Chapter 33
THIRTY-THREE
Della
First, I wandered down the hall to the left of the bedroom door. There was nothing of interest, just a lot of spare bedrooms and some rooms that appeared they were for storage. Then, I wandered down to the right and discovered the same thing, only there was a narrower corridor in the distance that seemed to join two sections of the house. I moved forward to check it out and stopped in the middle to look through the windows. There was a garden below, walled in by the house, with a wrought iron bench, cherub water fountain, and a meandering brick-lain pathway.
My stomach growled angrily, and I circled back, heading for the staircase. Everything was deathly quiet, including the seemingly lone uniformed house employee that wandered past the landing at the bottom. She was so silent she may as well have been gliding. My own feet made no noise as I slowly descended the stairs.
I knew Josiah had “business” to attend to, but I wished there’d been time to give me a tour of the home before he left. It appeared there were a hundred ways to get lost in the building’s sprawling corridors and living spaces.
As I headed toward what I hoped was the back of the home, where I assumed the kitchen was, I ducked my head into a few of the rooms, spotting a vast office and library and a living room. Ignoring the compulsion to poke around in any more of them, I kept on going.
In the stillness, I heard a muffled scream and quickly turned around, hoping to identify the source of the noise. Swiveling my head slowly, I tried to focus but couldn’t figure out where the sound came from until I realized it was coming from somewhere below.
I began opening every door I came across, searching for a way to get to a lower level. I knew this was foolish, but I wanted to see Josiah in action, and I wanted to know what he’d do to Brett. I was under no illusions I’d be able to stop him, and I wasn’t positive I even wanted to.
It was a morbid desire to see the man I was falling for more every day doing what was in his nature to do. He claimed to be these things and all it took was one look at him for me to believe he was capable, but I needed to witness it.
There were things he hid from me, things he hadn’t told me, and I didn’t want this to be yet another. Something had been on his mind lately, but he wouldn’t divulge what it was, and I wanted to be closer to him. With his guards following me everywhere and his talk about how our relationship wasn’t “approved,” I knew he was holding out on me.
While I fully understood he was a target due to his wealth, there was something hidden. I suspected it had to do with the realm he’d said he was from, the place in my head I could only imagine based on the limited information he’d given me.
I wanted more from him. More than just visits to the park, lunches at cafés. Why hadn’t he told me more? My thoughts began taking a downward turn until I remembered the nights at my apartment snuggling on my couch, his long legs stretched out, while I forced him to watch every Blade movie, every Underworld movie. He humored me but then pointed out multiple inaccuracies and I had to remind him they were for entertainment-purposes-only.
Josiah liked order and justice, more than anything, so the movies appealed to him on that level if for no other reason. The movies were bloody, gory, intense, and sexy. My man had the intense and sexy parts down to a science.
It just felt like there was something important he wasn’t telling me.
I hadn’t found any movies about demons to watch with him, not any that weren’t based on a haunting or possession, so we hadn’t ventured off into that genre yet.
Every door I opened showed me yet another room that wasn’t what I was looking for. When I got to the back of the house, there was one door left near the rear entry way. I had the feeling, given its proximity to the back of the house, I was finally where I needed to be.
For a moment I worried the door wouldn’t open but the latch gave way, and a long staircase led me down into the dark. I longed for a flashlight, but I was going for stealth-mode, so I hadn’t bothered to look for one or flip the switch on the wall. He could smell me, I knew, but maybe he was distracted enough to not be paying attention.
I held the railing the whole way down and was faced with a few different directions to go when I reached the bottom.
The echo of cruel and deep laughter steered me.