SMOKE AND ASHES
Gold has shared astonishing news about his own background and Belle has realized that he is an extraordinarily talented (and long-lived) individual. He has also shared that The House, itself, is a remarkable structure that adjusts to the supernatural requirements of the times and the community.
An impromptu supper with Ruby and Emma is interrupted by an attack alarm and Belle watches as The Good Guys get thrashed by an unremitting wave of little shadow creatures. They are saved by Mr. Gold's timely arrival as he takes out all the shadow creatures in one gesture.
Chapter 8
Aftermath
Slowly, nursing unseen bruises and aches the group managed to limp their way back inside and then down the one flight of stairs to the Map Room. Belle held back. She wasn't sure if she was a part of this or not. The others all ignored her, but Jefferson gave her a quick wink.
"Come on, princess," he told her. "You're one of us now," and he offered his arm to her. Belle winced when he called her 'princess' but she dutifully allowed him to lead her into a large room. There was soft grey paint on three of the walls and wood paneling on the fourth wall. There was one wall with multiple bookshelves completely crammed with books and papers. There was a large table at one end of the room with small replicas of buildings set on it. There was an enormous silver pentagram set into the floor at the other end. There was also another long table set near a wall with multiple chairs around it. The group was settling themselves down into the chairs around this second long table. Belle hung back again, trying to be inconspicuous.
Gold had already settled in at the head of the table. He had his arms folded and his eyes downcast and Belle could feel waves of something like sadness emanating from him. When he looked up, he caught Belle's eyes, and now she felt flaring anger.
Sad and mad. Easy to read. Hard to ignore. Didn't have to be an Empath to figure out how he was feeling.
There were some empty seats, mostly around Gold, as if by distancing themselves the individuals of the group could mollify what they anticipated would be his harsh response to their failure.
"Belle," he called her by her true name, not the name she had given to the others, "Sit down here," he pointed to a chair next to him.
Great, she was trying to remain discreet and in the background, but he had called the entire group's attention to herself. She gave him a weak smile and went over and sat down, slumping down and sitting absolutely still.
She felt like everyone was looking at her. Maybe if she thought happy thoughts the group would quit looking at her; it had worked with the bocan.
There was a long period of silence. Gold sat still for a moment before raising his eyes to the group. Belle almost cringed away from the radiating waves of anger and disgust coming from the man.
He finally spoke, his voice soft and low, "You were taken down by dubharim?" His disappointment and disapproval had to have been apparent to even the most socially imperceptive.
"There were a lot of them," Emma spoke up first.
"They were dubharim! Little shadows!" he raised his voice. "You, this group, is supposed to be a bulwark, an ultimate defense against the dark forces and you were taken down by a bunch of little pissant shadows! This was obviously a test of our defenses and you failed it – miserably! When the outcome of this battle gets back to . . .to . . . anyone, they will know that this group is a joke, a weak, ineffectual, laughable joke!"
"We did our best," the dark-haired woman who was throwing fire-balls with Emma spoke up. "We just aren't strong enough."
Gold glared at her. "Your 'best' is going to get you killed. Remember what happened to Graham? Anybody here still think what happened to him was an accident?" He held the entire group in his gaze. "Go back to your rooms," he ordered. "Lick your wounds. I will decide what needs to be done." Beaten down, the group slowly got up and slunk away without looking at Gold. "Not you," he told Belle who was trying to tiptoe out with the others.
She froze. Had he been talking to her? Was she supposed to have done something? She waited with an uncomfortable level of anticipation.
When they were alone, he turned to her. "What did you see?" he finally asked.
"Sir, I . . . I don't know that I should comment. . . "
He interrupted her, raising his voice. "What did you see?" he asked again, his voice sharp.
Belle couldn't meet his eyes. She spoke softly, afraid of what his reaction might be. "They fought as individuals."
"What do you mean?"
"Emma and the woman that called you a name . . ."
"Regina," he supplied.
"Emma and Regina and Ashley were getting in each other's way. The others should have been trying to herd the shadows to a point that those women could . . . fireball them but instead the others were fighting the shadows off themselves. And they weren't very good at fighting. If the woman who made the lightning bolts could have called up a wind, perhaps Jefferson could have used it to funnel the shadows in towards Emma, Regina and Ashley and then Ruby and the other man with the sword could have prevented them from leaving."
Gold had sat quietly while Belle gave her impression of the fight. He didn't say anything for a while but then pushed his chair back with a scraping sound against the wooden floor.
"No teamwork, huh?" he finally said.
"I really, I really don't know what I'm talking about," Belle said, shaking her head.
"Yes, you do. They still all work as individuals, not as a team. Each person does their own thing and they don't work together." He stood and began pacing. "I think you're exactly right. Hell, maybe they needed to get their collective arses kicked to make them rethink what they're doing."
"They still depend on you to rescue them," Belle added softly.
Gold stopped pacing. "Yes, they do."
"And Regina and Emma don't like each other," she finally shared.
Gold nearly laughed at her comment, "They don't, but I don't think you have to be an Empath to pick up on that."
Belle looked up at him. "But they need to work together."
He looked at her for a long moment. "Yes, they do," he agreed.
He paced for a short while then turned back to her.
He had spent the better part of his evening trying to figure out why he had told Belle all about himself. He had never told anybody about his early life. Yeah, yeah, he knew she was an Empath. She made people feel comfortable. So comfortable, a person would just spill their guts. He had known what she was and he had still yielded to her spell. Little witch. Was she doing any of this on purpose? Was she trying to get under his skin?
"Come with me," he ordered her, holding out his hand to her. She hesitated a moment, but then took his hand and stood and walked with him out of the room and across the hall. He opened the door and, still with him holding her hand, she felt like she was passing through an invisible curtain as she stepped across the threshold. She realized that she was in his apartment.
It was twice the size of her place. She was pulled along, passing several closed doors. Then there was a sleek steel and black granite kitchen with what appeared to be a stone floor. There was a dining area with a solid wood table set under an elaborate wrought iron chandelier. Needlepointed wooded armchairs were set around the table and all was set on a plush area carpet.
Gold continued to pull her along and they ended up in his living room. She looked around. Windows covered with thick velvet curtains on one side. The living room was decorated with high-end antique furniture, velvet and tapestried fabrics, and tasteful additions such as a plush Oriental carpet, tiffany lamps and carved teak curio boxes. One of the boxes caught her attention. It was plain, dark wood, probably mahogany. Something was inside the box.
Gold caught her looking at the box but said nothing, directing her over to a chair.
His place was what she might have expected. It was beautiful but still managed to retain a strong masculine aura. Nothing dainty or fragile, everything strong and purposeful. It was grey stone, wood tones, and iron. She thought it looked like the inside of a castle.
"Have you had supper?" he asked her, settling himself in a golden velvet chair.
"Ruby and Emma had come over and we were sharing pizza and . . .and beer," she told him.
"Ah, so they were introducing you to their Talents?"
"Yes sir," Belle answered softly.
"What did you think?" he asked her.
Belle looked at him. "I . . . I don't know," she answered honestly. "We just got as far as Ruby's and I hadn't had much chance to hear what Emma can do. She does something with water and she's a telepath and I saw that she can throw fireballs. It's a lot to take in."
"But you are a believer now, aren't you?" he asked her directly.
"I . . .I . . .I guess," she stammered. After what she had seen tonight, it was hard not be a believer.
He still sat opposite her in the golden velvet chair. It had mahogany arms and legs and a high back. It reminded her of a throne. "They were testing us," he said in a subdued voice. "And we failed."
"But you beat them off," protested Belle.
"That's right. So if you were them, you would . . .?"
Belle thought for only a moment before answering, "I would put every bit of energy, everyone I had, everything I could muster together and I would focus on taking you out." Under her breath Belle added, "If I didn't think I could take you down, then I could divide your people, force you to choose who to defend and then I'd take out the undefended group, taking out your people half at a time."
He slowly nodded. "So I have to get this group working as a team, working together. I have to get them strong enough to stand without my help."
Belle didn't say anything. She felt uncomfortable sitting in his luxurious apartment, answering his questions about his people. She wasn't sure why he had invited her into his home. She had a feeling it wasn't something he typically did. He seemed like the kind of man who would guard his privacy fiercely.
He leaned back and sat quietly, steepling his fingers as if he was thinking something over. "I have been trying to figure out why The House invited you in. If it was because you needed help or if it was because you were the one we needed to help us."
He shook his head, "I have reviewed everything I can find out about Empaths, which is damn little. There have only ever been a handful and each one has been different from the others, different skills, wildly different abilities." He sat without moving, staring at her, making her even more uncomfortable. "You are acutely sensitive to feelings, as I would expect an Empath to be. But you also seem to be able to see blank spaces, where things are missing." He continued staring at her intently for a moment. "What is it that you do?" He turned on her, his anger from earlier in the evening still in the forefront of his thoughts.
Belle felt him as he allowed some of this angry psychic energy to wash over her, to push her and probe her. He was still furious and the strong feelings permeated his touch. It was . . . unexpectedly intense, relentless, almost harsh. She pulled back, unwilling to allow him into her most inner recesses but he held her still. She tried to push back, to sidestep him, to avoid this intimate examination. She crumpled to the floor. He was too close, too close.
"Please, stop," she begged him, just managing to get a hand up to try to ward him off, tears spilling out.
"You can't stop me?" he said in surprise and she immediately felt him pull back. He stood up. "What the hell happened to your shields?" He began to pace. "This is no good. You are too vulnerable. Anything could just come at you." He seemed to remember something, "How the hell did you stop the Shadow yesterday?"
"I just made myself small," she told him. She couldn't meet his eyes and had remained sitting on his fine blue Persian carpet.
"Yeah, I still don't get that," he told her. "What did you do?"
"I made myself small," she repeated. "I got very still and pulled into myself and just kinda made myself invisible." She still couldn't look at him instead focusing on his high priced shoes as he walked back and forth.
He shook his head. "No, that doesn't explain it at all. I don't understand. You held off a bocan, one of the strongest, meanest shadow creatures, but I just cut through your shields like they weren't there at all."
She sniffed, "I don't know what happened." She had no idea.
He sat back down again and continued, "And somehow you managed to chase if off by thinking about fluffy kittens and snowflakes on mittens." He shook his head, "We've got to work on your shielding. If I had been an enemy I would have shredded you a moment ago. I do not understand why the bocan didn't take you apart."
She nodded. What was 'a shield?'
He stood, "Tomorrow night. On the roof top. You be there at eight o'clock." He held out his hand to her. She looked at his hand and took it. He helped her stand.
He walked her out of the apartment and down the stairs. Once to her door, she opened it and then turned back to him. He was standing close, so close. She could feel the heat coming from his body. He wasn't touching her. She could smell him, smoke and spice and something very wonderfully male. He whispered to her, "Belle. I am sorry. I'm terribly sorry." His voice, low and rumbling, thrilled her. "I shouldn't have come at you like I did. I had no idea." She wanted, she wanted to lean into him. "I was trying to find out how you can help us here." He put his hand on her chin and lifted her face to his. "You do want to help us?"
"I . . . I think so," she answered, still uncomfortable meeting his eyes.
He allowed his hand to touch her on the cheek and then his fingers slowly trailed back to her ear brushing her hair back. He was standing very close, his force of presence encompassing her. He felt warm and solid and safe and comforting. Gently his hand came back to her chin and then, with excruciating deliberation, his forefinger brushed against her lips, outlining, tracing them.
There was a long moment.
"I like this lipstick you've been wearing," he finally said in a husky whisper. He gave her a tight smile and then pulled back leaving her in the hallway in front of her apartment.
Belle managed to step inside the door and lock it behind her. She leaned back against the door.
What he had just done? What had happened had been the most erotic moment of her life, so much more exhilarating than any of the chaste kisses her suitors had given her, so much more than anything Gaston had done, had tried to do with her. Gaston had grabbed her, pawed her and slobbered on her. It had been more repulsive than arousing. He'd made her skin crawl.
Belle touched her lips which were still tingling from his touch.
If Mr. Gold had pressed her, if he had kissed her, if he . . .
She wondered if he had felt the same.
+ + + Upstairs
Gold sat in his apartment nursing a glass of whiskey.
He was mulling.
He was mulling over the attack and the disastrous attempt his group had made to fend it off.
He was mulling over Belle's insights into the problems his group was having.
He was mulling over Belle.
She had faced down that bocan, the shadow creature that had become Cora's constant familiar but then she had wilted under one of his psychic probes and had collapsed on him. He had been very angry (not at her), but nonetheless, she shouldn't have had the reaction she'd had – as if she were being violated. This weakness - a serious liability. Could she be taught to protect herself? He was going to try.
He had to.
He rousted himself and went across the hall into the Map Room. They had the city map almost completed with just that last section that Regina was supposed to be working on. Exact replicas of the buildings of the city with hot spots for both light and dark magic indicated. Archie's watchers had been roughly created out of clay and placed on the map. A pattern was emerging.
They were surrounding The House.
Why didn't they just go ahead and mount a full bore all-out attack now?
He knew the answer. They feared him. And rightly so. He had confidence that he could hold off nearly the entire host single handedly.
But Belle was right.
They would be coming after him, throwing everything they had at him. It would just take one slip up on his part. And if he was taken down, they would be able to dispense with his little coven in a heartbeat. The Fae wouldn't come to their aid. Hell, they wanted him out of the picture. It would be a win-win all around if the shadows took him out; well, except for him.
He knew he had some vulnerabilities. The Fae, those bitches, knew about them.
They had used the Silver Magic and had managed to take him down with it. That had left no room for any doubt regarding his ultimate alliance.
He was Dark Sith, Unseelie, Winter Court.
Since that time he'd prepared an amulet to protect himself against the Silver Magic. It didn't give him total immunity but at least now he could come into contact with the metal without experiencing searing pain.
He realized that the delectable Miss Belle would certainly be vulnerable to Iron Magic for, unquestionably, she was of the Blessed Folk, the Seelie, Summer Court. He needed to make an amulet to give her some protection. He would get Leroy's help and see to that tomorrow.
The Fae, those bitches, during his interminable stay with them, had also discovered that their blood (should he be unfortunate enough to ingest it) would neutralize him for a while.
Plus it made him puking sick.
The Fae had done that to him enough times when they had him as their 'guest.' Even a miniscule amount would be enough to stifle his talents and weaken him with aching bone pain, fever and racking waves of cramps and nausea.
That first time, he had lain on the floor of his cell, helpless in the throes of a total digestive collapse. They'd let him lay in his body waste, so weak that he'd been unable to shift himself onto a privy, too weak to raise his head to vomit into a bucket (if he had had one), so weak that he'd been unable to move himself back to his cot. He'd eventually recovered . . . in time, but each such episode had been most undignified and unpleasant and had left him soiled and broken. He hadn't liked feeling helpless while in the clutches of his enemies.
He was not with the Fae now. They watched over him, he knew. But he was not with them now. He (mostly) trusted little Marilyn at least she had a healthy respect for his abilities and he didn't think she'd dare cross him and he didn't think that Belle would have a clue that she could likely use her blood to incapacitate him at least he fervently hoped she had no clue she could do such a thing.
But he had yet to be able to develop a potion to protect himself from the damn stuff. He needed to be wary.
He took another sip of his whiskey.
There was something else. He had thought of it a long time ago.
It could hurt him but it would definitely hurt everyone else.
The Dark Curse.
There were very few who knew of it and many of those insisted that it had never existed or was lost beyond recall. The most powerful curse in the entire supernatural world.
The Dark Curse would take everyone to a world without magic, well at least change this world into one without magic. And the change was permanent, well, at least for a hundred human generations. It was said to have been cast long, long ago and magic was only now, over the past five hundred years or so, slowly returning to the world.
He stood looking over the map table, drinking his whiskey. He knew that after The Curse had first been spoken it was then scattered onto five scrolls. It was a long, elaborate spell, as might be expected. For each line, one scroll of the five would have the correct line of the spell. The other four would have the same wrong line. There was also an athame that had been used to cast the curse; it had been broken into five pieces and each piece was then paired with one of the scrolls. He knew where four of the scrolls with their knife pieces were, but, he also knew, part of the Curse, one of the scrolls and part of the knife had been lost. He had searched for it to no avail.
Without the missing scroll and knife section, the Curse could never be reconstructed and could never be recast.
Useless.
All that power, gone to waste.
No, he decided, it was still the Silver Magic and the Fae Blood Magic that he should be most concerned with. The Shadow Liege would likely direct his minions to try to find a way to use one or the other. Fortunately for him, the Shadow and his minions had the same sensitivities to Silver Magic and Fae Blood Magic that he had. They would have to find someone who wasn't sensitive to it and convince that entity to try to come after him with it. Lotsa ways for them to do that, bribery, extortion, seduction.
Gold smiled. Of course, those who were in his little group who would be susceptible to such practices also struggled with managing silver and Fae blood themselves. He'd had to work with Leroy to get an iron-handled but silver edged sword that Killian could wield. Milah and Regina had no protection from silver and avoided it at all costs. Now Jefferson, Gold trusted this man. The only vulnerability that Jefferson had was his daughter and he and Gold had put strong wards around the child. He would know if something happened to that child.
He trusted his people . . . to a point. Those with Unseelie attachments, he kept a close eye on. Truth be told he kept a close eye on those who were aligned with the Seelie elements. But he still felt (reasonably) safe. He knew The House . . . The House was his greatest ally in this endeavor. As long as he was in sync with The House, then The House would protect him. And he took care to stay in sympathy with The House.
As for the Fae, he didn't feel under immediate threat from them. They thought they had him under their boot and that he would never dare challenge them. He had, after all made a deal with them . . . and he never went back on a deal.
He took a swig of his whiskey.
For right now, the Fae were correct. He dare not challenge them.
However, should the time come, when he might be able to recover the missing scroll and athame piece. . . .
Thanks to my remarkable and supportive reviewers: thedoctorsgirl42, RaFire, RoxyMoron, juju0268, The Prince's Phoenix, Wondermorena, karolprado, emospritelet, spacecats, cheesyteal'c, cynicsquest, MyraValhallah, Erik'sTrueAngel, OneMagician, deweymay, LynRward, jewel415, Chauchi, Grace5231973, Robin4, VinterNatt, and Aletta-Feather
Anne Andrews (Guest): thx, Gold is indeed meant to be a total badass in this story
Kat(Guest): thx, glad you're enjoying this story
NEXT: All the tenants gather together for a Sunday lunch and are joined by the mysterious tutor (Marilyn) that Gold has called in
And Belle has a fun (interesting) evening with Ruby, Emma and Mary Margaret