Chapter 22
Gideon
Iwas never sure how I made it home to Grayspires, stumbling along through the frozen silence of winter, each of my rasping breaths filled with pain and fury.
How had Deliverance guessed my secret? It must have been that damn Bible. But I could have sworn she knew nothing about it.
It had all been accomplished long before I ever knew her.
But it had been a Pyrrhic victory, hadn't it? The master of Grayspires, but with such a rundown, ill-kept building as my stolen inheritance that I'd needed a great deal of money, immediately, to keep it from falling down around my ears.
Despite my growing business as poisoner, I would need a lot of money. Grayspires must be restored to her former glory. And an heiress with no protectors, just an old family lawyer it was easy to bribe, was the perfect target.
It had been so easy to seduce the sweet, innocent Deliverance, to bury myself deep in that soft cunny.
But not so easy to win her back.
As I arrived back, Grayspires sat like a symbol of elegant decay, the roof dense with lines of slippery dark slime. It had been my one, my great, my only love ever since I had come as a nameless bastard child to Grayspires Manor.
Toiling year by year in the stables and on the grounds would have made some men noble and strong, patient and pious.
Not I.
Poisoner by name, poisoner by nature, twisted and dark in mien and heart.
I spent that time plotting how I could take possession of the manor. Grayspires–dark, foul-natured, twisted. Just as I was.
And instead of loyalty to my father, the man who had sired me?
I had only hatred. He had brought me to Grayspires, but never given me a name.
I took it anyway.
My father I killed first, chose the slowest, rawest, deadliest berries to do so.
It had been a beautiful death, elegant in all ways, to watch the terror fill his eyes and see the bubbling contents of his own stomach in his mouth.
And I loved that feeling of power, tightened it in my grip, drove it into my own heart so that it dug sinuous tendrils around every organ.
I was only limited by my own intelligence and audacity in becoming the county's foremost purveyor of deathly nightshade and other poisons.
The other bastards of my father's that littered the grounds were either driven away or killed.
Because Grayspires Manor was mine.
But now my triumph sat on me like a scab, like a hard crust over a raw wound.
I had achieved all that I wanted. But I could not rejoice in my murderous gains without my ill-gotten wife.
She had been stolen and deceived in the most infamous way, and I had no regrets. Regrets were for men with tiny pricks. And now that I had her money, there was nothing that should have stopped me from moving on, finding another woman’s hole to fuck. There were no shortage of sweet cunts open to me.
At first, it was only the thought of her pregnancy that bothered me.
That was mine. Unlike my father, I fiercely wanted a baby.
I wanted an heir, a child who I would never abandon.
That I would raise to unimaginable heights.
They would have every luxury at my disposal.
It would in all ways be the opposite of my father's approach.
And then, somehow, my bratty mouthy wife had become indispensable to me too.
What had I done?
Even my workshop with its neat rows of herbs and potions and drinks that could send a man into a living coma or kill discreetly, with just a touch, just a drop, haunted me.
Because it had almost been the means of killing my wife and child.
How strange to think initially I had only considered Deliverance as a wet hole, a meek and biddable little thing I would pay minimal attention to.
Now I recognized in her a will almost as strong as my own.
Ada had been something I picked up along the way, the wife of an alderman who was thirsty for my cock and easy to smuggle away in a carriage.
She had touched my prick but never my damn soul.
But I could not get it out of my head—the way Deliverance had looked at me when I first brought her as a bride to Grayspires. Such excitement to be the lady of the house. It had amused me at the time.
But now, I wanted nothing more than to have her be mistress of Grayspires.
My home gave me no pleasure now. And the servants lined up to obey their Master only made me remember Bartholomew's insolence.
How dare he hide my wife! How dare he touch my wife!
Scarlet rage blinded my vision as I threw my glass of vermouth into the fireplace, sending blue and white and angry yellow flames to lick the shards.
I spent the next few days in a drunken, blurred stupor.
When I got up on the third day I rode into the village and went to the tavern. Asked for the prettiest woman servant, the ripest slut there.
Then I took her up to a room at the inn and fucked her, pulling down her barmaid's garb to suckle on her heavy breasts, the large round nipples.
But while she had her plump lips over my prick, I was still thinking about my wife, and when I was ball's deep in the next woman I thought again about my wife.
I left with my balls drained, but still feeling unsatisfied and twitchy. That hadn’t cleared my head at all. There was no godsdamn fun in cheating if my wife didn’t know about it. And cheating made her run away. That pissed me off.
Unless Deliverance left the safety of St. Mary's, she might be lost to me forever, because this woman was stubborn as hell. I bribed some of the Abbey servants to be my eyes and ears, make sure Bartholomew was keeping to his lifelong celibacy vows. I didn’t trust any man’s vows around my tempting wife.
I began to drink again, heavily, to prowl along the fence line of the monastery, more wraith than man, to watch jealously for any sight of Deliverance.
And so when I first saw Ada again back at Grayspires, I thought it was merely a product of my diseased and alcohol-soaked mind.
It was a grotesque parody of her old face, framed by the window as snow fell around her. She seemed to melt into dripping liquid, her poisoned skin flayed open so I could see the bone beneath.
Surely this must be a specter sent to haunt and rebuke me?
Who else but a creature of the devil would be there to laugh at my degradation and failure? My hand was shaking as I pointed.
"Begone!" I croaked.
Her eyes flashed at me with their old fire.
And she refused to leave.
It was not until I had stumbled from my chair, flinging the glass from my hands as I cursed at her, that the face disappeared.
But she did not leave for long. All those long weary winter nights she haunted me.
I did not believe in a God. But perhaps this was my punishment for weakness and failure.
And then, one night, the specter became flesh!
I had sent my servants all away, not wanting to see a face that wasn't Deliverance's, yet so sunk in gloom was I that when a cool white hand set a porcelain cup beside me, I didn't even think.
I took and drank.
For once I was only sipping one glass of cognac, preferring as I did sometimes to remember what I had lost with maximum pain and suffering.
So I was fully conscious when the poison hit me.
My limbs all locked up, with a terrifying rapidity that took out my toes first, then lower limbs, thighs, froze my cock, ran with electrifying power through my fingers and up my arms, and finally locked my jaw.
I slid sideways from the chair with no ability to stop my fall.
There was a crack as my ribs hit a nearby table and I landed with a resounding thud, on my back near the fireplace.
Dripping cognac from my shattered glass was soaking into my collar, the jagged glass jabbing me in the throat.
And as I was lying totally helpless on the ground, a shadow passed over me and I looked up into my former mistress's eyes.
The weeks had not been kind to her, eyes bloodshot, spidery purple veins splaying across her cheeks. She looked like a waxen doll that had been broken and put together too hastily.
"Gideon Nightshade," she rasped, and I could only stare.
Strangely, the name I had been so proud to win seemed tight, ill-fitting in her mouth.
"I never took you for a cunt-snatched man," she hissed, her voice seeming to come from far away and yet near. "Deliverance was meant to be nothing more than a means to an end. Wealth to plunder. Of course you had to sample her cunt. That’s the kind of man you are. You take and dominate.”
She walked around me, her dress shapeless black garb, the hair that hadn't been permanently burned pulled back in a tight knot.
I could only watch with agonized eyes.
"But then you had to favor her cunt. Be mastered by her cunt. And suddenly she was no longer disposable to you. Suddenly there was one person the great Gideon Nightshade didn't want to kill."
She bent with a terrifying crack of bones, like her knee joints had been put in backwards, then drew a finger down my cheek, cold as ice, her nails long and jagged, the dirt of the grave inches deep in them.
"But that can be remedied by someone with a stronger will than you. For you aren't the only one with a knowledge of poisons."
And in the eleventh hour of my life, I felt repentance smite me. A tool used by me could be used against me. . . and the woman I loved.
My whole body was frozen in this helpless state, motionless with the drug she’d dosed me with, and the fire crackled merrily beside me, while Ada leered over me in a parody of domesticity.
How long would I be in this paralysis? I tried to gather the scattered remnants of my mind to catalogue all the poisons, leaves, and dangerous oils Ada might have knowledge of.
Would it wear off soon enough to stop her?
She bent down with a snap of her raw bones, drawing my cock from my pants and, to my horror, moving her twisted mouth over it.
"Then we will be as we were before. Lovers. And Grayspires will always belong to us."
Cold sweat broke out along my throat to feel her wet and sloppy mouth slobbering along my prick.
Her sucking had a mechanical feel, drool gathering along my balls. Up and down, up and down.
But my cock remained flaccid and uninterested as the minutes stretched on.
My fingers twitched. Not much. Not enough to get up or shove her away. It felt like pins and needles were stabbing me. But I strained for more, willed my frozen limbs to move.
"Oh well," Ada shrugged, wiping the drool from her mouth and straightening her neat hair.
"When I have killed your wife and child, you will no longer have this silly sentimental attachment to them.
Of course, no holy place would dare to turn away a suffering sister, and by the time they realize my deception, it will be too late. "
No. Her plan was simple but effective in its audacity. While they might be on guard against the predations of one Gideon Nightshade, Ada's ruined face would automatically engender sympathy.
Another finger twitched, and I stretched my muscles, further.
Further toward the burning embers of the fire.
Grayspires no longer mattered, my life's work no longer mattered, being the powerful and feared Gideon Nightshade no longer mattered. All that mattered was making sure Deliverance and the baby were safe.
Even if I too would die in the process.
Ada was arranging her wimple in the gilt-edged mirror as my muscles twitched in pain.
And the tip of my fingers just hit the flame.
It was white-hot, but I strained further.
I could not fail.
"Well," Ada said primly. "Perhaps after all I do like Deliverance's face. Her nose is prettier than mine now. Perhaps I shall cut it off and glue it to my own."
She turned toward me like a large broken doll, and I closed my palm over the ember, let it singe and burn my flesh in silent agony as I met her eyes.
"And you, for all your wickedness, cannot stop me."
The moment she moved I held the ember to my fallen puddle of cognac, my arm steady as the flames licked up my fingers, and then.
They blazed through the puddle and onto the heavy, velvet drapes.
"You shall not hurt Deliverance," I cried hoarsely, for my tongue was finally loosed.
Ada shrieked with alarm as the flames chased each other overhead, and somewhere in the distance I heard the shattering of glass.
"Noooooooo," she cried as I saw a beam detach and hurtle toward her, and the sound was unearthly, inhuman when it hit.
Then all was fire and smoke and noise, such a roar and moan as if the mouth to Hell itself had opened.
I heard the glass vials of my poisons shatter and explode, one after the other, filling the air with a noxious scent. And I could not regret their loss at all.
Feeling returned slowly, too slowly, to my limbs, as I crawled desperately for the exit, and then I knew no more.