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Chapter Twelve
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2021-08-31 04:50:34Vanessa inhaled the heady fragrance coming from the rich, dark roses that she hugged to her chest while closing the door. Setting the box on the large round accent table that graced the center of the foyer, a smile brightened her face and hope embraced her heart as she searched for the card that would divulge the sender. When her trembling fingers finally pulled the card from the small envelope, the smile disappeared. “I thought maybe they’d be from Martin.”
Alison snatched the card from Vanessa’s fingers and read it. PLEASE FORGIVE MY DELAY IN SENDING THESE. EVEN MORE SO, PLEASE FORGIVE THE REASON THEY NEEDED TO BE SENT. I BEG YOU LET ME EXPLAIN. ALFRED JACKSON
Her brows knit together. “Explain what? Explain why he and his cousin behaved like depraved animals while Nick stood by and watched?”
Vanessa went into the living room and fell into a nearby club chair. &ldquo
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Shadow walkers have the ability to see in the dark far easier than a mundane can. Even so, they don’t have supernatural vision like the heroes of folklore and fairy tales. Shadow walkers have a strength superior to most mundanes, but, again, it isn’t super hero strength. Their hearing is better than a mundane’s hearing, but it couldn’t be called supernatural. These were facts that Nick lamented over while he sat in darkness that could only be described as pitch black.Had he not been bound with his hands behind his back for so long that he’d lost circulation in them and could barely feel their presence, he’d have felt his environment to help assess his whereabouts. The air was damp and the surface a cold stone, which led him to believe he was in a basement. He recalled the basement he and his friends rescued Martin from not that long ago. He wondered if it was the same group of shadow walker hunters who’d
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Alison pulled the door open with the enthusiasm of a child knowing a present awaited her on the other side. It was day number five of flower deliveries for both herself and Vanessa. As if Alfred had somehow been a fly on the wall during their conversation about receiving flowers, Vanessa’s remained roses, with only their color altering, while Alison received a variance of bouquets. Each one bigger and better than the one before it.She carried the flowers into the kitchen, set them down on the counter, and went to the butler’s pantry to rummage for more vases. “I wonder how long he’s going to keep this up. We’re running out of vases.”Vanessa leaned her elbow on the counter while she fondled the velvety pink rose buds. “As far as I’m concerned, he need never stop. I’ll just go buy more vases.”“The house smells really good,” Alison said with a gleam in her eye.&
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The restaurant was in a part of the city that they’d never been to, making it a little tougher to find than they’d expected. Even so, their moods were light when the host led them to their table and the waiter took their order.Although her inheritance made her disgustingly rich, Alison never let the wealth alter who she was or how she lived. She seldom did something that allowed her to remember and enjoy the fact she could do pretty much whatever she wanted. This dinner would be an exception. She ordered their best bottle of wine and insisted that Vanessa not so much as peek at the prices. She was to order whatever she wanted without a thought to the cost.They both started with a caprese salad with pesto and a Panzanella. Vanessa ordered her much coveted chicken marsala while Alison decided to try the wild garlic and ricotta ravioli with lamb soup. For dessert, they ordered panna cotta with raspberry coulis
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The cool, moist glass felt refreshing as Nick rested his forehead against the window pane. He’d been moved from the dank and dark underground cell to a prison on the open sea a few days earlier. It required minimal guards to move him, since the loss of circulation from being tied for so long rendered his limbs practically useless. He was only now getting full use of them back. Anticipating the return of his strength, his captor allowed him freedom for one night, but then shacked both a wrist and an ankle the following morning.Although he still hadn’t met his captor, he suspected it was a shadow walker up to no good. He’d strained his memory, trying to think who he might have angered enough to do such a dastardly thing to him, but could come up with no one.He’d lost track of the amount of time he’d been held captive, but from the shape and position of the moon, he knew it was approaching one month.
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Alfred drummed his fingers on the top of the kitchen table while he waited for Vanessa to serve him the morning cup of coffee she insisted on preparing. Normally, he’d find her incessant flirting amusing, but with so much riding on his success with Alison, her friend was rapidly becoming a nuisance that he couldn’t afford to have. Heloise’s frantic phone call telling him that Nick guessed his kidnappers were shadow walkers billowed the embers of his determination into enormous flames. Time was of the essence.He also needed to speed things along with Alison. He was making progress, but not nearly fast enough. He’d managed to get her to kiss him the night before, only to be told how guilty she felt because Vanessa liked him too. Since he’d already had sex with Vanessa -never mind the circumstances behind that sex- she felt she was wronging her friend by allowing anything to happen between them.He’d
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Alison was sitting at the kitchen table when Alfred entered. She responded to his bright smile with one of her own. “Have you seen Vanessa this morning?”Remembering a conversation that he’d eavesdropped on via the hidden camera, he said, “She mentioned that she’d planned on going back to school. Her car is gone. Maybe she’s enrolling?” He walked to the coffee pot. “Do you mind if I have some? My coffee maker is on the blink.”“Please, help yourself,” Alison said, while scowling in thought as she struggled to remember that fact. “When did she say this?”“Yesterday,” he said with his back to her as he calmly placed a few drops from the vile Ocilian gave him into the remnants of the pot of rich, dark java. He carried the pot over to her and replenished her cup without asking. She smiled her thanks as she added more cream and the
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Martin wore a look of surprise when Alfred answered Alison’s front door. “Fancy seeing you here. What miracle occurred to get you back into this house?”“Flowers,” Alfred said over his shoulder as he walked back into the kitchen. “I’ve got cookies that need to come out of the oven.”Martin followed him into the kitchen and looked around. The table was laden with freshly baked oatmeal and chocolate chip cookies. He inhaled their tantalizing aroma while reaching for a generously sized oatmeal with raisons. He took a bite and hummed his appreciation when the delicious flavors burst forth from its soft center. “I’m confused.”“Really?” Alfred said as he removed a batch of hot cookies from the baking sheet. “Why so?”“How are you here?” Martin asked. “Why are you here? Where’s Nick? Where’
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In an effort to make amends as well as make himself useful, Martin offered to fire up the grill for barbequed chicken. He’d spent enough time around Alison to know that it was one of her favorite foods. When her face lit up at the offer, he knew he was on his way back into her good graces.While at the grill, he did his best to observe both Alfred and Alison. He’d seen too much of her interaction with Nick to believe that she’d walk away from him and accept Alfred so fully in such a short period of time. Something was amiss. What confused him was the fact that Alfred was also a victim of the pizza lacing and magic that day. Although he had no doubt that Alfred had, at some point over the years, taken part in a ménage á trios, he found it hard to believe that his cousin would stoop so low as to deliberately participate in such a vicious one as that. They’d not only abused poor Vanessa’s
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If she admitted it to no one else, Alison had to admit to herself that she felt a little envious of Vanessa and Martin’s romantic marriage. She’d been foolish in rejecting Nick’s proposals and, now that she’d made her mind up to marry him, she wondered if it would ever happen. They’d discussed it briefly when they first saw each other in shadow land, but nothing was said since. She didn’t want to appear like she was trying to ‘keep up with the Jones’ by bringing the subject up now.She filled her lungs with air while she thought about all of the mistakes she’d made recently. She could be married to Nick by now if she hadn’t been so foolish. Now, she was pregnant and unwed with memories of having sex with a man who turned out to be so horrific it made her want to scrub herself clean until she’d eliminated all layers of flesh he’d touched. She felt dirty beyond reason. Th
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Other than the fact that it was an odd sensation, returning to the mundane side of the veil and re-entering her physical body was relatively easy. She was surprised to see Nick standing next to her when she sat up. “I thought your body was at Martin’s place.”“The king had it brought here by his guards when I asked for protection,” he explained.She looked at the empty spot where Alfred’s body should be. “It’s gone!”Nick smiled as he pulled her to him. “The guards took it with them and put me in its place. As it should be.”“Where did they take it?” she asked.Nick shrugged. “I haven’t a clue and, to be honest, I don’t care. If I ever lay eyes on him again, you’ll be having to hire a lawyer to defend me against murder charges.”She leaned her forehead against his chest. “I know this is a
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Alison paced the hall outside the room they’d placed Vanessa in. The doctor closed the door to all visitors almost three hours earlier while he examined and tended to her. Could she be that damaged?Her thoughts shifted to Alfred and Heloise. She’d learned that Heloise escaped the prison with magic and there was fear that she’d return for Alfred and take him using the same method. The elders were fervently working to decipher what type of magic Heloise used so that, should she return to free Alfred, they’d be ready for her. Not only did they intend to stop her from freeing him, but they planned on recapturing her as well. Once back in custody, steps would be taken to bind her that should have been taken in the first place.The sound of the door opening caught her attention. She watched the doctor come out of the room with nervous anticipation. “Can I see her now?”Dr. D. closed the doo
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Their zealous grumbles and complaints about having to pay for time with a used-up sex slave got the results they desired. They watched as Vanessa’s limp body was unceremoniously hauled off to a pickup waiting behind the building and tossed onto the pile of other used up sex slaves. It looked like they’d have to work fast to learn the route of the pickup. It was clearly time to make a delivery.Ocilian offered to give them time with another slave, but they indignantly declined and made their exit. Time was of the essence. They needed to mix and mingle and ask just the right questions in just the right way to figure out the best and least dangerous way to rescue Vanessa.As luck would have it, Nick stumbled upon two of the men who’d went in with Vanessa before him. His fingers dug into Martin’s forearm as he joked with them about getting worn out goods and listened to all they did to her. Their patie
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The dark side of shadow land should have rightfully been called the pits of hell. Not only was the atmosphere uncomfortably close and hot, but the lighting was dim and dingy, and the place was absolutely filthy. They quickly ascertained that they were too clean and too well dressed, so they adjusted their clothes and hair to better fit in.Time on the shadow side of the veil was measured differently than it was on the mundane side. It moved at a slower pace; which was why the shadow walkers were able to accomplish so much in what the mundanes considered a short amount of time. Had they been on the mundane side measuring time, they would have searched for Vanessa’s whereabouts for only a day before finding her. As it was, on the shadow side, it was the better part of a week.Their cover story was that they were recent converts to the dark side of shadow land and were still learning their way around. Since it was a more common oc
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The searing pain right down into his bones was far greater than Martin could have ever imagined. He didn’t know what to do to relieve it. It hurt to stand. It hurt to sit. It hurt to lie down. He wanted to scream the pain away but feared appearing weak in front of the king; especially since Nick was behaving in such a damnable stoic manner. What Martin didn’t realize was that Nick was in so much pain he was practically frozen by it. He couldn’t get his ribcage to work well enough to take in the amount of air that was needed to operate his vocal cords enough to protest the situation. As terrible as it was being cramped and clamped to the wall while a hostage, he’d much rather be there than going through the trauma his body was experiencing after being pulled from the mundane side of the veil to shadow land. The doors of the castle anti-chamber burst open as the king’s physician and his assistant rushed to tend to the men. Prep
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Martin clung to the rope that was attached to the slender seat as he was boldly lowered from the helicopter onto the deck of the yacht. When King Rufus said he’d have the helicopter take him to the yacht, he assumed they’d be landing on it and he’d be stepping out onto the deck. Instead, it hovered over the deck of the yacht as the wind swung his body to and fro while he, little by little, was lowered until his feet were able to support him.The helicopter stayed in position while Martin scrambled about the yacht in search of Nick. He found him chained by the wrist and ankle in a small room that looked like it was intended to be used for utility, not to accommodate a human.“So, cousin,” Martin said in a voice that he hoped sounded light hearted. “It seems it’s my turn to rescue you.”“So, it would appear,” Nick said as he struggled to stand. “They have me chained so
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Nick wrestled with what to do. It was the night of the new moon and he should be returning to shadow land for regeneration and rejuvenation. He could skip one new moon with limited consequences to himself, but more than that would be a problem.He guessed his captor was a shadow person simply by the way he was being treated. It wasn’t as cruel and harsh as one would expect from a hunter who was simply waiting for him to leave his body on the new moon, so it could be destroyed before he returned. Hunters had a sick way of thinking that, since the body was empty of the spirit because it was in shadow land, they weren’t committing murder by destroying it. They failed to understand that a small part of the soul and the spirit were still connected to the body and not all was departed. If that was the case, then the shadow walker would truly be dead.If he was correct and his captor was a shadow walker, then he should be return
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Martin returned to Alison’s home with a heavy heart. He’d spent the night searching for Vanessa in all the places he thought she might go to, but with no luck. Now, he had the burden of having to tell her that her friend didn’t go back to their old apartment, as she’d thought. She was sure to be worried and upset. These weren’t good things to be when one was making their first shift into shadow land.It was late afternoon on the night of the new moon when he knocked on her front door. When he got no response, he walked around to the back of the house and knocked on the kitchen door.Again, nothing,He tried the handle, found the door unlocked, and walked inside.Standing perfectly still, he listened for signs of life in the house. He could hear the faint sounds of love making coming from upstairs. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to decipher that it was Alison and Alfred
