Chapter 2

Darkness gave way to light as a hand jerked at Phillip Fogg's arm. The lieutenant blinked awake and allowed himself to be led out of his room. A door at the far end of the hall was opened, and he was pushed in.

Phillip fell to his knees.

The door slammed shut behind him.

Phillip fumed. "A fine way to wake up."

He turned his head toward a noise and found a breathtakingly beautiful woman standing on the other side of the room. She had dark hair like deeply roasted chestnuts and deep brown eyes staring at him in fear. The lady was dressed in a fashionable high waisted gauzy dress of yellow.

"Who are you?" She asked in French.

He pushed himself off the floor. "Phillip Fogg," he said to the enchanting lady.

"Philippe?" She repeated, putting emphasis on the wrong syllables, but at the moment, Phillip could not have cared less.

She switched to delightfully accented English. "You are Philippe, my David's friend. Where is he? Have you seen him? Oh, I have been so worried about him."

Her question threw a splash of cold water on his initial reaction. This woman was his dead friend's lady friend. The one he had killed yesterday.

"I am sorry," Phillip said, sobering. "David died yesterday."

He left out the more incriminating details. The lady's face crumbled into pain and abject despair. She folded to the floor, crying in great, wrenching sobs.

That Phillip could not take. He moved across the floor to her side and gently put his arms around her, slowly lest she object.

The distraught woman accepted his comfort for a time and then pulled away. "I'm sorry. Forgive me, Monsieur."

"No need," Phillip said. "You were… a friend of David's?"

"I am Georgette Claire," the lady said. "We were to be married, but the war…"

Georgette pulled a handkerchief from her sleeve, sniffling. "His father did not want me. These terrible people stole me and made my David do what they wished."

David helped her up from the floor to sit in a nearby chair. "Who are they?"

"Demons." Georgette said. "Demons in league with the devil himself. I have seen him. He is so horrible!" She crumbled into sobs again.

Her imagery and feelings were strong, but the information lacked credible detail. Right now, Phillip needed details. He took the woman's hand.

Phillip said, "Mademoiselle, you must be strong and help me. I must know what I am dealing with before I can hope to plan our deliverance."

Georgette looked up at him in surprise. "Philippe? You truly think we can leave here?" Her eyes glittered with tears and rekindled hope. "Oh, I have given to such despair. I will tell you. I will tell you all I have seen."

She explained everything that had happened to her since being kidnapped. "David was brought here to see me. Then he was ordered to do things for the Demon. He did them to protect me," she said, sniffling, but did not break down again.

"Who is this demon?"

"He is horrible!" Georgette shuddered. "He is the shade of an old knight cursed. He must have been very evil, horrible!"

Phillip asked again several ways, but was given the same answer. Finally, he resigned himself not to get any straight answers. Her confinement appeared to have affected her mind. Whoever this demon was, he was flesh and blood and dangerous.

The door opened behind him. Phillip's guards entered, ordering him out of the lady's room. Georgette rose, went against the far wall, whimpering. Phillip was almost grateful to leave her. David's fiancé was breath from madness.

The guards hauled him down the hall. This time past his room, up a set of stairs that wound upward into one of the castle towers. At the top, he entered a large room with tall, dark, lead-glazed windows, allowing only minimal light.

The room appeared to be a trophy chamber. There were pennants and battle flags here from all over Europe on the old stone walls. In between, ancient weaponry filled spaces. None of the weapons could be pulled down. Looking over the room, Phillip found one section of the wall set aside for a large tapestry. In depicted a grotesque scene of a medieval knight, a crusader most likely, being drawn and quartered by a large crowd of Turkish soldiers. The knight was in his armor. There were templar symbols in the tapestry showing the dying knight's order.

Phillip turned away from the tapestry in distaste. Such memorial tapestries were common, but they always turned his stomach.

To the right, an odd mechanical noise sounded. It came from a wide doorway adjoining this to another dark room. He did not have to be curious for long. The sound grew stronger.

Slowly, a wooden construction on wheels came through it. Attached to it at different points were pieces of armor that looked to belong to the dead knight. He shuddered, wondering why anyone would want to display that, but then the helmet moved and eyes inside it locked with his.

Bile rose in Phillip's throat as he realized the old knight was alive in this condition. His parts were rotting. The half of his face that could be seen in the torn helmet was misshapen and withered in a permanent scowl or grimace of pure hate and rage.

The mechanism he was attached to hissed and sputtered with the effort to give the head a voice. "I am Count Gregory," it said to him in a deep, gravelly voice. "You have killed my messenger. You must now replace him. General Wellington's orders must reach him without incident. You will carry them to him and tell them you killed David Evans before he brought his dispatches to Bonaparte, which will be completely true."

The mechanism Count Gregory was attached to moved closer. "My servant Evans kept me apprised of what the English are planning. Occasionally, the General's orders do not agree with my wishes. Lord Wellington is my weapon against the French government when they did not abide by my wishes. Many campaigns in Spain were arranged for their defeat. But Bonaparte has come back, a threat to my power. You will carry my orders to Wellington. And if you do not… the girl will suffer."

The platform moved away. "

"The girl means nothing to me," Phillip said with a surprising amount of force, even to his own ears. For a moment, Phillip was rather proud of his ability to hold his fear in check. Inside, he had been quaking. He had been sure he had just been pushed into an anteroom in hell.

"You are speaking of Georgette Claire," the head said. "I do not."

From the adjoining room behind the platform, a guard held a girl in his arms with a hand over her mouth to ensure silence. It was his cousin Sarah. his Uncle Seth's daughter and Boniface's sixteen-year-old sister. She had on a party dress showing her activity when she had been kidnapped. The girl looked nearly faint with fear.

"I found this one in England yesterday after you were captured," the head said. "She is lovely, too lovely to lie broken and left for scavengers at the bottom of these castle walls. My servants are many, scattered all over Europe. If you fail in my service, I will know, and she will die."

By some unseen signal, Phillip's guards pushed him past Sarah into the other room. As he entered, a door opened and Georgette was carried in, bound hand and foot with a gag in her mouth. A guard carried her unceremoniously to an open balcony door. While Phillip was still in denial of his intentions, the guard tossed her into the air. For a moment, Georgette hung in the wind above the balcony rail. Then she disappeared.

In shock, Phillip tried to get his mind around what had just happened. He was rooted to the floor. The mechanical platform came up close behind him, bumping his calves. Phillip turned, looking into Georgette's demon's eyes. "I reward failure this way."

Phillip and Sarah were forced into Georgette's old room. They were both in shock, Phillip because of Georgette's death and Sarah because of her kidnapping. She, thankfully, had been kept in the trophy room and had not seen what her fate might be.

Sarah flew at her cousin, hugging Phillip about the middle in a panic, looking for comfort. Phillip shook himself out of his horror and gave it to her.