Legacy

Chapter One

The old house didn’t just creak and crack in the late winter wind. It sighed, groaned, and moaned as if the house itself was a living thing that had made a bet with death and lost. If it’s not dying, it’s at least suffering, Dorian Schell decided as she reached for the flashlight on her nightstand.

Her room was filled with the steady blinking red haze from the clock. As her eyes began to adjust and her brain finally decided to wake completely, the realization that the power had gone out set in. The clock was blinking midnight because the backup battery had failed.

"Of course the power went out, she grumbled as she shoved her hands through the arms of her robe and switched on the light. If the wind even thinks about blowing, the damned breakers go."

The antique electrical system was only one of the many things that still needed fixing, and Dorian knew it. If she couldn’t get the estate ready pretty damned soon, she’d have to wait another year before she could open Coveington Academy for Girls... and waiting another year meant listening to the elders in the sleepy little town on the southern edge of the estate’s grounds bitch and moan about all the unexpected delays.

Dorian’s hand had just touched the doorknob when a bone chilling shriek tore through the hall outside her room.

Damian Schell brushed his hands against his thighs as the bartender rose from her hiding place behind the bar. The place was a wreck now... spilled drinks, broken glass, and the cracked face of the jukebox that continued to blare Jimi Hendrix in spite of having had one of the belligerent drunks thrown against it during the fight.

Damn it, Damian, the woman hissed, dropping a towel on the bar to clean up a dozen spilled beers. Why do I put up with you?

Must be my charm, Damian chuckled, pushing back the front of his shoulder-length black curls with his fingers.

"Is that what they call the way you look in those Levi’s?" the bartender smiled.

I guess it could be, Damian smiled, pulling a folded stack of bills from his front pocket. Then again, he shrugged, giving her a wink as he dropped the stack onto one of the few dry spots on the bar, maybe not.

The bartender watched the mysterious man saunter out the door into the night. She didn’t know any more about him than she’d gleaned off his Connecticut license the first night he came in; she didn’t know why he was in town, why he was always in her bar, or how he always had more than a grand in the pocket of his obviously worn but not yet old-looking Levi’s... but she didn’t care.

Damian Alexander Schell, birthdate December 21, 1978, was good for the place and good for her customers. At last call, there wasn’t a whole lot more that really mattered.

The combination of the chilled darkness in the room behind her and the terrified scream that sounded like it came from the kitchen drove Dorian into the hall and toward the grand staircase with only a brief glance over her shoulder when she realized that she’d dropped the flashlight when the scream had startled her. Now, as if fate had nothing more to do than taunt her, it was rolling back and forth on the still slightly-warped floorboards of her bedroom.

Damn, she muttered, stabbing the yet unchanged push-button light switch at the top of the stairs.

The dusty chandelier above the foyer sparked to life and Dorian breathed a sigh of relief. It wasn’t the main breaker, at least... it could wait until morning. Leaving the light over the staircase on, she turned back toward her room.

Now, more than anything, the sputtering erratic light coming from beneath her door was frustrating. It would be the breaker on her room that would have to blow. The fact that the dim light was playing tricks on her tired eyes didn’t help much either, she decided. The hall was so much more vibrant in the half-dark... the colors looked richer; the normally chipped details showed no wear and even the threadbare carpet runner seemed to have regained some of its original pattern.

I’m losing my mind, Dorian muttered as she pushed open the bedroom door. Or... not?

~

Chapter Two

Damian nodded to the gray-maned woman behind the hotel’s main desk as he strolled past her toward the stairs. The lobby was well appointed and nice enough as far as hotels went, but like the street outside, it was empty. Three o’clock in the morning didn’t seem like the time for someone’s grandmother to be manning the desk alone, he mused as he waited for the elevator, but who was he to judge? With his relatively small and lithe frame, God knew he didn’t always look capable of the things he’d done.

Damian shoved the room’s key into the door and walked inside. He pulled open the curtain that hung across the single window and shook his head at the stunning view of the dirty and much-graffitied half-abandoned office building across the street before dropping the key on the desk and flopping sideways across the lumpy full-sized mattress. He was tired and both the whiskey and the adrenaline were starting to wear off, which meant he was going to start feeling the effects of the fight at the bar, but it would have been nice to have some sort of company.

Since just after the twins had graduated from high school, the only times Damian had spent his nights alone were when he was on a job or visiting his sister in the decaying old mansion she was determined to turn into some elite boarding school. He didn’t see any sense in it, but he’d never bothered with college either... maybe Dorian had a better handle on the whole thing than he did.

He pulled his cell phone out of his back pocket and briefly considered calling his sister in her dusty old house, but set the phone down on the bed undialed. If the phone rang in the middle of the night, he knew, she’d probably start out having a heart attack... then move into making the rest of his night, and probably a good portion of the next day, a living hell just for scaring her.

The erratically flickering light in Dorian’s room wasn’t caused by the flashlight. In fact, the flashlight wasn’t even there... and neither was her desk, her armoire, or her bed. The entire room, lit exclusively by a soot-stained lantern sitting on what Dorian knew was a priceless antique table, seemed to have fallen backward in time. More than a couple hundred years, by the look of things.

While the mere appearance of the room was enough to throw her off balance and leave her teetering precariously on the edge of a nervous breakdown, the sound of people laughing as they approached the door sent her into a full-blown panic. She crouched behind a paneled frame stretched tightly with painted and embroidered silk and waited. It was foolish to hope that they’d just pass by... whoever they were... but that didn’t stop her heart from jumping into her throat when the door flung open.

The couple, while out of place in her house, fit quite well in the time-warped bedroom. There was no way to explain any of it, Dorian knew, but at least they looked like they belonged there. While the dark haired, well-dressed man seemed content to take his time wandering into the room, the woman at his side was far more anxious. By the time Dorian could force her mind to wonder what was going on... who these people were, why they were in her house, and why her house seemed to have slipped backward in time... the red-brocade wrapped blonde with her curls piled on top of her head had pushed the man onto the bed and climbed on top him.

Dorian ground her teeth together as the woman moaned and cried out while the man’s hands clawed at the top of her corseted bodice. Whatever the hell was going on, she decided, it had to stop. The problem, of course, was that her only weapons were in her room... which didn’t seem to exist anymore.

Damian picked up the phone again. He thought he’d driven out the nagging voice that kept telling him he needed to call his sister, but it just didn’t seem to want to let up. Over the top of that voice, though, he heard another one... he heard their father.

Never doubt your instincts where your sister is concerned, Son, the old man had told him repeatedly when they were young. There’s something about the two of you. I don’t know what it is. Just trust it.

Dorian would be furious. Calling to check up on her in the middle of the night because of a hunch. She’d bitch at him about waking her up when she had a hundred things she needed to start doing in just a few hours’ time. She’d tell him that she was fine. That he needed to worry about himself instead of worrying about her all the damned time.

And even after all of those things echoed through his mind, Damian shook his head and dialed his sister’s number.

Dorian hated the fact that she was crouching behind a translucent screen listening to the lovers like some voyeuristic freak, but she wasn’t really in any sort of position to demand they leave... was she? After all, the way things were at the moment, it seemed that they had more right to be here than she did. As the sounds of their passion faded, though, their voices grew as cold and dark as the February night outside.

What will you do to her? the woman asked as she pulled her corset into place and rearranged her many layers of skirts.

The same I do to you, the man chuckled. But with far less pleasure for my part. In truth, I am certain that the only satisfaction the child will offer will be when that idolized spirit of hers breaks beneath me.

Dorian squeezed her eyes shut, wishing she’d thought to grab the pistol Damian insisted she keep in the drawer of her nightstand. She thought she was alone, though. She didn’t need a pistol to flip a breaker. Now though, listening to the man’s increasingly graphic description of the rape he was planning, Dorian really wished the Ruger was in her pocket instead of lost at the top of whatever rabbit hole her house had fallen down.

May I watch? the woman asked wistfully.

Watch? the man laughed. My hope was that you’d prefer to assist. Perhaps binding her to the...

ENOUGH! Dorian roared, springing to her feet.

The screen she’d hidden behind was gone. The couple was gone. Her furniture had returned and the clock still blinked on the nightstand and the phone next to it... the damned phone was ringing off the hook.

She dove across the bed and snatched up the receiver.

Oh my God, Damian...

In his hotel room, Damian Schell sat straight up on the edge of the bed. All the fatigue that had plagued him and the last remnants of the night’s drinking vanished at the sound of his sister’s voice.

Dori! What the hell happened? The phone’s been ringing for like fifteen minutes!

I... I don’t know, Dorian’s voice whispered in his ear. It’s just... I... oh, Damian, this house...

It’s weird, Damian interrupted. I know. And I still don’t like it. He knew what she’d say when he asked, but he had to try. Do you want me to come back?

He’d been prepared for her to go off. He was ready for her to scream at him and get all worked up over how over-protective he was. He knew she’d yell and scream and accuse him of thinking she was weak or somehow incapable of taking care of herself.

When Dorian’s barely audible reply hit his ear... the meek whispered please that came from the woman on the other end of the call... Damian’s body moved on its own and he was on his feet and stuffing his belongings into his pack.

Give me an hour, Sis. Put on a pot and fill me in when I get there.

I will, Dorian said softly. As long as the kitchen’s still there.

Damian pulled on his riding jacket and slipped the phone into one of the buttoned pockets before shouldering his pack. He didn’t have much to go on, but one thing was clear. Whatever was happening at Dorian’s was bad news.

Thanks, Dad, he muttered as he swiped the key up from the desk.

He pushed the call button on the elevator but when the door didn’t open immediately it had already taken too long. Damian turned and flew down the three flights of stairs, missing two or three steps at a time, and startled the old woman at the front desk when he dropped his key.

I need to check out.

Is it bad? the clerk asked as she scribbled some notes in the register before pushing it across the counter.

Damian signed and set two hundred-dollar bills under the pen before pushing it back. What?

Whatever’s got you runnin’ out of here at three-thirty in the mornin’, the old woman smiled gently.

I’m not sure yet, Damian sighed, already anxious to be on the road. But I’m afraid it is.

The old lady smiled as she handed Damian his receipt, but he was already most of the way across the lobby by the time she tried to hand him his change.

Poor dear, she muttered, shaking her head as the kind dark-haired young man kicked his bike to life. She set the money back in the cash drawer as the sound of the engine faded. I hope everything works out.

Dorian dropped her robe on the floor and pulled a dingy gray sweatshirt over her head, pulling her long black curls out of the neckline before slipping into a pair of jeans. The floor creaked under her feet as she knelt to pick up her discarded flashlight then cracked and moaned as she walked over to the nightstand.

I know I’m alone, she affirmed aloud to the empty room as she pulled the Ruger from the drawer and stuck it into the back of her waistband. But I was last time, too.

Feeling better with the cold barrel of the pistol sitting against the small of her back, Dorian stepped into the hall and headed back toward the stairs. The hall outside her room had returned to normal, she realized as she approached the staircase. The paint and wallpaper were cracked and peeling in all the right places, the knicks and chips in the railing were exactly where they were supposed to be, and the carpet’s designs were so faded and worn that she could barely make out the lines even in the center of the round spot left by the flashlight.

Too fuckin’ weird, she muttered.

The chandelier was still on, even with its missing crystals and the few burned out bulbs, but there was enough light to navigate the stairs. It was the darkness in the foyer that bothered her more than anything, and Dorian’s grip on the flashlight tightened as she descended the grand staircase to the ground floor.

Damian pushed the Indian just a little more than the bike was willing, but he didn’t have much of a choice. It had been years since he’d heard that weak and utterly terrified tone in his sister’s voice. More years than he wanted to consider, the more he thought about it.

He was on the outskirts of the town that butted up against his sister’s manor before he was able to pinpoint the exact moment in his mind. But when he did, the only purpose the realization served was to make him push the bike even more.

He knew now, even as he hissed curses under his breath at the residents of the sleepy town that glared at him from behind their drawn curtains, that the last time he’d actually