Terror at the Hotel Salmoneus.
Chapter 3
Salmoneus stopped by the kitchen to start the servants on cooking dinner, hoping that some good food would shake Gabrielle out of her shock.
Hercules, Iolaus and Autolycus made their way toward the meeting room to find Xena and Gabrielle. Hercules noticed as he entered the room that both Xena and Gabrielle had taken chairs and turned them so that their backs were toward the painting of Ares. Xena was sitting beside Gabrielle gently talking to her while Gabrielle was staring off into space. Every now and then Gabrielle would run her hand on her skirt as though she was trying to wipe the feeling of the scroll off of her hands. The three men took chairs from the table and sat down quietly. They all wanted to comfort Gabrielle but were not sure what they could say to ease the horror from her mind.
Salmoneus entered the room and when he saw how upset Gabrielle still was, he allowed a sad sigh to issue from his mouth. "Gabrielle I had no idea about the library." He started but stopped when he saw Gabrielle wince and Xena glared at him. "Why don't you go upstairs and try and take a nap? You had a long trip to get here and a shock. The rest will do you good. I will have someone wake you when dinner is ready." Salmoneus finished quietly.
Gabrielle continued to stare into space for a moment and then slowly nodded her head. "As long as Xena comes with me, I don't want to be alone right now."
Xena nodded and lead Gabrielle out of the room. "Your room is the one I showed you with the waterbed." Salmoneus called to Xena as she left.
"Now that Gabrielle is gone, let's discuss what we should do about those scrolls." Salmoneus said.
"Now there's a conversation that is sure to instill an appetite." Autolycus muttered to himself.
Xena tucked Gabrielle into the waterbed and turned to leave but was stopped as Gabrielle grabbed her arm. "Please just lay down here with me for a moment, at least until I get to sleep?" She pleaded quietly.
"All right." Xena started to sit down on the bed but then thought better of it. Quickly removing her armor, sword and chakram and placed them beside the bed. She carefully sat down on the edge of the bed and moved slowly until she was in the center so as not to disturb Gabrielle with excess waves. Gabrielle watched her from the far side of the bed where she lay propped up on her side. As soon as Xena made the center of the bed she quickly stretched out to her full length on her back. The fact that Xena was heavier than Gabrielle caused her to sink into the bed and the part that Gabrielle lay on to rise. Gabrielle caught by surprise was thrown slightly and rolled over to land on top of Xena nose to nose. A wide eyed Gabrielle found herself looking into Xena's deep deep blue eyes. "Maybe Salmoneus better equip every waterbed with a users scroll." Seeing Xena's lip quirk slightly into a smile and suffering from nervous exhaustion, Gabrielle started to giggle helplessly. Regaining her composure Gabrielle started to roll off of Xena but stopped when she felt Xena's arm wrap around her waist. "Don't move. You will just cause waves and make yourself seasick."
Gabrielle nodded her head and snuggling against Xena, she quickly fell asleep with her head on Xena's shoulder.
Xena allowed herself a few moments after Gabrielle fell asleep to just lie there enjoying the feel of Gabrielle on top of her. Moving her other hand carefully, she brought it to Gabrielle's head and gently stroked her hair. After a few moments more, Xena decided that she needed to get up and see about getting those scrolls out of that library before Gabrielle woke up, so moving ever so slowly Xena started to inch her way out from under Gabrielle. Reaching the edge of the bed Xena quickly raised Gabrielle up slightly and slid one of the silk clad pillows under her and got out of the bed. Xena allowed herself a little smile of satisfaction on being able to get out from under Gabrielle in a waterbed without causing even the tinniest of ripples to disturb her. Watching Gabrielle clutching the pillow tightly with a smile on her face, Xena was almost tempted to return to the bed and take the place of the pillow but the memory of how upset the scrolls caused Gabrielle helped her to renew her resolve to get rid of them.
Quickly regaining her armor, sword and chakram Xena left the room. Finding a servant working on cleaning the corridor floor outside, she asked him to make sure that no one disturbed Gabrielle until dinner.
On her way to the library Xena passed the meeting room and heard Autolycus and Iolaus arguing and decided to see what was going on. Entering the room she saw Autolycus and Iolaus trying to hang a tapestry on one of the walls. First one of them would raise the tapestry and then the other and then they would argue about who was not holding it up straight.
"Will you please hold it up higher, Shorty?" Autolycus barked at Iolaus.
"It's a tapestry! Tapestries hang on the wall. Not the ceiling oh King of Interior Decorators!" Iolaus barked back.
Xena shaking her head at their antics examined the tapestry. It showed a group of Amazons on a deer hunt. While the detail of the tapestry was amazing, Xena who knew many amazons knew that even though amazons did not generally like to wear a lot of clothing that they would certainly wear more than those in the tapestry on a hunt. Also they were very few amazons that were as well endowed as those in the tapestry.
"Where did you get that tapestry? It's almost obscene." Xena finally asked Iolaus.
"Salmoneus remembered that he had it. He asked us to put it up. He thought maybe it would make Gabrielle feel more comfortable if this was up and we took down Ares painting over there." Iolaus said gesturing to where Ares painting still hung at the end of the room.
"Where are Salmoneus and Hercules anyway?"
"Hercules said that he wanted to take another crack at pulling out one of those candles in Salmoneus's mystery room and Salmoneus went to check on dinner preparations again. He is really miserable about how upset Gabrielle became and hopes that dinner will make it up to her."
Upstairs in the bedroom, Gabrielle was in the middle of a very pleasant dream, where a certain warrior princess was showing her the benefits of silk sheets on a waterbed. The dream had just progressed to the point where Xena was biting and licking her way down Gabrielle's throat when Gabrielle heard a noise coming from the side of the bed. Glancing over she saw a yellowed scroll hoping around on the table beside the bed. Gabrielle thought it odd but right then Xena had reached a particularly great spot on her body and she promptly forgot all about the dancing scroll. Suddenly out of the corner of her eye she saw the scroll fall off of the table and a few seconds later a yellowed, cracked paper thin girl was standing by the bed. "You have to get out of here now before it's too late!" The girl screamed at her.
Gabrielle awoke with a start. Feeling around with her hands she quickly determined that Xena was no longer in bed with her. She started to turn her head to scan the other side of the room when she heard a sound as though something was gently scraping or rubbing. "Xena is just sharpening her sword." She thought to herself. Starting to raise herself up off the bed to turn and look at Xena, Gabrielle felt a sudden sharp pain in the back of her head and darkness rushed to claim her.
"Okay, how's that?" Iolaus said as he stepped back from the wall to look at the now hung tapestry. Xena could see that the side that Iolaus had hung was slightly lower than Autolycus's side but thought that there was no sense in pointing it out. "It's fine." She said as she turned to leave the room. As Xena reached the doorway, she was stopped by the sight of a shaky Hercules being lead in by a worried Salmoneus. Hercules had his hands in front of him staring at them. "What's wrong with Hercules?" She asked Salmoneus.
"I don't know. I was headed to the library to get rid of those scrolls when I found him standing outside of the mystery room staring at his hands like he is now." Iolaus rushed to his friend's side and gently lead him to a chair and sat him down. "What's wrong Herc?"
"I couldn't pull the candles out of their holders! I have moved boulders, I have crushed rocks with these hands but I couldn't move those candles!" Hercules said in a small quiet voice.
Xena looking down at Hercules' hands noticed that they had angry red streaks on them as though they had been burned.
"Did you try and put out the candles with your bare hands?" She asked Hercules.
Hercules gave himself a little shake as though he was coming out of a trance. "No, I got those burns from the candle stick itself. It felt like I was holding on to ice. I could feel it burning my hands but for the life of me I couldn't let go of it. I was determined to pull the candle stick out of its holder and nothing was going to stop me. I must have blacked out. The next thing I remember, I was standing outside the doors to the room staring at my hands and Salmoneus was leading me away from the room."
Xena sat down at the table on one side of Hercules and Iolaus sat on the other side. Autolycus and Salmoneus took seats across the table from them.
"There is something wrong about this place and we need to figure out what and make a plan for dealing with it." Xena stated.
As Gabrielle came to, she had several thoughts rushing through her mind. One: That was not Xena she had heard in the room. Two: She had a splitting headache and three: She was now hanging from a wall by her arms somewhere cold and damp. Keeping her eyes closed so whoever attacked her would not know that she was awake yet, she focused on her other senses to give her information on where she was at. She could hear the sound of dripping water so she figured that she must be somewhere below ground level. She could smell the scent of hot metal and occasionally hear a popping noise of a fire. And she could feel a rough stone wall on her bare butt. "Bare butt!" Gabrielle's eyes snapped open and looking down she saw that she was completely nude. Gabrielle saw that she was hanging from a wall inside a closed jail cell, her toes barely touching the ground.
Looking to her right she could see a pile bones. Gabrielle released a sigh of relief when she realized that they were rat bones but her relief was tempered when she noticed that the bones had human teeth marks on them. Turning her head to look straight forward, she saw a small fire burning several feet away from her in a forge. There were assorted tongs, blades and other tools heating in the fire. Gabrielle gave a nervous gulp and turned her head to the left. She was barely able to stifle a scream when she saw another pile of bones but this pile had a human skull sitting on top of it. The skull showed signs of being gnawed by human teeth as well.
Hearing the noise of the jail cell door opening, Gabrielle jerked her attention back to in front of her. She watched as a hunched figure covered head to toe in a dark hooded outfit entered the jail cell. It stepped slowly around the forge and made its way till it was directly in front of her. Reaching up it pulled the hood back revealing its face. This time Gabrielle was not able to stop her scream.
The creature looked like at one time it had been human but now its skin was a ghastly pale greenish blue color. Its face had a scar running from the top of its head across through its left eye, which was gone leaving nothing but a hideous open socket. The creature's hands had long ragged nails. All in all, it looked like a corpse had crawled out of its grave. Gabrielle could not suppress a shudder as the creature raised it's right hand and started stroking her abs.
"No fat! No fat! You not taste good I bet! Too lean. Too stringy!" The creature hissed hoarsely. As the creature's hand neared Gabrielle's center she wondered if throwing up on it would make it leave her alone.
Gabrielle breathed a sigh of relief as the creature reversed the path of its hand and started upward, only to try and draw up and merge into the wall as the creature's hand neared her right breast. Gabrielle relaxed slightly as the creature only skimmed the very outside of her breast and continued to run its hand up to her right arm. She yelped with pain and anger as the creature pinched the skin of her arm cruelly. "Good Skin! Good Skin! Make a fine scroll. You will!" Gabrielle launched a savage kick at her tormentor but was disappointed when the creature nimbly jumped to the side and she missed.
The creature laughed at her and moved over to the forge. "Tools not hot enough yet! Need to be really hot!" The creature hissed angrily. "Bet you make pretty music as skin comes off my pretty little one. Leave now. Be back soon and we begin." The creature cackled as it left the jail cell and slammed it shut behind him.
Gabrielle hung from the shackles and shuddered violently. After a few moments she managed to calm herself. "Xena will find me and rescue me." She thought to herself. Her mind started to paint pictures of what would happen to her if Xena did not find her in time. "However, there is nothing that says that I can't try to get myself out of this one while I wait for Xena to rescue me."
Gabrielle looked up as well as she could and saw that the shackles that were holding her arms up were a single chain passing through a metal ring in the wall above her. Grasping the chain with her left hand she started to pull herself up until her right hand could touch the hair on her head. As her right hand started to search through the braids in her hair, her mind wandered back through her memories.
It had been the first time that she and Xena had met Autolycus, the self styled 'King of Thieves.' While Gabrielle would never admit it to anyone, she had been quite taken with the dashing and charming man and had pestered him with constant questions. All with the explanations that she wanted to get the facts right about his lifestyle for her stories ofcourse. Autolycus, one never to be shy when talking about himself had showed Gabrielle an old lock that he carried with him to practice on. He showed Gabrielle how to use a lock pick and pick the lock. After the demonstration he gave the lock and lock pick to her, more to keep her busy and get some quiet than he thought she would be able to do it. Autolycus was pleasantly surprised when it turned out that Gabrielle was an apt pupil and could pick the lock only taking slightly longer than Autolycus himself. Gabrielle had tried to give the lock and lock pick back to Autolycus but he told her to keep them that they were old ones and he had others. Gabrielle had run to her pack and stuffed the lock in but stopped when she heard Autolycus laugh at her when she started to put the lock pick away. "It will be a very generous jailer that will lock you away with your packs. You need to find somewhere to hide the lock pick so that it will be with you when you need it."
Gabrielle had immediately started examing her clothes to hide the pick but heard Autolycus laugh again. "What if they search you and find the pick?" Gabrielle looked frustrated but then smiled. Reaching up she deftly inserted the pick into one of the braids in her hair. Autolycus smiled and applauded her ingenuity. After that time, Gabrielle always kept the lock pick hidden in her hair. Taking it out when she washed her hair and putting it back in as soon as her hair was dry. It was not so much that Gabrielle ever thought she might need it but that it had become a sort of lucky charm.
"I hope that its luck still holds out for me!" Gabrielle thought to herself as her fingers sifted through her hair. Her left arm started to cramp from holding her weight up and she had inadvertently pulled her hair several times searching for the pick, causing her to utter several curse words that Xena would have been surprised to know that Gabrielle knew.
Finally finding the lock pick in her hair, Gabrielle allowed herself to relax back down until her toes touched the hay strewn floor of the jail cell. Standing on her tip toes, Gabrielle brought her hands together and started working on the shackle on her left hand. Straining on concentrating her focus on the task at hand, like Xena taught her while at the same time trying to relax and let her fingers do the work, like Autolycus taught her. Gabrielle quickly became covered in a thin layer of sweat. Finally after what seemed like an eternity, Gabrielle heard the sweetest sound that she thought she had ever heard in her life, the solid click as the lock opened. Her left arm, now free of the shackle, fell to her side and the chain rattled upward as Gabrielle gratefully sank down to stand fully on her feet. Waiting for a moment to give her arm a chance to get the blood flowing again, she then brought her right arm down as far as the chain would allow and passed the lock pick to her left hand. With a few moments of work, she had the other lock open as well freeing herself! Well free from the wall anyway. She was still locked inside the jail cell.
Walking shakily, she made her way to the cell door and examined its lock. It was large rusty crude looking affair, far too massive for the tiny lock pick in her hand. Carefully reinserting the lock pick back into one of her braids, Gabrielle looked around for something to open the cell door. Walking over to the forge she started to examine the tools that were heating. Finally deciding on a long tweezer affair she walked back to the cell door and inserted in the lock. Working the tweezer back and forth in the lock, Gabrielle's mind wandered and she found herself wondering what task the tweezer was meant for. Her overactive imagination supplied several ideas and with a shudder she refocused her concentration on getting the door open. Finally with a rusty groan the lock gave way and the cell door opened. Stepping through the doorway, Gabrielle thought to herself that Autolycus would have been proud of her.
Beyond the cell, the light from the forge did not carry far so Gabrielle found herself blinking, trying to adjust to the gloom. Stepping forward her toe hit a round object on the floor. Hoping against hope that the object would prove to be her staff, Gabrielle bent down and picked up the object. Bringing it up to her eyes in the gloom, she almost dropped it when she realized that she was holding a human leg bone.
Suddenly a noise from one end of the room drew Gabrielle's attention and she saw a dim outline of a door. As Gabrielle watched, the creature opened the door and entered the room. Seeing Gabrielle free and standing in the middle of the room holding a leg bone, the creature took several steps into the room and planted his legs in a wide stance. Throwing his arms open wide, it hissed, "not often that the pretty ones coming looking for me!" Gabrielle raising the leg bone high and with a yell started to run toward the creature. The creature with a ghastly smile on its misshapen face pulled two wicked looking knives out of its cloak and waited for Gabrielle to reach it.
As Gabrielle reached the creature, she threw herself flat on the floor and sliding on the loose hay on the floor, she slid through the creature's legs and out through the doorway and into the hall. Jumping to her feet she slammed the door shut and jammed the leg bone through the handle and against the door jam, effectively baring the door. In the torch light of the hallway she could see the bone creaking and cracking as the snarling creature on the other side tried to open the door.
Gabrielle raced through the maze of secret corridors and passageways. Several times she found herself in what appeared to be dead ends but with a little searching she always found the hidden switch that opened a section of wall. Finding herself at the base of another upward staircase after going through just such a secret doorway, Gabrielle wondered to herself how many that made so far. "Three or four? And just how do I get out of these secret passages?" After climbing the staircase, Gabrielle found herself at a hallway. To the right lay a well lit passage with torches and to the left lay darkness and cobwebs. Walking a few feet down the dark passage, Gabrielle stopped and decided that the dark passage didn't look to inviting. Turning around, she found herself face to face with 'tall, dark and gruesome'. The creature stood in the middle of the hallway with his arms open wide with a thin line of drool dripping out of the corner of his mouth.
"That is even less inviting!" Gabrielle thought to herself as she turned and ran down the dark corridor through the cobwebs.
Running in the dark Gabrielle hoped that there would be some warning before she ran into a wall or something. Suddenly Gabrielle noticed that it was getting lighter in the corridor and that she could hear faint voices. Reaching the end of the corridor, Gabrielle noticed that one section of the wall was faintly glowing as though the wall was made of some thin material and there was light on the other side. She was just trying to make up her mind on what to do next, when she distinctly heard Xena's voice on the other side. Turning she started to touch the wall when hearing a noise she looked to her left and saw the creature standing next to her. Screaming Xena! Gabrielle leapt at the glowing wall.