Lair of Beasts [Book I in the Curse Of Blood Saga]

Chapter XV - The scent of Death

"The same as I?" I shook my head in alarm. "But I am no..." My words stalled precipitously in my throat, but it was of no moment for Lucian completed the thought for me.

"Monster?"

"Lucian, that's not what I-"

He cut me off, however. "Is that what you think of me, Aria?"

I watched helplessly as he slowly raised an invisible barrier between us. What fleeting, fragile affinity we had established thus far, was now being hastily dismantled by my horrified response and his male pride; a pride that I was inadvertently eroding with my adverse reaction, leaving naught but a chilly stoicism. Yet for just an instant, and so ephemeral that I bethought myself ridiculous, I thought I noticed a hint of anguish in his features? Or was I merely chasing spectral fancies? He was still no more than an enigma to me; in sooth, I knew him not at all.

"Please, Lucian, I do not understand." I lifted my trembling hands to my ashen face, swallowing a confused sob.

"No," said he, "you wouldn't, would you." He seemed to want to approach me, but fearing I might collapse of apoplexy — so nearly unhinged was I — he kept his distance. My lamp still lay forgotten and abandoned on the ground between us. By that light, I watched his jaw clenching in an agitated rhythm of anger.

"And it seems that I am just as naive." He looked up to the sky pensively as if silently begging the lunar goddess reverently for guidance. "I thought you might actually..." The rest of his words he suspired loudly, leaving the thought cruelly unfinished.

"Might what?!" It was my experience that men were usually direct and spoke plainly; why should the one exception to the rule by my future husband!

"See me..." He seemed to scoff at himself then and promptly pinched the bridge of his nose in obvious frustration.

His demeanor appeared a little less threatening as he gazed absently heavenward and I forgot, for just a brief moment, to feel dread. My exhausted heart becalmed itself in that instant so that I might cast aside my fright and gather a little fortitude; mostly because his unusual eyes were now occupied elsewhere.

"You know naught," he said again, "and therein lies the problem."

"Then tell me, Lucian! Give me the means with which to understand all this." I stepped a little closer to him, but remained just outside of his reach. "And to understand you."

He lowered his eyes, no longer the eerie heteroclites of before, to gaze at me sharply and shook his head against my plea, an iron mask of cool detachment capping his stony physiognomy.

"This is neither the time nor the place." He indicated the saturnine darkness surrounding us with a derisive flick of his hand. "And I do not trust you yet." He narrowed his gaze.

A thought came unbidden to my mind. Of a sudden, I recalled the old woman from the apothecary. I'd almost forgotten about her — or rather I'd purposefully shoved the recollection to the back of that dusty, neglected shelf in the very back of my mind. I had been so brutally humiliated and frightened by the old hag's accusations, although it was now a few years hence, that I still awoke betimes, from nightmarish slumbers, with the dregs of her shrunken, toothless, screeching image foremost in my thoughts.

Her biting words had made not a little sense back then, but somehow I had felt the truth of her recriminations now, as if she had seen into my very soul, routed what evil lurked there and waved it at me in horrified caveats. That awful memory washed over me now and, for some inexplicable reason, I sought to share this with Lucian; I sought to forge some confidence between us. I told him of the apothecary's mad ranting that day long ago, and he listened thoughtfully the while I shed the leaden impressions she'd etched in my troubled mind.