A Cross to Bear (16 page)

With a sharp click, the rod retracted.

“Fine,” said Ingrid. “You want to quit. I quit too. Fuck this. You no worth my trouble. I have car bring you to airport immediately.”

She turned around and began jogging back to the castle.

Gabby shook with rage. Her eyes stung with sweat. The dirt had turned into mud from what pasty spit remained in her mouth. Her muscles screamed for the end of their torture. Her mind begged her to just give up, go back to Chicago, and forget all this ever happened.

“No!”
Gabby cried, shakily getting her feet under her.

Ingrid turned to regard her, intrigued.

Gabby started running.

She blew past a smiling Ingrid and growled with determination.

***

The rest of the day continued as had the day before. She trained in hand-to-hand combat with Master Mushito, followed by the shooting range, and then gymnastics and weight lifting. She twisted her ankle in her gymnastics class. It hurt like hell, and she could barely walk on it at first, but when she realized that it was going to gain her no sympathy, she dealt with it as well as she could.

That night, she finished her lessons sweating and wanting to pass out. She had never been in so much pain in her life. Her hunger was completely forgotten compared to the way every fiber of her body screamed.

Lilly and Orchid led her to a bathing room that looked like it came straight from ancient Rome. Pillars held up carved beams. Marble floors of milky white and gray with sharp accents in black were polished to a mirrorlike sheen. Steam rose from a bath the size of a small pool. It was fed by three Greek-looking statues of scantily clad women pouring the water from clay buckets.

Gabby was undressed by the two women, who then led her into the piping hot water. She tested the water with her foot and flinched back.

“It is good. You will see,” said Lilly with a beautiful smile.

“It is good. Come,” said Orchid.

Gabby tried to forget herself and tried to forget her fear. She stepped into the water once more. Another step brought the water up to her calves. Both Lilly and Orchid were gently coaxing her now, one holding each hand. They were as naked as Gabby. She looked at their seemingly frail little bodies and thought that if they could do it, then so could she.

A hiss escaped her as another step brought the steaming water up over her sore legs. She cursed when the water went up to her belly. With a cry both sour and sweet, she sat down and let the water rise to her neck.

Orchid placed a pillow behind Gabby’s head.

“You do very good!” said Lilly with a happy little clap.

Gabby fought not to fly screaming out of the boiling water. She closed her eyes against the pain, squeezing Orchid’s hand and gritting her teeth.

After a few minutes, she got used to it and was able to genuinely sit back and enjoy the bath. The intense heat soaked her tired limbs to the bone, chasing out every ache and pain. Lilly and Orchid had lit incense and added oils to the water, and the aroma reminded Gabby of a flower garden after a warm summer rain. The women bathed her body from head to toe with soft cloths, laughing when Gabby squirmed from having her feet scrubbed. They seemed quite enamored with her ample breasts, which looked overwhelmingly large compared to their very petite ones. They washed Gabby’s breasts repeatedly, giggling to each other.

Just when she had nearly fallen asleep, the women led her out of the bath and wrapped her many times in a thin white sheet that smelled of eucalyptus. She was led through hanging beads to an adjoining room.

A tall, muscular man with dark, curly hair waited for them at the head of a massage table. “Welcome, Gabriella. I am Anthony,” he said in a deliciously thick Italian accent.

“Hello, Anthony,” she said shyly, smitten by his light green eyes and sharp features.

She almost protested when the women unwrapped the sheet, but Anthony turned from them then and busied himself with his oils and incense.

Gabby was placed facedown on the table, and her backside was covered with a cloth. Through the face hole in the pillow, she watched the feet of Lilly and Orchid as they left the room.

“Where do you hurt the most?” Anthony asked.

“Um . . . the back of my legs, my shoulders, neck . . .” Gabby laughed. “Everywhere. But the bath helped a lot.”

“Good. Just relax. Sleep if you find the need to. Let me know if I go too deep.”

He placed his big, warm hands on her shoulders, and she flinched at the initial contact.

Slowly his hands worked her neck and shoulders. He made slow circles and traced deep straight lines around her shoulder blades. The warm oil smelled of coconut and smoky oak. She hadn’t noticed the music before, but now the sound of wind instruments and the crashing of the ocean outside the window lulled her into a deep, relaxing trance.

Anthony’s skilled hands worked her arms and hands before returning to her back. They traveled down the middle to the small of her back. There they lingered.

“I am extracting your tense energy. I can circumnavigate the gluteus maximus if you would like, though it will significantly hamper the flow of energy.”

“Huh?” Gabby asked dreamily.

What was he saying? Gluticus maxicus?

“Oh!” said Gabby, realizing what he meant. “No, it’s okay. Do what you want.”

Anthony removed the towel and began higher than he had been, pulling the muscles and energy down, down, down. He kneaded her backside like dough, and Gabby found herself giggling more than once. Slowly he pushed past to the backs of her sore legs. She winced, and he backed off, switching to an intoxicating swirling pattern with his strong fingers. Down to the backs of her knees, calves, heels, and out through her toes went the energy.

Gabby sighed, imagining that it was Victor rubbing her body with his strong hands.

Anthony replaced the towel and asked if she would like him to continue in the front.

“I would love that,” she said with a purr. “Would it be more effective without the towel?”

His brow leaped, and he said quite seriously, “Yes, it will be much more effective.”

Gabby flung the towel off her and turned over to her back. Anthony placed a warm cloth over her eyes and began massaging her face. At first, Gabby felt a little strange having her cheeks worked like piecrust, but then she felt the wonderful effects and drifted into her happy place.

Anthony worked her neck gently before moving to her shoulders and arms. Gabby swore that she could actually feel the energy flowing through the tips of her fingers. He then moved to her chest, working circles around her breasts at first, then getting to the muscle beneath the breast. His hands suddenly left her, and she nearly gasped.

Why had he stopped? Was he done?

Gabby’s worries were quelled, and she took in a quick breath as hot oil hit both nipples simultaneously. Those strong hands worked it in, and Gabby moaned, thinking of making love to Victor above the clouds. Anthony continued down her stomach, focusing first on the area around her liver, and then each kidney, pulling his hands around from her lower back and bringing them together at her belly button. He then directed the energy down her pelvic bone.

Gabby took in a shuddering breath when his hands parted ways, moving down both thighs. Anthony treated her aching thighs gingerly, working every muscle group before moving on to her knees, shins, feet, and toes.

She sighed when his hands left her, hoping that he would continue to the one place he had missed.

“How do you feel?” Anthony asked.

Gabby took off the cloth and blinked at him sleepily. “That was amazing.”

Anthony took the cloth and put it away. “I am glad I could be of service to you, Ms. Cross.”

Lilly and Orchid came through the beads then and helped Gabby up before covering her in a flower-pattern kimono.

As she was led out of the tranquil masseur room, she bent to whisper conspiratorially to Lilly and Orchid, “Do I get him every night?”

They both laughed. The sound was musical.

Gabby was pushed every day for a week after arriving at the castle. She regretted her decision to stay daily, but she also dug deeper every day, fighting to shake off the voices in her head telling her to quit. Her saving grace was the progress that she made. After the fifth day, the soreness went away, replaced by a tightness of muscle and increased agility and stamina. When at first she had been able to run only a few miles, now Ingrid was pushing her to beat five. She had learned to love rather than fear guns, viewing them as possibly the only thing between her and death. Her aim improved along with her precision, and Gabby began to genuinely like firearms. She shot pistols and rifles, shotguns and machine guns, as well as Uzis, and on one occasion, a flamethrower.

In the dojo, Gabby was beginning to get ahold of the basic forms, though she was frustrated by how slow it was coming to her. Master Mushito told her that his art would take longer to master, but Gabby didn’t feel as though she had the time.

Thanks to extensive classes when she was a young girl, the gymnastics came back to her quickly. Why she would need such skills eluded her. The entire point of the last week eluded her, but she felt good. For the first time in about a decade, she was losing rather than gaining weight, and while she wasn’t anyone’s Barbie, she could have given Marilyn Monroe a run for her money back in the day. She was still over one hundred and sixty pounds, but now she felt that more of it was muscle than before.

***

On the eighth morning of her stay at Chateau de Victor, Gabby awoke to find that Ingrid was not waiting for her in the dining room. Instead, she found Victor seated at the head of the table before a large breakfast spread.

“You look well, Gabriella,” he said, putting down his newspaper and rising.

“Victor . . .
Victor!
Where in the hell have you been?”

“Ecuador, dealing with business. I see that you have been doing well in your training.”

“You left me here without a word about where you were going or what I was about to go through.”

“Would the knowing have made it easier?”

“Wha . . . are you out of your mind? Why am I training like a fucking Navy SEAL?”

Gabby was furious suddenly. Without her morning run to calm her churning mind, and with Victor standing before her in his expensive suit and with a smug look of indifference on his face, it was more than Gabby could stand. The weeklong punishment had left her feeling strong, hyper . . . ready. She knew that it was the increased testosterone, and she wondered how the hell teenage boys held their shit together half the time.

“Answer me!” she yelled when he only smiled.

“You are being trained to kill werewolves like Michael Steele.” Victor’s endless blue eyes held her frozen in time. “With your power, they will become mortals. No fangs, no claws, no magic. But they will still be human, and they can still fight as such.”

She gulped. “I have used that power only once,” said Gabby.

“I will show you how to use it again,” Victor promised. “Look at what you have done in a week’s time. Imagine what you could become in a month, a season, a year . . .”

“I want to learn more about my power,” said Gabby.

Victor grinned. “Good. That’s my girl.”

She walked over to him and wrapped her arms around his neck. Her anger melted away as he returned the hug, though she could feel him holding back.

“What is it?” she asked, studying his eyes.

He offered her a reassuring smile and gestured to the food. “You should eat. Today will prove to be a big day.”

After breakfast, Victor led her down halls that she had never even seen before during her stay in the castle. They left the dining room through the opposite wing as Gabby’s. The hall boasted many doors, but their destination proved to be the door at the end. Victor went through it before her and stopped abruptly at another larger door. A small rectangular panel extended from the wall. Victor opened his mouth, revealing two sharp, pointed teeth. A green laser light scanned Victor’s teeth and retracted with a snap back into the panel.

The door opened with a hydraulic sigh and clink of metal, and Victor stepped into an elevator. He gestured with a hand, inviting her in with his winning smile.

Gabby stepped onto the platform.

The door closed, and a ring of light moved up the walls of the cabin. Faster and faster they went; Gabby looked to the digital numbers above the door—floor twenty-one and descending.

The elevator stopped at the twenty-seventh floor, and the door opened with a bing.

Gabby stared out over the long, wide room that lay before her and gasped.

“Just as you have trusted me, I entrust you with the knowledge of my most guarded secret. The location of my true lair.”

Gabby stepped off the platform and walked onto the smooth stone floor. Before her was a cavern of such immense proportions that Gabby felt terribly humbled in its presence. Stalagmites and stalactites reached for each other throughout the chamber, connecting in some areas. A natural lake took up most of the chamber, though bridges spanned the shimmering lengths, leading to hidden doors and hallways. Walkways webbed along and across the entire length and width of the cavern. Victor led Gabby onto one and waved his arm slowly over the rail.

“What would you like to see first? I have three thousand years of collected art in these caverns.”

“Did you say three thousand years?”

“Yes,” said Victor with a laugh. “Though I do not claim to be so old. My collection was inherited from my maker, and he before me, and so on, dating back many eons.”

Each room that he led her to was comprised fully of metal or concrete. From the wild, jagged dripping cavern they emerged into a sterile, immaculate steel room containing more jewels than Gabby thought could exist in one place at the same time. Upon short pillars sat sparkling crowns encrusted with rubies, diamonds, and pearls. There were displays of rings, bracelets, and necklaces with titles engraved on plaques such as
206 B.C., Qin dynasty
and
King Henry III, 1236 A.D.