“Homosexuality is against the law of nature.”
Tony felt his lip curl. “You're one to talk; you're a thing in a basement!”
“I am a power!”
“Yeah, big power. So you've killed a few . . . dozen people.” He kicked at the water. “You're still stuck in a flooded fucking basement.”
Lee shuddered and his nose started to bleed.
“Okay, I'm sorry.” Jerking away from the pillar, Tony took a step toward Lee. “I'm sure it's a very nice basement.”
“Enough.”
“Right.”
“Or I may just kill him now.” The shudders grew more violent.
Would another step closer make it better or worse? “I said I was sorry.”
“You'll consider my offer?”
“So
make
an offer.”
“I want you to join me.”
“Say what?”
“With your power added to ours, we could be free.”
Ours? Thing
s
in the basement? Plural? Listening for a second presence, Tony remembered the mirror. He glanced down, adjusted it to pick up Lee's reflection, saw movement to the actor's leftâlooked up at a blank fieldstone wallâlooked down, made another adjustment, and saw something looking back.
Sort of.
The wall was in constant movement. Roiling. A description he honestly thought he'd never use. Features appeared and disappeared, pushing out from the stone and reabsorbing a moment later. Eyes. Nose. Mouth. It was as if someone with a scary sense of proportion had animated one of those abstract paintings Henry liked so muchâwhere the proportions were already a little frightening.
“You're very quiet.”
“Just a little surprised,” Tony admitted. When it spoke, the features appeared in the standard arrangement. The mouth even moved although Lee still did the actual talking. Tony couldn't shake the feeling he'd seen the face before.
“Why surprised? I've been helping you. The journal was a tad . . . convenient, wasn't it? I left it there in the library for you.”
He
had
seen the face before. He'd seen it every day they'd been on location hanging against the red-flocked wallpaper over the main stairs.
“Creighton Caulfield?” Seemed Graham Brummel's theory that Caulfield was the template for the thing's personality came up just a bit short.
On the wall, brows connected to nothing in particular drew in as Lee said, “You've only just figured that out?”
“Excuse me for being distracted by being trapped in a haunted house with dead peopleâincluding,” he added, “a few that weren't dead when the doors closed!” He waved the lantern for emphasis since if he moved his other hand, he'd lose the reflection in the mirror.
Caulfield looked a little confused. “Well, yes, but . . .” “So I'm thinking that if you want me to join you, you'd better assume I know nothing and make with the backstory.”
The face on the wall couldn't sigh, but Lee could. “Did you even
read
the journal?”
Tony actually felt his ears grow warm and the water lapped a little higher on his calves as he shuffled his feet. “A friend's reading it.”
“A friend?”
“I'll get to it! I just haven't had time.”
“I left it for you.”
“So you said.” Best defense, good offense. “I'm finding that hard to believe since you stuffed it behind that mirror almost a hundred years ago.”
“Fine.” Lee and the reflection of Caulfield in the tiny mirror snortedâalthough only Lee made the actual noise. “I left it there for someone
like
you. Someone like me.”
“I'm nothing like you!”
“You thought you were the first?”
“The first what?”
“Heir to ancient power.”
And the anvil dropped.
Fifteen
“SO YOU'RE
a wizard?”
Lee drew himself up to his full height, the movement echoed by an upward surge of the features roiling on the wall. “I am nothing so tawdry!”
“But you said . . .”
“I did not.”
A quick glance down into the mirror showed that Caulfield's reflection looked as offended as Lee did. Tony, who'd been forced to embrace his inner wizard in a big way over the last few hours, tried not to feel insulted. “Whatever. My bad.” Although he didn't try too hard.
“Your what?”
“Just forget it.” Tony's left hand ached, the weight of the lantern pulling his fingers away from his palm and, in turn, his lower arm away from his upper. Probably a good thing in both cases, but the pain was distracting. Unfortunately, if he wanted to keep an eye on the thing Caulfield had become, he couldn't switch the lantern to his other hand as he very much doubted his left hand had recovered enough to manipulate anything as small as Mason's touch-up mirror. “So if you're not a wizard, what are you?”
“We are Arogoth!”
Tony closed his teeth on his initial reaction to the pompous declamationâ
Dude, you sound like an alt-rock cover band
âbut the snicker slipped out before he could stop it, before he could remind himself of what the consequences would likely be. And who'd suffer them.
Lee went to his knees in the water, features twisted in pain, mouth open in a silent scream.
“I'm sorry!” He surged forward and, as the collection of powers trapped in the wall surged out toward him, realized that touching the darkness would be a really bad idea. Only one step away from the pillar, he jerked to a stop. Lee remained on his knees, writhing. In the mirror, Caulfield's face had disappeared from the roiling darkness leaving nothing but threat. “I said I was sorry, damn it! Leave him alone!”
“Do not mock me!”
Bright side; if Caulfield wanted to use Lee's voice, he had to ease up on the punishment. Ease up. Not stop. It was pretty fucking amazing how much punishment the human body could take and still keep talking.
“I wasn't!” Growing frantic, Tony searched for something he could use to reach the other man without putting himself in danger of being absorbed. “I'm tired, that's all!” There was nothing near him but the stone pillar. And nothing on the stone pillar but a nail about head height.
Yes.
Twisting around, he looped the lantern's wire handle over the nail, spun back, and
reached
for Lee.
With his left hand. Nerves shrieked as he spread his fingers. Tony just barely stopped himself from shrieking along with them.
Fortunately, there wasn't much distance to cover. Fortunate, because although there wasn't exactly a weight limit the heavier the item the more it took out of him and Tony was running near empty. Also fortunate because Lee wasn't an eight-year-old girl and the less time he had to accelerate before impact, the better. Tony hit the water, sucking back a scream as the other man slammed into the burn on his chest. As they fell, his left arm wrapped around Lee holding the actor close.
So close he could feel Lee's heart pounding within the cage of his ribs.
So close he could smell the faint sweet iron scent of the blood dribbling from Lee's nose.
Was this what Henry felt? So intimately aware of another's life?
So desperately needing to protect it.
He lost his grip on the mirror but somehow managed to keep both their heads above water. Up close and personal, it was numbingly cold. Under the circumstances though, numbing was good. He finally folded his legs and settled Lee on his lap. Snarled, “If you kill him, you've lost your leverage.”
Lee went rigid. And not in a good way.
“If you kill him, I'll destroy you,” he continued. “I don't care who else you throw in my way. I don't care if I have to die to do it. I will take this house apart, brick by brick, and I will wipe you off the face of this Earth.”
A shudder. Then the dark head tipped back against his shoulder and green eyes focused on his face. “You mean that.”
“I do.” And he did. At that moment, he'd have thrown the world away to keep Lee safe.
How will Lee live with no world?
the more rational part of his brain wondered.
Shut up.
“Then it seems we may be able to come to an arrangement.” And just like that, with a second shudder, all evidence of pain disappeared from Lee's face. “Release me.”
There didn't seem to be any point in holding on, although it took Tony a moment to convince his arm of that. Or maybe it just hurt too much to move it. Who knew? Eventually freed, Lee bent forward and splashed a handful of water against his face, rinsing the red streaks from his mouth and chin.
“Me, I'd have left the blood.” Tony braced himself as the other man moved against his lap. “You don't know what's pissed in this water.” His bladder was giving him some definite ideas in that direction himself.
No real surprise when Lee . . . or specifically, Caulfield . . . ignored the comment. He probably knew exactly what was in the water and didn't care. It wasn't his body after all. And the bastard had borrowed it without permission.
Tony pulled his legs back out of the way as Lee stood. As Caulfield walked the body back to stand by the wall, he groped around the floor for the mirror.
“Were you planning on remaining down there?”
His fingers closed around metal and glass. “Just need a moment to catch my breath.”
“You're weakening.”
“Still got enough going to kick your ass,” he muttered as he crawled back to the pillar and used it to get to his feet. “So, what kind of an arrangement did you have in mind? You know, with the joining you and all.”
“Simple. You join me and I will release your coworkers and the object of your unnatural lust.”
“He has a name.”
“So?”
Yeah, okay. Probably didn't matter much. “I join you in the wall?” An eternity of roiling. Hard to resist.
“With you as a part of us, I will be free.”
“You said that earlier. Free how?”
“Free of this place. Free to go where we will. Free to do as I will.”
“Will some of that
doing
involve unnatural acts?” He flipped the compact open again, and rubbed the glass against his jeans. Wet denim didn't exactly help clean up the reflection.
Lee's brows drew in disapprovingly. “Not the kind you enjoy.”
“Duh. I meant that whole murder/suicide thing you've got going upstairs.”
“The whole murder/suicide thing, as you put it . . .” His lip curled. “. . . will be unnecessary. As we will be free to move from this house, I will not need to contain the dead as nourishment.”
“But there'll be dead? Dying?”
“Of course. I will gain power and we will make a place for myself.”
Caulfield seemed to be having a bit of an identity problem. Seemed like he wasn't completely merged with the original darkness. Or after being stuck in a damp basement for almost a hundred years, he'd gone completely bugfuck. Oh, wait. Odds were good that being bugfuck was what had brought Creighton Caulfield to the basement in the first place.
“Okay, if . . .” Tony stopped as Lee's face went blank. He looked down at the mirror and saw that the roiling had progressed to writhing. The darkness had become thicker, nearly obscuring the fieldstone wall completely, and Creighton Caulfield was very nearly defined as a separate presence. It almost seemed as though he'd been pushed out of the darkness by its more aggressive movement. His features actually held together as a face on a head over a body, cheeks and shoulders held a faint tint of color and . . . oh man, the old guy was naked. Obviously naked.
A quick glance over at Lee showed a similar responseâalthough less blatant given the generous coverage of a pair of wet tuxedo pants.
Response to?
A replay. Had to be. Replays fed the thing in the basement and since it was definitely reacting positively to whatever was going on, Amy and Zev must've released the head and let the cycle start up again. The memory of pain tried to force Tony's arm back up against his body, but he fought it and won.
Breathing heavily, sweat burning in the broken blisters on his chest, he studied the image in the mirror. Caulfield arched out from the wall, spine bowed, only hands and feet a part of the darkness. The position looked painful. Given Caulfield's reaction, it either wasn't, or that was part of the attraction.
It's like porn for elderly masochists. And it
would
be the gardener's replay; it's one of the long ones.
Eyes narrowed, head cocked to one side, Tony could nearly see Caulfield without the mirror. The faintest translucent image of a man bowed out from the wall; easy enough for those who didn't knowâwho didn't believeâto dismiss it as a trick of the light.
He returned to the reflection, hoping Caulfield wasn't heading for a big finish because that would put a distinct bend in his sex life for some time to come.
Unfortunately . . .
Great. Something to look forward to.
Tony sighed silently as Caulfield snapped back into the darkness and began to roil again within it. He could hear that future conversation now.
Damn, there it goes again. Is it me?
No, I was just thinking of this evil old guy I saw once . . .
Of course, if he wanted Lee to survive this, that particular problem was unlikely. A very minor bright side.
“So.” Lee's arms made a pale band across the black T-shirt as he folded them. “Have you made up your mind?”
Seemed that Caulfieldâboth on the wall and in Leeâplanned to ignore what had just happened. Worked for Tony. Forgetting would be harder, but ignoring he could do. “If I join you, then Lee and the others walk away?”