the haunted kingdom, Charles E.J. Moulton [chrome ebook reader TXT] 📗

have to live through this one more time.”
“Aren’t you going to sit down, Alexander?”
Alexander smiled.
“No. Not if you won’t leave. If you leave I can continue my meal.”
Lucinda’s eyebrows curved inward. “I’d rather stay, but thanks
anyway.” She walked up to a plate of grapes and picked one up. “You mind if I have something to eat? Häppchen? Whores’ Hors d’ouvre? Sorry if I borrow expressions from other levels of the space-time continuum.”
”By all means,” Alex nodded. “Help yourself. I know I can’t stop it.”
Lucinda grinned, her black eyes disappearing inside her grin. She was ironic, but there was never a humorous expression on her face. Her eyes remained half-closed all the time. Her face serious, her gaze the entire while fixed on her brother no matter where in the room she moved.
“I need you to listen for once.” Lucinda opened her eyes for the first time and she pouted with her lips and her tongue came out. She flicked with her tongue a couple of times, leaning against the large table almost in her brother’s face. “I need your head," she said. "Alexander the Baptist!" she said in a low bass baritone. She cackled, starting to imitate Salome by throwing with her cape. “And then you can have my present. Head for heels, or whatever the expression is.”
“That’s heads or tails, you morose idiot.” Morgana whispered.
Lucinda turned her head toward the speaker. “Miss Flaunty arrives with wee philosophical gems of wisdom.” She took one step toward her. “Her royal highness is full of the highest eloquence.”
"Don’t waste my time." Alex said, threateningly soft.
She turned her head to him, back still away from her brother, her head facing him, looking at him from the corner of her eye. She began speaking, but hesitated.
Instead, Lucinda leaned over to Belinda and smiled.
“I will keep my promise,” she said menacingly. “Don’t fret.”
“You face me and speak to your brother,” Belinda spat. “Look at whom you speak to.”
Lucinda gave her an angry look, ran up and leaned up against the table and screamed.
"You were the promise kept, a sweet reward for sending away me.”
Belinda whispered haughtily. “As we now know where we stand we can start talking on equal terms. If I am the reward for your eviction, then it all makes sense.”
“How so, dear?” Lucinda whispered.
“When a sickness is removed from the earth, a blossoming flower arises.”
”Oh, I see. Well, if you are the flower then this must be the garden.” She smiled. Lucinda stepped back and said nothing for a while. Steven half-smiled and was given a dirty look from his aunt-in-law. She walked a few paces away from the table and then turned around and pointed at Belinda. She turned around again and pointed at Steven. “Then that must be the weed.”
Steven jumped at Lucinda and was held back by Zedrick and Patrick, who calmed him down.
“You perverse little vulture.” he screamed so loud that it hurt Patrick’s ears. “I have more pride and dignity than you and your kind will ever have.”
"I was in exile... remember? You have your cute little Belinda to show off. Me? I am your own little murder minister.” There was a pause. “Aww, yes” she continued softly. “I am proud of my murders. Bloody hell, I have something to show off. It's not like a just sit with Lucifer all day and play with his c- ... socks."
“Murder is your specialty, isn’t it?” Alex interrupted. “Ruining lives, traumatizing parents and sons alike. Making the lives of others a living hell.”
Lucinda took a step closer to him, her mouth opened and her skin grew crackly like the shell of a nut. Her eyes turned grey and her irises red. Her hair stood up on end and she leaned against the table, eyes widely impersonal. Her tongue forked and popped out of her mouth, clear red. The dog in Patty’s lap, who had been sitting fascinated, leaned terrified against the table, fell backwards with a thud, immediately aided by his aide.
There was a painful silence in the Hall.
“I am here to make a deal with you, Alexander.” Lucinda looked at him with cats’ eyes. In his mind she walked up to him, told him he was a good dog and kissed him clean of purity. He found himself in the dungeon of Rigor Mortis outside Yambollah tied to a bed, covered with wax just like Belinda back then in 1411, Lucinda sitting on him, licking the wax off his fur and riding his chest. “Ten thousand days of pain, 262,800 hours, if hours mean anything to you at this point in your era of history. I shall give you no less than what you gave me, you must understand that.”
“Does that mean that I have to suffer until I die?”
“Yes.” she sizzled. “Suffer until you damn well drop in a pool of your black spit.” She paced the room, flung around with her dress, clearly enjoying the attention she was getting. “Your whole country soon extinct, you will become but an odd memory. I will put your heads in glass jars and look at them while I eat breakfast. I’m going to play a game with you. It is called

Sizzle My Brother Over Hot Burning Coal,
Salt Him And Pepper Him And Serve Him Up Whole.”

“You could’ve had that revenge much sooner than this.” Alex gestured to the whole crowd. “All our heads might be in glass jars by now.” There was modest laughter. Now it was his turn to lean forward and threaten Lucinda. “Why now? Why wait, Lucinda? Why this extraordinary torture on both of our sides for three decades? Why didn’t you just ram a spear down my belly in 1392 and have it all over with?”
Lucinda nodded and leaned forward, her face now an inch from that of her brothers.
“You were always a spoilsport, a wimp, a faggot, a really bad actor. Your lisping vanity is as big as mine, you little milquetoast, so don’t point at me for vanity. You stand in front of the mirror as much as I do.” She stood up and smiled. “I have all the reason to hate you. Planning is what I did for thirty years. I planned my reappearance very well, brother heart.”
“I detect hurt feelings,” Alexander sighed. “What was that old saying you thundered out about the four horsemen of the apocalypse rolling over the country before the century was over? That never happened. Why?”
Lucinda smiled. “I never said that. I said before the quingenium was over.”
”There is no such word. I have read enough Latin to know.”
Lucinda smiled again, this time in a mixture of spite and patronization.
“I say, do you not know what quingenium means. You are a learned man. It is the half of millennium. It means half thousand. If you can count I shall present you a year. Anno Domini 1500.”
“That year has no relevance to me,” the king laughed and waved her away with his right hand.
Lucinda walked up to her brother again, Reficule constantly following her obediently. “We are playing for keeps here, Alex. This is more than just a sibling quibble. If I win, I win for real.”
Alexander’s expression was one of confusion. What is with the year 1500?”
“By then, one of us will rule what we know as reality.”
”We will all be dead by then.”
She lifted her right index finger and shook it. “But our sons and daughters won’t be dead.
Your cute little nitwit princess won’t want to refrain from little cuties hopping in palace grass.” Lucinda spat. “Or will she?”
Belinda stood up. She pointed at Lucinda and Alex waved for her to sit down. “Our race will flock the Earth.” She leaned over and smiled. “They will all relish in walking over your face.”
“Eloquent choice of words. I’ll have to use that.” She curtsied and mocked. “Good Day to you, Sir! How about if I walk over your face?” Lucinda leaned over, laughing, and it was obvious that she enjoyed this. “Lucifer and I want some little ones one day. Besides, he has more potential and a variation of assets to offer than most men with two... That is beside the point. Our offspring will rule the known world. I am talking a negotiation here. I offer your father a real challenge and then he can see how you deal with it. If he wins, you will never see me again. Believe me, he will not be able to win this, I will give your country a make-over it will never survive.”
Alexander stood up. “Your threats have never ever amounted to scratch.” Alexander stepped back, the lights of the flames from the fireplace dancing in his face.
“Not so fast, brother. Remember, I have a business to attend to. You have a country to run, a wedding to organize. I am here on errands. Important errands.”
There was a long pause.
“You see, when I thought of taking revenge I could not just blow your palace up into smithereens or kill a few of your citizens. You are a special kind of person and a special kind of person deserves a special kind of treatment. Killing you slowly would be more fun, I gathered.”
One of the musicians had forgotten his drum and stumbled over it as he backed toward the door in order to escape. He was fat man named Igalfur, usually jolly and whose face was now numb with terror. He fell over and tripped right into the instrument with a bang. She looked back at the man and smiled.
"What's the matter with you, Sweetie? Looking for something?"
She saw the terror in his eyes and watched him stand up she sent a thought to him:

"CRASH INTO THE WALL!"

Promptly, he lifted and hit the wall, fell on the drum, breaking it, as if on a given signal the man rushed out of the room, bloody.
Five people rushed to his aid, Bantrard among them.
She strolled up to the long table again, relishing like a horny 16-year-old in keeping these people tense. She went from plate to plate picking at people’s food on which she munched on as she spoke. She cackled. “I am unpredictable and you like it.”
Alex started circling the table. “To hell with everything. You are going to die! Now!”
She mocked him and lowered her voice. “Now! You like that word. Don’t you? Now!” She turned to Morgana and smiled. “Sound so masculine, doesn’t it? He wants it NOW!” Lucinda laughed while she backed toward the middle of the hall, chased backward by Alexander.
Belinda rushed up to him, grabbed his sleeve and tried to hold him back. She was panicking.
“Don’t tempt her, father!”
Lucinda for the first time was distressed, tried to get away by having him focus his attention at Belinda. “Your daughter is distraught. You better help her.”
”I am helping her by killing you.” Alexander argued.
”How are you going to achieve that? You tried thirty years ago and it didn’t work then.”
”I’ll never stop trying to kill you,” she growled in a low and raspy register.
“Father,” Belinda pleaded. “Don’t provoke her, not even for me.”
He turned to her. “Sit down, dearest. I am doing what I should’ve years ago.”
Lucinda laughed. “Always this masculine authority.” She sighed and continued very peacefully. "Fine then... If that is your attitude I can do nothing but oblige." She circled him and left Reficule in the middle of the hall and Alexander standing next to him. The seventh head of