Without even realizing what I was doing, I grabbed Cormack’s hand in mine. Had he been human, my grip would have broken every bone in his hand.
The front door was broken in and it hung skewed on the hinges. The grand entrance showed obvious signs of squatters, broken bottles, newspapers, stray socks lay scattered across the cracked and dusted floor. A mirror hung on one wall and it had been broken, a spiders-web of seven years bad luck.
My body shook violently with fear and the numbers rattled off in my head, faster than I would have been able to say out loud. I looked at Cormack. It was obvious he was trying to look brave and unnerved but I saw his underlying emotions. Fear and nervousness. It terrified me to think why Cormack would be afraid. He was already dead. What could Cole do to him?
He met my eyes briefly and we both seemed to understand what the other was thinking. It was me Cole wanted to see.
“Cole?” I said aloud, my voice seeming to fall flat in the vast expanses of the mansion. “I’m here.”
We both listened with expectancy, straining to pick up on the faintest of noises. Our ears fell only on silence.
I pulled Cormack down a hallway that looked as if it stretched on and on for miles. We checked every door. With each one, I felt afraid my heart might explode with my fear as it was opened, only to reveal an empty room. I knew that if Cole was here he would have heard us the moment we walked through the door. The floor gave us away as it creaked and moaned under our weight.
Finding nothing down the hall, we went up a flight of stairs and continued checking doors. At one point we had to turn around and go back down when we found a section of the house that had given way, the hallway dropping down into another room below.
I didn’t like this game of hide-and-seek. The shadows seemed to move and dance but neither I nor Cormack saw or heard anything actually move. I wasn’t sure how much more of it my nerves could take.
The bottom floor of the house was completely empty. We moved onto the last section of the house, the upper south wing. It was behind the fourth door we found her.
Emily was standing at the window, looking outside toward the rear of the house, her back turned to us. She didn’t turn to look at us when the door noisily opened.
“Emily?” I whispered hoarsely.
When she still did not turn around I stepped hesitantly into the room, Cormack followed me. My eyes darted nervously around, watching for any signs that Cole was in the room with her.
“Emily,” I whispered as I got closer to her. “We’ve got to get out of here. Don’t you realize what is going on?”
I placed a hand on her shoulder and Emily whipped her head around to look at me. I nearly didn’t recognize the woman who looked into my face.
Emily’s normally tan skin was pale and lifeless looking, her eyes shallow and dark. The skin of her lips was dried and cracked. But it was her eyes that frightened me most. They were bloodshot and fierce, hatred spewing out of them. They were the eyes of a crazed woman.
“You’re too late, Jessica,” she said with malice in her voice. “Cole will be mine forever now. I’ve already taken that step. You can’t have him now.”
I didn’t understand what she was talking about.
“Jessica,” Cormack whispered as he came to my side and my eyes followed his.
I hadn’t noticed the knife in Emily’s hand. Or the blood that dripped from it and her wrists onto the floor.
“You’ve got your own beautiful man, you can’t have mine. He’s mine, no matter what he says,” Emily said as she turned her body toward me, the knife held tightly in her fist. Her eyes looked wrong, unfocused and confused. “We’re going to be together forever in the afterlife.”
“Something’s wrong with her,” Cormack said.
“He’s manipulated her,” I said quietly, very aware of the sharp point of that knife. “Cole made me think things that weren’t real.”
“He’s done nothing to me!” Emily shrieked, but her tone didn’t sound so sure. “We’re going to be together. I’ll finally have what you and Alex have.” Her tone was losing confidence with every word she spoke, her voice breaking.
Cormack took a step forward, obviously not afraid of the damage the knife could do. He held Emily’s gaze steadily as he approached her. She looked at him doubtfully but did not stop him as he brought his hand up to her temple.
Emily closed her eyes as he did, her brow furrowing as they stood connected for several seconds. She suddenly took several gasping breaths, making me jump violently. When she opened her eyes again, they looked clear and focused. Tears streamed down her face as she looked at me.
“He… I’m so sorry…,” she started to say but her eyes suddenly rolled back into hear head. Her body went instantly limp but Cormack caught her before she hit the floor.
“Well, well,” a chillingly familiar accented voice said from the doorway. “They sent the conveyor to drag me back. Did they promise you your own final judgment in return for your services?”
The world seemed very quiet as I turned where I stood to where I had heard the voice come from. Cole stood in the doorway, wearing only a pair of white cotton pants, his menacing wings in full view as they brushed the floor.
I didn’t even hear it as Cormack’s shirt shredded to pieces and his own wings burst forth.
“Two things can happen right now. The first is that he stays and your friend here bleeds to death for no reason. I don’t want her and have promised her nothing, despite what she has led herself to believe.
“Two, he leaves and gets her to a hospital and you and I can have a little chat.”
Strange feelings flooded through me as I met Cole’s eyes. I remembered all the feelings of desire for him that coursed through me as I lay dying. The way I craved for him to touch me, the way the sound of his voice made me feel alive. I knew they weren’t real, but they had felt real.
“Cormack, you have to go,” I said quietly, my eyes never leaving Cole’s flawless face.
“I promised Alex, though,” he hissed as he readjusted his hold on Emily’s body.
“Ah, Alex,” Cole said with a chuckle. “Now there is quite a problem. Taken care of for the moment but I’m sure it won’t be long before he causes me trouble again.”
My blood boiled as Cole spoke of the man I loved more than my own life. Before I even thought about what I was doing, I rushed at him. “You will not speak of him!” I screamed and slapped my hands at his chest and shoved with as much force as I possessed.
It made me sick that the haunting, familiar feeling of longing and desire flooded through me. But at the same time it felt as if I had just put my finger into an outlet, a jolt of something radiated from where my hands connected with Cole’s skin. I jerked back, feeling like my brain had been slapped. What was that?
But the most startling thing was Cole’s reaction. I was in no way strong enough to cause Cole pain but as I struck him, he jerked away from me, a terrifying hiss escaping his lips. A perfect imprint of my hands remained on his chest, his skin looking gray and decayed.
“Alex’s plea has worked well,” Cole said, his voice sounding light but his eyes burning with malice as he looked up from his chest at me. “It seems I cannot touch you.”
My brain struggled to catch up with what had just happened. Cole couldn’t touch me. He couldn’t hurt me. While I was still terrified of him, he couldn’t harm me.
“Everything’s fine, Cormack,” I said as I looked back at him for a brief moment. “Get Emily to a hospital before she bleeds to death. I didn’t come all this way after her for nothing.”
“Jessica, I can’t,” he started to argue.
“Now!” I screamed at him, my nerves starting to crack. “Get her out of here!”
He gave me a serious look, going back and forth between me and Cole. I thought I heard a low growl escape his chest before he balled Emily up in his arms and leapt straight out the window.
Now alone, I turned my attention back to Cole. I wanted to run, I
wanted to scream. I wanted to beat Cole until he bled and begged me to stop. But I couldn’t do any of those things right now. I could only stare back into those cold, black eyes.
“It is a pity really. She is quite a beautiful creature. It would be a waste if she were to die,” Cole said as he never broke his probing stare. “She was not the one I wanted and still want though.”
“How can you possibly still be hopeful?” I asked, my voice surprisingly calm. “After everything that has happened?”
“Your beloved Alex said once, that I had no idea what real love is. He was wrong. I think you know that.”
I didn’t want to admit it but Cole was right. I did know that Cole was capable of real love. The way he loved though had gotten twisted into obsession and had led to dozens of women’s murders.
“But you don’t love me,” I whispered. “I’m not her.”
“No, you’re not,” Cole said, the corner of his lip twitching, itching to crack a smile.
I had been so focused on the more-than-man before me, I did not notice at first how the walls were patching themselves together, how the glass grew in the window frames, how the dusted floor became polished again. When our eye contact finally broke, my mind blanked momentarily in surprise at the difference there was from just a few moments ago.
The room we were in was no longer in ruin. It was instead a lavishly decorated bedroom, a massive four poster bed sitting in the middle. A small crystal chandelier hung from the ceiling. Paintings and tapestries hung from the walls.
I marveled at the eighteenth century décor around me. It was a few moments before I realized what I was seeing meant.
“Get out of my head!” I screamed, the force of it surprising me.
“I may not be able to touch you but I can still make you see what I wish,” Cole said as he took a step toward me, that smile tugging on his lips again. “Will you walk with me Jessica? See my home as it once was? The way it was when I should have inherited it?”
My initial instinct was to scream at him again and tell him to go back to hell. The feeling of being on a heavy drug seeped into my system, bringing with it all sorts of horrid memories. But I didn’t think Cole could harm me. I wouldn’t let him get that deep into my mind. I wouldn’t allow him to make me want to hurt myself again. And besides, I needed to get on his good side, if he had one, and convince him to go back to the world of the dead where he belonged.
In answer to his request, I stepped out into the hallway with him. I tried to ignore the satisfied smile on Cole’s face.
“I told you once of my family’s wealth,” Cole said as he led me down the hall. “You have no idea. In the late seventeen hundreds, my family was one of the most influential this side of England. Second only to the Anthony’s.”
I understood now why the woman from Cole’s letters had agreed to marry James Anthony. His family was still worth more than Cole’s.
“All of this should have been mine. My father was well past his expiration date and I was the only child. My mother had internal problems; she couldn’t have any more children. I was robbed of all of this.”
We wandered into a library. Cherry wood shelves lined the walls, from floor to ceiling. Books were crammed onto them, their spines looking old and worn. I recognized some of the titles, knowing they most have been first edition copies, and very valuable in today’s world. Other books were written in languages I didn’t even recognize.
From the library we took a set of stairs to the ground floor. A few doors down Cole opened one.
This room looked like a mini version of the library. Shelves and books lined the walls but a massive desk dominated the middle of the room. Dark tapestries gave the room a sinister but sophisticated look.
“This was my father’s office,” Cole said as he approached the desk, running his fingers over a large leather volume. “This is where he laid out his plans and built his empire. I spent many hours in this room, learning of his ways that I would never be given the chance to use.”
I wasn’t sure I wanted to know about what Cole kept hinting at. Everything about Cole was terrifying; I didn’t need any more added to it.
We wandered down the hall further and entered a massive kitchen.
“I avoided this room like the plague,” Cole reminisced. “I could not cook to save my life. I never had a desire however. That was what the servants were for. It was in this room that I made love for the first time though. I can’t say it is all bad memories coming from this kitchen.”
My skin crawled as Cole shared this with me. Too much information.
He then led me to a grand ballroom, its wooden floors stretching on and on. The walls were a bright white, the light streaming in through the windows dancing off the massive chandelier dangling from the ceiling. Our footsteps echoed softly off the walls.
“The king and queen were entertained in these walls. My father was close friends with the king himself.”
I didn’t want to think about all the women Cole had probably met and seduced within these walls.
He then led me down another hall and up a flight of stairs. We were now close to where the hallway had collapsed into the first floor. Just before we got to where I knew the spot was, Cole opened a door and indicated for me to enter.
“And this was my room,” he said quietly, his voice too close behind me for comfort.
The room we entered was as grandiose as any other we had been in. Everything was beautiful and perfect. Another massive bed dominated the room, covered in a deep red quilt. The rest of the room was decorated to match.
I felt my blood pool in my feet though when several frames on one wall caught my attention. At first I thought it had been a framed mirror, my own reflection looking back at me. Then I realized: this was the other woman. But it was what was below her painting that horrified me.
More than a dozen beautiful women stared back at me, peaceful smiles on their faces. I recognized those faces. The women Cole had choked in my nightmares. The last one in the line was all too familiar. It was Emily.
I threw up on the floor, right then and there.
“Get out!” I screamed as I spit on the floor, trying to get the taste of bile out of my mouth. “Get out right now!”
My brain felt like it had been invaded by a heavy fog, swirling around so that I couldn’t think straight. I wanted it out. It felt as if the heaviest blanket that existed had been draped over me and it was suffocating me from the inside out.
“Get out of my head!” I shrieked.
It was almost as if I watched the clouds roll back, retreating from the corners of my brain. Cole pulled out. I took a gasping breath as I collapsed onto my hands and knees. They both shook as I forced myself back up to my feet.
When I looked up again the room was back in ruin and decay. The paintings still hung on the wall, all of them but Emily’s looking dusty and cracked.
“They all paid for the pain Jane caused me,” Cole’s voice said malevolently from behind me.
I turned to look at the dark angel behind me and nearly screamed when I saw him.
Apparently Cole had been manipulating my thoughts from the moment I first laid eyes on him when Cormack and I had arrived.
Cole’s eyes were blacker than I thought it was possible for the color to be. The veins around his eyes swelled, but instead of looking red or bluish from blood, they looked black, like ink ran through Cole’s veins. The rest of Cole’s body was terrifying. All of his skin looked as if it had shrunk just slightly, clinging too tight and stretched on his skin. His once glorious and perfect wings were now a mockery of what they had been. His feathers looked skewed and thin. It looked as if he had lost nearly half of them.
“And now you see me as I truly have become,” he said evenly, his eyes burning with intensity.
Cole finally looked like the monster he was.
“So that was her name? Jane?” Maybe it was a defense mechanism, my need to change the subject to something slightly less terrifying. I was afraid
I might pass out if I didn’t. I would have thrown up if I hadn’t already just done that. My eyes dropped from Cole, resting on the floor, just in front of his feet.
Cole stepped around me and approached the painting of her. “Yes, Jane was her name. My Dearest. We were in a relationship for six years, if you can call what we had a relationship.”
“What happened?” I asked hesitantly as I looked at the woman who was so hauntingly similar to myself. “Did you ever see her again after the last of the letters?”
“Once,” Cole said as he stroked a finger down the frame of the painting. “I begged her to allow me to see my son. She tried to deny that he was mine, but she knew. He looked nothing like James. He had my eyes, my hair, my build. I think most people suspected he was my son, even Jane’s father.
“She met me in the next town over, where we would be less recognized. William was five-years-old. It was like looking at a painting of myself when I was younger. Jane, she could hardly look at me. She knew what she had done, how she had forsaken me. After that brief meeting I never saw her or my son again.”
“It was wrong of her to keep him away from you,” I said, actually feeling sorry for Cole.
“I sent him a gift, every year on his birthday. I have no idea if he ever received them, if Jane ever allowed them to get to William.”
We were silent for a few moments, both staring at her portrait.
“Why did you leave me the letters, Cole?” I finally asked, my voice very small.
He was quiet for a while, I wondered for a brief moment if he had even heard me. Finally he turned to me, his eyes looking empty. “I see two people when I look at you, Jessica. On the one hand I see you, the woman who’s lived through hell her entire life but is still sane, still able to cope and function. But on the other hand, how can I not see Jane?
“It’s illogical and obviously ridiculous, but I wanted to wake something up in her. To make her remember why she loved me, the way I made her feel. And maybe I thought I could draw that out in you.” He turned and looked back at her face, the skin he had known so well for so long. The woman he had longed for for centuries.