twenty-nine

Alexei

The skin around Wilder's lips turned pale.

He looked down at Alexei with panic in his eyes.

"Eh?" he whispered, grasping Alexei's hand so hard it was painful.

Alexei understood: his mind had gone blank. But his own had finally cleared.

Everything made sense all of a sudden: an unnatural, perverted kind of sense, but it was the only sort of sense to be had, and he would take it.

‘I have buried your seed.'

Those were signs of a struggle, after all. And the soil had been too hard and frozen, as he had initially thought, for a slip of a girl to dig up all that dirt by herself. Someone else had done it.

And buried her under it.

Alexei dropped on all fours and started digging with his own two hands like a lunatic.

"What are you—?" Wilder was screaming at him.

"Dig!" Alexei screamed back. "That mewing we heard…I think the cat is buried under here, alive, and P-Poppy might be too! Help me, for God's sake!"

Once upon a time, a lifetime and a half ago, he had insisted that he did not scream. He did not need to shout to be obeyed. He did not need to raise his voice, not once, to get what he wanted.

How he had prided himself on being calm and collected at all times. At not caring. At putting up a stony, icy front, that no one could penetrate.

How utterly ridiculous it all seemed now.

Now that he was screaming himself hoarse calling Poppy's name as he dug on that garden's soil for her. He roared as he used his fingernails, his legs, his arms, even his teeth at some point, to part the black, frozen dirt.

Dirt was flying in every direction around him, getting inside his eyes, his hair, his shirt. He did not even notice.

"Wilder," he shouted. Wilder was digging furiously next to him, but they weren't being quick enough. They were being too bloody slow. "Get a shovel! A shovel, man!"

"What—what are you expecting to find in there?" Wilder asked, sounding really afraid for the first time since Alexei had known him.

"I'll tell you what I'll put in there if you don't hurry! You." Alexei screamed, without stopping for a moment, without looking up.

The meowing was getting weaker by the second.

Within seconds, Wilder was back and leaning above the freshly-filled hole, his boot braced against the ground, and digging up the dirt with all his might. He flung a second shovel to Alexei, who started working on the other side of the grave. His brow glistened with sweat and his hair clung damply to his skin, but he didn't stop until he heard the shovel hit something solid. Then he jumped inside the hole and, flinging his coat to the ground, began to dig even more energetically.

"Isaac!" Alexei yelled at Wilder after a few minutes of this strenuous work. "It's free."

Together, they lifted the casket from its hole, grunting and panting with the effort it took to extricate it from its hasty burial place.

"My God," Wilder sputtered. "A casket, Mikailoff. Jesus, it's a casket, it's much too heavy for a cat, or…It's not empty, Alexei, it's…"

"Don't fall apart on me now," Alexei hissed through clenched teeth. "Need to open it. Come on…Ah."

It was stuck.

The next instant, Alexei was on the ground, peeling the lid open with his fingernails.

Wilder swore and then made a whimpering sound, as if he were choking.

"Shut up, Wilder," Alexei said, and removed the lid, plunging his hands in up to the elbow. Then:

"Poppy," in a horrified whisper. "My God!"

He had held on to hope fiercely that it wouldn't be her. That she wouldn't be buried here, in her own garden, right under his nose all this time. But it was her.

She lay there, her slender body still and white, dressed in her nightgown. Her hands were tied and her mouth was gagged. Her hair fell about her loosely like a mermaid's, and it took all he had in him not to fall in the casket next to her body and weep like a child.

"Help me," he flung over his shoulder to Wilder.

Together, they lifted her onto the ground. She was not breathing, but she was still warm.

"She's not dead, is she?" Wilder asked in a hushed, terrified voice.

"I don't care if she is," Alexei said fiercely. "I'm waking her up, either way."

And he grabbed her in his arms and turned her on her side. He hit her lightly on the back, but when nothing happened, he started hitting her more forcefully. Wilder busied himself with removing her gag and cutting the ropes around her wrists.

"Her hands are bloodied," Wilder gasped, and Alexei looked at them, without stopping hitting her back with his fists.

Wilder was right: her knuckles were scraped raw, her nails bloody. Tears burned Alexei's throat. If blood had gotten under her fingernails, then that meant that his little seed had fought like a lion.

"Good girl," he murmured. "You bought yourself some time."

"I fought." A coughing sound was coming from the ground, hoarse and dry and choking. Alexei looked down sharply—Poppy was struggling to come awake.

"Poppy!" Alexei's strangled exclamation was half joy, half pain.

"I fought him like you taught me," she was trying to say, still half-unconscious, but her voice was drowned in a coughing fit.

"I know, angel. I know you did." Alexei turned her so that she could breathe better, supporting her neck with one hand, her back with the other.

Wilder was crouched nearby, watching, but Alexei couldn't stand to let him touch her right now. He took her cold hands in his and started untying the rest of the knots, but his hands were bruised from prying the nails off the coffin and he was shaking so much he hardly made any progress.

"Let me," Wilder said quietly, and quickly completed the task. As he did so, Alexei noticed something bulging beneath the skirt of Poppy's dress. He reached for it: it was the soft, shivering little body of Cerberus.

"Hurts," Poppy whimpered, shuddering under Wilder's careful touch.

"The danger is gone," Alexei told her. "It's over."

She coughed wetly and struggled to sit up and look at Alexei. Her eyes found the cat, which Alexei was handing over to Wilder.

"He crept in there with me," Poppy said around another coughing fit. She wheezed, unable to get enough air in her lungs. "He came while I fought. He was watching over me."

"He saved your life," Wilder murmured.

"You saved my life," Poppy told him and Alexei, and then she doubled in two, gasping for breath. Her hands were shaking.

"Don't speak now," Alexei told her, "save your strength."

"You…You came."

Of course I did. He couldn't speak. Am I crying again? Why am I always crying?

"I…"

Poppy took a shuddering breath and was still in his arms. Alexei shook her, but nothing happened.

"Wilder, she's not waking up," he said frantically.

He propped her to a seated position, supporting her back with his left knee. Her pale face was utterly still and her delicate, almost transparent eyelids were closed. Alexei passed a hand over her cold cheeks, smoothing the curls away from her white brow. As he touched her like that, tenderly, slowly, out of his own volition, all of the day's fear and anguish seemed to culminate within him.

He began to shake her until her teeth chattered, but apart from her eyes fluttering, she did not respond.

No. No. This cannot be happening.

Not after everything we went through.

Dear God, please give her back to me. I shall not stop fighting for her; I will never stop.

He pulled her closer to his chest, rubbing warmth into her cold arms and willing her chest to breathe. His muscles were screaming in protest, but he went on until he felt her move against his heart.

"Open your eyes for me, love, come on." She didn't move and a desperation seized him. "Don't you die on me, Poppy," he murmured. "Don't you dare die."

In the end, his despair was quiet rather than screaming. He gathered her in his arms and sobbed, letting his head fall back.

Then Wilder's hands were there, warm and steady, on his hair, around his shoulders, supporting him, holding him up.

"'S all right," Wilder murmured, his voice broken. "It's all right, my lord. Alexei. It's going to be all right. She is safe and sound."

She was safe, but definitely not sound.

Alexei took her to the Underworld.

…

The doctor said that she needed sleep and rest and she would be herself soon enough.

"Will she, by God," Alexei retorted, seething. "She was buried alive."

"Well," the doctor floundered, looking for a response, "that…that might take some getting over."

"You think?"

Alexei packed him off and asked for another physician to be brought to the club, one who was preferably a human being. While they waited for him, he was informed that the vicar was still there, and was asking for an audience with him.

"Good grief, must he?" Alexei grunted. "Show him in."

"Can I see her, please?" The vicar looked like a shadow of his former self, but he still had that stubborn, vain look about him. His voice was trembling as he spoke, and so were his hands. Alexei couldn't care less.

"No," he said and turned his back on the vicar, busying himself at his desk.

"I would like to see her," the vicar repeated.

"I should think you'd be too ashamed," Alexei said bluntly.

"Please," the man insisted, ignoring Alexei's comment.

"The answer is no," Alexei said, suddenly terribly tired. What time was it? It must be close to midnight. "And I won't send her back to you, not unless she expressly asks for it. And if she does, I'm coming with her to knock your teeth out."

"Your Highness, I am asking you…"

"Would you like them out now?" Alexei asked kindly.

"I would like to see her." The man's insolence had no bounds. He was not used to being denied, was he? Well, it was time for little boys to grow up.

"I won't let you in, unless she specifically asks for you," Alexei said in a final tone. "And then I shall do my damnest to persuade her to never to set eyes on your miserable face again."

Something akin to rage lit up the vicar's eyes. "You have no right to keep her from me," he started saying, becoming heated. It would be amazing how quickly the cloak of respectability dropped and left him exposed for a coward and a bully—except that it was revolting. "You have no right to—"

"Oh, you want to talk about rights, do you?" Alexei was seated and Poppy's brother was on his feet, but Alexei was still taller. "What right have you to starve and torture her, then? To sell her? To ruin her health, her self-esteem, her very will as a human being? To reduce her to the state she was in when she first came here? Let's hear it."

"I," the vicar drew himself up, "have a right to do with her as I seem fit. I am her brother."

Alexei wasn't aware of the fact that he'd moved, until he found himself face to face with the vicar, clutching his shirt in an iron grip and tilting his face up, in order to punch him in the face. He let all of his anger and frustration pour out of him, hitting the man again and again, knuckles crunching on bone, blood spurting, until one of his guards had to rush into the room and forcibly restrain him.

"Stop it, my lord," he heard the man's voice command through the haze that filled his brain. "Stop now. He's unconscious."

Alexei was panting, but no air was coming into his lungs.

"Get him out of my sight," he commanded. "While he still breathes."

They kept the vicar in the Underworld, but put him up somewhere far away from Alexei's rooms. He could barely stomach the idea of the man being somewhere in the vicinity of Poppy. Which made him think of other things that were going on in the Underworld right now.

They always had, every single night for years.

But all of a sudden, he didn't know why, but his skin was crawling at the very idea.

Oh.

He knew why: the sleeping girl on his bed held more power over him than anything ever had. He could not stand the thought that money was exchanging hands in that vulgar manner while she was under his protection. While she was fighting for her life.

For once, maybe he would do what she wanted. After all, all his own desires had been fulfilled. Eradicated. Wiped clean. And only she remained; she was all he wanted. And she would be obeyed.

"Wilder!" he called.

"I'm here," his friend materialized out of nowhere, as if he were hovering close by, ready in case he was needed. "What do you need, my lord? Patrons have started arriving upstairs, and the gaming rooms are already filled to capacity. Do you want to join them?"

"Don't you my-lord me now," Alexei said. "We are way past that, don't you think?"

"I do," Wilder smiled. "What do you need, Mikailoff?"

"Throw them all out," Alexei said.

"What?"

"Throw them all out," Alexei repeated. "I don't want them in the same establishment as her. I don't want money exchanging hands, or girls…women, our women, being pawed at, gawked at in here. We'll find something else to do. Hell, we have enough money to survive on doing absolutely nothing for years, if that's what we want." Laughter was bubbling up in his throat, as if a great weight had been lifted from his chest.

"We?" Wilder was laughing too.

"Beg pardon?"

"You said ‘we have enough money'… Don't you mean you have enough money, my lord?" Wilder said.

"I do not. And I am not your lord. I am your…" He couldn't quite say the word. But his heart was all warm and his eyes were stinging.

"Friend," Wilder smiled more widely than Alexei had seen anyone smile. "I know. I am too."

"Well, that's that then. Now empty the club, if you would be so kind. On my orders."

Wilder smiled rarely, but again he flashed his teeth at Hades.

"Right away, Mikailoff," he said.