“Why do the elders concern you?” Alex asked, walking up and wrapping his arms around Bernard’s shoulders, leaning his head over to see Jacob.

“Forget that. Where is our master being held?”

“At Angelica’s, she would never allow him to be any place else. Who are you really?” Alex asked, stepping back a few feet from Bernard, looking from one of us to the next. “I believe there are things that are much different about you tonight.”

“We are the ones that your mistress’s have been speaking about,” Jacob stepped up and looked Bernard directly in the eyes; he dropped to the floor, and passed smooth out.

“You’re not even fleshers are you?” Alex yelled as he turned to flee.

Derek was on him before he even knew he was on the ground. He began screaming for mercy the moment his stomach touched the shiny tile. Jacob walked over and bent down, telling him that we were not the ones that he had to worry about. He told him the rumors were true about us saving the slaves that had been tortured and placed in harm’s way and taking the lives of those who had committed the acts against them. Afterwards, Jacob lied and said that he was only going to use him and Bernard to turn the two sisters against one another but we needed their help to do it and by doing so, he and Bernard could have all that their master’s owned. I almost swallowed my tongue listening to Jacob lie the way he was, because we all knew that if Tammy was anywhere near these two for five minutes alone, they were dead and she was their executioner.

Our main plan was long past once we realized that there was absolutely no way we could take down one master and its home without alerting the other two that we were here. So, Jacob had devised a better plan of taking what belonged to one sister the same way she’d taken Martin, leaving a note behind stating if she wanted to see her beloved pets alive again that she would do everything her sister asked of her. The note would not only infuriate her, it would confuse her as to who had her precious pets. Derek pulled Alex to his feet, while Fala lifted Bernard up as he started to come around. When he began to scream, Alex, still in the grip of Derek’s fist, told him to calm down that they were in no danger, then explained quickly what Jacob had told him.

“May I go to him?” Bernard cried, tears rolling down his face as he leaned back to look up at Fala, who in turn looked over at Jacob.

“When will your mistress be back?” I asked, stepping up and cleaning my face with a cloth from the arm of the chaise lounge that was close to the door.

“You’re the…” Bernard said sluggishly, looked at me, then went limp in Fala’s grasp.

“She won’t be back until tomorrow night. When they plan a gala they plan for days” Alex explained. “I will help you in any way that I can, but I must ask that you do not take me from my home. My mistress needs me.”

“You will do as you are told and ask nothing from us. Do you understand?” I smiled, showing my fangs as I walked closer.

Alex nodded, saying nothing, and looked at me like I had just sprouted a second head. Jacob took the note from his pocket and told Alex to lead him to the one place that only Angelica would go to visit his master that others were not permitted. When Alex tried to say that he didn’t know what Jacob was talking about, Jacob’s face contorted much like it had when he thought Jessica had been killed in Cuba. His fangs elongated, the bone structure in his cheeks and forehead shifted, and the sound of his voice changed to tones ten times in depth. “You dare lie in the face of your own demise?” Jacob growled, storming up to Alex so fast that Alex’s eyes grew as his mouth fell open in a silent scream, too afraid to produce sound.

Derek dropped his grip on Alex’s shirt, stepping out of the way, staring at Jacob in the same astonished manner that Fala and I were. Alex began to move backwards until his body was flat against the floral patterns on the wall in the sitting room of sort. I found myself trying to force my face to do the same thing that Jacob had done but nothing happened, other than my making a fool out of myself by moving my mouth around and grunting so bad that even Jacob took a second to look over at me. I shrugged my shoulders and thought it best to try later.

“It’s a room hidden off of her study. I didn’t mean to lie,” Alex begged, holding out his hands, now looking back and forth from me to Jacob, perhaps thinking I was about to morph like he had. “We were told we would be taken to the care of Lord Cheree if we ever gave out the information.”

“Lord Cheree should be the least of your worries right now,” Jacob replied, grabbing him around the throat causing him to scream out. “Take me to it!”

Alex took Jacob up a flight of stairs that appeared when Alex pulled down on a golden rope hanging by one of the plush sofas that were spread throughout the lavish room. Once they were gone, we waited. It was then that I noticed that the walls were made of material. The paisley print was raised just enough to feel the texture under my fingers as I glided them along the golden print of velvet swirls. Three chandeliers hung from the fifteen-foot high ceilings, which were lit by some form of oil, I assumed from the faint smell, but as to how they were lit, I had no idea. Black and white marble-topped tables that sat in between the lounge sofas stood on shiny golden pedestals with intricate leaves decorating the legs. The room was not what I was expecting to see coming up from the horror not half a foot behind a secret door that hid not only the hell we had just walk through, but the passage of what we now knew was the creature called the ‘butcher’.

Bernard began moaning on the ground and that’s when I noticed that his black slipper type shoes looked like they would fit me easily enough, so I bent down and took them for myself. I was, after all, the demon seed of my maker, as they had been calling me. Even though they were a bit too big, they would do nicely until we went back through the marsh. The secret panel slid open and Alex came out a little too fast, by the looks of it with a shove from Jacob. He slid quite far on his stomach as Jacob stepped down slowly from the steps. To my biggest surprise, he was holding a pair of ladies shoes in one hand and a scroll of papers in the other.

“You brought me shoes?” I smiled, tapping my covered foot.

“I see you have acquired a pair of your own,” he replied, smiling back; his face back to normal.

“Yep, but I can use those after we get out of the sluggish swamp,” I laughed, taking them from him. “Bernard won’t mind getting his feet a little dirty, will ya Bernard?”

His eyes fluttered open as I bent down beside him. “Are you going to kill me?”

“Not anytime soon,” I smiled. “Are you going to be a good boy and do exactly what we tell you to do?”

“Yes, I will do anything,” he replied, with crimson tears building.

“Then you have nothing to worry about,” I lied, getting to my feet, offering him my hand, which he never took.

He bent his head back, saw Alex getting to his hands and knees, and cried out. He and Alex crawled to each other and held one another in a death grip, more like two scared women than two grown men.

Chapter Fifteen

We exited the same way we had come in, with the two of them in tow. Jacob explained what the scrolls were as we made our way to the end of the tunnel, waiting until then so that the butcher wouldn’t hear our retreat. He told us that they were plans that the two sisters had derived of the two lesser powers that ruled London, Lord Cheree, and the Lebrun Estate, so that they, themselves, could create an attack to bring them to rubble. It was then that he explained that he had found a third scroll of Angelica’s castle that she couldn’t have known about, and one that Inara had planned to use on her own sister after her sister had helped her rid London of the others.