Sour Grapes

Thirty

Plucking a brand from the wall, Claudia picked her way down the stone steps. The plinth had moved easily, once she realized how the bastard had done it. The lever wasn't on any wall; it was by the floor, and like the pipes that had been installed in the villa, the mechanism that moved the statue aside had been expensive in the extreme. It had also been exceptionally well greased. Not a creak, not a groan, yet as she turned the handle, cogs moved the heavy stone plinth aside as though it was made out of cork.

At the foot of the steps, she followed the corridor. These Etruscans do like their underground chambers, she thought, passing row upon row of neat stone sarcophagi. They were not the oldest of tombs. Those had been tiny replica houses, but once the gods made it clear that the dead should be interred deep in the earth, as close to wolf-headed Aita's realm as they could manage, a complex array of passageways was excavated into the hillside, where the spirits of the rich had columns and courtyards to walk in and even the humblest had a niche. Her torch revealed joyous banquets on the walls, reflecting all the pleasures and enjoyment that the dead would delight in, and she tried not to picture the exultation in the rapist's heart as he strode smugly down this narrow corridor in the rock to take his own satisfaction.

Of course, it could have been any one of the three. Drugs?

Terrence sedated his neurotic sister with opiates. Tarchis used drugs in the shrine, albeit benevolently, and had free access to the temple physician. Lars had worked at the hot springs as a masseur and fed his wife those lovely extra minerals.

The wherewithal to fit that pricey turning-device?

Terrence had inherited more money than he could ever spend. Tarchis was in the perfect position to siphon off temple funds. Lars had free access to Eunice's capital, since men automatically take control of their wives' finances.

Cochineal dye abounded, so Terrence could have picked it up from any one of a dozen places locally, while Tarchis and Lars painted themselves on a regular basis.

How about access to the god's chamber through this secret burial passage?

Well, that was the point. They weren't secret, these tombs. The hills all around were riddled with tunnels, a landscape Lars would know intimately, having been born here, plus Terrence owned the land and would know every well-surveyed feature, while all High Priests were aware of what was in and around their own temples.

And since rapists hate women, that didn't narrow the list.

Terrence was openly contemptuous of Thalia and had remained deviously single to maintain his playboy lifestyle. Tarchis had made it quite plain where a woman's place was: in the wrong. And if a thirty-seven-year-old masseur had married a woman twenty years his senior purely for money, charm would be his disguise.

But only one of those three possessed the core quality required to rape repeatedly and with no conscience. As Claudia followed the passageway through endlessly painted rock faces, so many things fell into place. Heaven knows, there were enough artisans in Mercurium with the talent to design a mechanism with the cogs and gears needed to swivel poor Fufluns aside. But how many of them were young enough not to question the customer's motives yet sufficiently indifferent to religion not to find the request sacrilegious? Moreover, an artisan bright enough to start his own business at the tender age of sixteen

… Passing side chamber upon side chamber of sleeping Etruscans, she wondered how could this predator sleep? He slept, though, because he had no conscience. No remorse. He'd planned his campaign of rape with military precision, and of course it was not the hot springs that had been central to this story.

It was control. Rape was never about sex. It's always, always, about control…

The tunnel opened out into a large underground hall whose walls were lavishly decorated with figures and birds, animals and gods, and from which a flight of stone stairs swept upwards. But it was the wooden steps that caught Claudia's eye. New steps leading up to a door which, though locked, boasted a key on a hook on the wall. A spare. In case he somehow needed to make his escape via this route. Her lips pinched. Thought of everything, haven't you? Like the gears in Fufluns' chamber it turned silently. She was aware of her heart thumping against her ribcage as she eased open the door.

Straight into Terrence's bedroom.

'Claudia!'

The shock in his eyes was matched only by hers. Shit. She hadn't expected anything like this. She'd assumed the tunnel would exit into fresh air, but no. Terrence needed to extract every ounce of satisfaction from his abominable secret. Each time he looked at the wall, cunningly painted so the lock didn't show, he'd experience a ripple of pleasure and, of course, he'd been revelling all night like everyone else. Even fiends need their beauty sleep.

'This is an unexpected pleasure, I must say,' he said and she watched as surprise slowly changed to something she couldn't identify but which made her stomach turn over. Too late she realized it was cold calculation. Terrence had seen that she'd come here alone — and that she had no weapon, no bodyguard, nothing.

'You shouldn't have shown me that swivelling laurel. Without that, I would never have found the lever beneath the statue or made the connection between you and Lichas.'

What was it Orbilio said Hadrian had told him? 'Lichas said he loved me too much to let me waste my future on someone like him. He said I didn't know what he had done. I said I didn't care. He said I should, and when it got out my father would disown me.' They'd assumed the toy-maker was referring to some sexual liaison, perhaps even a promis 232 cuous past, when what he really meant was the contraption he'd designed on commission. 7 told him again I didn't care,' Hadrian told Marcus, to which Lichas replied, 'That's what you say now, but what about when we 're broke, when we 're the scandal of the town and no one will talk to us, and when the luxury you've been used to and the family who raised you are cut off?'

Rosenna got it wrong. Because her brother hadn't mentioned Terrence by name, she'd assumed the 'he' had meant Hadrian when Lichas told her he intended to go public. She was wrong. Lichas wasn't bothered by some trifling gossip concerning sex between two consenting adults! Still only seventeen, yet smart enough to have started his own business, admit his own sexuality… and follow his conscience.

'The clever part came from playing down the commission,' she told Terrence. 'Telling Lichas that you wanted the mechanism installed for … what? Using the chamber for private pagan worship?'

Terrence nodded.

'But paying no more than the going rate.'

As he climbed out of bed, naked and tousled, she saw the knife by his pillow. 'Too much money would have aroused his suspicions.' Green eyes smiled ingenuously. 'Couldn't have that.'

There must have been a veiled threat as well, she realized. 'I'm sure you reminded him that we all have our little secrets?'

'I saw no harm in reinforcing the close friendship I enjoy with his boyfriend's father.'

'Except trading Lichas's silence with exposure of his relationship with Hadrian only held good so long as Lichas didn't suspect any ulterior motive.'

What happened, she wondered? Had one of the little moons let something slip? She doubted they'd ever know, because if Lichas hadn't confided Terrence's secret to the people he loved best — Rosenna and his lover — he certainly wouldn't betray the trust of a rape victim! But somehow the toy-maker had discovered the real purpose behind the installation of his pivot and told Terrence that he intended to tell Tarchis.

Tor a bright young artisan, you wouldn't credit the lad's naivety,' Terrence said. 'He actually suggested that out-of-the-way meeting place for my benefit. Discretion, can you believe that? I think he expected me to fall on my sword or something equally stupid.' His patrician smile was as cold as the Arctic. 'I guess he hadn't thought through the alternative.'

'And Tages witnessed the killing?'

'Dirty blackmailing creep. Came hurtling down the hill, saying if I gave him fifty gold pieces he'd keep his mouth shut. I ask you!' He sniffed in contempt. 'Another moron who didn't stop to use his brain.'

'But you obviously did, because you had the presence of mind to bury Tages, on the grounds that two corpses were bound to invite a murder enquiry.'

Claudia remembered her first meeting with Terrence and Thalia. 'Who'd want to stab him like that?' Thalia asked, to which Terrence replied, 'I don't suppose anyone wants to stab anyone.' Suddenly she saw a way to talk her way out.

'Look, Terrence, if it wasn't premeditated-'

'You know what I found most irritating? That bloody shirt-lifter washing up on my land. I thought he'd be miles away by the time he surfaced, but it just goes to show. Life's one long learning process, and really that's the beauty of it, don't you think?' There was just a fractional pause. 'Mistakes can be corrected.'

In an instant the knife was in his hand. Claudia turned and ran down the stairs.

'You're quite right. I should have taken you the long way out of the maze,' he called down quietly. 'But there's no way out of this labyrinth, Claudia.'

She heard the distinctive click of a lock behind him. Shit. She'd left the torch up there and now, as she plunged deeper into the darkness of the underground hall, she couldn't find the entrance to the tunnel. Terrence's feet echoed on the wooden stairs with inexorable slowness. With a knife in the one hand, the torch in the other, his expression made her blood run cold.

'Do you know what it's like to be a god, Claudia?'

She crouched as his flame made a sweep of the hall.

'When, you're Fufluns, you can have any woman you want, and in whatever way takes your fancy.'

'They're not women, they're children,' she hissed back, crunching her shin on the ancient stone stairs. 'And you're not a god, either. You're a pitiful specimen of sub-human scum.'

His laugh echoed round the cavern. An echo of the laughter painted on the walls. The very echo of Hell. 'I like women who fight.'

'Thalia doesn't fight.' And where was that bloody tunnel?

'Wrong. Thalia stopped fighting back on her twelfth birthday when I showed her what men are for.'

Oh, god. His own sister. How could she not have seen through this monster? Right from the start, she'd been repulsed by the way he'd bullied Thalia, and now she saw it was the product of a lifetime spent undermining and demeaning her for no other reason than that she was female. Eunice had read him all wrong. He wasn't over-protective of her. He'd intentionally married her off to a man too old to make her happy and impossible to live with, because he enjoyed watching her suffer. Once she was widowed, he sought others way to torture her, and through opiates, turned Thalia into a rambling neurotic, feeding off his peers' irritation whilst tormenting her further by rubbing her nose into her past and dangling future husbands under her nose.

'Then why drug the girls?' Where is it? Where is it? Where is the entrance? 'Why induce hallucinations with catnip and that other foul stuff?'

'A chap needs variety in his diet.' His voice was pure honey as he swept the blackness with his torch. 'With those quivering virgins, the pleasure comes from making them do anything I want, simply by asking them nicely.' He chuckled softly. 'And Claudia, I do mean anything.'

Come on, come on, it must be close now!

'Have you any idea how it feels? Knowing that any time I choose — any bloody time — I can slip down here and get those little tame pussycats to do things even the most hardened whore draws the line at. But you, you're a fighter. You and I will enjoy a different kind of party.'

There! At long last, her hand found thin air.

'The hell we will!'

She ran, but he'd caught her shadow in a sweep of his torch and was loping behind down the tunnel.

'The only way you'll take me is by necrophilia, you pervert

— or is that something you already enjoy?'

His only answer was laughter. It sounded unbearably confident, but that didn't matter. She was light, she was fast — but shit, he was faster. With the advantage of light and knowing his own territory, he was gaining. She'd never make the god's chamber in time! What now, what now? She ducked into a side chamber and flattened herself against the wall. Behind her, Terrence cursed as he lost sight of his quarry. She heard him slow down. Stop. Saw the patterns of light distort the paintings as he was forced to search each separate sepulchre. Claudia slid down on to her haunches and scrabbled around for a stone, an offering, anything that might serve as a weapon.

Nothing.

And she didn't even have a sandal to defend herself with, while he was armed with a knife, and there was no one to rescue her. Not down here. As far as Timi and Tarchis were concerned, Fufluns rested undisturbed on his plinth. Why would they open the door? They'd shut him away after the festival. It might be days before anyone entered. Orbilio had saved her neck in the past, but his own life swung in the balance. There was nobody left. Just her and her wits. And a desperate desire for justice…

Timing her move until he was inside a chamber, she slipped along the corridor one side room at a time. Three, four, five

— sweet Juno, how many people were buried down here? But impatience only invites disaster. She forced herself not to think beyond the next chamber, then waited for the light to recede. Six, seven…

'I told you.' A strong hand clamped round her throat, pinning her tight to the wall. 'I like women who fight.'

Too late, she saw that he'd outwitted her. Realizing what was happening, he'd notched his torch in a holder in one of the tombs and played Claudia at her own game, grabbing her as she darted out.

'Kick and squirm away, my pretty one,' he crooned. 'But Uncle Terrence is a big man; he's strong and he's no novice at overpowering his struggling victims. In fact, he likes it.'

Dammit, the more she clawed and the harder she scratched, the more aroused he became until suddenly his mood changed. And dim as the light was in that corridor, it was more than adequate to see the knife point glinting an inch from her eye.

'Not so brave now, are we?' he whispered. As she froze, mesmerized by the tip, he pushed his thigh between her legs. 'Do you like that, my pretty one? Doesn't it make you feel good?'

First make them fight, so they can see how much more powerful you are than them. Then make them frightened, so they're ashamed of their cowardice.

'You call that little apology a penis?'

The grip on her throat tightened.

'Let me ask you again.' He thrust himself hard against her. 'Does it feel good?'

'Fuck you.'

Unhurriedly, the pressure on her windpipe increased until, gasping, gulping and choking, Claudia had no choice. 'Yes,' she gargled, and miracle of miracles, the grip lessened. 'Yes, it feels good.'

'How good?' Force was gently exerted on her throat again.

'Very good.'

'Then beg for it, you bitch.' The point of the knife moved half an inch closer. 'Pull down your tunic, tell me how much you want me, then take me inside you, like a good little bitch and maybe, just maybe, if you work really hard to pleasure me, maybe I won't have to blind you.'

He'd do it anyway. Terrence was a sadist through to his marrow. Claudia imagined the gratification he sustained from driving that blade into Lichas's stomach. Not his ribs. Not straight up and under into the heart, which, as a patrician who'd been taught military skills, he'd know would despatch a man swiftly. Terrence deliberately opted for slow. The most protracted and painful death he could inflict. Knowing the last thing Lichas would see was his pleasure.

'All right, all right,' Claudia whimpered. 'Please, Terrence. Not my sight. I'll do anything, anything you ask, I promise. Whatever you want.'

'Anything? Even…' He whispered things that made her gorge rise.

'Even that,' she whispered. Sick bastard.

'Then you'd better start begging, hadn't you, bitch? Take off your tunic and tell me how much you want all those things I've just said.'

Her trembling hands were not acting. As she fumbled to unfasten the brooch on her right shoulder, his gaze dropped to her exposed breast. Bunching her left hand into a fist, she jabbed her betrothal ring straight in his eye.

'Aaaargh!'

He reeled backwards, clutching his eye, but had enough composure to hang on to the knife.

'Bitch!' he roared. 'You're all bitches; I'll kill you for this!'

Claudia spun round and raced back up the corridor. Maddened by anger as much as the pain, Terrence was right behind, and as she swung into the chamber and grabbed for the torch, he punched out with his knife. But she was ready for this. She was diving downwards even as he lunged out, using the flaming brand as a weapon.

And there was only one part of his anatomy to aim for.

As he howled, writhed and roared, Claudia had the satisfaction of knowing Terrence would never rape another woman again.