The Taking (19 page)

Read The Taking Online

Authors: Erin McCarthy

He was going to protect Regan from his own fate regardless of what it cost him.
There was no light. No sound except for the staccato of Felix’s breathing and the rustle of his clothing as he shifted occasionally.
He had thought he had been set on a stool when he had arrived, yet there was nothing beneath him, no furniture, no ground, no sense of the bottom, the top, the walls, or anything other than an infinity of darkness. Plato’s Myth of the Cave melded with Dante’s Inferno, a vast empty chasm of quiet, shadows, and the occasional lick of the flame of pain.
Felix had no concept of how long he had been suspended in nothing... whether a day or a month or a year he couldn’t say, only that he was slowly and increasingly going mad, like Camille had in the torture of her grief, every second an agonizing suspension of time, every moment endless in its nothingness.
There was no food, yet he wasn’t hungry. No water, never thirsty. He had no need to relieve himself and no sexual desire, a strange physical lethargy coupled with acute discomfort stretching each minute that much longer. He was aware of every inch of his body as a heavy, crushing burden, simply struggling to hold himself upright as weighty as balancing a tree trunk on his shoulders for months on end. No longer attempting to move, he hung, suspended, like a ham in the slaughterhouse, swaying, blood trickling down his sweaty backfrom the latest slash of pain.
His thoughts moved quickly, like cockroaches scrambling across his brain, purposeful and startling in their approach. They didn’t belong to him, and came and went as they pleased, scattering with the unexpected glare of lacerating agony. The pain was like being thrust into the heat and light of the sun after the darkness, pricking and burning, slashing and tearing, sometimes here, sometimes there, never in the same place twice, the pattern so random as to not be a pattern at all, maddening in its anticipation.
The fear intertwined with the pain, which kicked the numbness with the force of a boot heel, bringing back the fear, which preceded the pain, until there was nothing but numb, fear, pain, the trio that confirmed Felix still in fact lived.
He wished, when his mind was not screaming, for death. If it were bestowed upon him, he would embrace it, caress it, make love to it as a groom does his bride. Without hesitation he wouldfall into it, accept the oblivion, the freedom of a true nothingness.
His hands had found their way to his neck, had tried to choke off his life breath, to end the infernal agony, but they didn’t have the strength to complete the task, not even enough to produce the bliss of unconsciousness.
It simply went on and on and on... until it didn’t.
Felix blinked and he was in the parlor of his own house, sitting on the sofa, body still stiff and wracked with the aftereffects of pain, but clean and whole.
Alcroft stood infrontof him in evening clothes. “You’re released from your punishment. But if you ever touch another woman I have chosen as my own, it will be much, much worse. Ponder that, slave.”
Felix did.
Chapter Ten
Chris paused in front of Regan’s house. “Are you okay being here alone?”
She shrugged with an aplomb she wasn’t sure she felt. “Sure. I’m fine. I do love this house, you know. It’s been a ten-year dream to live in it, and I’m not going to let a ghost scare me.”
So she said. Her racing heart didn’t seem to get the instant message from her brain.
He looked unconvinced, too. “Hey, you have a package on your doorstep.”
Regan glanced down and saw the bubble mailer propped against her front door. “Geez, I think I need to talk to the mailman about that. It’s a miracle it didn’t get stolen.”
She picked it up and winced. “It’s from Beau.”
“The bastard. Maybe it would have been better if it had been stolen. What is it? A knife for you to shove in your back?”
Ripping open the packaging, she slid the interior box out and frowned at it. “It’s a box of chocolates. And a note that says, ‘I love you.’”
“Lame. Like a fifty-dollar gift is going to make you change your mind.”
“Especially considering he just agreed to the divorce. My lawyer said this afternoon it will be official, all filed and done.” Regan shoved the gold foil box back in the mailing envelope. “I would say it’s meant to be a truce gesture, but that doesn’t strike me as something Beau would do.”
“Hardly. But who cares about him? Just eat the chocolates and burn the note. So, are you going to call the voodoo guy to celebrate your divorce going through? And does he have a name, by the way? I’m tired of calling him voodoo dude.”
“His name is Felix.” Regan unlocked her front door, juggling the envelope under her arm. “And no, I’m not going to call him. What the hell would I say? Hi, I do want you?”
“That seemed to be your plan back there over dinner.” Chris leaned against the wall and lit a cigarette. Taking a deep drag, he said, “Regan, something strange is going on here in this house.”
“I thought you quit smoking,” she told him.
“I did. This is just a vacation from quitting. And don’t avoid the subject.”
“What am I supposed to say?” Regan shoved the door open and turned to him, hand still on the knob. “Yes, something strange is going on. Is it paranormal activity? Is it me, drinking too much wine? Being completely stressed out over my divorce? I don’t know. But I’ll go crazy if I just sit around thinking and freaking out about it”
“I’m just worried about you. Remember that movie
Poltergeist?
What if they’re punching a hole into this world with the intention of taking you back to theirs?”
Great. Just one more thing she needed to worry about, being sucked into her walk-in closet and disappearing into the world of the dead. “Good night. I’m going to bed. I love you.” She kissed him on the cheek.
“Love you, too.” Chris blew smoke to his right. “Call me if you need me. Or if you have hot sex and you want to tell me all the juicy details.”
“When have I ever given you details of my sex life?”
“When have you ever had sex with a voodoo practitioner? There’s a time to start everything.”
“True that.” Regan smiled and started to walk into the house. “Bye, sweetheart.”
“Bye, babe. Talk to you later.”
Regan paused, glancing up and down the street. She had the unmistakable sensation of eyes on her, watching.
“What?” Chris asked, following her stare curiously.
There was only a man walking his dog a few doors up and he wasn’t even looking in their direction. Looking up at the balconies across the street, Regan saw they were all empty. “Nothing.”
Just paranoia, her new best friend. She closed and locked the door and went up the stairs, determined not to turn on every single light she encountered. The moonlight was streaming through the entryway windows, illuminating her ascent. She didn’t want to be afraid of her house. She wanted to believe that Camille was reaching out to her. Maybe the dead woman just wanted someone to acknowledge what she had suffered in her young life. Maybe she wanted to comfort Regan or at least share in their mutual pain of having lost a sister.
Or maybe Camille was simply what people referred to as an imprint—a ghost who was trapped in the house reliving her last days on earth over and over. There was no purpose to an imprint, they weren’t even aware of what they were doing.
Yet somehow she knew that wasn’t what Camille was. The monkey on the bed, the image behind her in the doorway, the rash ... those weren’t repetitive flashes, they were intentional actions.
Heading to her room, Regan decided to take the chocolates with her. She would watch a little bit of TV now that she had hooked up her flat-screen, and eat the candy in bed. That seemed like a perfect way to thumb her nose at Beau’s gift. He would be appalled at the idea of eating messy melting chocolate in bed. Maybe she would even smear a little on what would have been his pillowcase, just because she could.
Childish, maybe. But she had earned her petty defiance.
Ten minutes later she was in her pajamas, a romantic comedy playing on the DVR, the box of chocolates open in front of her, a glass of red wine on the nightstand. She was debating a cream-filled versus a cherry-covered dark chocolate when she decided she needed to rest her eyes for just a second. Dinner had given her a full stomach and the sleepless nights were definitely catching up with her.
The remote sliding out of her hand, she fell asleep.
Camille filled the crystal flute with water and set it on the chest of drawers. Her parents’ old room was dark, the only light that of the moon streaming through the French doors. She was in her shift, straining to see the parchment paper in front of her as she wrote in bold, large letters “COURAGE” in dragon’s blood ink. Rolling the paper and then dipping it into the glass, she watched the liquid darken, the ink washing off the paper to swirl into the water.
The blood of her enemies, that’s what it was, everyone who had betrayed her, who had spoken out against her, the very rules and conventions of society themselves, and her biggest foe of all—disease. She concentrated on the water, on focusing all her fears into that glass, all the things, people, emotions that had ruined her life.
She would ruin them in return. Make them powerless by making them a part of her. She would triumph in the ultimate victory, that of death.
Picking up the glass, Camille drank her bloody
courage.
Two swallows and it was gone, inside her, flowing throughout her whole body.
She stepped over to the French doors and flung them open, pushing the doorstops with her bare feet to force the doors to stay. Feeling the power already, she climbed onto the wrought iron railing of her balcony and perched there, arms flung wide.
The breeze kicked up her hair, her shift, and she closed her eyes, her head sinking back. The night, the moon, the other world kissed against her cheeks, and she laughed, embracing it.
Soon she would be with her family again and she wouldn’t be alone in this big empty house anymore.

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