“Listen,Daddy’s Boy. You think the Videns give a shit about you? We can’t stand that obnoxious look on your face. You broke your promise to your people. And now your people are getting ready to break a few promises themselves.” His lips curve at the edges like a pair of pale worms. “You took our family and damned them tohell.”
“Wes took them.” I shake my head, pissed. “Scratch that—he didn’t take them. They fuckingvolunteered!” I riot those last words right in his dirtyface.
“They didn’t volunteer forthat!” he roars back. “That’s your problem, Prince of Shit—or is it King? Both are laughable.” He takes a staggering step back. “You don’t get it. You’re too removed. I guarantee if those were your sons—your brothers, you would be hauling ass to free them, to get them back to their rightful form. Dude, the Videns don’t need you.” He shakes his head as he slips into the murky shadows. “Be on guard. Be afraid. I’m going to make your every nightmare cometrue.”
He takes off, and I’m left alone, the threat still hanging in the air like a sickle. The throngs of Videns come to mind. Young men, boys, all of them so ready to help Wes with whatever the hell scheme he dreamed up. Not one of them realizing they would be sacrificing everything. Zander is wrong. The Videns do need me. They need me to protect them against mybrother.
I set out in a rush to find my lookalike, but the lights are too low, the bodies too thick. It will be a miracle if I ever see Skyla again, let aloneWes.
“Myson!”
I turn to find Demetri’s smile eroding on his face at the base of the stairwell. “Come.” He curls his fingers my way as he starts upstairs, and without reservation I follow him. I want answers, and Demetri’s got them by the truck full. What better night to start talking than, on this, the sacred night of his bastard’sbirth.
“Where to?” I stride alongside him as we head down the elongated familiar halls. I made this haunt my home for a time, a time I no longer wish to remember. I thought Demetri had saved me, and yet it was him who tossed me down that cliffinstead.
“Let us admire my treasures.” He lifts a finger to the mouth of the trophy room, and my gut cinches. I hate this place. I hate the fact there are creatures with their heads mounted to the wall filling the auditorium length room, and I hate the fact a majority of those creatures are exactly what I am—aFem.
I step in before him and take in the horrors, the eyes set agog, the gaping mouths, lion-looking creatures with human jowls, the mouth and nose of a man. Clowns, rows and rows of ghastly looking creatures that would frighten the holy shit out of just about anybody. The bear-like Fems with their black eyes, the fangs emanating from those dark holes they call mouths. I look to Demetri, perhaps the most frightening of them all, andscowl.
“Has Lizbeth seen this? Maybe this is the room you can host her in. I’m betting she’d think differently of youthen.”
“Never—to all of the above, never. The room has properties. It can have an entry or not, and it knows how to behave when my Lizbeth is afoot. No, these treasures are only shared with a given few.” He slaps his hand over my back and looks to the trophy wall before him with pride. “You’ve done it, Gage. You’ve created the next generation of Edingers—the perfect bloodlines, the perfect frame. I could not be prouder of you in every respect. In all that you’ve accomplished, you’ve served me well. And yourself. Skyla was a prize, wasn’tshe?”
My stomach sinks when he speaks of her in past tense. “She stillis.”
His brows furrow, and that forever grin of his dissipates. “Yes, I see.” Something about his answer, his demeanor, has me itching for the door. “You do realize what thisis.”
“The room? The party? Or the conversation in general? Because I’m fucking lost at themoment.”
He winces at the expletive, and, in truth, I gave it for thatreason.
“The room is a poem written in blood.” He looks to the expanse of corpses. “It says my love for you has no borders. I will kill, maim, and steal to seat you on the throne, my son. Nothing or no one can tame my velocity. The party is for you, my beloved. A proper introduction to the gentry. Our people shall bow to your feet soon enough. They have waited so long for you, and tonight they are in the presence of greatness.” The flicker of a smile comes and goes. “The conversation—a father speaking to a son. A heart to a heart. Power to power. I am yours, and you aremine.”
I can’t help but look Demetri in the eye. It’s unsettling, a dark pit of longing, a black hole, twin ebony balls of anxiety—that’s all I see when I look atthem.
“Okay,” I say it quiet, the way you would to defuse a madman. “Let me find my wife. We can cut the cake and call it a night.” I slap the old man over the shoulder and lead us out of this den of demons, and once we leave, I can’t help but note the doorway into that nightmare has sealed itself off, blending seamlessly into thewall.
Yes, that was just for me. I’m afraid Demetri has a lot of plans that are exclusive to me. He takes off, and I assure him I’ll be right behind him, but the sound of laughter emanates from farther down the hall, toward that private theater where we’ve seen far too many horrors on the bigscreen.
The closer I get, the thick smell of weed takes over, and soon I’m walking through a warm cloying fog. More laughter, grunting. I swing the door to the theater open and head inside to find a plume of smoke rising from the back row. The screen up ahead plays a black and white silent cartoon as if an eerie homage to the guests of honortonight.
“Who’s there?” I call as I head toward the tangle of bodies. A part of me knows I should duck out, leave whoever it is the hell alone, but that laughter, something aboutit.
“Gage?” a tiny female voice callsout.
“Shit. Giselle?” I speed over to find her seated on Ellis Harrison’s lap with his pants pulled down to his ankles. I realize they’re fucking—this is old news to me really—but it enlists such a fresh hell in me, it doesn’t seem to matter. I pluck Giselle off a little too violently and land her on her feet before yanking Harrison up, causing his joint to fly across the aisle with its orange glowing tip. “Are you fucking kidding me?” I thunder in his face as I slap him around and thrash him. “You’re smoking with my sister? You promised me you would never fucking do that!” In my rational mind, I very well know he most likely didn’t promise me that on any level, but in the heat of the moment it felt like the right thing to say. “Ellis!” I scream over his pot smoking face as loud as my lungs will allow. “Pull it together, or I will fucking killyou!”
Giselle lands her tiny fists over my back, shouting something about celebratinglife.
“You can’t see Ellis anymore!” I bark at her, and she stills—a look of fright frozen on her innocent face. “This ends tonight.” I turn back to the boy I grew up with. “You’re done. You will not pull my sister down. You will not take this life she was given and squander it under a fucking haze of this shit you’re addicted to!” I give a hard kick to his leg. “I won’t let it happen.” I stalk out of there, my adrenaline pumping through me like a war drum, my rage hitting the stratosphere. If it wasn’t the twins’ birthday party, if it wasn’t mine, I could have very well strangled the shit out of him. I’ll make it a point to talk to my parents about this. I don’t care how much my sister protests. I’m prying them the hellapart.
I hit the base of the stairs before I realize that ridiculous mask I was given is nowhere to be found. A body knocks into me, and I look up to find the ever-elusive shadow man, nothing but a dark breath of demonic air. His eyes meet with mine as he offers a laughing smile, and a shiver runs through me. He’s not real. He can’t be. For sure he isn’t one of those things that spins around the Transfer. He walks through the stairwell, straight through it, and I force myself to lookaway.
Crap. I take in a full breath as I set foot toward the mouth of the great room filled with its blaring music and riotously happy guests. I don’t see Skyla. I don’t see anyone I know in fact, so I head down the dark hall instead, desperate to get my head together. I should have asked Demetri about that figure, about the Videns. I slap the back of my neck as if swatting that smug grin off Demetri’s face. I should have wrung Ellis’ neck. And just like that, I relent. I shouldn’t have been so hard on him, on my sister. I left her there in tears, and now I feel like a monster. But there’s something about this place, about this night, that has me on edge. Maybe it’s the fact Skyla and I never finished that sex war we threatened one another with. That’s what I should do—find my wife and then find a very dark corner in this haunted estate, take the edge off this tension I’ve been hauling around allnight.
Just as I’m about to turn around, I spot a lone light at the end of the hall. I know that room all too well. It’s Demetri’s office. I head over to check it out, fully expecting to find another couple locked at the hips. This celebration might be under the ruse of my sons’ birthdays, but those dresses, those masks out there, they’re acting as fuel for the lust that’s long taken over thisisland.
I step to the edge of the door, ready to bolt if I see one shiny ass in the air, but I don’t. I see one shiny ass seated at the leather throne, looking sour and down as if someone just pissed in his favorite breakfastcereal.
