Echoes in Eternity (The Pella Series Book 1) (52 page)

“But I thought they already knew what they want
ed, they’ve made their deposits and are just going to participate in the auction for the aircrafts which are on sale by Mr. Pella’s company.” She shakes her head pitifully in response.

“Clearly you must be new in the business, because people with large disposable income can also be impulse buyers. Why not sell more than one
product if you know what they like exactly? Part of your job as Mr. Pella’s assistant is to get to know the clients. Which group of clients did they assign you?” she asks.

“Uhm… South American buyers,” I respond. “Predominantly Spanish speakers I guess
,” I say. I guess I can part with this information.

She walks around me as if she’s assessing me for a dress she’s making for me.
She’s measuring me with her eyes, sizing me up and examining me. She shakes her head as if I have failed some test.

“Well, let me just show you the painting, and I will make my assessment after you tell me what you think of it.” Is she a manager of some kind?

“I’m not sure if I am qualified to judge art.”

“You are a college graduate and you look like a cultured young woman. That’s all that counts.”

“Okay. Show it to me anyway,” I say, resigned.

She slides her arm into mine and as if we’ve been the best of friends for years, she walks me to the heavy ornate door. She pushes the door further open. We stand about 2 feet away from the threshold. The other room
looks palatial, it’s clear that this particular room is not part of the hotel at all. It’s foreign, yet distantly familiar. I may have seen it in a book. She points at a large painting of a young woman on the opposing wall.

“We could examine it closer, but I must
stay in this room to remain in full contact with the other security members,” she purrs. “But you are more than welcome to take a closer examination,” she adds invitingly.

“I can see it well
enough. Thank you,” I respond. The young woman in the painting is elegantly dressed in a cream and pale lilac colored lace and satin dress with bows in the front, and ruffles around the collar emphasizing the young woman’s properly endowed chest. She has a pale lilac colored hat with feathers and flowers matching her elegant dress partially shading her face. She has brown pearls accentuating her neck with a single pink diamond hanging down from the strand. Her hands are holding an intricately designed fan. Her curls fall onto the left side of her shoulders. She’s about my age, but from a different time.

“Nothing? No assessment yet?” Hailey asks
with disappointment coloring her voice.

“Looks like
a late 18
th
early 19
th
century painting that has a woman wearing a French style dress. By the looks of it though, her hat is …” I squint my eyes to better see the artwork. I quite like the hat. If hats were fashionable, it’d be the kind I’d choose. Then I notice her upturned left arm holding the fan. I can see a distinctly painted birthmark. I look back up at the face again. She looks… forlorn even though there’s an attempted smile on her face. She looks like me! I turn to Hailey immediately, and she has a satisfied smile on her face.

“Congratulations! I guess you
can
assess a painting, though a bit slow for my taste…” she says in a velvety voice. I yank my arm off her linked arm.

“Why is there a painting of me in there?” I ask shocked.

“Oh! That’s a painting of you?” she asks excitedly clapping her hands. “And you told me we’ve never met. I’ve met
her
,” she says elegantly pointing a well-manicured finger into the room, “in the garden party where she wore that exact dress, though she was wearing a coquettish smile then instead of that damsel in distress look. She’s the girl I’ve met.” I look at this woman before me. She doesn’t look any older than twenty-five years old yet she claims to have met the girl who remarkably resembles me in the picture.

“Who are you
exactly and what do you want from me?” I ask taking a defensive position.

“Nothing at all. Just asking your opinion on a
piece of artwork and you’ve managed to see yourself in the painting. I was just beginning to think that it was just my imagination seeing the resemblance in the painting. That was a painting of the quaintrelle of Duke Courcillion!”

The room spins around me.
As I take a couple of steps toward the Command Center, she grabs my arm by the elbow. My eyes lock on her hand firmly holding my arm. My gaze travels up to her face. Suddenly all the combined shit I have experienced in the last two days comes rushing to the surface and something just snaps in me.

“Get your fucking hand off me
before I hand your whole damned arm back to you after I rip it from your shoulder socket!”

“My
, my, my… do you really think that you are a match for me little girl? Have you any idea what I’m capable of doing?”

“If my
bitch-dar
is working properly, you’re capable of all kinds of dirty shit.” My response makes her throw her head back and laugh hard.

“
I underestimated you. You aren’t entirely stupid.” Then she yanks me towards her and whispers in my ear, “You’re still not a match for me. You’re not going to have who has been serviced by me, who even craved me while on the battlefields. He
is
rightfully mine!”

“Who would that be?” I ask, though I know the answer before she utters it. She runs her tongue over her upper lip leisurely, caressing it skillfully as if to tell me that I’m devoid of
the sexual talents she possesses. Her incitement, implication that she had been intimately involved with Alex lights a fuse in me and the hostile side of me awakens like a beast. Suddenly all of Alex’s past trysts are personified in this woman and I feel an ardent violence towards her.

“Alexander! He is mine!
He’s always been mine. Look at me,” she says protruding her ample breasts, then looks at me disdainfully and spits her words, “and look at you.” The bone crushing strength she exerts in her grasp of my elbow is felt through my entire arm. I’ve had enough!

“
My powers and talents are unmatched missy. You can’t even begin to imagine the skills I can employ to please a prime male like Alexander,” she purrs. “You think you can steal a man out from under me?
You?
A little girl who hasn’t even seen a cock two days prior to this?” she taunts. Jealousy burns, anger and fury rise in me. Instincts and years of martial arts training take over my actions. Her grasp of my elbow is now burning my skin. Taking a deep breath, I over hook her at the elbow like a chicken wing and torque it in. Then, I quickly grab Hailey’s neck and get her to her toes and sweep her outside leg. Before she knew what hit her, she lands on her back on the tile floor with an ungraceful thud.

“Bitch!”
she screams and grabs my leg pulling me onto the floor.

“You talk too much!
” I shout and rolling, I land on her cushioning my fall. She gets a hold of my chignon and pulls my hair and manages to get my head in a painful guillotine choke. Somehow, in this shitty position, I feel more alive than I ever did in the last three years, because I can do something about it. I can fight back!

“You… submit… to… me!” she shouts.

I calm myself down first, relaxing and loosening up, because, the relaxation slows the effects of the choke. Tightening up will only serve her purpose. I slow my breathing. Getting my arm as high as possible, I throw my arm on the opposite side of my head while it is trapped over Hailey’s shoulder. I then put as much pressure on her face and shoulder as I possibly can. Finally, I slightly get some breathing room and it gives me a chance to bring my arm that is on the trapped side of my head up and I start digging between Hailey’s leg and with my bent elbow making it very uncomfortable for her, she opens her guard up.

Finding my chance, I pull my leg over her leg I just dug my elbow into and free my other leg by sliding out. Then I rotate my hips the side of Hailey’s body
that is opposite my head and I escape her choke. As soon as I’m out of it, I slap her hard, leaving my handprint on her face, drawing blood from her lip. She runs her tongue over the trickle of blood.

“That will cost you!” she says jumping up, and lunges at me again. The bitch just won’t stop!
As she grabs my hair with one hand, she digs in her nails and I realize late that two of them are claw rings piercing my flesh at the base of my right breast, digging deep, as if she’s trying to pierce an object under my skin, scraping my flesh. I scream with pain and elbow her as I try to get out of her grasp. When I finally manage to escape her snare, I feel the trickle of blood coursing on the side of my body. My breathing slows. The images of my painting in the other room come to me unbidden. I stumble my way. I vaguely feel Hailey grabbing me my by the hair again to yank me back. A dark spot is before me with many different images begin floating before my line of vision. She tries to push me into it, but I resist. A distant sound can be heard. A door is opening. I feel her let me go. The visions in a thick dark trickle follow me behind, ready to take me in and sweep me into an abyss. Hailey looks ahead after hearing the door and as if chained to her spot, remains behind. I inch my way into the Command Room. I look over my shoulder and only manage to see her behind a haze. She has a satisfied smile on her face.

“See you, never!” she mouths.
When I turn towards the other way, I come face to face with Anthony.

“Miss Duncan!” he shouts, rushing to my side trying to catch me as I see the ground rushing up to me.
I feel Anthony grasping me before I hit the ground.

As I look at Anthony’s terrified gaze, I realize he has stormy gray eyes.
Somehow, I remember that terrified and bewildered look painted all over his face in a different time and place, on a cold rainy night; the last concerned gaze I’ve seen before I was pushed into the cold clutches of a river by the spiteful hands of a woman. I look at his face again through my slowly diminishing sight. It’s the same expression. He reached out to catch me back then, but I was already drifting away in the River Seine by the time he reached the banks!

I hear the same
pleading shout that came out of him as he did then “Sir! Hurry!” looking helpless as he was in that distant memory. My hearing as well as my vision are dim. I see the movement of his lips behind the hazy curtain of my obfuscating vision. And the last words I utter before everything darkens around me are, ‘
I remember your eyes, Anthony!
’ I’m sucked into a vacuum. There’s no sound, no color, no existence. It’s an abyss. I don’t know if I’m falling or floating. There’s nothing to hold onto. Nothing to grab, to see, to orient myself with: it’s oblivion. Then the eerie, distinctly rattling sounds come with an onslaught as if loud rusty chains from a shipping dock are yanking a heavy load. Still, I see nothing, but gloomy darkness in pitch black. I reach towards the sound; because it’s the only sense my mind registers. I struggle to remain conscious. As the ethereal pull gains momentum and intensity, my strength to hold on to my senses evaporates and finally diminishes completely.

CHAPTER X
V

THUNDERSTORM

Alexander Aurelius Pella

             
When Doc takes Elissa away from Courcillion’s presence, I turn the intensity of my gaze onto him full blast.