Stealing Kathryn (3 page)

“Oh my God, I’m going out of my mind!” Kathryn tried her damnedest to get a grip on herself, telling herself it was just exhaustion toying with her mind, fearing she was finally succumbing to the same illness as her family.

Then heat and a suffocating thickness washed over her. Her vision went black, with spots of green floating before her. Then the spots went a luminescent yellow, like cat’s eyes did when caught between shadows and candlelight.

A scream caught in her mouth, barricaded at her lips by something that felt like a chilled, smothering hand.

“Kathryn, my beauty.”

There were disembodied fingers at her throat, soft and warm–

No! Cold now! So cold!

The ghostly caress stroked her. She trembled helplessly as that chill touch drifted over her everywhere, her neck and throat, her breast, belly, and hip, touching against her flesh as though she did not wear any clothes at all. Kathryn tried again and again to scream, to struggle, but she was paralyzed everywhere but her mind. Who was doing this to her? Why could she not see? Had she somehow fallen asleep without realizing it and now suffered another cruel nightmare?

No! It was all too real. Too sickeningly real.

“Perfect.” The cloying, hoarse vocalization rang with undertones of demented pleasure. Then those fingers were at her throat again, gently palpating the wildly rushing pulse they discovered there.

“Sleep,” the voice commanded, as rough as sand, then as smooth as glass, “sleep!”

Kathryn crumpled lifelessly into the waiting demon’s embrace.

“Light. Now.”

Cronos nearly jumped out of his clammy skin when the command came out of the darkness.

He had not even heard the Master return.

The torch flared brightly, revealing the bulk of the Master, the fact that he was once again cloaked, and that he held a great object within the cloak’s folds.

Cronos had to stay the urge to run forward and get a better look at the Master’s new treasure.

“What is it, Master?” Cronos crowed, his gleeful face turned respectfully to the floor in hopes that his properly respectful subservience would win a response. “Is it a pretty treasure?”

“It is my prettiest treasure yet, Cronos,” the Master said, his voice rolling around the room in such a way that the shadows seemed to shift eagerly to absorb it. The Master rarely deigned to speak to him, never mind use so many words in this place.

In this way, Cronos knew the Master was pleased with that night’s plunder.

“To the treasure tower, my lord?” Cronos asked eagerly. He dared not move without permission and there was no telling if the routine would be the usual one if this was so special a spoil.

“Lead.”

Cronos almost fell on his face as he scurried to obey. He felt the Master’s dark presence behind him, overwhelming and just shy of treading over him.

It wouldn’t be the first time.

Cronos’s toothpick legs had to coordinate their steps three times faster to stay ahead of the Master’s ground-devouring stride. One misstep on Cronos’s part and he would be a loud crunch beneath his employer’s heavy foot.

But he did not mind. There would still be new treasure to see! Joy! What joy it was to see the Master’s new treasures. Sometimes Cronos was more ecstatic than even the Master was about his acquisitions.

They traveled swiftly up out of the depths of the dungeons, Cronos lighting the way as they took spiraling stairs up and up and up.

Cronos’s pallor was nearly blue-gray from lack of oxygen by the time they reached the treasure tower’s main floor.

He doused the torch. Here there were large sconces embedded in the smooth marble walls, and nearly a hundred candles in stands between the mid-chamber’s massive marble columns.

Now no longer dependent on Cronos to light the way, the Master strode past him, his cloak whipping the little toady hard in his wake.

Cronos caught the flailing fabric hard in the side of his head and his valiant efforts to remain upright failed. He received a face full of marble floor, loosening several already damaged teeth.

The Master was oblivious.

He took to another flight of stairs, his steps a ringing clang against the ornate black iron.

When he reached the uppermost level, he traversed the long hall to a set of colossal double doors. So huge were they that it seemed it might take five strong men on either side to push them open.

But all it took was a momentary glitter of intent from malachite eyes. The doors swung soundlessly, easily open and the Master was not even forced to break his stride as he entered. The room beyond the intricately carved doors gleamed gaudily back at him, the bright resplendence of it making him narrow his eyes.

There was ornate paneling upon the massive, curving walls, constructed of the purest gold and crafted by a brilliant artist who had incorporated into the design his adoration for the four seasons of the years. Golden suns and filigreed autumn leaves in multicolored gold glistened all around him.

The entire circular floor, enormous in diameter, was carpeted with a single hand-woven rug. It was a tapestry of silken threads that had taken a madwoman all 101 years of her life to design and create. Every god and goddess known to any man, woman, or child in her world had been depicted within its weavings. Every beast of superstition and legend, every imaginary creature from all manner of folklore. The Master even saw several representations of himself crafted amusingly into the loom.

Then there was the ceiling. It was streamed in multihued satin bunting. The dye master who had colored each magnificent bolt had been a genius out of his time. He had managed to create a palate of colors that might never again be rediscovered or even named.

The Master strode past mounted things, things encased in protective glass, crystal, and amber. Each a treasure with remarkable history.

But they were old curiosities to him now, and presently not attractive enough to gain his attention.

In the center of the unique museum was a bed. It was roughly three times the size of most large beds, with feather-stuffed ticks full of the softest quills from the most unique and rarest birds. But its true value came from the fact that none of the birds had been harmed or killed because of its creation. Each feather had molted out naturally and been painstakingly collected.

The bedspread was knitted lace made of delicate, strong webbings of silk, in a style used this once and never again.

The Master laid his latest and by far greatest treasure upon the very center of this bed.

Kathryn.

She slept. He had commanded it to be so. Enchanting her into a repose like those of Aurora, Snow White, and countless other sleeping princesses of fairy tales and lore. She was a beauty beyond all their combined beauty—if a bit wan and bedraggled from her exhaustion. But all this would be remedied soon enough and she would far surpass the radiance of anything else on display in the room. He could tell just by looking at her. He was satisfied to see she was exactly as she had portrayed herself in her dreams. Her honesty was just one more sparkling detail to add to her perfection.

“Kathryn.”

The name rumbled from deep in his chest like an ensemble of bass range instruments brought together to serenade a waiting heart.

Her rich, earthen brown hair would be long and naturally coiled, he knew, when not crammed into the vicious twisted tail hanging askew at the top of her head. Her face was long and strong, yet somehow delicately boned with its femininity. The eyes, when opened, would be fathomless and dove gray. She bore the lips of a seductress, able to create a luring smile or a heartbreaking pout, and when parted invitingly they could boil blood. Any and all of these would come naturally without malice, intention, or cunning. Altogether she was the ultimate jewel, made to far outshine the thousands adorning her compatriot treasures in the room.

The Master’s blood churned with awakened intensity, his nostrils flaring as he drew in the true scent of her with greed and unmitigated delight. She smelled of sweetness and salt, a combination of artifice and naturalness. She used some sort of perfume, a combination of differing scents in different areas of her body. In her hair, under her arms, and between her breasts. There he lingered, smelling how sultry sweet she was and feeling the warmth of her radiating against him. He hulked over his treasure as dark, bestial things stirred to wicked life within him.

He suddenly backed off, throwing himself in violent retreat from the temptation of her. A low, animal-like sound, somewhere between a purr, a growl, and a bark, rolled from him as he tried to regain control over the dark urges and twisting images feeding through his mind. His powers had allowed him to taste the desires of hundreds of thousands of women, but with her it had been different. With her there had been so little control. He was afraid that he might lose control and harm her.

He had to remove himself from her now, or he might spoil his new treasure.

It bothered him that he had slipped in his self-control. It was an event that must never be allowed to happen. He was a creature made up of hellish, unruly internal demons. He must always retain perfect order of himself or risk chaos; risk disapproval and censure, perhaps a violent punishment. Or worse, he would cause himself to suffer. When chaos reigned, he was his own worst enemy and it was his treasures that were the first to suffer. It was all things of beauty he would methodically begin to destroy.

Above all else, these treasures—this particular treasure most of all—must be kept safe.

Especially from himself.

Chapter 2

“Adrian?”

Adrian’s malachite eyes darted up to meet his sister’s troubled gaze across the expanse of the table. Candlelight flickered across her exquisite features, licking at her in contrary shadow and light.

“Adrian, why will you not let me see this latest treasure of yours?”

She was suspicious and more than a little upset, he could tell.

“It is not ready,” he said with quiet simplicity.

“But why will you not even tell me what it is? You have always delighted in giving me the histories that make each of your acquisitions so unique.”

Adrian narrowed his eyes on his twin sister. Aerlyn. Known the worlds over as Maya, Epona, Mari, and more, but ever to him she was Aerlyn, his steady, his guide back from the night. It was her wisdom and goodness that tempered his evil and carefully cultured chaos. She was also the frustrating force that held him ever in check, forced him to keep from giving in to the desire to run amok through the minds of the worlds.

For he was Adrian. Angus, Sandman, Morpheus, Bogeyman, all these, but ever Adrian to her. Hers was the mirror of light and healing and dreams. His was of dark fantasies, oppressive guilt, and nightmares.

She, the only one ever destined to love him…and she the only one he might once have felt that alien emotion for. That is, if he could stop hating her for her interference with his desires.

“Aerlyn, the treasure is mine.” His tone brooked no argument. It was his way of warning her to back off.

“Brother.” She quieted a moment to remove the reprimand from her tone. She must tread carefully with him. His was a delicate balance of control, one so easily set asunder. “Adrian. You have never known me to interfere with any of your baubles in the past. I am concerned that you are concerned I might. You have not done something of which I might be forced to disapprove, have you?”

“Your approval is irrelevant.” His voice dropped an octave with a threatening hint of patience being lost.

But he was on the defensive for a reason, Aerlyn mused. She narrowed silver eyes on him, her soft countenance drawing into an image of piercing discernment as she tried to measure her sibling’s motives.

“There are rules, Adrian. Rules we both must obey. And rules we must both guard each other from breaking. You know very well my approval is unavoidably relevant.” She leaned a little closer, trying to probe his thoughts, but he was shoving up a black, guarding wall against her. “That little toad you keep to assist you, the one you call Companion, has been mooning about the fortress in perpetual orgasm for the entire day now. Whatever it is you have brought has obviously made a singular impression on him.”

“Cronos is but a fool, and too easily impressed.” Adrian’s dark lips thinned and parted to reveal a gleaming row of ivory teeth, two of which were long, sleek fangs.

It was Adrian’s version of a smile.

Aerlyn was not so easily swayed.

“That is true.” She nodded curtly. “But I am not. Something is amiss in this house. Did you think I would not be able to feel it? There is a new energy here. A peculiar one.” She leaned forward, candlelight enhancing the silver starlike patterns in the ebony curtain of her hair. “What have you done, Adrian?”

Adrian lurched suddenly from his chair, the last vestiges of his tenuous control of himself gone in an instant. He roared in outrage as his fists crashed violently upon the table. Aerlyn sat back calmly as he shoved the table clear across the room with one powerfully enraged sweep of his arm.

Dishes, candles, and splintered wood struck the distant wall and floor in a din of discordant crashes. Adrian loomed threateningly over his sister, casting ominous shadows over her cream white skin and gown.

“Do not presume to censure me this time, Aerlyn!” he spat, his eyes like maddened emerald fire and his features mottling and twisting in anger.

“And if I do not, who will?” She cocked a silver-black brow. “The Ampliphi put me in charge of keeping you under control, Adrian, and I will not fail them. It is one thing that I must allow you to torment the dreams of innocents without rhyme or reason, but it is you who presume too much if you think I will let you take your spoils in manic measure!” She rose up slowly, her personal energy giving him pause as it enveloped his, making him flinch angrily. “You will show me what you have pilfered, my brother. If it is an acceptable bit of fluff, you are certainly welcome to keep it with the rest of your silly baubles. I even encourage it. You know it pleases me to see you take such avid interest in things of beauty. It makes me feel you may yet prove to have a heart in that monstrously black chest of yours.” She paused for a breath. “But there is some beauty to which you know full well you do not have rights!”