Horn of the Unicorn Read online

  “Because,” Tess said wryly, “even if he were dead, we wouldn’t make it out of here alive. Not with those jerk-offs from The Order he has guarding every door and window on the lower floors.”

  And they knew the ways of The Order of Dragomaene all too well, for it had controlled their lives, from nannies to doctors to tutors, since they had come to live within this hell. For The Order remained, as it had for years, subject to the tyrannical dictates of its Chancellor.

  Chancellor Randolph Alfred Montgomery.

  Talk about having a bad seed on the family tree, Tess thought with an inner groan.

  “Well, I hate it,” Emily sighed, flopping back on the bed, slender arms flung wide. “All of it. Him, the cold, this miserable freaking house. Why can’t I be some badass babe with an Uzi and Vale-Tido training? Some ass-kicking cross between Jet Li and Rambo, but uh…with some feminine flair thrown in to soften my rough edges? Then, between the two of us, we could off them all!”

  “You’ve been watching too much TV,” Tess drawled, knowing Emily’s fondness for action-adventure movies.

  Emily huffed toward the ceiling. “What the hell else is there to do? I’ve read every damn book I can get my hands on, and unless you know of any exercises that actually put some bod on a woman, instead of taking it off, I’m outta luck there. And god only knows what would happen if I took up sewing. I’d probably end up making a straightjacket for myself.”

  Crossing her arms over her chest, Tess struggled to ignore the knot of worry in her stomach that had been twisting tighter as the day wore on. “You sound bored, Em.”

  “Yeah, well, we can’t all use the back of our closet doors as target practice with pilfered steak knives to keep entertained, now can we?”

  “No one’s stopping you,” Tess answered with a rough laugh.

  A sardonic smile twisted Emily’s mouth as she tilted her head to look at Tess. “Just my shitty sense of aim. I’d probably drop one of the damn things and end up taking off a toe. Unfortunately, I think my nipples would be safe,” she quipped, the words thick with sarcasm, while staring down at the petite shape of her chest. “You can’t catch a falling knife on something that doesn’t stick out very far to begin with, can you?”

  Despite her worries, Tess’ shoulders shook with humor. “God, you’re incorrigible.”

  “Incorrigible, maybe,” Emily murmured, rolling to her side and propping her head on her hand, ink black curls falling like soft silk against the delicate features of her face, “but when it comes to bodacious bosoms, I’m sadly lacking.”

  “You don’t need them,” Tess pointed out. “You’re adorable the way you are.”

  “Adorable,” her sister muttered, curling her upper lip. “Just what every woman wants to hear herself described as. Thanks, Tess. Next you’ll be telling me I’m the soul of gentility.”

  “I wouldn’t go that far,” Tess averred with a smile, shaking her head at Emily’s wry, sometimes bizarre sense of humor. If not for her sister, she knew this place would have beaten her down years ago. Emily made each day worth living, gave it purpose, and that only added to Tess’ sense of responsibility for the younger woman. A responsibility that fell on her shoulders—to get the warm, vivacious Emily Laurent out of this prison that had become their existence before it killed all that wonderful, life-giving fire, though she knew it would infuriate Em to know that her older sister felt that way.

  But it was true. Even if the mystery of the cavern riddle had failed to be solved, it was only a matter of time before Emily’s passion was extinguished, for their lives resembled a garish fairy tale—or a nightmare. And Tess knew that if she had not lived it, she would have never believed. The Order of Dragomaene owned them, had catalogued and classified them down to the most intimate details, and she hated them with a strength born from sheer force of will.

  In her and Emily, Montgomery believed he had found the answer to his life’s quest—the one thing he had sought for more than half a century. With their blood, he planned to achieve his life’s desire. Through their suffering, he would live the dream of a madman. And if his close friends and political allies thought him the most noble and honest of fellows, Tess knew him for the monster he truly was.

  As if she could sense the monster’s presence at her door, the fine down upon her arms raised in warning mere seconds before she heard the gentle rasp of her bedroom door being unlocked from the other side. The bastard never knocked, believing himself the master of his domain. Everyone within the estate lived beneath his rule, subject to his dictatorial, sadistic whims.

  Knowing their confrontation would be ugly and cruel, Tess rushed across the room and shoved Emily to her feet, forcing her back into her own bedroom while her sister argued beneath her breath. “I don’t understand why you don’t just let me stay! I’m not a child, Tess!”

  “And the less you have to deal with him the better, Em,” she whispered harshly, knowing she had only seconds to spare. “Especially today. It’s hard enough to stomach being in his presence, without having to worry what he’ll say to you!”

  “But I want to talk about what we’re going to do about tomorrow,” Emily argued. “Damn it, Tess, I’m not helpless and you’re not doing this alone! We need a plan!”

  “And I’m trying to think of one, I promise,” Tess whispered quickly, then closed the connecting bedroom door in her sister’s angry face and flipped the lock. She rushed back to the window seat just as Montgomery entered her room, those cold, lifeless eyes raking her with a possessive gaze that pitched her stomach into a churning, rumbling queasiness. She returned a rude, calculated stare of her own, refusing to cower, feeling the disgust pool richly within her blood as he smiled in satisfied delight. He had always taken great pride in her refusal to shrink before him, believing he would savor a sweeter victory in the end, when he watched that power broken.

  Licking his dry lips, he approached her, stopping but a few feet from where she sat upon the seat. The morning sunlight burned unkindly across his form, showcasing his disease-ridden body in all its rotting glory, as if he actually wore the sins of his heart upon his flesh. Her nostrils flared with the faint stench of his cologne, the woodsy scent unable to mask the decaying odor of his soul.

  He was foulness personified, though most chose to ignore the truth they could plainly witness with their own eyes, tricked by the fine furnishings and hand-tailored suits he wrapped around himself like a snake camouflaged within the rusty, leaf-covered floor of the forest. A serpentine smile twisted his thin lips, his accented voice stronger than one would expect from such a disease-ridden man.

  “You’ve heard the grand news, my pet?”

  A slow smile of pure hatred curled her lip in response. “Satan himself is coming to claim your soul?” she drawled, the acid sarcasm of her words producing a slight tremble beneath his papery skin.

  “Careful, Tess, lest I inflict my displeasure with you upon your precious, spineless sibling.”

  His warning knotted her muscles, as it always did, though she refused to show her fear, knowing it was the wounded look of a trapped rabbit that he sought. Unwilling to give him the satisfaction of even so minor a victory, she mentally wrapped the fear within a careful, precisely structured shell of pride, and swallowed the bitter, foul-tasting medicine. Cocking her head to the side in a deliberate act of nonchalance, she held his burning gaze.

  “I’d kill you myself, before I let you harm her. And Emily is hardly spineless, as you well know. She just can’t tolerate the sight of you. The way I see it, if it’s a choice between you or your men, she’d be far better off being raped by your mindless goons than by a disgusting piece of filth such as yourself.”

  “Tess…Tess…Tess,” he chided gently. “You do have that same fiery spark as your mother. It’s such a pity she refused to let me fuck her when she was young. I’m sure I could have given her better seed than that patriot father of yours.”

  He paused, appearing lost for a moment within the blackness of his mind
while Tess seethed with painful memory, and then he slowly resurfaced, blinking her carefully back into focus. “But back to my true reason for this visit, pet. I’m sure you’ve heard that the riddle has been deciphered and the doorway into the realm of The Wicket Wood discovered. The time for life and death is at hand. And you will do nicely, I’ve no doubt. After all, my dear, a beast that has not fucked a woman in hundreds of years is sure to take any cunt he can—even one accompanied by so acid a tongue as yours. He can always cut it out, if he chooses,” he drawled in the singsong tone of a madman.

  “Not if I cut him first,” she challenged in a low, throaty whisper. An icy chill trailed down her spine, as if death itself had stroked her flesh with its lifeless hand. She trembled deep within with hate, like a tremor set deep inside the immovable earth, refusing to show her fear before this monster.

  Oh yes, she hated him and his damn Order. Hated them with the single-minded purpose of the imprisoned, with the stubbornness of the young, and the pure loathing of the wronged. For years she’d lived with the slow, steady burn of hatred, so much so that she did not know how that sickened part of her soul would ever heal. You could not lay her out upon a surgeon’s table and cut it out with a knife. Not unless you could cut out her heart, for the consuming emotion had too long ago become a malignant disease within her flesh and blood and bone for which there was no cure.

  Though she was only twenty-six, it seemed as if she’d hated this man and his sadistic Order forever. As if she’d had lifetime upon lifetime to churn with the need to seek their blood, to take bone deep satisfaction in their savage destruction. And yet, their plans for her lay at the opposite end of an ironic fate. If they had their way, she was to be their eternal salvation, and the thought sickened Tess until she felt held together by little more than the threads of desperation to see Emily set free.

  “Yes, I’ll fight him,” she said with a hard, taunting smile. “You’re crazy if you think I’ll just lie there and let you win.”

  One thin grey brow arched in cold humor. “You know what would happen should you endanger the beast, Tess—your precious Emily would pay for your stupidity. And if you were to be so foolish as to take your own life before your purpose is fulfilled, she will merely take your place. You know that is why I’ve not ridden her myself. If you fail me, Tess, I’ll let the beast have her. Then once he’s weakened, once I’ve spilled his blood and taken his horn, if she’s managed to survive I’ll simply give her to that cutthroat group of scum working for me. They’ll fuck her ‘til she bleeds to death, Tess. Is that what you want? Is your own virgin snatch so valuable that you’ll sacrifice Emily to a fate that would surely be worse than death for the duration of time it would take to bleed her? How much pounding and ripping before she gasped for that last breath, no doubt cursing you, my dear, for failing her so miserably?”

  “You’re insane,” she sneered, shuddering with rage, “you pitiful monster of filth. You live a madman’s dream of immortality, when the only eternity you will ever know is the one you spend burning in hell.”

  She took a sudden step forward, hands fisted tightly at her sides, smiling with a cold twist of her lips when he attempted to hide his involuntary flinch. “And if you lay a hand to my sister, you’ll die screaming until your throat goes silent from the slow, agonizing pain of having your black heart ripped out while it still beats.”

  “Such brave words for one who will be no more than my whore,” he snarled, spittle spraying from his grey lips in a disgusting show of fury. “Do you think he will pierce straight through you? Now that’s a sight I’d pay to see, your delicate little cunt ripped apart by the beast that will give me everything I’ve ever wanted.” He paused, gathering his anger around him like a cloak, until he spoke once more in the lighthearted tones of one who no longer comprehends reality. “The ancient texts say that it is sexual, you know. The beast’s horn is encased within skin as sensitive as that of his cock. Just imagine it, Tess. A two foot phallus of solid, unforgiving bone that craves naught but your blood. What a beautiful, decadent sight for this old man to envision.”

  His old, bone-riddled hand gripped her jaw, and she couldn’t help but wince from the bite of those chilled, gnarled fingers as they dug into her skin. “That, my innocent Tess, will be the sweetest moment of all, knowing that you will die, fucked apart by that animal, so that I might live.” He sighed with soul-deep appreciation for his genius, the maniacal gleam of pure, untainted evil roiling in the icy depths of his yellowed eyes. “What I wouldn’t have given if Mummy and Daddy could be there to see it with me.”

  Tess jerked her face sharply to the side, wrenching free from his grip. “Do you forget that you had them killed, Montgomery?” she sneered, lip curled in pure repulsion even as her voice cracked with emotion. “That they died by your order?”

  His eyes closed, a look of mournful blackness falling over his pale, papery skin. “No, I do not forget, child. She chose to whore for that arrogant American, earning every pain-wrenching moment of her death. But I pity the loss all the same, if only at the thought of how much they would now suffer at the fate that’s to befall you and your sister.”

  The thin, wrinkled line of his lips spread in a sickly smile, the yellowed, dull veneer of his teeth just visible between their gap. “Isn’t life a grand, grand adventure, little Tess? Be ready to leave at sunrise. And enjoy it…for it just might be your last.”

  Chapter Two

  Wishes and Waterfalls

  Our truest life is when we are in our dreams awake.

  A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers

  Henry David Thoreau

  It just might be your last…

  The words lay heavily across Tess’ shoulders that night in the shower, as the water streamed down blisteringly hot upon the back of her neck. As her lungs breathed in the heavy, steam-filled air, she struggled to hold in her sobs.

  “Damn it, Tess,” she whispered harshly, tears stuck thickly in her throat, “don’t lose it now or you might never get it together again. And whatever you do, don’t start daydreaming about a man who probably doesn’t even exist. You have way, way too much to figure out right now, woman, and no silver-haired, drop-dead gorgeous hero is going to come and rescue you. That only happens in fairy tales, movies and psychotic episodes.”

  She laughed, a cross between a jagged giggle and a hiccup, then watched in a dejected, hopeless trance as the clear water spiraled smoothly down the drain, wishing her troubles could so easily be washed away. Wishing she could simply melt into a wash of nothingness and float into the shimmering stream, feel it swirl through her head to dissolve her brain and bring her absolution in oblivion. She longed for freedom, from her prison and existence, and it was with a small catch to her breathing within the foggy enclosure that she realized she would gladly take her life—but for Emily. It was a sickening thought, but had Montgomery not stolen it away years ago? All that remained was this sad, pathetic shell of determination. And even in this, Tess feared she would fail. How could she win? She had no weapons, but her sheer stubbornness to see him destroyed. Even that one pathetically stolen knife that she’d managed to learn to handle with some degree of skill over the years had been confiscated earlier in the evening, when a group of Montgomery’s men had barged in to search her room. She’d been unable to get the blade back beneath the loosened floorboard that had served as its hiding place before they’d come through her door, and they’d laughed cruelly when they had taken it from her, jeering at her pathetic attempt to outwit them.

  Another stupid mistake on her part, and now she had nothing.

  And what did Montgomery have but the power—all of it. Not even a crumb was left for her to cling to with trembling fingers as the sobs welled up from within her chest, racking her body until the water mixed with the torrent of tears slipping down her ravaged face, her chest tight as she struggled for air through the thick steam.

  “I just wish he was here,” she breathed out raggedly, barely recognizing her ow
n voice. “If this is my last night, I wish he was here with me, just once, damn it. I wish he was here and that I could touch him. That I could run my hands over that beautiful body. That I could watch the pleasure cloud those impossibly blue eyes. Lose myself in the feel of that too gorgeous mouth, in the feel of his hands on my flesh, finally touching me.”

  She knew it was wrong to be longing for him—for a fucking dream—when her and Emily’s lives were in danger, but she couldn’t resist.

  Her weakness made her sick.

  She was not a weak woman, damn it, and yet, she had allowed this living nightmare to reduce her to nothing but hate and despair, and impossible longings for things that she could never have. The only thing she could still take pride in was her determination to see Emily free. Emily, who still refused to let hatred and fury rule her life, to darken the shining beauty of her smile and her heart. Emily, so bright and witty, soft and tender even though she longed so badly to be tough, and the only soul in the world who loved her. An unconditional love. Emily expected nothing of her. In fact, Tess knew the most difficult part of her plan would be convincing Emily to leave without her. Emily, who still laughed and dreamed and believed that they could do anything they set their minds to, so long as they always had one another. It would be nearly impossible to make Emily run from her, but she would do it.

  “You have to save Emily,” she muttered to herself. “Goddamn it, Tess, you have to!”

  But would it work?

  She had nothing but a single plan, and now that the time was near, self-doubt tore at her like a body tortured upon the evil device of a rack. A kiss. An advance. Stolen moments, a stolen dagger. Blood upon her hands while Emily could run free. Far and fast and forever, never turning back. It was her only choice—her only chance for victory—and there was no doubt within her tired, despair-heavy limbs that she would die. She could accept that. What horrors could death bring that she had not already lived in this life? Her only regret was…