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An Excerpt From: FIRE ANGEL
Copyright © BETH KERY, 2008
All Rights Reserved, Ellora's Cave Publishing,
Inc.
The
lights dimmed in the crowded parlor.
“I can’t
say I’m sorry that you made the request,” Austin whispered with his typical good-natured
enthusiasm. “If one-tenth of what I hear about this young woman is true we’re
in for a treat indeed.”
“If one-tenth
of what they say about this young woman is true then we’re about to witness
a miracle of the same magnitude as the Second Coming,” Vincent growled.
A
woman in front of them wearing a hat with large ostrich plumes turned and
scowled indignantly at them, feathers quivering. Austin smiled charmingly in return. Vincent
was too preoccupied to even notice.
Meanwhile
Lady Fordham dramatically introduced, “The renowned American medium, Miss
Serafina Grovenor, and her equally gifted mesmerist father, Mr. Samael
Grovenor.”
Vincent
barely registered Lady Fordham’s trembling voice or the applause that
followed. The tall, dashing man who led the veiled young woman up the
stairs onto the platform was most definitely Richard Grovenor,
the very same man that Vincent firmly believed was responsible for the
death of his wife Susan and the disappearance of his daughter Melissa. Not that
he’d ever been able to entirely convince Scotland Yard of that.
His
gray eyes narrowed hungrily on the back of the slender figure of Serafina
Grovenor. If Melissa was still alive she would be thirteen years old next
month.
“Would
you take a look at that,” Phillip Crakall breathed out in stunned
lust a few seconds later.
Vincent’s
legs tensed in preparation to stand up and clobber the lascivious, drunken rotter when what Crakall referred to finally penetrated
his brain.
The
female that Richard Grovenor had just seated on the platform was no twelve-year-old
child. She was a woman. Young, perhaps, and tender.
But a full-grown
woman nonetheless.
“She’s
lovely, isn’t she?” Austin
whispered, his eyes never leaving the vision on the stage.
Vincent
frowned and responded succinctly through clenched jaws.
“Pure
of spirit, my ass.”
Granted,
Miss Grovenor wore a black veil that obscured all of her face upward from
the bottom of her nose. And her black wool jersey dress was more modest
than most Vincent had seen on young women of a similar age. But Richard was
up to his old tricks to be sure because Vincent had never known that such a
small amount of exposed skin could be so thoroughly captivating. The color
of that radiant skin was a uniform ivory with the faintest tint of peach.
Her red, full lips created a shocking contrast to it.
But the
most obvious reason for both Phillip Crakall’s and his own terse
exclamations was the young woman’s bosom. Her dress hugged the fullness of
her breasts enticingly and the merest hint of creamy, firm flesh swelled
over the curved neckline.
The
girl must have been a natural actress because the modest strand of pearls
that surrounded her slender neck was a stroke of genius. Perhaps they
suggested “purity” to some but to Vincent they hinted at a vulnerability
that conveyed a potent, almost electrical jolt of sexual excitement.
Or at
least that was the way it felt to his unprepared loins.
It
irritated him that he and Phillip Crakall agreed on any topic, let
alone this one.
He
watched tensely as Lady Fordham conferred with Richard Grovenor while
Serafina sat still as a statue. Lady Fordham nodded toward the front row of
seats, which were occupied by four individuals. One of them, a balding man who
Vincent recognized as being a member of the Society for Psychical Research
and a regular attendee at other séances that he and Austin had investigated,
waved to Grovenor in silent acknowledgement.
Samael
Grovenor began to address the room full of people in a deep, compelling
voice.
“I bid
you all a good evening. We human beings typically consist of a mass of undisciplined
emotions and random thoughts which take the center stage at any given time
only to be swept away in the next moment by a selfish desire or a carnal
impulse. It is only the rarest type of person that God makes worthy of
being a true vessel for the most wise and pure of entities upon the spirit
plane. You see here before you—this young woman—such an individual.”
“As
many of you already have learned from our previous demonstrations, an
impartial committee will presently choose a random topic for Triumphe, the control
that directs my daughter’s spirit channels, to expand and lecture upon in
great detail. I must make it abundantly clear to those of you who are
novices to these miraculous displays that the only education that Serafina
has ever received was that taught to her by the crudest of country schools
and her humble mother until she began to show the extraordinary gift of
being able to channel the wisdom of spirits at the age of thirteen.”
“Nevertheless,
as you will soon see, Serafina will expound in breathtaking detail on the
most complex of technical, scientific and philosophical topics, showing
more breadth and depth of knowledge than even the most learned experts in
these fields, something that has repeatedly been affirmed even by those
same expert scholars. This in and of itself would be miraculous enough but
Serafina, through the grace of the divine spirits and God himself, is able
to do the same on any topic presented for her discourse. This will
be made obvious by the use of an impartial committee that will choose the
topic among themselves presently, with no prior discussion.”
Samael
Grovenor paused dramatically, his near-black eyes wandering slowly across
the spellbound faces in the room. “And as you will soon see, the spirits
have singled out this young woman in yet another miraculous manner.”
“Is
your panel ready to choose a topic, Mr. Bowen?” Samael asked imperiously.
“We
will confer,” Mr. Bowen declared with a bow from the front row.
Samael
nodded once and turned toward Serafina. He paused when a commanding voice
called out to him from the audience.
“If
your panel was truly impartial, Samael, wouldn’t it be comprised of
at least one individual who was not a fervent adherent to
spiritualism but instead a healthy skeptic?”
The
crowd rustled as it turned to locate the one responsible for such rudeness.
Most of the occupants of the room didn’t seem pleased when they saw the
tall, imposing figure of Lord Rashleigh standing in the next to the last
row but they certainly didn’t seem surprised.
CLOSE WINDOW
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