see. He blinked his eyes furiously, and just when he could finally focus—on a few distant stars overhead—he remembered everything and he literally choked on his own breath. And when he could resume breathing, it was hard and fast, with real, abject fear.
No. With real, abject terror.
He'd gone through the glass door. How badly was he hurt? He did not want to die, goddamn it. No, goddamn Isabel.
And where was she now? Why was he still lying outside on the stone floor of the courtyard? Gregory stiffened with dread.
Blood was interfering with his vision, he realized. He had a cut—or cuts—on his forehead and temple that were bleeding profusely. Gregory automatically tried to wipe the blood away. Where the hell was everyone? Why had they left him like this? Panic sharpened his breathing to an impossible, razorlike edge.
He used his left hand to smear away the blood, and he tried to lever himself slowly into a sitting position. He was overcome with waves of undulating darkness and he gave it up quickly, but it was some time before the need to faint diminished. Fuck. He was in really bad shape.
When he'd taken some control of his breathing, when his pulse beat a bit less frighteningly, he twisted his head around so he could see into the house. He froze.
Antonio lay facedown just inside the shattered door, his back and upper torso bandaged, the linen stained red.
Oh God. What happened?
Gregory wondered frantically. And where was Cass?
Help. He had to help his brother. He could not let Antonio die.
Gregory moved onto his side, panting with the effort, sweating with it, his vision blurring again. He got onto his stomach and slowly, painstakingly, he began to crawl toward the house.
Within inches he collapsed. But he refused to give up, intending just to take a moment to collect his strength, when he felt that he was being watched.
Instinct told him it was Isabel. Every hair on his nape rose. And he looked up.
Tracey stood just inside the shattered door, watching him.
Relief overcame him and he collapsed again. “Tracey.” He thought that his whisper was inaudible. How he needed her now. He had never been happier to see anyone.
He felt her coming, more than he actually heard her, and he twisted so he could look up. “Thank God. Tonio?” he asked.
She paused, standing above him. “Everything will be fine,” she said. “Trust me.”
And there was something in her blank expression, something odd and eerie, or something in her tone, equally strange, that made him tense with growing dread and a new inkling—one he did not want.
She smiled.
The woman of his nightmares smiled and lifted the knife.
Gregory knew it was the end. “No!”
He tried to twist away as the metal flashed down, but the moment
the knife went into his flesh, slicing through muscle and bone, he knew he had failed and that it was too late.
She stabbed him again.
 
 
Antonio had been fighting to come out of the darkness for some time. For somehow, somewhere, in the back of his unconscious mind, he felt an urgency, a knowledge, an awareness, that would not let him go.
He had to wake up. The stakes were too high. The stakes were life and death.
But the blackness was thick and soft, and so terribly comforting. It would be so easy to succumb to its embrace, to succumb, to drift, to forget … to die.
But the images were there, twisted up inside his brain.
His beautiful son. His dead wife. His injured twin brother. The little girl. Cassandra …
He must swim through the shadows and face even greater darkness, and slowly, painfully, he did so. And as the blackness began to abate, the pain began, and with every incremental step back into the light, the pain grew and intensified. Suddenly Antonio was conscious.
And with the consciousness came complete and stark recollection.
Tracey was Isabel, and he must destroy her before she destroyed them all.
Antonio opened his eyes and for one moment he had to fight to see, because many of the tapers left in the hall had burned out. And when he could see, he saw her shadow, not far from where he lay. Turning his head, shifting ever so slightly, he saw her standing not far from him, her back to him, staring out into the night.
No, not into the night, but at his brother, who lay injured in the courtyard, unable to defend himself.
He had to get up, he thought with panic and the first seeds of rage. Before she did the unthinkable.
And as Antonio struggled to sit up, he saw her move out of the corner of his eye.
He froze, head whipping around, and saw her stab his brother in the back with a knife.
Adrenaline gave him the speed, strength, and agility he might not have otherwise had. He lunged to his feet, never taking his gaze from Tracey, watching her wield the knife a second time, and he did not pause to think. He launched himself at her.
And she realized he was coming too late. Just before he hit her with all of his strength and the full force of his two hundred pounds, she glanced back and saw him. Tracey went flying past Gregory, Antonio on top of her.

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