Prologue
“Well, Solace … tonight is the night that you’ve been looking forward to for a thousand years. You’re finally going to be rid of me.”
“I’d hardly claim that I’ve been looking forward to this night, Edmund.”
Edmund smiled, the action wistful. “I know, my old friend.” Edmund puffed on the meerschaum pipe that he held delicately in his hand. Edmund looked across the desk. He was going to miss Solace. His old friend was cantankerous on a good day, but he’d been around for so long, Edmund couldn’t imagine his life without him.
The form Solace usually chose to maintain while inside the house was of a human man, which was ironic considering Solace’s ill feelings about humans. But since Edmund chose to maintain a human form, Solace did so out of habit.
Solace chose as his face one that had hard lines of someone who’d experienced a lot of strife. His roundish face was half covered with a full, thick, black beard that matched both the thickness and color of the hair on his head. Very little of his handsome face was visible, just his sharp and observant deep blue eyes. Eyes that Edmund knew saw much more than Solace let on.
His body was pleasing, if Edmund’s inclinations went that way, which they did not, but he could appreciate the strength and muscular frame with which Solace’s human form was lined. Solace preferred to adopt taller frames that allowed him to easily intimidate those that he wished to keep at a distance. At one point, one of those people was Edmund, but time, it seems, can change even the stubbornest of creatures.
“I’ve left instructions for you, if you care to read them.” Edmund released the puff of pipe smoke and opened the drawer of his large, mahogany desk. There were many things about the human world that Edmund was going to miss besides his old friend. One was his pipe. He doubted that Pandora would allow such a habit to persist once she had him back where she could get her claws into him.
“I don’t care to read them,” Solace sighed. “I wish you’d let me stay and fight. Her minions are no match for my skill. You know this.”
“Yes, I know, but the agreement is legally binding. She’s upheld her end of the agreement, and now it’s time for me to uphold mine.”
“She’s going to torture you.”
“Probably, but she’ll eventually tire of it and just let me be. It’s not as if she can kill me, or anything, and at one point we were happily married.”
Solace narrowed his eyes as he glared across the desk. “There are a great many things worse than death, Edmund.”
“And I’m sure she’ll explore many of those, but I wouldn’t change anything. What I’ve experienced these last thousand years has been worth a thousand more of having my wife show me just how much she hates me.”
“I fail to see the humor in that, Edmund.”
Edmund looked over at the large face of the grandfather clock along the one wall, nestled in between two overstuffed bookshelves. “We don’t have a lot of time.”
“Let me stay,” Solace all but pleaded.
“I need you to do me one last favor.”
Solace growled. The sound would terrify even the bravest of humans, but Edmund knew Solace would never hurt him, even if he wanted to.
“I want you to find her, Solace.”
There was a long pause, and the only acknowledgement that Solace had heard him was the clenching and unclenching of his jaw muscles.
“What is this human to you, and why should I bother finding her?”
Edmund leaned close, almost as if he was afraid of anyone overhearing his statement. “I’ve given to her the very thing that Pandora is hoping to get back this night.”
Solace’s eyes went wide. “You’re not serious, Edmund? You gave it to a human? And a human female at that?”
Edmund smiled and brought the pipe to his mouth again, drawing deeply. “Quite ironic, isn’t it?”
“You don’t think this is going to enrage Pandora further?”
“Frankly, I couldn’t care less what that she thinks.”
“You say that you want to uphold your end of the agreement, but how is this not a violation of the agreement?”
Edmund let out the puff of smoke. “Because I had Themis herself help me word the contract. It’s perfectly binding. Not even my wife can contest it.”
“If you took the effort to do that, why didn’t you word it in such a way that you could get out of it entirely?”
“Because Pandora would have seen right through that.”
“And you don’t think she’ll see right through this one?”
Edmund smiled. “I’ve given her no choice.”
Solace sighed. “As you have given me no choice.”
“You can refuse me, if you wish to.”
Solace narrowed his intense blue eyes. “And ruin all that you’ve fought for?”
Edmund shrugged. “It’s your choice.”
“You know I won’t let that happen.”
“I was hoping not, but sometimes I can’t tell with you. You’re too serious for your own good, Solace.”
Solace pressed his lips together and refused to respond.
“I think spending time with humans might be good for you,” Edmund said after a few tense moments of silence. “I’m hoping that you’ll find that you enjoy the human female’s company.”
Before Solace could respond, the large grandfather clock chimed that it was 11:45. Edmund took one last puff from his pipe and dumped the burnt tobacco in a nearby ashtray. Reaching into the drawer to his right, he pulled out a small pipe cleaner and stuck it inside the pipe. Once clean, he reverently set the pipe in its stand on the corner of the desk. Looking up, he smiled into the face of his long-time friend.
“I will miss you, Solace.” The emotion made his voice thick. He cleared his throat.
The stone exterior of Solace’s face cracked. “What am I supposed to do here without you, Edmund? You’re my purpose.”
Edmund took a deep breath.
Before he could utter the words, Solace barked out at him, “Don’t say it.”
“It’s the only way, my dear Solace.” He stared into Solace’s eyes as he uttered, “I release you.”
They both felt the bond snap and break. Solace whined and Edmund exhaled loudly. Edmund seemed to regain his composure first. “Well, that’s done. Now, you have no excuse.” He looked at Solace with nearly pleading eyes. “I don’t want you to watch her take me, Solace. It will be hard enough as it is.”
“I don’t want to leave you,” Solace forced out through clenched teeth.
“You have no bond holding you here. You simply need to rise from the chair and leave the house.” Edmund smiled, the action forced, and they both knew it. “This is what I wish. Find the human female and make her your new purpose.”
“I don’t want a new purpose, Edmund.”
“Please. Do this for me.” Edmund jutted his chin toward the door. “Go now, before she gets here.”
Slowly, Solace rose from the chair and looked down at his friend. After an uncomfortable long pause, he nodded and turned to walk from the room.
Solace exited the room and gently closed the door. He wanted to rip the door off its useless hinges. He wanted to rip Pandora and all her minions apart. He wanted to stay with Edmund. He’d been by Edmund’s side ever since he was known by his true name of Epimetheus. Edmund had been Solace’s first, and so far, his only purpose, and he’d underestimated how hard it was to walk away from that. His kind formed attachments and those attachments were meant to last until the purpose was dead. But Edmund was immortal, and so Solace would not have outlived him. He was long-lived, but Solace wasn’t immortal.
Instead of walking out the front door as Edmund wished him to, Solace made a right at the end of the hall and walked over to the large painting Edmund had commissioned over a century ago now.
They’d been living in France at the time, and Edmund had befriended a drunken human who had some skill painting. Edmund was a collector. The various priceless trinkets scattered about this house was proof of that. A house that Edmund had told him that he was leaving to Solace. Solace didn’t want any of Edmund’s things. He wanted Edmund to stay with him. But according to the contract, Edmund’s time with the humans, and with Solace, was over.
The chime of the clock echoed throughout the empty house. Twelve loud strikes. When the last one echoed down the hall, Solace flipped the hidden switch on the frame of the painting to reveal the secret door.
The painting was one of Edmund’s favorites. He’d insisted on bringing it with them from France when they’d moved to the United States. The painting was of Edmund standing in Forêt de Tronçais, in Auvergne. He was standing by the oldest oak tree in all of France and was holding a large golden key. Solace had asked him once what the key opened, and Edmund had enigmatically told him that the key was the solution to the problem. Solace had never understood what Edmund had meant and didn’t ask about it again.
As Solace slipped into the tunnel behind the painting and clicked the secret door closed, his ears picked up voices. She sure wasted no time coming to collect her prize. Solace curled his lip as he hurried down the dark tunnel until he came to the end. There, he quietly slid a small panel of wood aside and peered into the room beyond.
The room he was looking at was the study that he and Edmund had been sitting in a few moments ago. Edmund was still sitting in the chair that he’d been in, but instead of being alone in the room, in the room with him was Pandora.
For having been created to be the perfect female, Solace didn’t find her particularly attractive. In fact, he found her rather ugly. Ugly to the point of being repulsive, but maybe that was just his perception.
“Where is it?” Pandora demanded.
“Not here, darling.” Edmund’s voice was calm and controlled.
“We had an agreement, Epimetheus.”
“And I’m upholding my end of the agreement. Down to the very letter of the contract.”
“You took it with you when you left,” she demanded.
“Yes, but the contract states that I’ll return to you exactly as when the agreement was made. I did not have her with me when we signed the contract.”
Solace grimaced. That was what Edmund had meant when he’d said that he was upholding the contract, and that Pandora would be unable to contest it.
Pandora growled and walked behind Edmund. She leaned down and ran her clawed hands over his chest. Her face contorted with rage as she raked her claws up Edmund’s chest, tearing the flesh he had chosen to cover his form with.
Edmund grunted in pain and Solace couldn’t stop the quiet whine.
Pandora paused and, it seemed, glanced in his direction, but Solace knew that she couldn’t see him. The walls of the secret room were lined with paint that had a small piece of the Helm of Hades blended in, rendering anyone inside the room invisible. Not even Edmund could see him in this room.
“You have made me very angry, Epimetheus.”
Solace returned his thoughts to the happenings in the room he was watching. Pandora was still behind Edmund with her hands on him. She was smearing the blood around on his chest.
“You can always choose to leave me be, since I do not have what you truly want.”
“You would like that, wouldn’t you?”
Edmund didn’t answer the rhetorical question.
Pandora lifted her hands from Edmund’s chest and slowly came around to stand before him. She slid her lithe form onto Edmund’s lap and wrapped her arms around his neck. “You have other things that I have missed.”
Edmund smiled. He’d told Solace that, in the beginning, he had actually loved Pandora, long before she’d turned into the monster that she was right now. Solace watched as they kissed. The action was one that he’d seen Edmund do many times. Edmund loved humans, despite being the very creatures that caused this entire situation. Edmund was especially fond of human females and had often spent intimate moments with them but had never kept one around for more than a decade, or so.
As the grandfather clock in the room began to chime that it was a quarter past the hour, Pandora broke off the kiss.
As Solace watched, it seemed as if Edmund might have known that he hadn’t left for his eyes met Solace’s for a moment before they both just disappeared.
The room, and the house, were now empty. Edmund had left, and now Solace was alone. Alone and without a purpose. The hollowness of that left a darkness inside him that Solace didn’t like. He needed a purpose. Edmund had told Solace to fine the human female that he’d entrusted with his most prized possession.
Replacing the wooden panel, Solace sighed into the darkness before turning and walking back down the hallway to the painting. He opened the secret door and stepped into the main hallway. The house was quiet. A house that now belonged to him. Solace didn’t want the house. It brought him no comfort without Edmund here with him.
He walked back to the room he’d been in earlier. He could still smell her, though he knew they’d left. Stepping into the room, his eyes were drawn to Edmund’s desk. Solace remembered when Edmund had bought the desk. He’d been so proud of it and had hired six human men to bring it into the house. Solace and Edmund could have carried the thing themselves, but Edmund had to give the appearance of being an elderly human to avoid suspicion.
Solace stepped over, his eyes drawn to the chair that Edmund had been sitting in just moments ago. His mind went to the image of Pandora on Edmund’s lap and the contented smile that had appeared on Edmund’s face. Maybe he wouldn’t be as miserable as Solace had feared. Sitting on the surface of the desk was the file Edmund had said for him to read. He still didn’t want to read the instructions, but it seemed as if he had no choice. Yanking the file from the desk’s smooth surface, he rolled it up and stuffed it into the pocket of his coat. He lingered, just staring at the chair for what felt like an eternity.
He sighed.
Edmund was gone, and he would never return.
Turning, he walked deliberately to the front door and opened it. The cold air hit him in the face. He rarely felt the cold, but he did this night. Without a glace back into the house that had brought him so many memories over the many years of living there, he closed the door and walked away.
“I’d hardly claim that I’ve been looking forward to this night, Edmund.”
Edmund smiled, the action wistful. “I know, my old friend.” Edmund puffed on the meerschaum pipe that he held delicately in his hand. Edmund looked across the desk. He was going to miss Solace. His old friend was cantankerous on a good day, but he’d been around for so long, Edmund couldn’t imagine his life without him.
The form Solace usually chose to maintain while inside the house was of a human man, which was ironic considering Solace’s ill feelings about humans. But since Edmund chose to maintain a human form, Solace did so out of habit.
Solace chose as his face one that had hard lines of someone who’d experienced a lot of strife. His roundish face was half covered with a full, thick, black beard that matched both the thickness and color of the hair on his head. Very little of his handsome face was visible, just his sharp and observant deep blue eyes. Eyes that Edmund knew saw much more than Solace let on.
His body was pleasing, if Edmund’s inclinations went that way, which they did not, but he could appreciate the strength and muscular frame with which Solace’s human form was lined. Solace preferred to adopt taller frames that allowed him to easily intimidate those that he wished to keep at a distance. At one point, one of those people was Edmund, but time, it seems, can change even the stubbornest of creatures.
“I’ve left instructions for you, if you care to read them.” Edmund released the puff of pipe smoke and opened the drawer of his large, mahogany desk. There were many things about the human world that Edmund was going to miss besides his old friend. One was his pipe. He doubted that Pandora would allow such a habit to persist once she had him back where she could get her claws into him.
“I don’t care to read them,” Solace sighed. “I wish you’d let me stay and fight. Her minions are no match for my skill. You know this.”
“Yes, I know, but the agreement is legally binding. She’s upheld her end of the agreement, and now it’s time for me to uphold mine.”
“She’s going to torture you.”
“Probably, but she’ll eventually tire of it and just let me be. It’s not as if she can kill me, or anything, and at one point we were happily married.”
Solace narrowed his eyes as he glared across the desk. “There are a great many things worse than death, Edmund.”
“And I’m sure she’ll explore many of those, but I wouldn’t change anything. What I’ve experienced these last thousand years has been worth a thousand more of having my wife show me just how much she hates me.”
“I fail to see the humor in that, Edmund.”
Edmund looked over at the large face of the grandfather clock along the one wall, nestled in between two overstuffed bookshelves. “We don’t have a lot of time.”
“Let me stay,” Solace all but pleaded.
“I need you to do me one last favor.”
Solace growled. The sound would terrify even the bravest of humans, but Edmund knew Solace would never hurt him, even if he wanted to.
“I want you to find her, Solace.”
There was a long pause, and the only acknowledgement that Solace had heard him was the clenching and unclenching of his jaw muscles.
“What is this human to you, and why should I bother finding her?”
Edmund leaned close, almost as if he was afraid of anyone overhearing his statement. “I’ve given to her the very thing that Pandora is hoping to get back this night.”
Solace’s eyes went wide. “You’re not serious, Edmund? You gave it to a human? And a human female at that?”
Edmund smiled and brought the pipe to his mouth again, drawing deeply. “Quite ironic, isn’t it?”
“You don’t think this is going to enrage Pandora further?”
“Frankly, I couldn’t care less what that she thinks.”
“You say that you want to uphold your end of the agreement, but how is this not a violation of the agreement?”
Edmund let out the puff of smoke. “Because I had Themis herself help me word the contract. It’s perfectly binding. Not even my wife can contest it.”
“If you took the effort to do that, why didn’t you word it in such a way that you could get out of it entirely?”
“Because Pandora would have seen right through that.”
“And you don’t think she’ll see right through this one?”
Edmund smiled. “I’ve given her no choice.”
Solace sighed. “As you have given me no choice.”
“You can refuse me, if you wish to.”
Solace narrowed his intense blue eyes. “And ruin all that you’ve fought for?”
Edmund shrugged. “It’s your choice.”
“You know I won’t let that happen.”
“I was hoping not, but sometimes I can’t tell with you. You’re too serious for your own good, Solace.”
Solace pressed his lips together and refused to respond.
“I think spending time with humans might be good for you,” Edmund said after a few tense moments of silence. “I’m hoping that you’ll find that you enjoy the human female’s company.”
Before Solace could respond, the large grandfather clock chimed that it was 11:45. Edmund took one last puff from his pipe and dumped the burnt tobacco in a nearby ashtray. Reaching into the drawer to his right, he pulled out a small pipe cleaner and stuck it inside the pipe. Once clean, he reverently set the pipe in its stand on the corner of the desk. Looking up, he smiled into the face of his long-time friend.
“I will miss you, Solace.” The emotion made his voice thick. He cleared his throat.
The stone exterior of Solace’s face cracked. “What am I supposed to do here without you, Edmund? You’re my purpose.”
Edmund took a deep breath.
Before he could utter the words, Solace barked out at him, “Don’t say it.”
“It’s the only way, my dear Solace.” He stared into Solace’s eyes as he uttered, “I release you.”
They both felt the bond snap and break. Solace whined and Edmund exhaled loudly. Edmund seemed to regain his composure first. “Well, that’s done. Now, you have no excuse.” He looked at Solace with nearly pleading eyes. “I don’t want you to watch her take me, Solace. It will be hard enough as it is.”
“I don’t want to leave you,” Solace forced out through clenched teeth.
“You have no bond holding you here. You simply need to rise from the chair and leave the house.” Edmund smiled, the action forced, and they both knew it. “This is what I wish. Find the human female and make her your new purpose.”
“I don’t want a new purpose, Edmund.”
“Please. Do this for me.” Edmund jutted his chin toward the door. “Go now, before she gets here.”
Slowly, Solace rose from the chair and looked down at his friend. After an uncomfortable long pause, he nodded and turned to walk from the room.
Solace exited the room and gently closed the door. He wanted to rip the door off its useless hinges. He wanted to rip Pandora and all her minions apart. He wanted to stay with Edmund. He’d been by Edmund’s side ever since he was known by his true name of Epimetheus. Edmund had been Solace’s first, and so far, his only purpose, and he’d underestimated how hard it was to walk away from that. His kind formed attachments and those attachments were meant to last until the purpose was dead. But Edmund was immortal, and so Solace would not have outlived him. He was long-lived, but Solace wasn’t immortal.
Instead of walking out the front door as Edmund wished him to, Solace made a right at the end of the hall and walked over to the large painting Edmund had commissioned over a century ago now.
They’d been living in France at the time, and Edmund had befriended a drunken human who had some skill painting. Edmund was a collector. The various priceless trinkets scattered about this house was proof of that. A house that Edmund had told him that he was leaving to Solace. Solace didn’t want any of Edmund’s things. He wanted Edmund to stay with him. But according to the contract, Edmund’s time with the humans, and with Solace, was over.
The chime of the clock echoed throughout the empty house. Twelve loud strikes. When the last one echoed down the hall, Solace flipped the hidden switch on the frame of the painting to reveal the secret door.
The painting was one of Edmund’s favorites. He’d insisted on bringing it with them from France when they’d moved to the United States. The painting was of Edmund standing in Forêt de Tronçais, in Auvergne. He was standing by the oldest oak tree in all of France and was holding a large golden key. Solace had asked him once what the key opened, and Edmund had enigmatically told him that the key was the solution to the problem. Solace had never understood what Edmund had meant and didn’t ask about it again.
As Solace slipped into the tunnel behind the painting and clicked the secret door closed, his ears picked up voices. She sure wasted no time coming to collect her prize. Solace curled his lip as he hurried down the dark tunnel until he came to the end. There, he quietly slid a small panel of wood aside and peered into the room beyond.
The room he was looking at was the study that he and Edmund had been sitting in a few moments ago. Edmund was still sitting in the chair that he’d been in, but instead of being alone in the room, in the room with him was Pandora.
For having been created to be the perfect female, Solace didn’t find her particularly attractive. In fact, he found her rather ugly. Ugly to the point of being repulsive, but maybe that was just his perception.
“Where is it?” Pandora demanded.
“Not here, darling.” Edmund’s voice was calm and controlled.
“We had an agreement, Epimetheus.”
“And I’m upholding my end of the agreement. Down to the very letter of the contract.”
“You took it with you when you left,” she demanded.
“Yes, but the contract states that I’ll return to you exactly as when the agreement was made. I did not have her with me when we signed the contract.”
Solace grimaced. That was what Edmund had meant when he’d said that he was upholding the contract, and that Pandora would be unable to contest it.
Pandora growled and walked behind Edmund. She leaned down and ran her clawed hands over his chest. Her face contorted with rage as she raked her claws up Edmund’s chest, tearing the flesh he had chosen to cover his form with.
Edmund grunted in pain and Solace couldn’t stop the quiet whine.
Pandora paused and, it seemed, glanced in his direction, but Solace knew that she couldn’t see him. The walls of the secret room were lined with paint that had a small piece of the Helm of Hades blended in, rendering anyone inside the room invisible. Not even Edmund could see him in this room.
“You have made me very angry, Epimetheus.”
Solace returned his thoughts to the happenings in the room he was watching. Pandora was still behind Edmund with her hands on him. She was smearing the blood around on his chest.
“You can always choose to leave me be, since I do not have what you truly want.”
“You would like that, wouldn’t you?”
Edmund didn’t answer the rhetorical question.
Pandora lifted her hands from Edmund’s chest and slowly came around to stand before him. She slid her lithe form onto Edmund’s lap and wrapped her arms around his neck. “You have other things that I have missed.”
Edmund smiled. He’d told Solace that, in the beginning, he had actually loved Pandora, long before she’d turned into the monster that she was right now. Solace watched as they kissed. The action was one that he’d seen Edmund do many times. Edmund loved humans, despite being the very creatures that caused this entire situation. Edmund was especially fond of human females and had often spent intimate moments with them but had never kept one around for more than a decade, or so.
As the grandfather clock in the room began to chime that it was a quarter past the hour, Pandora broke off the kiss.
As Solace watched, it seemed as if Edmund might have known that he hadn’t left for his eyes met Solace’s for a moment before they both just disappeared.
The room, and the house, were now empty. Edmund had left, and now Solace was alone. Alone and without a purpose. The hollowness of that left a darkness inside him that Solace didn’t like. He needed a purpose. Edmund had told Solace to fine the human female that he’d entrusted with his most prized possession.
Replacing the wooden panel, Solace sighed into the darkness before turning and walking back down the hallway to the painting. He opened the secret door and stepped into the main hallway. The house was quiet. A house that now belonged to him. Solace didn’t want the house. It brought him no comfort without Edmund here with him.
He walked back to the room he’d been in earlier. He could still smell her, though he knew they’d left. Stepping into the room, his eyes were drawn to Edmund’s desk. Solace remembered when Edmund had bought the desk. He’d been so proud of it and had hired six human men to bring it into the house. Solace and Edmund could have carried the thing themselves, but Edmund had to give the appearance of being an elderly human to avoid suspicion.
Solace stepped over, his eyes drawn to the chair that Edmund had been sitting in just moments ago. His mind went to the image of Pandora on Edmund’s lap and the contented smile that had appeared on Edmund’s face. Maybe he wouldn’t be as miserable as Solace had feared. Sitting on the surface of the desk was the file Edmund had said for him to read. He still didn’t want to read the instructions, but it seemed as if he had no choice. Yanking the file from the desk’s smooth surface, he rolled it up and stuffed it into the pocket of his coat. He lingered, just staring at the chair for what felt like an eternity.
He sighed.
Edmund was gone, and he would never return.
Turning, he walked deliberately to the front door and opened it. The cold air hit him in the face. He rarely felt the cold, but he did this night. Without a glace back into the house that had brought him so many memories over the many years of living there, he closed the door and walked away.
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