Chapter Thirty-Three
THIRTY-THREE
MAVEN
The interior of his ridiculous luxury sports car is nicer than my apartment in Manhattan.
We drive in silence through town until he pulls off the main road onto a narrow dirt road that winds through the tall pines. We follow that for a while as I begin to wonder if my corpse will be found by cadaver dogs sometime next spring.
This is how people disappear. Like this. Someone says, “Hey, let’s take a ride in my car,” and the next thing you know, you’re being dismembered in the woods.
Ronan glances over at me. “What?”
“It’s nothing.”
“And you say I’m the liar.”
I hate how easily he can read me. “Okay, fine. I was just thinking that fall I took must have knocked something loose inside my brain.”
He chuckles. “Because you think I’m the evil mastermind responsible for multiple kidnappings.”
“And murders.”
“Murders, too? You’re starting to hurt my feelings.”
“You say that as if you have any.”
His voice drops. “You’d be surprised.”
When I glance over at him, he’s giving me a look so hot, it could melt steel. Flushing, I quickly look away.
He parks at the edge of a clearing near the graveyard. The church looks far less ominous in the bright morning light. Without a word, he exits the car and starts walking toward the crumbling building.
I watch him go, staring at those broad shoulders and long, powerful legs, and hesitate for a moment before following him.
Ronan is unlocking the big silver chain on the iron gates at the front of the church. He waits for me to reach him, then pushes the gates open and walks in.
The groan of their rusted hinges echoes through the sanctuary like a warning.
Spinning the keys on his forefinger, he strolls over to the descending staircase in the floor by the opposite wall, then turns to look at me.
Sounding bored, he says, “Let’s get this over with, Bugs. I’m on a tight schedule. I’ve got lots of evil masterminding to get back to this morning.”
He walks down the stone steps and disappears.
Hesitating at the top of the staircase, I look down. I can see the floor of the basement for a few feet around the bottom step. It’s an unremarkable gray stone. I descend each step slowly, noticing that it doesn’t smell like animal musk anymore, just mold and rot.
When I reach the bottom step, I find Ronan leaning against a stone column a few dozen feet in front of me, arms folded over his chest, gazing at me from under lowered lids.
“Have a look around, Nancy Drew.”
What I see when I look around are bare stone floors, thick marble columns rising to a vaulted ceiling, and a lot of dusty, empty space.
I also see the big cages lining both sides of the far end of the room. There are a dozen of them total, six on either side.
They look more like dungeons than cages, cells from Medieval castles where prisoners were held. The sides have been bricked in. The bars are thick black metal bolted into the floor.
From my angle, I can only see the ones nearest to me at the end. They appear empty.
Wary, I glance back at Ronan. “Those aren’t like any kennels I’ve ever seen.”
His tone sours. “I suppose your expertise extends beyond bugs to all known creatures?”
Without waiting for a reply, he turns and walks slowly toward the cages. When he reaches the far wall, he spins on his heel and spreads his hands open.
“Take a look.”
I slowly cross the open space, my senses alert for any hint of danger, but there doesn’t seem to be anything amiss. The cages lining either side of the room have nothing interesting inside.
When I glance at him, he drawls, “So what do you think? Am I cleared of all charges?”
“Please don’t be smug.”
He smiles. “Can’t help it. That’s my default setting.”
After a moment of looking around, I say, “You could have moved the test subjects.”
He looks at the ceiling and heaves a dramatic sigh.
“It’s not impossible. I was out all night. Maybe you knew I’d want to see what was down here, so you had everyone moved somewhere else.”
He fixes his icy gaze on me and shakes his head. “I’m sorry to disappoint you, Maven, but I haven’t kidnapped anyone.”
“I heard screams coming from inside this building. Explain that.”
He studies me for a moment. “Are you sure they were screams? It couldn’t have been anything else?”
“Like what?”
“Like the wind. Like a screech owl. Like your imagination.”
I’m about to say it wasn’t my imagination but stop myself. I remember the way Auntie E looked at me when I insisted she said she had a nightmare about snakes, and my face grows hot.
He moves slowly closer, holding my gaze as he approaches. Stopping only a foot away, he reaches out and touches a strand of my hair, gently sliding it through his fingertips.
His voice low, he says, “Let’s play a little game. I’ll give you a truth for every truth you give me. I’ll go first. Why haven’t you braided your hair since the night we made love?”
Noticing that he said “made love” instead of “had sex” or the even less intimate “fucked” throws me for a loop. I close my eyes and exhale, willing my pulse to slow. It bangs away painfully anyway.
I quietly admit the truth while looking at the top button on his shirt. “Because you didn’t like it braided.”
He wasn’t expecting that. A new tension stiffens his body. His fingers tighten around the strand of my hair. We stay like that for a moment until he grips my chin and tilts my head up, forcing me to meet his eyes. He searches my face for any sign of deception.
Not finding it, he pushes for more.
“But why would you care, since you think I’m such a villain?”
“No, it’s my turn. What’s this sickness of yours?”
A shadow passes over his face. His eyes darken. He debates for a moment, then answers grudgingly.
“It doesn’t have a name. Medical literature has no comparable cases. We can’t find any instances of it outside our family. We believe it’s a genetic mutation, but we can’t pinpoint it on our DNA.”
My pulse is racing. A hundred questions crowd my mind, but it’s his turn, so I bite my tongue and remain silent, thinking of Bea and what this mutation might mean for her.
As soon as we return to New York, I’m getting her tested for everything.
Still holding my chin, he begins to thoughtfully stroke his thumb over my jaw, back and forth in a lazy slide of skin against skin that makes it hard for me to breathe.
His attention fixed on my mouth, he says, “The first time we spoke after you came home, you said you hated me. Is that still true?”
Breathing shallowly, I hesitate before shaking my head.
“Say it out loud. I want to hear you say it.”
Something about the dark, intense tone of his voice makes me tremble. Not from fear, inconveniently. I whisper, “It’s not true. I don’t hate you. I wish I could, but I don’t. I never have.”
His chest expands as he inhales. His jaw tightens, and his lips thin. He’s got that restrained look about him again, as if he’s holding himself in check with a tremendous effort of will. And then, only barely.
I moisten my lips and gather my courage. “Did you know I worked at the museum when you made the request to access our lepidoptera collection?”
His answer is instant. “No. I don’t do the outreach for studies. There are dedicated teams who handle that, far down the food chain from me. If I’d known where you were, I would have come to you.”
He slides his hand down and encircles my throat. I tense, keenly aware of how easily he could harm me if he wanted to. But I don’t try to pull away. For some inexplicable reason, that gentle pressure around my throat is arousing.
He senses it somehow and tightens his grip, pulling me against his body. Lowering his head, he speaks in a thick voice into my ear.
“If I’d known where you were, baby, all the demons in hell couldn’t have kept me away.”
He sounds sincere. Or is it my imagination again, playing tricks on me?
He lifts his head and slants me a challenging look, head tilted to the side, our faces inches apart.
“Your turn. And I believe you know the question.”
His thumb is pressed against my carotid artery, so he can surely feel how wildly it throbs. I swallow, my body thrumming under his touch, a kind of feral forest blood running through my veins.
Every time he touches me, this happens. My body responds independently of my will. I don’t understand it, and it frightens me, especially because it only seems to be getting worse.
I feel like a stranger to myself. I feel as if I’ve swallowed myself like an ouroboros swallowing its own tail and ensuring its own destruction, only to be reborn to do it all over again.
We could be caught in this cycle forever, Ronan and I, this push-and-pull back-and-forth unending cycle of thrust and parry, feint and lunge, unless one of us decides to stop dancing around like the dueling fencers we’ve always been and break it.
But I have something precious to protect, and I’ll lay down my own life before I’ll risk hers.
My voice comes out hoarse with emotion. “Bea is all the best parts of me, the best thing I’ve ever done or ever will do, and I’ll never give her up.
Never. I’ll protect her until my last breath.
I’ll kill to keep her safe. I say this because I don’t want there to be any misunderstanding.
If you try to take her, not even God can keep you safe from me. ”
He nods, once, slowly, never taking his gaze from mine, then inclines his head and presses a chaste kiss to my lips.
Even that barest of contact makes me shiver.
“I’ll give you three days. Leave Solstice before sunset three days from now, and I’ll let you both go. You have my word I won’t try to stop you, and I won’t follow you. It will be the end.”
His gaze drills into mine. His voice drops to a growl.
“But if you’re still here, I’ll consider it your tacit acceptance that you’re mine, and I’ll never let you go. Not even if you beg me to. And you will, Maven. Once you know everything, you’ll beg to be set free. But it will be too late. Once I claim you, you’re mine forever.”