Hemlock Veils (37 page)

Elizabeth lifted her eyes to the beast asleep on the floor, and she knew then why he hadn’t highlighted this section. He was one of the rare beings it mentioned in the beginning: a Cursed whose only antidote was an action of his own, a Cursed who could never have a Curse Breaker.

***

The blurred edges around Henry’s vision darkened, as though he looked at life through a black fog. It made concentrating difficult, made seeing her face nearly impossible.
Elizabeth,
he thought as he stared up at her. He hated when she cried, hated how unjust it was for someone like her to feel any kind of sorrow, but the sensation of her hands on his face felt like home.
Elizabeth.

I’m not going to leave you,
she promised, except the sound was trapped within the confines of his head, warbling as though her voice traveled through water.
I’m going to get help.
Her face left then, replaced by a shattered china plate: the moon, obstructed by twiggy, spider-like branches.

It felt like a dream. A nightmare, more precisely—given her tears and the way flames licked his side. They scorched, sizzled his flesh, yet he couldn’t move. And still, with his eyes closed, he stared at the moon. Then red, flowing hair; crimson, seductive lips; lavender eyes. Her face flashed in his mind over and over again, first expressions of anger then those of unbridled rage, making her hair appear as flames behind her head. Flames all around—on the witch, on his body, on the trees.

She screeched that awful sound, and even with his eyes closed, he couldn’t escape the glaring fire and her face—her face that held every evil captive behind her beauty.

His head caught fire, his brain like kindling in his skull. He screamed but nothing came out, nothing changed, and still he slept. The witch’s laughter: it was a disturbing sound, mixed with her deafening screech.
I’ll kill you before you can kill her
, she kept saying, and even though he knew what she meant, it didn’t make sense.
I won’t let you do it. You’ll always be mine.

He wanted to say he wouldn’t do it anyway, but his vocal cords caught fire, too. Then he realized he was nothing more than a monster and had never been able to speak.

Like a reel of photographs set on automatic scroll, her face lit up his psyche, expression after expression. It wasn’t her face anymore, though, but the face of evil: a
Diableron
, as repulsive as the soul
Aglaé
lacked.
Elizabeth,
he thought again, sending his thoughts outward, to wherever she might be.
Elizabeth, run!

He saw her then, suspended above by the curling branches of a hemlock that appeared more alive than
Diableron
herself. He called to her but nothing came out, and through that black mist of his vision, his fur was aflame. The flames spread from his body and licked their way across the forest, where the trees—suddenly bare and dry—ignited with an explosive force.

Elizabeth screamed, agonizing and drawn-out, and amidst the wretched sound were pops and crackles, noises that would usually remind him of fresh logs on a campfire. Her screams made his own pain intensify, made the flames on his body turn a mysterious blue.
Elizabeth,
he called out. But she didn’t hear, for her flesh began to bubble and melt away, dripping from her skull. Soon, her screams stopped all together until a charred figure lay lifeless in the arms of the hemlock. Somehow, every strand of her silken hair had been untouched, if only to remind him the blackened, fried body was hers.

The screams inside him were so earsplitting his skull cracked under the pressure, fracture upon fracture. And as though they went hand in hand, the pain in his heart and the burning of his flesh only scorched hotter. He would kill the witch when this was all over, when his spirit was freed from this inferno of a prison.

Water shot from his eyes in a pressurized stream, like a leak in a hose. Tears? They sprayed everything, even
Diableron
, and through his cries the fire extinguished, the forest turning green again. Even Elizabeth’s skin became supple and alive.

He jerked at the face in his black, foggy consciousness: Arne, frantic and sleep-deprived and telling him everything was all right. Was it?
She’s all right,
he said through the ocean in Henry’s ears.

His chandelier, his ceiling, his windows draped in the golden silk he hated. Elizabeth’s face, her hand, her faint and distant promises that he would be all right, that she would never leave him. Had she saved him from the fire, or had
he
saved her?
I thought maybe we could save each other
, she had once said, though every memory seemed lumped into one and he couldn’t recall when.

All the pain, all the anguish, extinguished by the touch of her hand and her eyes as green as his forest. At last, waves of weightlessness flowed through him, his limbs floating on a choppy, rhythmic sea of slumber. He let it take him, the sea—let it sink him, pull him under. It was then
Aglaé
haunted his dreams. Red flowing waves, lavender eyes: she was enchanting and alluring, and he followed her.

***

Elizabeth hardly remembered laying her head on the down pillow, because she was out before she could close her eyes, exhaustion pulling her under like the drowsy current of a narcotic. Now, just after sunrise, she awoke with low sunlight behind her eyelids. It didn’t take long to remember where she was, with high windows and golden drapes, and she twisted to her other side, her heart worrying a hundred frantic worries all at once.

But beside her lay a sleeping Henry, in his real form. She sighed a relaxing sigh, sitting up. He lay in the same position, on his right side. The sight of him in morning light took the breath from her chest, and he was even more beautiful than the beast had been under the light of the chandelier. His dark hair fell low on his forehead and his face looked more peaceful than she’d ever seen, and before she could get too swept away in watching him, she lowered the blanket ever so slightly, checking the incision on his side, just over his hip.

Regardless of what she knew about him, she was surprised at how advanced the healing was. It was a healthy, pink scarring color, and even surrounding the injury—where she expected to see puffy redness—was a normal fleshy hue. With caution—and an elated, quickened heart rate, she admitted—she lowered the blanket a little more, trying to keep his private things private, and saw the same thing had happened with the marks on his thigh. They were pink in the same fashion, suggesting healing.

She put the blanket back in place and found her eyes traveling his perfection—his masculine hands and fit, strong arms, and the muscular tone of his abdomen and chest—where they ended on his ominous tattoo. Except it wasn’t ominous, she realized. It was beautiful, just like the nighttime version of him, and it made him that much more attractive as a man, regardless of the reason she was sure he’d gotten it.

Her eyes traveled up his neck to the gentle pulse of a vein beneath his ear, and to his face—to his stern but peaceful brow and the way his short, dark beard, thinly grown and peppered with a silver that revealed the secret of his true age, added so much allure to his already charming features. She gently swept the hair off his forehead and drew her hand down his face, the smooth yet bristly sensation of his facial hair satisfying her fingertips. She wondered how long the poison would hold his consciousness. With a panicked heart, she wondered if he would ever wake at all. What if she had taken the wrong steps to revive him?

She ran her hand into his soft hair. “You have to come back, Henry,” she whispered. “I know you don’t want me here, but…I need you.”

Lying down, closer to him, she decided to let the poison run its course without extra morphine, since that’s what her instincts told her. She took his limp but warm hand and fit hers—hardly more than half the size of his—inside it. Holding it and curling it to her chest, she closed her eyes and allowed herself to drift back to sleep.

Chapter 22

Something about black satin rubbed Henry the wrong way. Perhaps because the trend had become so common among women of his class.

“I’m glad I caught your eye,” the woman wearing it drawled. Her lips were the color of red wine, and her extra-long lashes were glued on. She put her hands on her hips and Henry smiled, backing her into the corner. At least she wouldn’t be wearing the dress much longer.

They’d just left the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall, or the “Schnitz,” as the Portland locals called it. Halfway through the Oregon Symphony’s rendition of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 2 in D major, he’d spotted her in the balcony adjacent to his, eyeing him over her binoculars. She knew who he was, he could tell, but that didn’t surprise him since everyone did. He hadn’t planned on taking anyone back to his hotel tonight, but she was pretty enough. He had given her a single nod, and when it was over she waited outside the lobby. They’d walked up Main Street then turned left onto Park Avenue where Arne would meet them with the car. He never introduced himself since he didn’t think it necessary, and neither did she. He preferred it that way.

It was near midnight and beneath a canopy of trees, he wedged her into a red brick corner, the exterior of a local attorney’s office. He placed his hands on the bricks, cooled by nighttime air. His eyes traveled over her, down her long slender neck to the low, swooping neckline of her dress, revealing cleavage that did nothing special to his pulse.

“I’ve heard
so
much about you,” she said.

“And what have you heard?”

“That it would be a
pleasure
to make your acquaintance.” Her thin lips grew mischievous, and he moved his hands to her satin-clad hips, his mouth traveling down her neck. She breathed a satisfied, “Mr. Clayton.”

She smelled of Chanel No. 5. The scent was everywhere.

For some reason, even though he’d smelled it on other women like her, he knew from this moment on, that scent would always remind him of her—the woman he’d just met, the woman who was nameless. Her black hair had been trimmed short, which made tasting her that much easier. As he descended her neck, she said between aroused breaths, “Surely, there’s somewhere else we can take this…”

He moved his hands down the roundness of her behind and gripped it firmly, pushing her into him, and with her diamond-studded earlobe between his teeth, he said, “My driver will be here shortly. Until then, I’ll take it where I want.”

She murmured, wrapping her arms around him. They usually liked when he took charge, but there had been a few who hadn’t, a few whose eyes swam in teary regret and humiliation when it ended. It probably should have been more difficult to forget those eyes and the brief sting of guilt, but he never saw the women again and frankly, when his successes outnumbered the few failed attempts at pleasing his partners, it was easy to forget the way some women felt taken advantage of.

He straightened at the sound of footsteps. The interruption bothered him, but it brought a strange presence. Turning, he squinted at the curvy silhouette, one he at first thought was naked. But she wasn’t truly naked, he saw when she stepped beneath a streetlamp; just clothed in something so scanty it could pass for lingerie. Heat and arousal flourished in his abdomen, and his eyes widened at her red, flowing hair and supple lips. It was like nothing he’d ever felt: so intense and sudden, it didn’t feel natural.

“Mr. Clayton, why’d you stop?” the unnamed woman in satin said, still holding his neck and not noticing the goddess approaching.

With his eyes on the goddess, he shoved the black-haired woman off of him, and she gasped in offense. Still, he couldn’t take his eyes off the red-head’s smile, off the way her lavender eyes nearly hypnotized him. He’d never seen eyes like hers, and a power lay behind them—a power he wanted to get lost in but didn’t want to be controlled by at the same time. He stared, dumbfounded.

She touched his bowtie, and her scent was that of exotic flowers. He closed his eyes, his head spinning in a deadly but euphoric daze. “I see your reputation precedes you,” she said, her voice raspy and slight. He opened his eyes. In his peripheral vision, the black-haired woman who paled in comparison placed her hands on her hips.

“My…reputation?” he asked with a deep swallow. Her index and middle finger walked up his neck.

“You’re a bad boy, Henry. You’ve hurt many women.”

“Excuse
me
,” the woman in black said.

The mysterious beauty looked at her, then back at Henry. “Which one do you want, Henry?” she asked, her head tilting and eyes narrowing as though she knew him better than he knew himself, knew what he would do before she even asked it. “Her or me?”

The corner of his mouth lifted. His charm had gotten him far in the past. “Both?”

She laughed, continuing to draw her finger up his neck, and the sound was…actually quite unsettling. “That is not an option.” He exhaled at the overpowering surge of heat that overcame him. Why was it he wanted to run from something he wanted so badly to be swallowed in?

“Then you, of course,” he answered. She smiled, and he could have sworn blackness lurked inside her mouth—as though one of the universe’s black holes existed solely behind her lips. From the corner of his eye, he saw the other woman sulk, her heels clicking on the cement as she stormed off. And all he could think was good riddance.

“Not very wise,” the red-haired woman teased, even as the spell she’d put on him led him to grasp her waist. He pulled her against him, roughly, and lowered his lips to hers.

Before he could kiss her, in an oddly cool breath she said, “I’ll give you one more chance, Henry,” and that was when he heard the voice of the man and the cocking of his gun.