Heart's Price (MxM)

Chapter 60

Inside, the house is quiet and dark, gloomy with the blue of evening and the brownish orange of the day's last light. It has the air of an abandoned place, filled with an oppressive stillness and a silence I fear to break. If I didn't know better, I'd think there was no one home.

Squinting, I struggle to make out details in the dimness, never having recovered my glasses after losing them by the lake.

Everything appears as I remember it: the entrance hall with its dusty rugs and dark antiques, the arched doorways to the dining hall and library on either side, and the arc of the grand staircase, sweeping upward to the second floor and the broad balcony above.

There's no sign of Aengus—or of anyone else.

"Where is—" I start to whisper, but Ambrose cuts me off with a sharp hiss and motions to the others to be still.

As he does, a distant wail reaches us, carried on the air like the doom-song of some wild banshee. There are words in it, I think, though I can't understand them, and I realize that it must be Shanti, calling the rakshasas to hunt.

From deeper within the house, far in the darkest shadows, I sense a stirring of the air as something that slumbered is awakened by the call.

Ambrose's eyes widen and his grip tightens where he holds my arms, and then, with swift and sudden strength, he pulls me around and shoves me hard against the wall, crowding close and shielding my body with his own.

No sooner has he done this than a roar of wind sweeps through the room, surging down the stairs and rushing from far along the lower hall. I shut my eyes, knowing it carries incorporeal shapes, roused to a lust for blood and seeking prey.

For a terrible minute, I'm certain they will find me and tear us all to shreds; then, though, the piercing wail comes again, and the demon wind swirls once more round the room before pouring through the still-open door at our backs and racing forth beneath the descent of night.

As the last of it leaves, the door slams shut in its wake with such force it shakes the wall.

The dust settles—literally—and as silence returns we release a collective sigh of relief. Ambrose loosens the painful grip he'd had on my arms, which was probably hard enough to bruise, and I rub the back of my head where I'd knocked it against the wall.

"Ow."

"Sorry," he murmurs, smoothing his hands over my arms to soothe the hurt away. "I was afraid they'd spot you."

"Yeah, no shit," I agree, feeling a little dizzy for some reason. "At least they're gone now. But where is everyone?"

As I speak, Dane and Freya's expressions shift towards alertness and alarm, and then a voice hails us from the above. Looking up, I see Aengus himself standing at the top of the stairs, one hand balanced casually on the rail. He keeps the other in his trouser pocket, possibly holding a weapon of some kind.

I feel a twinge of indignation at the sight of how 'at home' he looks—dressed in checkered slacks and a loose cotton dress-shirt, his dark auburn curls, streaked with gray, greased back from the dome of his brow—before reflecting that, disturbing as it is to consider, he's actually been living here quite a bit longer than I have.

He looks down at us, his gaunt, waxy-looking face appearing almost spectral in the gloom, and his resemblance to Ambrose is striking enough to be uncanny. Ambrose said he didn't actually share Aengus' blood, but it makes me wonder just how intermingled the Thornes and Oakfields might really be.

"You've arrived just in time, Penelope," he says, his low, raspy voice and the familiar curl of his accent grating on my nerves.

He grins, and for an instant, I see a flash of something awful—shrunken eyes in a face barely covered by a stretch of discolored, papery skin, a hint of bone showing at the jaw, and rotten, browned teeth. Then I blink and his smile is spotlessly white again, his face youthful if oddly mask-like, his illusion restored.