Moonless (2 page)

2

The Weeping House

Mother took to bed, ill, at the conclusion of the concert. Alexia sat in Father’s shadow during dinner and tried to ignore the weight of countless eyes, her stomach twisted tight. Any time she boldly lifted her gaze, heads turned away.

She hated their stares. More than that, she hated the whispered conversations. Father had been wise to keep her isolated on their own estate—where she yearned to be now. If only Aunt Sarah could have joined them! Sarah would not tolerate this veiled scorn.

Alexia kept her shoulders back and head high until the meal’s conclusion, and while Father was occupied with other gentlemen in the dining room, she escaped, ignoring the chorus of gossiping women at her back. She eased into her “guest chamber” bed with a novel and buried herself in the script. Exhausted from their travels and ordeals, she yawned and rested her head on the pillow, fading into a dream.

Vacant eyes. Blood. A screaming horse. A cloaked man . . .

Alexia leapt out of bed, gasping. Her book clattered to the floor. The nightmare burned in her mind, those blue eyes . . .

It was a dream. Nothing but a dream.

Disgusted with herself, she climbed out of bed to retrieve her book. She turned to douse the candle she’d left burning, and froze. Glancing out the corner of her eye, she straightened up.

Movement. Was someone in her room?

She turned.

A framed portrait hung opposite her. Two brass roses met at the base of its circular surface, and at the center stood a young woman with dark curls, jade eyes, gleaming skin, and pert pink lips.

Very lovely. And then she noticed the candle flickering behind the girl.

Alexia twisted. The candle’s flame danced behind her.

She looked back at the frame—no—mirror. The enthralling girl studied her with a confused frown. She stepped toward the glass, trembling as she lifted a hand. The girl on the other side reached toward her with shaking fingers.

“Am I dreaming?” She watched the double’s lips move, frightened the image
would
respond. Somewhere beneath the glamorous layers hid the child who turned sixteen a month ago, the young woman whose father hid her away because of an unsightly
exterior, the girl who spent the better part of her life in books.

“Impossible!” The word fell simultaneously from both their lips. She lifted her trembling hands, the lovely reflection’s hands, slim and shapely. Running her fingers over the voluptuous curve of hips, she swallowed. “Not possible!”

And yet she couldn’t deny what the mirror told her. Somehow she’d been transformed. That, or she’d lost her mind.

A whisper of sound pulled her reluctantly from the glass. She strained to interpret it. Crying?

Yes, weeping.

Desperate and broken, the sound was barely audible but distinctly feminine, echoing from some forlorn corner of the estate. She shook her head and turned away, but the whimper filled her heart with guilty pinpricks, beautiful in its defeat. She ached for the child.

Rupert’s story?

No.

A prank. That had to be it. Ru stashed Abby away somewhere to imitate the trapped spirit. Their parents would be so heavy from the festivities and alcohol they’d sleep solid until morning roused them to hunt.

Smart, Ru. Smart.

She’d let him have his hoax, and then she’d give him a good scare in return. No point prolonging Abby’s misery.

Pulling on a dressing gown, she tucked her hair back, retrieved the candle, and aimed for the door. She gave the mirror a last wary glance before slipping out.

Hundreds of empty portraits bid her unwelcome in the hall. A man stood at his wife’s side holding her hand, but in the dark she could see he squeezed mercilessly at the back of her neck. Another canvas flaunted two sisters on a set of swings, the cool glint of their flat silver eyes, smiles malicious. Empty things. She hated empty things: pictures without a soul, statues wrought in tragedy . . .

She shuddered.

Not tonight. She wouldn’t entertain those fears now. She had a prankster to put down!

Starlight glazed the parlor as she descended to the first floor and through the hall to the blackened kitchens. The cry strengthened to a wail, broken and wretched. How could the rest of the house sleep through such a desperate overture?

She turned down a servant’s hall and halted at an alcove. The wail echoed about her, as though she could cast her eyes about and find the child standing there.

A window glimmered against her candle. An empty chair sat beside crumbling mortar and exposed brick. Before her hung a crimson tapestry of a knight driving his lance through the heart of a whitened maiden. She reached for the fabric.

It rippled.             

Wind?

She slid a hand around the edges and cool air tickled her palm. Pulling back the thick material, she found a door that came to her chest. No handle. Only a keyhole. Crouching forward, she pressed against the barrier. It moved.

The sobs stopped.

She froze.

An intake of breath resonated. Silence.

She shoved the door wide. Whitewashed walls closed off a narrow space whose apex reached far above her head in the darkness, no windows. Straw glimmered in the candlelight, covering the circular floor.

Alexia filled her lungs with air and forced her thundering heart to slow. There were no such things as restless spirits. Someone had been crying, and she would prove it.

With steady hands, she pressed the walls, searching for an alternate exit. Another draft lifted the ends of her hair.

She knelt in the straw, slowly brushing a hand from left to right until a cool breeze hit her palm. She cleared away the straw to reveal a handleless trap door.

This went well beyond Rupert’s ability to devise. She could return to bed now and pretend she’d not heard the frantic summons . . . but these irrational fears would haunt her slumber and seed an insurmountable terror of the supernatural. She exhaled, closing her eyes. There was a rational explanation for all this.

Returning to the kitchen, she sought a lever to pry up the door and found a ladle. Back in the little chamber, it worked perfectly for lifting the trap door.

Wooden stairs waited below. Cool air washed up from the darkness, sending gooseflesh up her arms. The slatted steps welcomed her trembling candle’s glow. Setting it aside, she gathered up her thin skirt, took a deep breath and stepped through.

The stair supported her meager weight as if made of stone, cold and raw beneath her bare feet. As she descended, cobwebs swayed vindictively to either side.

But that’s not what stopped her. No.

She gasped and reached for the candle.

3

Blood Red

A body dangled from the rafters, several inches above the dirt floor.

Alexia’s scream froze in her throat.

Soft honeydew tresses spilled loosely over thin shoulders, the child’s eyes heavily-lashed and downturned. Her cheeks were blotched, wide, and white, contrasting with vibrant crimson lips. Scarlet skirts hung about the girl, like the bleeding petals of a rose, still as death.

Alexia swallowed. A child. She couldn’t be more than thirteen. Great wide irons looped her wrists, cutting wicked lines in the little one’s skin.

It wasn’t right. Disgust bubbled through her chest. She covered her mouth and hurried down the steps, anxious to rescue the body, or at least lay it to rest.

The girl’s eyes turned up. Brown, chocolate, swirling.

Alexia tumbled back. She thunked into the stairs and landed on her rump. Hard. She sucked in a breath. The little face watched her, expressionless, innocent, beautiful. Alexia’s stomach twisted. No one should be that perfect—not even in death.

The child’s blood-red lips curled back over canines, her brows lowering. “Have you come to rescue me?”

The malice echoed in Alexia’s head, like scraping fingernails across her brain. She gripped the wood beneath her. The child bowed her head, glaring from beneath her brows.

“Who—what are you?” Alexia held herself perfectly still.

A jingle resounded about the cellar as the “ghost” jerked her irons free from the anchoring beam and landed on the ground with catlike grace. Sawdust drifted down from the rafters like snowflakes.

Alexia pushed up onto her shaking legs. “A-are you the girl who hung herself?”

Chains dangled at the child’s sides as she crouched, coiled to pounce. “Run.”

“No.” Alexia shook from head to toe. “If I am going to have a fate worse than death, I will take it right here.”

The girl’s eyebrows shot up. She straightened, her muscles loosening, head cocking. “You are not afraid of me?”

Alexia swallowed.
Show no fear in the face of the beast
, Father’s voice echoed in her head—his warning should she encounter a predator while wandering their estate grounds. She squared her shoulders. “Should I be?”

Bright red lips pulled back in a snarl. “Yes.”

Dread flooded through her. “Oh, all right.”

The child neared. Perfect little fingers lifted to one of Alexia’s dark curls. The girl’s head tilted as she studied the spiral and her eyes bored into Alexia. “It has been ages since I met another of our kind.”

Alexia fell back, taking her hair with her. “W-what?”

The girl’s grin widened. “Who are you?”

“I asked you first.”

Her glare returned, nostrils flaring, teeth gritted. “Bellezza.”

Alexia brushed the hair away from her face with a trembling hand. “I am Alexia.”

One eye twitched, half a smile forming. “And
what
are you?”

Alexia’s pulse spiked. “Beg your pardon?”

A wicked sneer twisted Bellezza’s face. “You may beg for many things.” Her eyes narrowed. “Death, revenge, mercy.” Her golden curls shook. “But never ask for pardon.”

Distant floorboards moaned.

Bellezza turned. “Have you brought others?” She took a deep whiff of the air, eyes closing. Her chest swelled, wind respiring about her form and lifting her honeysuckle curls. The sneer returned. “He would try to stop me.”

A tremor rattled down Alexia’s spine. Her knees failed and she staggered backward, landing against a beam.

“Shall we go meet him?” The charming child batted her eyes. “The draft down here is something repulsive, and the bugs . . .” She flipped an eight-legger from Alexia’s shoulder. “Besides, I have something you’re dying to see.” And she flitted up the steps, dousing the candle.

Alexia’s heart thundered as she resurfaced in the straw-strewn chamber. Bellezza was gone, the chest-high door spilling starlight into the secret room. The girl’s chains echoed from the kitchen.

Alexia sprinted after.

Bellezza’s fetters jingled out into the hall just ahead of her, muffled by the walls between them. The child’s footfalls stopped. Hushed voices . . .

A sickening crunch.

A gasp.

Thud.

She rounded into the entryway, out of breath.

A body lay on the floor. Bellezza knelt over it. A cloaked stranger loomed above the child, gathering her chains. He looked up.

Blue eyes . . .

Alexia stumbled backward into the hall. The stranger from earlier! That irresistible caller whose eyes harbored such an impossible color—the subject of her perpetual nightmare!

She swallowed, slowing her heart. A breeze wafted past, stinging her nose with a sweet metallic smell. She chanced another look.

Little Bellezza huddled over the motionless body at his feet—as far as her captor would allow. Her head turned up, eyes meeting Alexia’s. She giggled wickedly. Her laugh caught in a sob. She screamed, and whirled on the stranger. “Why would you kill him?”

The intruder pulled her back violently. Her form landed squarely against his, silenced by the motion. She recoiled, struggling to break free, but he threw her soundly over one shoulder and strode out of the building.

Alexia slid into the entry, trembling.

Starlight raked across the silvery hair and glassy eyes of the motionless man on the floor. She knelt beside him. A ladle speared Baron Galedrew’s heart through, dark liquid seeping down his nightshirt and onto the wood. His wide eyes stared emptily after his murderer.

Alexia gasped and covered her mouth.

Outside the door, murky clouds hid the sky. Hedges made a dark barrack of the drive. Golden-haired Bellezza lay across the neck of a stomping grey horse, her captor holding her fast as he mounted behind.

The stallion reared and the stranger’s head turned.

Alexia fumbled backward. She ducked behind the door.

Had he seen her? Would he return to finish the job and silence the lone witness? She readied to run, certain by the way her knees trembled she wouldn’t go far. She pulled herself up on the door and yelped.

Dark prints smudged the frame. She turned her wet palms up.

A terrified cry retched from her throat.

The horse shrieked and lurched away. The peal of hooves resounded about her as the burdened beast vanished down the lane, a second one joining them in the trees.

Blood. It stained the floor and her fingers. She tried to rub it off. It appeared in splotches across her nightgown. Bile burned in her throat.

Pounding rumbled above, feet on the upper floors.

Alexia gagged and vomited as she landed against the floor, uncertain whether her face felt wet from tears or the blood which glistened everywhere.

A man knelt suddenly next to her, eyes large. A servant.

“Alexia?” Father’s voice boomed down the stairs, pulling her attention to the confused babble of startled gentry. She tried to respond, but her tongue stuck sickly to the roof of her mouth. He raced into the hall, several other men following him. Rupert surfaced in the crowd and pushed forward, gawking.

She ripped her eyes away.

“What happened?” Lord Dougal demanded. “Girl, tell us!”

“Can you not see she is terrified?” Father shouted.

Faces continued to trickle in but all she could see was Galedrew’s empty stare, barren of life.