Chapter 3
CHAPTER
THREE
In my opinion, midnight was an excellent time for a party to end.
Though I’d embraced the darker side of things, I could still identify with Cinderella.
Her one and only party had ended at the stroke of midnight with a great deal of fanfare.
As an orphaned child foisted onto a stepmother who hadn’t wanted me, I liked the loud tolling of twelve bells that sent everyone scurrying for the door.
It had become one of my signatures since I always left a glass slipper on the last step of my front stairs on party nights, so everyone could see it as they departed.
It made sense to me, anyway.
Carrying the shoe with me, I made my way around the house and out to the cemetery to make sure no one lingered. A few people had needed to have a ride called for them, but I hadn’t seen everyone off personally and wanted to make sure that no one was trying to sleep it off in the mausoleum.
I paused outside the mausoleum’s door to admire the view of the cemetery.
The full moon shone like a spotlight through the evergreens and thinning branches of the other trees.
Mist clung to the grass, flowing with the breeze, and giving the nighttime an eerie quality that appealed to me.
I wanted fireflies blinking on the scene, but it was far too late in the year for them.
Still, it was an inspiring sight of slow decay and disturbing darkness.
Something made a scuffling noise inside the mausoleum.
I flinched, turning to investigate. I honestly hadn’t known if the door could be opened at all, but there it was, cracked open about three inches.
Ornate metal and filthy glass, the door looked heavy while not letting me see inside at all.
I set down the shoe and got out my phone, turning on the flashlight app before putting a hand on the door to push.
A sound like protesting metal made me twitch, and then I laughed at myself. It was almost but not quite like the sound I’d heard just before my great black beast?—
“Oh, goddess,” I whispered in sudden alarm because right there crouched down beside the crypt inside the mausoleum was a massive black wolf-like creature. Its eyes reflected red in the light of the phone, squinting at me as a snarl curled thin lips away from the beast’s fangs.
I flicked the light away on instinct. “Sorry,” I said for possibly blinding the poor thing. “I won’t hurt you. It’s okay.”
I turned off the flashlight app only to go cold with the realization that I’d just made it harder to see the predator lurking in the shadows in front of me.
Harder, but not impossible because with every breath the beast took, its chest glowed a brighter red-orange before it dimmed again.
I knew exactly where the creature was…and when it stood up.
“You can see me,” the beast said in a voice like thunder.
I gulped, that deep rumble stirring my desire in the strangest way. Well, no, my desire for this beast was strange, but that a subterranean male voice and the frisson of fear could cause such a reaction wasn’t odd at all. I did have a few kinks.
“Y-yes, I can see you. Better, um, better in the light, of course,” I said with a breathless laugh. “But yes. Should I not be able to see you?” I asked with a frown since he knew I was dealing with something beyond the realms of the reality I’d thought I understood.
“Some can. Some cannot.” The glow from his chest showed his open mouth and all those teeth as he talked. “You didn’t scream, though.”
“Oh, uh, no. Well, this isn’t the first time I’ve seen you. Though I didn’t scream then either, actually. That, um, spirit? They screamed.”
“They always do.”
I had no doubt about that. “I probably would’ve if you’d been running after me like that.”
“Then don’t try to escape Hell.”
I couldn’t resist a step closer. “Is that what happened? I’d heard what had sounded like a gate opening, and then that ghost-like person running… Wait, are there actual gates to Hell?” I gasped again, a hand over my heart. “Is there a gate to Hell on this property?”
“Yes…and yes.”
“Hell is real,” I said absently.
“And damned souls find ways to escape from time to time. I catch them and send them back.”
A shiver went down my spine as I gazed at those terrible teeth and the orange flicker of flames behind them.
And then all of a sudden, the beast blew out a breath and a collection of candles on top of the crypt blazed brightly.
The golden glow now illuminating the beast’s thick black fur, muscular body, and long clawed fingers had me feeling hot and cold as the world tilted alarmingly.
I gasped when I found myself held by massive hands—one at my waist and one behind my head—and realized I’d been about to faint. And the beast had caught me. Saved me. “Oh, thank you,” I whispered as I looked into the deep golden eyes staring back at me.
The giant creature nodded and steadied me before letting me go and stepping away. Something inside me opened wide, like I was making room for this nightmare being to come in and be cared for. It must be so lonely to be something another person might never be able to see. I wanted to change that.
“I’m Ambrose Augustine. What’s your name?”
“Saph.” He cleared his throat, and it sounded like rocks in a blender. “Saphrax Sableclaw.”
“Sable? Are you the caretaker? Oh, my!”
Saph actually wound his fingers together as though he was nervous. “I’ve kept out of sight and only done the minimum while you’ve gotten settled. I’ll stop coming into the house if you don’t want me to.”
“No, no, I’m not upset,” I said with a hand out. “I just had no idea. I mean, of course I didn’t. Who would? Oh! Did Mister Dodge know about you?”
That great black head nodded briefly. “He treated me… But I was allowed…” Saph closed his eyes and swallowed hard.
I couldn’t resist taking a step closer. “It’s okay. You can tell me.”
I didn’t miss the way Saph edged around to the other side of the sarcophagus, putting it between us. If he needed the space, I’d let him have it, but that he was afraid of me was almost laughable.
“He treated me like a talking pet, but he allowed me into the basement. And he…” Saph gestured to one of the cubbies in the mausoleum’s wall. “He let me read the books.”
My heart clenched. “Then you can have that again. Of course, you can! Whatever you need is yours.”
Saph eyed me up and down, and I let him look, hoping my desire to make this amazing person comfortable was clear. I helped that along by saying, “You have a very important job to do, and I want to make sure you can do it to the best of your ability.”
Saph’s big golden eyes crinkled and the corner of his mouth curled in the smallest of smiles. “Thank you,” he rumbled.
Before I could say anything back, a huge crack of thunder sounded outside and had me squawking as I jumped, bumping into the crypt.
Goddess, I’d known it was supposed to rain tonight, but not that it was going to storm so ferociously.
Looking outside, I watched as a gentle rain became a downpour.
A glance at my velvet brocade jacket and silk dress nearly made me pout since both would be ruined when I walked back to the house.
Oh, and my Louboutin boots! They’d never recover.
“There’s a tunnel into the house from here.”
I blinked at Saph. “There is?”
He approached a wall and gave it a push. The stone was only a facade on top of a wooden door that popped open to reveal a set of dirt stairs descending into darkness.
I cleared my throat. “That’s, um, not the way to the gates of Hell, right?”
Saph actually chuckled. “I promise it goes to the house.”
Only slightly reassured, I walked over and paused. “Goddess, that’s dark…” I whispered and made to reach for my phone to turn the light on again.
“Let me go first,” Saph said before easing by me and ducking into the opening.
Hard muscle and soft fur briefly brushed against me, and I shivered at the feel of both.
I’d always thought Belle should’ve been able to keep her Beast and that the Big Bad Wolf had gotten a bad rap, but oh, now I understood the depth of my depravity.
Fur, fangs, claws, and a touch of hellfire might be exactly what I needed.
And then Saph reached for my hand, grasping it in rough fingers and pulling me forward into the blackness of the tunnel.
I caught my breath at both the touch and the possibility that I was surrounded by snakes, spiders, rats, or who knew what else that could live down in the dirt, but I didn’t try to light my way for a second.
Saph might let go of my hand if I did.
That massive hand enveloped mine as I held onto his middle finger like a lifeline and stumbled after him in the pitch black of the tunnel.
The candlelight faded quickly and, though the sound was muted, the thunderclaps outside still reached my ears.
The tunnel floor was dirt, but it was level for the most part, with only the occasional rock or stick—tree root? —hampering my steps.
“Who made this tunnel?” I cleared my throat since I sounded rather breathless. “Was it so the family could visit the mausoleum secretly for some reason?”
“No, I made it from an old ghoul’s tunnel. They consumed the corpses centuries ago and left to find more. Though I hated having them here at the time, their tunnels have proved helpful.”
Ghouls? I wasn’t entirely sure what those were, but if they ate the dead, well, I could certainly imagine that horror. But also, it had been centuries ago and yet Saph had known the ghouls? Centuries ago?
“How long have you been here?”
“Three hundred seventy-seven years.”
“Goddess.”
“I’m quite a lot older, though.”
“How old are you?”
“I’m not entirely sure, but they called where I was born Tartarus back then.”
Tartarus was the deepest part of the Underworld, according to Greek mythology. It was Hell before the Christians got ahold of it. Saph had been born in Hell.
“Saph? What are you?”
“I’m a hellhound,” he said before pushing open a door that let a little yellow glow of light into the tunnel.
Pleased that I’d been right about what Saph was, I followed him out of the tunnel and into what definitely looked like a stone block basement. Saph’s head nearly reached the cobwebbed rafters above him, there was a nightlight plugged in near the stairs, and?—
“This is your home!” I exclaimed as I squeezed Saph’s big finger.
In one corner of the room was a large, well-made bed with an actual canopy, a pair of leather club chairs, and a small table between them. Most of the room was full of things covered by sheets and old cardboard boxes, but that corner was absolutely where someone lived.
Saph shrugged one shoulder, and I bet he blushed beneath the darkness of his fur.
I moved around in front of my great beast and clasped his other hand as well. “Saph, listen to me. This place is more your home than mine, so please don’t ever think I want you anywhere else but here. Okay?”
Saph gazed steadily at me before he blinked and nodded. “Okay.”
Happiness made me hug Saph’s massive hands to my chest as a wiggle of desire returned. How did one go about kissing someone with a wolf’s muzzle?