Dominic's Nemesis (7 page)

“The boy is having a rough time of it,
Dominic. Among the injured was a close friend. You might consider
inviting him to stay.”

“Stephan is rash and too excitable. He could
learn a thing or two from Cael. Certainly more than I can teach
him.”

“He worships you. At least go see the
lad.”

“
Perhaps.
” He made no promises. Dominic ran a
clenched hand through his hair. He was on overload since the
‘bath
’
earlier, and
didn
’
t know if he could
handle another incident. With Stephan, nothing ever transpired
without incident.

“Mr. Montgomery—”

“No sense puttin
’
on airs. ‘Matthias
’ will
do just fine. That
’
s wot me friends call me.”

The other man cocked a brow. “Rather
presumptuous.”

“Optimism is a necessity thing in me line of…
work.” Matthias sized up his newest off-the-books client. Foreign,
most like. The gentleman did his level best at concealing the
accent, but no dice. French maybe. Moneyed. The ruddy blush reeked
of a soft gentleman, who over-indulged in fine wines, rich foods,
and classy whores. He guessed by the tailored lay of his waistcoat
and high-kick boots that he could roll the gent right now for a
couple of hundred pounds at least. The stiff posture, bespoke a
certain haughtiness. Probably thought himself too good to have
dealin
’
with a lowborn
proprietor of a paranormal asylum. The prig.

“An wot can I do for ya on this ‘ere fine
evening.” In truth, it was an ungodly hour of the night. The sparse
office area they occupied abutted a stone structure housing the
inmates. A hum of activity, punctuated by the odd thump or bang,
radiated from the asylum proper belying the hour. “I reckon you
ain
’
t ‘ere to pay a
penny and see the ‘freak show
’
.”

“Some other time perhaps.”

The gentleman offered a half-smile at the
notion. Intrigued, not horrified, Matthias noticed. He retained
total composure even with the knowledge that the only thing
protecting him from a hundred lunatics, many with ‘abnormalities’,
was a blotchy, paint-bare wall. Good. Matthias found that
encouraging. The more amenable his clients were to the seedier side
of life, the more willing they were to pay to distance themselves
from it.

“I
’
ve come on a rather delicate…family matter.” He
approached the subject with the same caution one might use if he
were attempting to cross a bridge of questionable construction.
“The problem is such that it requires an…impartial party, and your
…services…well that is to say, I have reason to believe that my
late brother
’
s
heir…heirs, but that
’
s
neither here nor there.”

Family affair, ha! Matthias knew his game; he
saw
it often enough. The
sneaky bastard meant to poach his brother
’
s inheritance by having the legitimate
heirs declared insane. Not original, but effective, in his
experience. If their situations were reversed, he
’
d probably give it a go as well.

“Their mother was a certifiable lunatic, you
understand. The woman broke every natural law in the Good Book:
bigamy, adultery, sorcery, and eventually suicide. She died an
inmate at Bedlam. One of the younger sons has been on the path to
madness for years…but we had hoped. Ah well.”

“You wish my help shakin’ the family tree
‘til all the nuts fall out…that ‘bout it?” Get on with it. Matthias
grew tired of his charlatan act.

“Yes, and no. The oldest…eh…legitimate son is
a recluse. No one
’
s seen
him for years. With my brother’s passing, the title plus all
adjoining properties and monies…the family legacy is being laid at
the feet of a trio of madmen. And I will not stand for it.”

His composure slipped, Matthias spied the
twisted lip that revealed not concern for his nephews, but envy and
hatred for their luck of birthright.

“That evil, lying…I will not stand idle while
that bitch ruins the rest of the family the way she ruined my
brother.”

“So, wot is it ya require me to do Mr…”

“
Ambrosi.
”

“Ambrosi, then.” Ah, Italian.

“The younger two began exhibiting bizarre
behaviors in early adulthood. They can wait. First, I want you to
find my oldest nephew, Dominic Ambrosi, now Conte Ambrosi. He is
here in England somewhere. Find him…he is stark raving mad at his
advanced age. Find me the evidence first. And then I want him
removed to a suitable facility in Italy, where he can be
watched.”

Fool, Matthias concluded. To play such a
dangerous game was folly. One heir could have an accident or be
discredited with relative ease…but three? Folly. But, who was he to
turn away an easy mark.

“As ya wish.” Matthias
’
eyes twinkled with malevolent greed.
“‘Tis the matter of—”

“No need to quibble. A handsome sum is yours
upon the receipt of any damning evidence.”

“Then, I’m at yer service.”

Seated alone at a table fit for a party of
thirty, Eden went through the motions of eating dinner only because
she could ill-afford to skip a meal. She was relieved at not being
forced to keep up pretense in front of the all-too-intuitive
Kathleen. The doctor had departed for London, so no probing
questions from that direction either. Dominic abstained as usual.
And there were no footmen because their host preferred not to have
people leering about while he ate. Since he never seemed to darken
the dinning hall, Eden wondered why he cared who occupied the
room.

Dominic. He became a virus in her mind,
spreading until all her thoughts were infected with him. Even the
strange…Hallucinations? Visualizations? She knew not what to call
the oft disturbing bend her conscious mind seemed to lead her these
days. Whatever they were, they
were
saturated by shades of Dominic. Dominic
straddled above her spread-eagled body on a circular bed of black
satin. Dominic standing over her in the bath, gasping her leg high
in the air, with parted lips hovering millimeters from her
wiggling, pinkish toes. Dominic writhing in agony and shame as some
unseen force rent deep slashes across his flesh.

The latter image distressed her even though
she knew it to be just more bizarre evidence of her declining
lucidity. The strangest thing was, outside of the fleeting images
and the unnatural circumstances that had provoked them, she felt
sane and rational. But what if she wasn
’
t? What if she were going soft in the head? How
long before someone suspected, Dominic, the doctor, or both? Would
they toddle her off to Newgate or worse yet, Bedlam?

* * *

Several days later…Determined to reclaim some
measure of normalcy, Eden decided to take Kathleen’s advice and
discard her mourning clothes. Sporting a bright-colored, if
voluminous day dress, she wandered about the second floor halls
looking for a worthy subject to sketch. She adjusted the parchments
and tin of charcoal under her arm as she strolled past another dull
oil portrait and about the fifth podium-ed vase. All were much too
commonplace to warrant an artist’s attention. Twenty minutes later,
lost and weary of banal art, lifeless tapestries and Spartan
architecture, she headed for the third floor.

She stopped short when she rounded an
unfamiliar corner. There stood a massive set of double doors,
adorned with exquisite metal relief. A stained-wood plaque hung
over the threshold. She couldn
’
t read whatever language the words were written in,
but the stark, black inscription evoked a note of warning.
Probably, a promise of doom to the travelers who failed to heed the
warning, which could only mean one thing…Behind these doors lay
Dominic
’s private lair.
She’
d stake her life on it, and would probably have to if he
caught her sneaking around the restricted wing. So then why did
find herself pushing open the great doors.

She nearly jumped out of her skin when the
hinges creaked. The door itself seemed to protest her entering.
Eden inhaled a courageous breath and skidded forward to take a bite
of the forbidden fruit. The first thing that struck her was how
different his domain was from the rest of the house. The room was
large, but stark and empty. The walls bereft of art. The space
naked of furniture. No rugs adorned the polished oak floors. No
windows broke the monotony of walls. She deemed it ‘the music
room
’
because there was
but one object present. A pianoforte.

Eden came closer to admire the instrument.
The lacquered grand occupied a raised circular stage in the center
of the room, hauntingly illuminated by a beveled glass window
blinking down from the ceiling. Most of the rest of the room fell
in shadow as the sun at the moment hung directly above. Eden envied
the brilliantly contracting effect achieved by the light descending
upon the ebony pianoforte in a perfect circle whilst leaving
anything outside the central sphere chained in darkness. The scene
was an artists’ wild fantasy. She longed to sketch it at dawn…hmm,
maybe twilight…no
midnight
. Tempting but with her appetite
so wetted, Satan himself could not stop her from exploring
further.

Sliding her hands along the length of each
wall, she located a knob-less door in the wainscoting. Beyond it,
she gasped.
Beautiful
. Hundreds, thousands surely, of books
lined the five…no six walls in the hexagonal room. A second and
even third layer of jam-packed shelves ran upwards to an impossibly
high ceiling. No blinking eye gazed down at her though. Instead,
diagonal rectangles of paned glass spanned the perimeter so that
the window appeared to be one long diagonal stair-step that
ascended one level with each side of the hexagon. This allowed the
bookcases to exist undisrupted on all six sides and afforded the
central reading area a unique panoramic distribution of sunlight.
Eden imagined spending hours, days lounging in the radiance,
reading the classics atop the ottoman, sketching admit the
luscious-looking throw pillows dotting the rug-ed floor, dosing in
an armchair before the fireplace.

Awe-struck, Eden abandoned any notion of
leaving the room. She bypassed a lamp table without thought and
stepped onto the rotary ladder, her bundle of sketching
paraphernalia still clutched under an arm. Excited, she climbed up
one-armed, wanting to get a glimpse of what sorts of treasures lay
in the wealth of bound volumes. Who knew when she
’
d ever have another chance to visit.

She almost reached the third level—stopping
to skim a title or two—when disaster struck. The bundle under her
free arm slipped. Had she let the items fall to the floor, she
would have been fine. They were just paper and chalk, after all.
The fall couldn
’
t have
damaged them. But, she acted on reflex. She reached to
‘save
’
them, upsetting
her balance. Eden felt herself tilt backwards in slow motion,
cognizant of impending disaster but unable to prevent it. A beat
later, she knew the ominous weightlessness of freefall.

* * *

Dom stood in the dressing room adjoining his
bedchamber, his hair still damp from the bath. Pants on but
barefoot, he was buttoning his shirt. A stifled sound seized his
attention. Like someone smothering a scream with a pillow, he
thought. His body slid from corporeal to astral on instinct.

All other senses faded to naught, honing his
mind-sight a hundredfold. He latched on to her at once. Distress
morphed her usual rich purples and violets into a blinding shock of
indigo. Dom melted his own lifeforce with hers just before he
exited the astral realm.

* * *

“Umph!” Eden landed hard on her back, atop
something soft…in comparison to the hardwood floor, anyway. She did
not remember anything on the floor near where the ladder attached
to the shelf-wall. Only temporarily winded, Eden let out a long
sigh of relief and began to test each limb for injuries. She gasped
anew when the thing she had landed on also began to stir beneath
her…enfolding her in solid, sinewy arms dusted with wiry black
hairs.

“Oh…” Realizing that she
’
d landed on a ‘who
’
and not a ‘what
’
, Eden scrambled even harder to extricate
herself. “I
’
m so sorry.
Are you—”

“
Keep
still.
” Dom ordered, shifting beneath her.

Dominic! She squirmed around to see for
herself. She’d landed on the enigmatic host himself. Could her luck
get any worse? Or better…she did not yet know which category to
file their latest encounter under.

He made some adjustments to his position,
removing her hindquarters from his groin. Plop! Her bottom slid
ungracefully to the floor. He moved again, detangling their arms,
flipping her forgotten hem down. She was able for the first time to
turn fully around. The bun atop her crown pick that instant to
crumble and unleash a cascade of hair over her face, but not before
she caught a glimpse of his gapping shirt and lack of
spectacles.

A mangled noise escaped her throat at what
she saw, sickening patches of ruined olive flesh and scar tissue
marred his chest and extended above his collarbone. Just like in
her hallucinations…only, the damage was done to his back and
shoulder blades. It couldn
’
t be…real, could it? What happened? Who could have
possibly done such a thing to him? Annoyed at having her view
obstructed, Eden shoved at the blond mass, but in the few seconds
it took to dislodge her hair he finished buttoning his shirt.
Single-minded, she scooped forward, hands outstretched.