Blood decorated every surface.

The entrance and front room held the highest concentration, as if men had barged in and killed any who attempted to stop them. I remembered the butler that night that the Dowager agreed to take Dawn. His wig askew, buttons crooked. He lay nearest the entrance. His head askew, body crooked. What horrors had I brought to this house?

I had the luxury of considering such things that night because Sally was in control. Her daughter was missing. I was merely a spectator of her decisions. Detached is the word that I’d use.

Using his collector blunderbuss, Mr. Hall took readings of every spatter and puddle, every chair and bed, every bloodied weapon. Sally remained convinced Dawn was alive. She must have been taken by force. I would have felt her death. I would have known, wouldn’t I? Maybe not. Yes, of course I would. Sally argued with herself. I did not get involved.

She was right. She would have known. When our family members die, something happens inside us. We didn’t learn the details until years after that moment. She was right nonetheless. Later that day, with the sun still low in the morning sky, Mr. Hall would confirm with his readings and his catalog that none of the blood belonged to Dawn. In fact there was very little Carrier blood at all. Mostly that of the Dowager’s servants. Humans. But he did find something interesting. Carriers and an Incola had been in that room. It was the same scent that we had repeatedly found while attempting to locate my brother’s son, Theodore.

“Whoever has Theodore, has now taken Dawn as well,” Sally said aloud. “There will be no end to the pain I will cause them should they hurt her,” she exclaimed.

Yes, yes, of course. But they won’t hurt her. I attempted to soothe Sally. Dawn is much too valuable for them to hurt. Sally knew better than most what could be done to her. Her value, like ours, was in our ability to breed more Carriers.

“We have to find them.”

How? I asked her again. We’d been over this before and had no plan. No one had seen anything, not that any of the aristocrats in that neighborhood would speak with us, a convicted murderer escaped and on the run from justice. All the Incola and Carriers had been laid low with illness. I had been locked away and awaiting execution. We did not even know exactly when the kidnapping had occurred.

“We are going to the club. I will need Paetus’ help.”

 

Paetus would be very little help to us. That much was apparent as soon as we entered the club. He lay on the back of an oversized, overturned velvet couch. His clothes, the same he’d worn in our garden, were now untidy, untucked, unfastened. Unacceptable. He drank directly from a nearly empty cognac bottle. The label said XO marking it as Extra Old and therefore extremely expensive. The bells on the way there rang noon. Early, even for Paetus, to be inebriated. Very little in the way of furniture or dressings remained in the club.

Paetus greeted us with open arms, gesturing to the room without rising. “They took everything not nailed down. Anything they could sell. And then they left. As soon as they were free to go, they did so.”

Sally and I both knew how Paetus treated his Carriers. They had every reason to abandon him. For this I did not, still do not, feel sympathy for him. They may have left him and taken everything they could find but Paetus would remain a very rich man. You couldn’t live for as long as he had and not amass quite a fortune. I had thoroughly diversified my assets and I would have bet them all that Paetus had done the same. The expense of the brandy he drank confirmed he wasn’t completely destitute.

“We need to use your mews,” Sally said without preamble.

Paetus rolled off the couch into a bow. Holding one hand as if to direct us, he gestured to the stairway. “It is the only thing they left me. One last insult, for it is the one thing I will never have need of again.”

We started our ascent up the first flight of stairs. The mews was the method by which Paetus transferred his consciousness into a Carrier. That thought halted our steps for a fraction of a second. I did not come to the front but I had enough fear and doubt to give us pause. The only reason Sally would need to use the mews was if she intended to leave me. What are you doing, Sally? I asked her but did not bother to wait for a reply. No, you cannot. You swore you would not. I had killed my Leon in a blind rage the last time she left me. The last time Dawn had been taken.

Sally spoke to us aloud as we reached the second flight. “Dawn is gone and I will do what I must to find her.”

There was a thud behind us and we turned to see Paetus laying awkwardly on the stairs. “Mistress Dawn is missing?”

We nodded. “Taken, most likely. Her hiding place lay in shambles; her guardians dead or dying.”

“Why did you not say so immebr…immedri…immedriately?” he asked as he undid his trousers and began to urinate.

Our Victorian sensibilities forced us to turn away. It was not urine that we smelled but alcohol. When he caught up to us on the third flight, completely sober, he helped us step over the dead man sprawled there. He healed himself, cleared his body of inebriation, in a matter of seconds. Would we ever stop underestimating Paetus?

We increased our pace and reached the top quickly. There in Paetus’ private chambers sat the mews. I should say lay. There lay the mews. Today we would call it a sensory deprivation tank. The man-sized metal coffin connected to a stationary bicycle was, we knew, filled with salt water.

Sally began to unfasten our bodice and Paetus shooed everyone toward the door. “No, they all stay,” she declared.

I panicked. They can’t. I don’t want to hurt anyone.

“That is why we need the mews. It will contain you while I ride Dawn and discover her condition and whereabouts.”

Paetus took our gloves and other garments and laid them aside. Then he offered his hand to aid in stepping into the water. “Sally, I presume.”

She dipped our chin to him but stopped him when he opened his mouth to ask something. “Another time,” she said.

He stared at her face, his eyes flicking around to the various features as if he suddenly saw the differences between us. His breathing increased and he snatched his hand away from ours. Our power of touch lay in the body, no matter who controlled it.

The lid shut and locked. I felt a moment of panic. What if Paetus refuses to free us? He is quite angry.

“That is another reason the others had to stay. Andrew and Auley won’t let any evil befall you.” Just like that she was gone.

Away.

Alone.

Abandoned.

The saying “seeing red” means being blinded by rage. It wasn’t figurative with me. It was literal. All I could see, hear, or think about in that dark tube was blood. My own thudding in my head. My dead loved ones. That of those I wished to slaughter. For one of the few times in my life I wasn’t conflicted. I had no hang-ups or considerations of others. I wanted to kill.

Death.

Destruction.

Demolition.

I laughed. An insane cackle cleared my throat on its own. I was happy. It was only later when I had time to consider that I realized the truth. I wasn’t afraid that I would hurt someone. I was afraid it would feel too good. This state of being without a conscience was addictive. I needed Sally. I wanted her. But if she was going to leave me, I would level the world.

My others—Jo, Effie, and Mary Martha—did not attempt to soothe me. Almost as if they felt how unstable and dangerous I was, they stayed clear of my muddled murderous thoughts. I wondered if I could kill them and began to fantasize about what my methods might be. I would strangle Jo with my bare hands. That way I could watch as the life left her eyes. Effie would be beaten and burned. How dare she remain young and beautiful while I aged! When I got to Mary Martha, that’s when my imagination took off. Much like the most famous serial murderer of my time, of all time really, I desired the mutilation of that woman’s womanhood. That fantasy took a life of its own. Details stood out: the futility to her struggle, the first cut depth, the warmth of her organs, the negative space as I removed something of value.

I never saw them. I felt them shy back from me. Their cowering exaggerated my hunger. Their fear fed my fantasy. Just then, Sally’s consciousness came into Dawn’s mind.

I expected information about her location. I thought I’d see through her eyes. What I saw instead, I didn’t understand at first but was every bit as horrifying as my own murder mutilation dream.

As the deprivation tank removed all distraction, I saw as clearly through Sally as I would through my own physical eyes. It wasn’t what we expected.

The whip sliced through the air, its sound almost as sharp as its barbed end. Dawn reeled it back in and snapped it again, this time catching Ambrose across the face. It wasn’t the baby face he’d had in life, but the visage of his true self.

“I’ll kill you, you cunt!” the snarled words flew from his mouth accompanied by spittle. Even if his monstrous body hadn’t been sliced and whipped to pieces, my son would be revolting as he was completely deformed by bulbous tumors stretching his greenish-gray skin.

Here, Dawn had another tenebrae, one where she was in complete control of not only her victims but of the very fabric of reality. The instrument of pain in her hand changed at her will, becoming a snake. She rubbed its head with her chin, cooing at her new pet as she walked to the wooden box in the corner.

Opening the lid, she became more disgusted by the sight than by that of her brother. “I brought you a gift, Archelaos,” she said and dropped the king cobra on top of the old man. His paper-thin skin offered the serpent’s teeth no resistance. Three times it struck his face before the lid closed on his screams.

“You can’t keep us,” the familiar voice argued. “Dawn, they don’t deserve this.”

Why does Leon insist on defending them? her other asked. You saved him, allowed him inside our mind after Mama killed him, and this is the thanks he offers!

Dawn’s twin stepped forward. Peace washed over Dawn as her other smoothed her hair. She spoke directly to Leon, I am the one to speak to should you be dissatisfied with your accommodations.

“Who are you?” he asked. Leon, seated in a luxurious chair, a fireplace at his back, could drink the brandy in his hand but he could not look away from the torture of the other men. Dawn skipped to him and sat in his lap. She rubbed his eyebrows with her finger and traced the lines of his face, her fingertip gently brushing his Roman nose and full lips. She licked her own.

“My name is Eve’ and you should be happy Dawn wants you…” Eve’ perused the tenebrae devices, pausing beside the rack. “If it were up to me, I’d see you stretched.” A smile spread across her face as she imagined it and I was glad we were hidden in the shadows.

A noise that none of us could hear sounded. Both Dawn and Eve’ turned their faces up. A chasm opened in the sky and they fell up into it. Just as Sally and I did in our own field. We were in Dawn’s mind.

Sally jumped sideways and flew down and out. She followed Dawn and her other. She attempted stealth. She wanted to use Dawn’s eyes to pinpoint her location. Once again, what we saw was not what we wanted nor expected.

Dawn lay on her back in a dark windowless room. Sally used Dawn’s peripheral vision to investigate but the task was difficult. Walls were wooden, not bricked nor plastered. Nor were there any decorations of any kind. Looking around was completely out of the question as Dawn only had eyes for the naked boy above her. A silver crucifix hung on his neck, catching what little light came from the candle to one side. Dawn looked and we watched as he trailed his hand over her pubescent chest and then lower. He reached between them. We recognized the angling of his hips and the surge forward of intercourse. Sally screamed and flew back out of Dawn and crashed into home.

Standing in our field, a storm matching our fury in the sky above us, we raged.

Sally yelled, “He is dead!” A lightning bolt ripped through the clouds and struck the ground. Her voice was the clap of thunder; it made no sound of its own.

The rain, heavy and thick, soaked me to the bone. It reflected my feelings just as the lightning had Sally’s. “She is so sick. Her mind: completely warped. I should never have introduced her to that world so young. Her mind was not ready for Domination.”

“That’s what you’re most upset about! Her thoughts? No, no. He was raping her. We have to find her, kill him, and save her.”

“Of course that is the most upsetting thing. Are you forgetting the tenebrae in her mind? The one where she fantasizes about torturing my deceased son and husbands! The physical can be overcome. Once her mind is broken asunder, it may never come back together.”

She pushed me into her memory of Father. The experiences she’d spared me in life. The pain, guilt, and confusion that Father’s hands and other parts on our body had caused. “Whatever she’s become, she does not deserve that.”

I took Sally into my arms and begged forgiveness. So much I owed her. “You are right. We must find her.” Sally allowed me to soothe her and the storm clouds rolled away. I reasoned, “You inhabited her thoughts. Did she feel distressed? In pain? Guilty as we did with Father?”

Sally shook her head no. I felt it against my shoulder. “But,” she argued, “she is too young to understand. Perhaps it is this experience, and not your instructions in Domination, that fractured her mind. She feels she has no control over the real world and so she created the tenebrae and filled it with figments of her imagination to feel in control.”

 

“Try to remember, were there gaslights in the room?” Edwin Hall questioned us about what we saw. Sally remained shaken for several hours and so I had taken the helm. She was with the others in our meadow, trying not to remember as I fought to recall details.

There had been a light to our left but it was dim, much dimmer than our modern gaslights, and it flickered more. “A candle on a chest or trunk,” I replied.

“That is good. You gained more clues than you realize.” Mr. Hall went to our parlor door and opened it, calling Andrew and Auley. They came in and he asked them, “If you woke to find yourselves in a small wooden room without adornment or window, the only furniture being a bed and a small chest beside with a single candle upon it, where would you guess you were?”

“A shanty?” Auley guessed.

“I think not,” his father contradicted. “In the poorest of homes a single room serves all purposes. It would have been littered with chairs, a table, kitchenwares, other people. No, I would guess quarters on a ship.”

“My thoughts exactly Andrew.” Mr. Hall snapped his fingers and pointed to him as he spoke.

“I do not see how it would have been possible.” Paetus spoke when he paused his pacing. “I have closed down every port; every ship sits idle.”

“Perhaps there is one defiant ship, crew, or captain who took them aboard. We should go ask around and see what we can find. Maybe someone will know what ship it was and where it is headed.”

“Wonderful idea, Auley.” I called them both by their first names from the start. I do not even know their surname. Leon had always called them Andrew and Auley and so too did I. “Go. Now. And take Paetus with you. He might as well put all his nervous energy to use.”

Andrew said, “A portrait of Lady Dawn might be of use if we do find someone with information.” I directed Mr. Hall to the palm-sized portrait in our desk. “And also a description of the boy could be useful, in case they keep Lady Dawn hidden from view.”

Sally and the others froze. They were strangely silent; a deep silence that I could feel. I closed our eyes to help us remember better. I attempted to keep our focus on his face and not what his body did. I did not wish to trigger another breakdown in Sally. “He was close but not yet a man, fifteen maybe. Dark hair with a curl. Cut stylishly and above the chin. Dark eyes and lips and skin.” I thought about it. Had the darkness of the room obscured his true features?

“Like this?” Mr. Hall asked.

I opened my eyes to see he held a photograph of my brother, Thaddeus. “No, his features were larger, broader, and his skin darker.”

Almost as if Thaddeus had a mulatto child with a Negress. I heard the lawyer’s coarse description of my nephew in my memory. “No, no, no, no,” I began to chant.

Mr. Hall held up a sketch I’d had made up the previous year. Sally spoke when I could only repeat one word. “Yes, we are looking for Theodore. My brother’s son kidnapped my daughter.”