The Pale Waters (#1 Reclaimed Souls) (5 page)

I glide a fingertip down his spine and
slowly walk around him while keeping the connection. I can tell he
wants to take over, take control, and it’s probably taking
everything within his own self-control to keep from doing so. I
smile at him. I explore his waist—smooth with baby fine hair—and
inch up, fingers splayed, and discover most of his chest is
scarred, raised, but smooth.

I rub into him. I kiss and lick the
smoothness, follow small ridges, bumps, and lines until I reach the
left side of his neck. Roland’s breathing is extremely shallow and
I can feel his rapid pulse under my tongue. My fingers trace his
face, mapping it. At first, I thought he would pull back and leave
me completely, but he doesn’t. Maybe because the lights were out or
maybe because my touching him like this felt like uncharted
territory. It is certainly a first for me.

The right side of his face is scarred,
including his lips. It isn’t as smooth here. It is ridged—much like
his posture at the moment—and puckered in certain areas, like the
back of his jaw, into the neck and ear. It almost feels like the
scars on his back and chest are
older
than the one on the
right side of his face. How could he be burned
twice
? Who
would do such a thing?

I kiss his jaw and lick up to his lips,
kissing him fully on the mouth, to which he completely embraces me,
groans, and kisses me eagerly back. Hard, slanted, passionately.
Suddenly, the bathrobe is open, but he isn’t touching me. For some
reason, he’s talking.

“You have no idea how long I’ve—” he starts
and stops abruptly.

What is he talking about?

“Wait, what?” I ask, breaking the kiss. My
neck tingles. This wasn’t a good idea. “What were you going to
say?” He’s messing with my head, trying to get under my skin,
confuse me. It’s working.

But he never answers me. Something beeps in
his pants pocket. Roland turns away, flips on his communicator
tablet, and reaches for his shirt at the same time. I retie the
bathrobe. Some of the light from the tablet glows against his face.
It plasters ghastly shadows against his skin, and I realize it’s
worse that I ever imagined it could be. Nothing can cure him of
those scars. The redness. The puckering. All those scars on one
side whereas the other side is completely smooth and handsome.

He must feel like a monster every time he
looks at his reflection. No wonder he keeps the place in darkness.
But I cannot let myself pity him. I can deal with lust. I can deal
with sex. I will enjoy licking every inch of those scars on his
body.

I
cannot
deal with pity or its kinder
sister: affection.

Without warning, he looks away from the
tablet and at me. He knows I’ve seen him. He’s no longer hidden
from me. I see the lust on his face as well as disappointment. He
wonders if I’m still attracted to him. Just as a moth is attracted
to a flame, I cannot alter that attraction, and it will get me into
trouble.

But I see something else in his expression:
a haunting, like something literally eats at him, something he
cannot purge.

Then the look is gone.

“We have a delivery. Get dressed,” Roland
orders as he buttons up his shirt. Whatever he was feeling seconds
ago is now gone. “I’ll meet you in the hallway in two minutes.”

My mind whirls.
We have a what?
“What
were you going to say a moment ago? What’s going on?”

Roland pauses by the door. “It’s time for
you to show me what you’re capable of, Rahda.”

TEN

THE DOOR LATCHES, AND ROLAND IS gone in a
flash.
It’s time for you to show me what you’re capable of,
Rahda.

My eyes flinch as I flick on the lights.
I’ve been in the darkness too long already. I open the wardrobe,
but instead of selecting one of the lovely fabrics, I pull out a
black utility shirt and black trousers, put them on, and then lace
up my black combat boots.

I am amazed at how everything seems to be
tailored just for me. The clothing fits perfectly. Not too snug or
too loose. I could easily run up and down a few flights of stairs
wearing this outfit.

Just before I leave the apartment, I pull my
damp hair up into a tight bun and meet Roland in the hallway.

“I don’t have a key for the apartment,” I
say as I fiddle with the door.

“You won’t need one. The doorknob is
programmed to recognize your unique body signature once you enter
the hallway. You and only you can open your apartment door.”

“A form of protection? But from whom?”

“From me,” he says without the slightest
hint of humor. “Now follow me. We need to reach the lab
quickly.”

Before I can question his chivalry or ponder
the fact that I might actually
like
finding him waiting for
me in my room one night or why I need protection
from
him in
the first place, Roland pockets his communicator tablet and jogs to
the end of the hallway. It’s a long hallway.

“What the hell!” I squeak mostly to myself
and run to catch up. He pauses at a curtained window, and I see the
wet streets below. Deserted. Dingy yellow lamps burn against the
fog unsuccessfully.

Roland opens a wooden panel and waits for
me. I duck inside and together, we traverse an intensely spiral
staircase that was probably never meant to be seen by
outsiders.

“We have to get there quickly, and this is
the only way,” he explains after the first few steps. There are no
lights to guide me, and I am again reminded that everyone here
seems to be able to see in the dark.

“How in the world can you see?”

“Just follow the steps and my voice,” he
answers. “It’s a regular staircase and not exactly difficult to
operate.” A small amount of sarcasm enters his voice. He’s teasing
me, and I smile in the darkness.

“I hope that you’ll be extremely sad, then,
when I fall down twenty flights of stairs.”

Two levels down. A hundred more to go. I
thank Goddess for the trousers and the boots. I would have tripped
all over the fabriskin robes.

“Is that still the rumor? Twenty stories?
Only nine floors are visible.”

Underground levels, then. Instantly, I
imagine medieval dungeons and torture chambers. Actually, now that
I think about it, those two things are making a comeback.

“How many basement levels?”

He chuckles. “I don’t know, to be honest.
You are welcome to investigate on your own time, if you wish.”

“How can you not know how many floors your
home has? Haven’t you lived here your whole life?”

“My ancestors built it over other
structures. Churches and other such things, and they kept building
in and around the Palace, absorbing other buildings in the
process.”

“So they just built around whatever was in
the way?” That would explain the bridge and the crack in the
floor.

“I guess you could say that.”

A couple of feet below, I can see a sliver
of light coming through the bottom of a door, but as we approach
it, the light goes out. How odd. Roland opens that very door.

“Why did the light go out as we approached
it?”

“Just as your apartment door recognizes you
and unlocks itself, my home recognizes
me
and behaves
accordingly, to include lowering the lights.” He leads me into a
smaller hallway. Tiny, embedded recessed lights mark the glass
floor, sort of like lights under the surface of a swimming pool,
and there is just enough illumination for me
not
to veer off
the ledge. The hallway is like a catwalk, its flooring raised
several feet above the older-looking brick walkway below. At some
point in history, this part of the building was
outside
and
a side street or a sidewalk.

Glass planks unite the walkway with
connecting doors. Roland stops at an unmarked door, I hear it
unlock, and he allows me to enter first.

I notice two things immediately.

First, the lights do not go out completely.
It isn’t by any means bright, but it’s better than everywhere else
in the building. I turn around to see how Roland reacts to the dim
light. He’s looking down. I try not to notice the scars, but I’m
not yet conditioned to see past them. So I turn back into the
room.

Second, and maybe more importantly: we are
not alone.

“‘Bout time ye got here, Rolan’. Is dis her,
tha new hire?” a short, stout man standing in the middle of the
room asks.

ELEVEN

“CALM YOUR HORSES, MR. UNDERWOOD. I only
received your page two minutes ago. Rahda, this is Alben Underwood.
He is an old friend as well as my weapons expert, among… other
things,” Roland says, though the last part is so vague it could
mean anything from
he’s my cook
to
he’s my personal
secretary
to
we’re lovers
. “Alben, this is Rahda Plesti,
my newest research assistant.” No
among other things
. Mr.
Underwood holds something in his hands. “What have you brought me?”
Roland asks.

I wasn’t aware that Roland had a weapons
expert. The man is short, round, with long white hair, tiny,
wire-rimmed glasses that rest on the tip of his nose, and he looks
more like a bookkeeper than a man who should be holding a
slimy-looking dead sea animal. I am sure that in time, I will
understand why a weapons expert would be excited about a dead
specimen, though
excited
might be too strong a word.

Alben’s accent spoke volumes. He must be
from the far-far north—perhaps a north sea citizen, known for their
fierce loyalty and a fierce fighting style—and definitely a
commoner.

Roland supposedly hates commoners. And…
maybe everything my mentor told me about Roland isn’t true.

Alben stands next to a stainless steel table
filled with various instruments. Microscopes. Dissecting utensils.
Chemistry tubes. Against the walls stand glass-covered shelves
containing books, antique weapons, and metal parts for, presumably,
weapons making. I’m honestly not sure, and I do not ask.

“Spent time in tha black water near Hades
Rocks to find dis here creature. It will have wot ye need for tha
new hire.” Alben holds out the
creature
. Neither Roland nor
I move to take it from him.

“What exactly is that thing?” I ask.
And
it came from Hades Rocks?
Nothing good ever came from Hades
Rocks. I look around for some sort of weapon.

Alben huffs unceremoniously. “Weren’t’ye
listenin’? Jus told ye. Wot type of research assis’ant are ye?”

“I think what Mr. Underwood means to say is
that the black ink and the cuttlebone inside of the cuttlefish, the
creature in his hands, will aide you in your research.” Roland’s
face is turned away from me as he says this. “At least,
I
think it might help you. The others…” he trails off.

“The others didn’t think so?” I ask,
referring to the previous research assistants, and he nods.

I begin to think of the possible reasons for
using a cuttlefish. I can use the cuttlebone for casts, models, and
even a rudimentary white paint, none of which even comes close to
what I need. The black ink, well, it would depend on what that
black ink can do when combined with
other
ingredients.
Ingredients that Dorni might have in her Widow’s Lane shoppe.

I smile, and Roland looks at me
curiously.

Cuttlefish are the perfect chameleons,
blending into their surroundings with almost near accuracy to avoid
predators. Excellent bio-natural technology that I would love to
extract and use in the human world.

Can I manipulate it? Would it work?

I already have a working theory, but I need
to see the lab promised to me, and I need to know and see what the
other
research assistants had worked on before me. I pick up
a silver lab tray and allow Alben to deposit the cuttlefish onto
it.

“Thank you, Mr. Underwood.” The creature
squirms against the pan and immediately turns the exact shade of
silver as the lab tray. “I didn’t realize it was still alive.”

“Cuttlebone can waid’a day, but ye’ll need
ta move fast ta remove da black ink,” Alben explains. This is why
Roland brought me down through the spiral staircase at breakneck
speed. The cuttlefish isn’t long for this world.

“How much time?”

Alben huffs again as he brushes past me,
rubbing his slimy palms against his trousers. I get a whiff of
black sea water and gunpowder. “How wud I know? Yer da research
assis’an’ fer chrissakes.” Then he turns to Roland. “Ya migh’ need
ta start lookin’ fer nummer eight. Dis one here don’t seem all dat
bright.” He does a little wave and then leaves without saying
another word. The door hisses closed.

“I think he’s sweet on me,” I say.

Roland watches me closely before he smiles.
It’s a total transformation. He doesn’t look so sad or angry, but I
notice that he keeps his
good
side pointed in my direction.
Even after the intimacy we shared upstairs, he appears reluctant to
allow me to see him fully, completely, and I’ll require
full
access. And I’ll need to know why the others failed.

“Do you mean Mr. Underwood or the cuttlefish
there?”

“Definitely Mr. Underwood.” I wink at Roland
as I lift the tray slightly. It isn’t heavy or cumbersome, but I do
need a place to withdraw the black ink. “Will you show me to my
lab?”

“Allow me to take you there now, Rahda. It
isn’t far.”

I love and hate it when he says my name like
that. Like it’s the dearest name to him. And it probably is,
professionally speaking, if I can allow him to re-enter society
again. If I can make him feel whole again. If I can make the scars
disappear.

TWELVE

ROLAND TAKES ME BACK OUT INTO the hallway,
and I find that I have to adjust again to the darkness. I stifle a
large yawn, and part of me wishes I was fast asleep upstairs in
that glorious bed, but the sudden excitement of starting the
project early, even if by a few hours, rejuvenates me.