Darker Still (27 page)

“I’m sorry. I really do like you, Maggie, but you have to go home.” I moved into the hall. “Mr. Smith, I desperately need you to make sure Miss Hathorn gets home safely. She is not part of the equation.”

“Natalie,” Maggie called, “what are you—”

“And please keep her quiet,” I added.

Mr. Smith advanced to the open doorway with a look on his face that made Maggie take a step backward.

“You’ll be sorry, Natalie. I could ruin you in society.” Maggie was such a pretty girl. But ugly when angry.

“I’m not trying to be in society,” I replied. “I hope to explain one day, Maggie. I really do.”

“Don’t touch me,” Maggie hissed at Mr. Smith as he reached for her arm and exited. “I have a driver outside.”

I watched as Mr. Smith followed her anyway, to make sure of it.

It hurt to lose the only female friend my age I’d managed to gain.

Flustered, I was shaking horribly as I wiped the floor clean. But I had a task to do. Lives depended on it.

After securing every obvious door to make it seem as though I truly was trapped, I stowed a small bag with a few amenities and every piece of my jewelry—the only valuables I had—in a darkened alcove just past the exhibition room. I pulled out a small vial. Oil used in blessings. Mrs. Northe had given it to me. I took a dab onto my finger. I wanted to counter the pentagram. Its marks were gone, but anxiety still hung in the room. While I knew a pentagram could be used for a sign of luck and blessing, I couldn’t credit Maggie for knowing which direction to draw it, as the direction changed the meaning from good to ill.

And so I countered the pentagram with a small mark of the cross upon my forehead: an act of blessing and forgiveness, of cleansing, hope, renewal, and the power of the Holy Spirit. I needed angels on my side tonight, and so I called upon that sacred vow granted me as a baby, a vow I renewed now as a woman in this moment, a vow to reject the Devil.

Of course I had to go in and see Jonathon. Just one moment. We’d said good-bye earlier, but it was not enough. Not that I would ever have enough of seeing him. Even from looking at the portrait, I could tell he was in fading health. He was pale, and his fine cheekbones looked even more pronounced. The beauty that so enticed me was turning harsh.

He was loath to let me out of the embrace that I fell into, as I always did when I fell into his world.

And I was loath to let him go as I watched him brighten. Some of the pallor reversed, to my great delight, as he caressed my cheek.

“You look so lovely, too lovely,” he murmured.

“No I don’t. The lace is absurd.” I chuckled and gestured to my neckline. “You like that it’s cut low.”

He tried to offer a smile, but his flirtatious nature was fading. Only weariness remained. “Natalie, someone was here. I think it was that friend, the girl—”

“Yes, Maggie. She’s out of the way now, not a trouble. She was being foolish and…well, trying to summon you as if in a séance. She’s quite…taken with you.”

Jonathon sighed. “Even now? I’m sure I look quite the fright.”

“A ghost of yourself, but still, even the Devil can’t take the beauty out of you,” I exclaimed.

“So you are then too?” Denbury asked.

“What?”

“Taken with me?”

“Oh, helplessly,” I breathed. This compelled him to seize me and to steal one last kiss. I was addicted to them.

“Natalie,” he murmured against my cheek, “you know you don’t have to do this—”

“Too late,” I replied, “You and I are in this madness together, thick or thin. This must be done. The women of Five Points—or wherever he strikes—will bear his torment no more.”

His expression was complex, but he murmured, “God be with you.”

“And also with you,” I replied, as in my Lutheran liturgy, a comforting structure amid the events that had torn our realities apart. “And he will be. He’s on our side, you know,” I replied with false bravado. Our eyes were honest; we each knew how terrified we were.

“I’ll be on guard, ready to drag him in here forever,” he growled. “I beg you to be careful. If you are in too much danger, leave. We will find another way.”

I moved to the edge of the frame, hand outstretched toward my body in the museum.

“Natalie, look at me.”

I turned.

“Swear you’ll abandon this course if you’re in grave danger.”

“I swear,” I said to assuage him. “I love you,” I murmured, wanting
love
to be the last thing we said before facing battle.

“And I you,” he replied, his voice shaking a bit. I stepped out and down into myself again, trying to hide my own fear.

I sit now upon the bench, practicing the phrase upon which lives hang. Lives should never be down to mere words, but I suppose they always are. Whether declarations of war, law, or treaty…words ever determine lives.

I hear noises above. Subtle, quiet noises. Likely the fiend is in the building. I cannot pretend I am not terrified. I
am
, most assuredly, terrified. I feel Jonathon’s phantom hand at the small of my back, bolstering my courage and reassuring me that I am never truly alone. I yearn to feel that touch in this life, in
this
reality. It is the only thing helping me keep my wits. The sounds grow closer.

I must look distracted, unaware. I’ve closed the curtain, having given Denbury a kiss upon the air as I drew it. He could not move to acknowledge it but kept staring at me until the last. Forgive the trembling, telltale jagged edges of my writing that betray my fear.

I hear a slow and sauntering step down the hall. I’ll turn the page and write something benign, lest he see damning script. I must act surprised…demure…everything he expects. Dear Lord, be with me now. Steady my resolve to do what must be done. I shall turn the page and fold the cover over. The fiend closes in!

• • •

And I think, dear diary, I’d like to travel to Italy, where I could see fine art and where perhaps the men are as beautiful (and perchance as scandalous) as legend would have them…

I must pause, someone seems to be at the door of this chamber where I sit, trying to pass the time while locked away. Am I saved at last?

Half an hour later, if that

(Oh, Time, you are unreliable, and Terror, you affect it.)

I write this as the visage of Lord Denbury is being cut into pieces. Oh, gruesome sight, oh, harrowing night—a poet of such unnerving talent as Baudelaire could not even begin to pen an account of this. I can hardly believe it as I sit here to recount it. I begged Jonathon’s leave to write this, to sort out the tumbling mess of my thoughts and my senses, struggling to comprehend these last moments…

The demon was dressed as a lord every bit as beautiful as mine, but with that darkness, that pallor, that hollow-eyed terrible mask, those reflective eyes that make him not my dear Jonathon but a devil. He slid into the room like a snake.

His lowered head fixed me with a gaze I thought might asphyxiate me in the instant. “Oh! Hello, pretty thing. Why, you look familiar…” His voice was a terrible purr. “What on earth are you doing after hours in the basement of a museum?”

I bit my tongue and gestured to my ears, nodding, and to my mouth, shaking my head.

“Oh, that’s right, my mute beauty!” he exclaimed. Now for the next snare…

I shook my head. I ripped a page from the diary and scribbled a plea, placing myself entirely in his hands…

I tucked the diary beneath the bench and held the paper out to him. He read. His eyes widened.

“Arilda? Lost and locked in? Your name is Arilda?”

I nodded and gave him a quizzical look—as if why on earth should that matter? Though I knew very well why it did. I tried to appear as if I was falling into his trap when in fact it was the other way around…

I practically could see his mouth water. “Perfect,” he said, in a tone that made me shudder. “Oh, you are a treat indeed.” I suppressed a violent shudder and instead smiled with what I hoped was a look of charming enticement, rather than a grimace.

“I don’t have to go out hunting tonight, Denbury,” he called in delight. “The prey has come to me!”

My eyes flickered to the curtain, to the painting, to the man inside. Thinking of Jonathon, I was bolstered. He loved me.
He
loved
me
. And this…form…before me was not my love.

The demon advanced. “What a rare and succulent gift. My powers increase. Subjects laid at my feet, my quest opens unto me! Have you ever been with a man, fair one?”

Now I did allow myself to shudder. Part of the act, I looked appropriately horrified. The demon wanted to defile a lady. I wanted to spit in his face. The look on my face seemed to satisfy him, for he laughed. I didn’t need to fake or stage a blush; my cheeks were scarlet from his forward talk.

“No, of course not! You are a virgin saint…” He approached closer. “Perfect. Do struggle, will you? Act your part. It will add to the effect. And who knows, perhaps someday they’ll canonize you too!”

Horrifying, so terribly horrifying, yet he was mesmerizing, it was true, for he still
was
Denbury—in the flesh. Something of his otherworldliness, something of his demonic nature had a sort of intoxication, a drug to it, beyond his handsome trappings. I recalled how Jonathon had been immobilized, and I watched the demon’s hands to see if they contained some weapon.

The fiend’s eyes were now luminous with an eerie quality beyond their animalistic bent and clouded. Reddened. Blood pooled in the tear ducts. I took his untoward approach as my cue and backed away.

I prayed that his base nature would not make him hesitate in coming closer to the painting. How could he know our plan? He was so clearly focused on how my violent death would aid his power. The devil hadn’t remembered how the real soul of Denbury, my hero, had been watching me from the first.

I reminded myself of the knife tucked at the edge of my bodice and knew that if worse came to worst, I would defend myself. I would not go easily into that good night. Opening my mouth, I demonstrated my inability to speak with a small squeak of protest.

“I can be as rough with you as I please. You can’t make a noise. And so the powerful preys upon the helpless. You and countless others…I will carve your names in blood on your own flesh. Names written in the Book of Death. And when your name is called, you will follow me. The society will rest upon the shoulders of the restless…”

He grabbed me by the throat, just like the first nightmare featuring him had foretold. My breath choked out. Good God…a society. Seemed the Devil had an institution after all.

As he scraped his thumb along my collarbone, his breath was hot against my neck. I loved nothing more than being held close by Denbury. But not like this. Again, this was not Jonathon.

His tongue traced the hollow of my throat, and it felt like the forked kiss of a snake. I shuddered again. He snickered. “Like that, do you? A shiver of delight, perhaps? The angel of a girl will fall to her demon, and I grow ever powerful in the depths of our sin. The more I take—” He raked a hand over me. A cold, deathly hand. Hardly the caress of the lover I knew and cherished. He stepped back so that he could watch my body react. “The more I gain.”

His hand had released my throat to fumble at his clothes, at his pants. I felt hysteria tickle at my nerves. I’d practiced the words. I prayed then, harder than I’d ever prayed in my life. I reached out and took his face in my hands, as if begging his mercy.

His eyes lit with delight. I struggled a bit closer to the painting. I needed our weight on my side…

His eyes looked into mine, deeper. I stared into cold-blooded inhumanity, into sulfur, hell, and death. I stared into eyes that would see me dead, if they could, and I feared his very stare might kill me. But my panic overcame his dread gaze and made my body leap to action.

In a fluid, violent motion, I threw back the thick red curtain over the portrait. Then I spoke. My voice had never been so authoritative. The angels were on my side, surely…

“
Ego
transporto
animus
ren
per
ianua
…Beelzebub the Devil!”

In the moment that his horrible eyes widened, he stared up at the painting, now revealed, and then back at me. He began to snarl and gripped me painfully tightly. I did not fight the violent momentum of his grasp. Instead I threw my weight to the side as if we were on the edge of a cliff and I intended to take us both down, the watery sensation of a trip inside the painting washing over me like a cool wave. His surprise allowed for my slight frame to succeed in dragging him into the terrible magic of his own making.

I heard Denbury—both of them—cry out. I felt hands clambering over me. I was on the floor of the study. I couldn’t tell at first which hands were which. But I gasped as a hand reached beneath my skirts, pawing with claws and scrabbling to get at me. My God, it would seek to take me even in the agony of defeat. It was an animal…Red and gold light crackled all around us, the throes of his hellfire.