Chapter Twenty-Seven #3
Circling the house, Darcy hid behind a large bush to observe the front of the manor.
However, nothing moved within. Guardedly, he climbed the outside steps.
I can smell human blood. He heard Wickham’s words clearly now as he approached the main door.
A shiver shook Darcy’s spine when he saw the door standing ajar.
He waits for you. A warning rang in his head: Death calls you.
Shoring up his resolve, Darcy used his shoulder to push the door wider.
For some reason, he did not fear Wickham’s lying in wait.
Such was not of Wickham’s nature. They would face each other in a pivotal arena.
Waiting for his eyes to adjust to the dense darkness of the entranceway, he cautiously stepped inside.
The moon reflected through the left-hand windows, creating a latticework of light and dark patches, a luminescent carpet leading to the main hall.
Darcy warily moved to the room described by his cousin, the hub for the dance.
He had seen it only briefly the night he had come here alone.
For two nights Darcy listened to the cadent shuffling of feet, unaccented pulsations.
He imagined the sway of disembodied spirits bending to Wickham’s gestures as his enemy orchestrated an improvised promenade.
He stood where those lost souls had stood.
The double doors fully opened to a grand hall.
The expanse of the room spoke of Seorais Winch-combe’s desire to be the gentleman he never was.
Darcy experienced a twinge of empathy for the man who lost everything because he had loved Darcy’s relative.
Locating a candle by the door, he lit it, compelled to see the hall for himself.
He held it aloft. Again, he moved guardedly.
Broken and twisted furniture filled every corner and was piled high in the room’s center.
Fine tapestries depicting forested scenes of animals and of pagan gods hung precariously from light fixtures, shredded by the force of what must have been a violent storm.
Darcy recognized the destruction, knew automatically it had come at Wickham’s hand.
Everything stood in ruin, except an ornately carved, thick-legged chair, resting in the room’s center.
Reaching for it, Darcy’s fingers traced the etching found in the wood, a horned god—resembling a human, surrounded by animals.
The branching antlers stretched like treetops as the god sat, legs spread wide and holding a torque, a twisted narrow band in gold, in one hand and a horned serpent in the other.
Above the scene was the name Cernunnos, written in gold.
Elizabeth and Mrs. Annesley were correct.
Upstairs. He heard the word as if the walls spoke it. Setting the candle on the table, he took a fresh one and lit it from the first.
Sucking in a deep breath of resolve, he climbed slowly, approaching a final counterpoint. Step by step, he soon stood at the top. He followed his cousin’s description to the private quarters.
Again, the moon lit the way, a beacon in the night, to another open doorway. Unlike the rest of the house, this room radiated light. Yet, it was cold and uninviting. The door tottered on its hinges, but Darcy stepped cautiously within.
The coffin was there and Wickham was in it. Darcy set the candle aside before reaching for his sword. Inching slowly forward, he shoved aside a powerful urge to run from the room and the scene of what he could easily become if he succumbed to the curse.
Wickham rested in his coffin, arms crossed about his waist, his eyes wide open, but as if seeing something not there.
This was the creature that had filled the lives of generations of Darcys with fear.
Wickham left chaos and death wherever he walked.
A beast of the night, he indiscriminately discarded his victims, leaving them torn and broken, great gashes ripping apart their necks, or he took them as he did Lydia Bennet, small puncture wounds draining their life, one drop of blood at a time.
Impulsively drawn to Wickham’s figure, Darcy stood over it.
Poised, he placed the tip of the sword above the braggart’s heart and prepared to end the curse.
Wickham’s steel grey eyes told a tale of despair, and as they turned deathly pale, Darcy felt a fizzle of excitement course through his veins.
Minutely, he shifted his weight and prepared to plunge the blade into Wickham’s soul, but as he braced for the act, silently and slowly, a serpent slithered forth from under Wickham’s arm and wrapped itself around the sword’s tip.
In a fraction of a second, panic shot up Darcy’s back, and he snapped a quick glance at Wickham’s face, only to find the grey eyes closed and a grim smile adorning the mouth.
Knowing Wickham’s penchant for show, Darcy flicked his wrist to adjust his hands for the paik, but before he could thrust, a wrist shot out and caught his arm in a viselike grip.
Wickham’s eyes blackened into pools of timeless death.