Page 19 of Hunted By the Headless Horseman
Tears burn in my throat, but I force them down, refusing to entertain the thoughts of comparing myself to his wife and destroying any rising belief that I could ever be a substitute, much less take her place. When Jack takes the back of my neck and grips my curls, my breath hitches.
My public behavior, which seemed indifferent on the surface, he took as a betrayal. My friendship with Edmund Thorne was sundered.
Thorne? It’s a common enough name. But it still congeals my blood from the more personal meaning. Still, I write it off.
I was arrogant and spiteful to have robbed him. But he was as skilled in matters of the sword and subterfuge. While he may not have recognized me with my Phantom guise, I know he suspected. I held him at gunpoint and demanded nothing more than his crest ring. The ring he once offered to Catherine. But he used the diversion of handing it over to take the knife from his boot. He dealt me a scar. Minute. But a scar all the same.
“Oh, Jack…” I soften my fingers on his neck, curving around it as much as possible.
Yes, he discovered my identity through that scar. He used his influence and repute to smear my name, frame my wife as a witch, and rally an angry mob against us.
Horror ices my blood. His rage and grief seem to shudder through me.
They broke my legs. And forced me to watch as theyhungmy wife and children, claiming my whole bloodline was cursed.
He trembles with his fury. I bring my hands around his back, press myself against him hard, and hold him through the raw pain.They looted my home. And left me for dead. Destroyed parts of it.I hear his words through what sounds like gritted teeth.I crawled to my wife and children, took them down from the trees, and held them while roaring to the heavens.
Fury burns through me, but my longing to empathize with him is greater.
One of many I paid off in my past was a widow who lived off the grid in your modern terms. She grew everything she needed and only occasionally went to market. After a chance encounter when my horse upended me during a storm, she appeared at the exact moment and offered me shelter. She knew my name, though we’d never met. She was the only one who knew my identity, though I’d never told it to her.
I hang onto his every word, not leaving this space, not allowing a thread of a gap between us. His fingers dig into my neck, leaving little bruises, but I don’t care. Any pain I feel is trivial compared to his.
Some would call her a soothsayer. I called her a confessor, a divine priestess. That night, I crawled all the way to her home. It took me the entire night. And she was once again waiting for me. In return for vengeance, I offered her my heart, and she granted me a curse to exact my revenge. She said I would become something fearsome, a terror to those who wronged me.
I shiver as he tells me how he hunted down the men, burning their homes, casting out their families.
The baron was last. I had the soothsayer’s carte blanche to curse his bloodline, ensuring every man in his family would die a wretched death in their 40th year. I castrated him first. Then dragged him by my goddamn horse down the same road where I’d robbed him, leaving his blood and refuse to soil the ground. I finishedby hanging him on the same gallows where he hung my family.
“Jack…” I whisper, shedding tears for him, for his suffering, for the souls of his family, praying, believing, knowing they are in a better place.
After taking my revenge, I was left to roam my manor, forever haunted by my pain and quest for vengeance. My immortal horse is my only companion. And yes, my Belle. Over the past two centuries, I searched every inch of these woods, of my manor, and the confessor’s home, never gaining a single clue to my heart.
October possesses more magic and opportunity,he says with a measure of reverence and depth, the words tethering my heart.The Hunter’s Moon, the autumnal equinox, and the veil thinned during Samhain all grant a greater force of spirit power. My heart must be found in such a month. Or I will spend another year with the curse.
Silence hangs in the air like a noose, and I hold my breath, heart in my throat, as he takes deep breaths in contrast. I nearly choke when he cups my face in his gloves, his fingers insistent, urging, longing.You, Belladonna Holloway, summoning me on the first of October cannot be a coincidence. I had never felt hope until I heard your words. And now, you have heard my haunted tale. What say you?
The air of the gardens seems to echo with the sorrow and rage of his tale, pressing in on my heart. I touch my palm to his chest, struggling with my words. “Find your heart and reclaim your head. Did she give you any other information, any other ways? Like how you mixed our blood, and we can talk. Is there anything like that, where you could have a head…even if it’s just temporary?”
He says nothing.
And then…
10
“Some of us prefer the beast.”
JACK
Sharing my past with Belle was necessary for grieving purposes and bonding.
It was important for her to understand my past in all its grit and darkness—all its bloodshed. She may sympathize with me, perhaps empathize, but she must also understand I amnota good man. I am a broken one with a depravity most cannot control, much less master.
Belle sighs while clutching my arm, fingers still tethered in mine as I lead her to a specific location on my property. My cane still in hand. It is neither a sigh of contentment nor of sadness. It is simply…pensive. As if she is lost in thought. But she still leans her head on my shoulder from time to time. Would that I could lower my head to kiss her brow.
She must accept how I am as flawed as any man. My needs run deep. My hunger is not easily quenched. I must determine if my sweet summoner is strong enough to look at the fractured pieces of my soul and accept my darkness. My wife was stubborn, a spirited vixen. She was much like a wild horse I needed to break. A process involving respect as well as fear.
Catherine grew to trust me, and after a worthy hunt—whether in the bedroom, the gardens, or anywhere upon the grounds I chose—she would submit. A gray area of submission on account of all the cursing, spitting, and kicking. Despite how I hid my Phantom identity, I never hid my dark sexual nature from her. She preferred my seduction, romance, and mind fucks to my hunts, bondage, and floggings, but she still played along.
