Meridian Chronicles: Keepers & The Soul Key (#4)

Chapter 14

Chapter 14

The unfamiliar room, though quiet was unsettling. With blurred vision and weakness, Echo tried to piece together her surroundings as she lifted her head up from the soft black satin pillow. Her brown locks were washed and remained damp, leaving wet tendril trails on the pillowcase. After a struggle to lift her head, she collapsed onto the pillow and her eyes surveyed the ceiling.

The ceiling was layered with eloquent crown molding that appeared to be gold running along the trimmed edges. Up in the center of the high ceiling, there was a painting in muted cool colors, giving a soft ambiance to the scene that appeared to be from the renaissance period. There lay a woman, nude, stretched out on a hillside with only one hand to cover a woman's most regarded place. Echo stared at the exquisite painting for several moments before her eyes scanned the room as footsteps were audible. They were slow and deliberate coming closer, and then she could no longer hear them. Instead, there stood Lahash.

His darkened eyes were vibrant with lust accompanied by a smirk barely exposing his teeth as he stared at her. Not realizing that she lay just as nude as the painting she took careful study of, she sat straight up as if to get out of the bed. After realizing that she was not dressed, she jerked her head around and looked for her dress.

"Looking for something?" Lahash said as he remained leaned up against the wall.

Echo jerked the complimentary matching satin sheets tightly against her neck. "Where am I?"

Lahash moved toward the bed but stopped and just stood over her while she looked at him with disdain. "They were dirty, you were dirty."

"You took my clothes? You washed my hair?" Echo was incredulous.

Lahash hissed and sat down in the bed next to the nymph. "Would you have wanted me to leave you in such a state?"

Echo snarled, cutting her eyes upward but tipping her chin down as if it pained her to look at him. "What do you think? What did you do to me while I was unconscious? Did you?"

"I don't think it matters much what I think. Now, does it? But, no I am not into necrophilia." he said in a  dismissive tone as he moved away from the bed and momentarily disappeared.

 Echo pulled up the sheets and looked for her clothes when Lahash appeared once more, standing over her with his right arm extended. A clean dress dangled from his fingertips. It was her dress that she remembered wearing when she was captured by him.

Without a word, Echo jerked her dress off the end of his fingers, then furiously dressed while remaining on the bed. Lahash turned his head away as though uninterested in seeing her nude.

He walked away and sat in the chair positioned at the corner of the end of the bed. "Sleeping Venus," Lahash said as he looked up to the ceiling above the bed.

"Sleeping Venus? I don't understand." 

"The painting, by an Italian artist, Giorgione." He cut his eyes back to his real obsession. "I quite like Italy. Art, architecture, and the drink." He lifted his hand up, holding a crystal goblet full of dark liquor called Disarrono.

 "Italy? From the way you dress, I would think old Paris." She rolled her eyes.

"Who said I didn't appreciate Paris?" Lahash snorted.

Echo stood up from the bed with her dress on and stared at Lahash with her arms crossed. "Why did you bring me here? I thought you wanted me to die?"

"Die? I think not. Quite the opposite. I couldn't have you running around the dark realm trying to implore your fairy magic on the demons here. It would surely ruin their reputation. And I can't have you doing that to any other demon. Or anyone else for that matter." Lahash smirked.

"What is it then? Why am I here?"

"You know the answer to that. You know why I have you here." Lahash's face darkened with a guttural voice and he stared at her with his steely eyes. 

Echo took a couple of steps away from the bed and further away from Lahash.

"Answer me, you are the Earth nymph, what is your power? Lotus seems to drown out problems; no pun intended." Lahash sneered. "Venus, oh, Venus. She is truly the queen of lust? Ruler of air? What about Siren and her scorching protections?" Lahash in an instant emerged in front of Echo. "So Echo, what are your gifts? What is your true strength?"

Echo's jaw clenched before she answered. "Stability. The stabilizing factor of all human lusts. Greed. I have the power to..." the demon took her hand and pulled it up to his face where he examined her fingers before he put her index finger in his mouth.

After a long gaze into her eyes, he slowly took her finger out of his mouth. "Go on."

"I could kill you." Echo lashed out.

"Maybe, maybe not." Lahash snorted.

"My energy comes from the Earth and I give energy to the Earth. I can create storms there, disasters. I can create harmony." She said as she winced at the sight of her finger in his mouth.

Lahash pulled her finger from his mouth and said, "Ah, yes only on Earth. You don't seem to be as powerful here in the dark realm, do you? Only Siren is a true match for the dark realm...or Karma."

"So what is it you want? Why are you after me? Why is it me you are so obsessed with?"

Lahash's cocky demeanor left with such an unexpected question. He turned and walked away from Echo, putting his crystal goblet on the table just a few feet from the bed. Maintaining his turned back, he said, "Why I want you should not be your concern. I will leave you to yourself. I have brought some things for you to increase your energy."

Lahash stomped away, leaving the room and shutting the door to his quarters behind him.