Master of the manor 2, p.1
Master of the Manor 2, page 1
Master of the Manor 2
Dante King
Copyright © 2024 by Dante King
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
v001
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Contents
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Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Epilogue
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Immortal Swordslinger
Bone Lord
Chapter One
“Tell me a little bit about yourself,” I said.
Afternoon light shone through the windows of the therapy room at Beldame. Dust motes danced in the beam, sparkling against the leatherbound spines of ancient books and across the weathered shelves filling the space that functioned as my personal library and office. Despite the light, the room was fairly dim, but the woman sitting across from me on the couch still wore shades, all the same.
Kalleos smiled. “I apologize,” she whispered, a faintly Hellenic tilt to her syllables. “You must feel as though you are being watched, Dr. Jackson.”
“I’m not a doctor,” I assured the woman. “Just a therapist. And your, ah — uncommon hairdo doesn’t bother me in the least, miss…”
“Phalasarna,” Kalleos said, tilting her head slightly. “Quite a mouthful, no?”
To tell the truth, I did feel watched. Though I tried to ignore it, to press on and sink my teeth into my first therapy session with Beldame’s newest tenant, I couldn’t forget that Kalleos and I were not alone in here.
And I preferred to see my patients alone.
One of Kalleos’s snakes was hissing at me. Dozens of them writhed across the top of the gorgon’s head, each one a wriggling serpent with eyes the size of my thumbnail. Those eyes were always watching me, shifting whenever I shifted in my big, comfy therapist’s chair. They were sensitive like that. Their mistress, though—Kalleos herself— didn’t seem bothered in the slightest by the constant movement and hissing of her hair.
Though I suppose she wouldn’t be. She was a gorgon, after all.
Sulphurine would be tickled pink to see me right now, I thought. After Kalleos arrived at Beldame the previous night, Sulphurine and I had a long chat about our new resident and how we planned to tackle adding her to the duty roster. We didn’t know why the gorgon had come to Beldame, but we felt certain she hadn’t made the decision lightly. She either felt she needed to or had been forced to by someone else, the way Tarja was forced to attend by her parents.
Tarja. My gaze flickered up to the ceiling, as if I could see through the walls of the Manor to the vampire’s suite. I had a lot of things to figure out about Tarja—chiefly, whether our relationship was going to progress from sharing blood to other bodily fluids as well.
In marked contrast, my relationship with Sulphurine was blessedly simple. The beautiful succubus was mine. She adored me, as she wasn’t able to say the L-word because of her demonic origins. She’d been hired to work with me as a counselor at Beldame for the rest of the summer, and after that I knew she’d stay with me wherever we went. She’d even offered to make me immortal if I didn’t get sick of her after a few decades of cohabitation.
As if any man could ever tire of a woman as beautiful, attentive, and in touch with her sexual side as Sulphurine. The redhead was so vivacious and gregarious that if it were her sitting here instead of me, she’d probably have been charming the snakes right off of Kalleos.
I tucked my thoughts about my girlfriends away for the moment. I had a patient to take care of.
My patient was a striking woman, every bit as striking as Sulphurine or Tarja in her own way. Kalleos was statuesque, with a voluptuous build and a fashion style that made me think of film stars from the 1940’s. She hadn’t taken off her dark sunglasses since she’d arrived at Beldame, and I was beginning to think she never would. They seemed like they were part of her—as much a part of her as the writhing snakes atop her head.
Her shoulders were bare, and patches of yellow-green scale showed on her throat. Every now and then when she spoke, I caught a glimpse of a long, forked pink tongue and short, stubby fangs. Most men would have been drawn to her firm, full breasts, or her wide hips in her sleek pencil skirt. But I kept looking at those patches of scale.
More than anything else, they reminded me that this wasn’t a human being I was talking to—she was a mythological creature. Despite that, Kalleos was still a person in every way that mattered.
She’d come to Beldame for help. And I was going to give it to her.
I let the silence stretch out, waiting for Kalleos to fill it in with some details about her life. None were forthcoming, which didn’t surprise me. I knew from my time at Dr. Bourassa’s clinic that their own lives were often the last thing that patients wanted to talk about. A lot of the time, it opened old wounds.
Dr. Bourassa, I thought, keeping my gaze on Kalleos. There was a time in my life when that name was my open wound.
I cleared my throat. “Perhaps you’d like to hear a little bit about Beldame before we get started,” I said, gesturing around the study. “I haven’t been here for terribly long myself, but I understand it has a rich history—”
The gorgon shook her head. Her snakes writhed from the motion, hissing and sticking out their tongues. “It does not matter. The Manor is… nice. Certainly.” She turned to me, a sliver of her eyes visible over the rim of her dark sunglasses. They were yellow, and so bright that they almost seemed to glow. “I am not used to the weather here just yet. So chilly!”
I nodded. Whether she knew it or not, Kalleos had just given me a toehold. “Where are you from?” I asked, crossing one leg over the other.
On this, Kalleos showed none of her former reticence. “I am from the Isle of Paxos, young man. Off the coast of Greece. Just south of—”
Suddenly she turned her head and spit on the carpet. Just a tiny little one, barely enough to be noticed. But the motion surprised me.
“—of Antipaxos,” she growled. “Malakas!”
From context clues, I guessed that the last word was a swear. “So you’re Greek,” I said, making a little note on my pad. “That would make sense, considering your…”
“Mythological origins?” Kalleos arched an eyebrow. “Are you entranced by the story of Perseus and Medusa, Dr. Jackson?”
As a matter of fact, I’d read it in high school. But that was neither here nor there. “Like I said, I’m not a doctor,” I repeated with a disarming smile. “Honestly, you can just call me AJ if you like. The other two residents do.”
Well, one of them did. Tarja, being a vampire, wouldn’t call me anything but the archaic, shortened version of my given name ‘Abraham’—Bram. She loved the joke.
“Your other residents,” Kalleos repeated, her tone unreadable. “The succubus and the vampire, yes? I have not had much time to introduce myself to them.”
“Sulphurine and Tarja,” I said, nodding. “Sulphurine was a patient here until recently, and she’s decided to stay on for the remainder of the summer. She’s my assistant.”
Kalleos nodded at this, though her face gave nothing away. For the dozenth or so time since she’d arrived at Beldame, I wished she’d take those sunglasses of hers off.
Then again, maybe it was a good thing that she didn’t. Kalleos was a gorgon, after all.
That’s probably just a story, I told myself, trying not to think too hard about Perseus and Medusa. All myths get twisted and distorted over time. Even half the things I thought about Sulphurine and Tarja turned out not to be true…
“Of course,” the gorgon said breezily. “I’m sure we will all be great friends.”
Hmm. What was that in her tone? Was she being sarcastic, or did she just truly not care whether she got along with the other residents or not? I decided to push her, just a bit. Like one of the raptors in Jurassic Park, testing the electrified fences.
I hoped this one wouldn’t burn me too badly.
“It sounds like you’re not terribly interested in your fellow residents,
Kalleos scoffed. “Why would I? At my age, friendships are not easy things to cultivate.”
Another toehold, though this one was even more fraught with peril than the first. “At your age?”
To her credit, Kalleos took the question well. “Are you implying I’m an old woman, Dr. Jackson? Too old, perhaps, to be in the care of someone as young and inexperienced as yourself.” She gave me a little sniff, though there was a lilt to the side of her mouth that made me think she was smirking a little bit, too. “What a forward young man you are!”
I wasn’t all that young. I was twenty-seven, and there’d been a time not too long ago when Kalleos’s criticisms would have really stung me. Back when I’d been working Dr. Bourassa at his clinic, and the world felt like my oyster.
I’d been a kid fresh out of college, with big dreams of making discoveries and changing the way we did therapy for patients with mental disorders. Everything was going perfect until it all came crashing down—I had a patient who fell in love with me, fell through the cracks after I transferred her to my superior, and then got in a car accident that left her in a coma. For a year I’d roamed from temp job to temp job, traumatized and certain that I’d never touch another patient again. That everything was my fault.
And then came Beldame.
If you talked to Sulphurine or Tarja, they’d no doubt tell you that I ‘saved’ them. But the truth was, they’d saved me. Before I met them, I was little more than the shell of a man: the jobs I worked at Sunlight Staffing before Beldame all gave me top marks, but I never felt anything but terrible about my life and my future. Thanks to them—and the strange, forbidding presence in the woods around this Manor—I’d faced my fears, overcome them, and become a stronger person in the process.
So Kalleos could say whatever she wanted to me. I knew who I was, and I knew that I was both loved and respected by the people who meant the most to me.
And I always would be.
I didn’t rise to the bait. Instead, I decided to go on the offensive.
“Kalleos,” I said, leaning forward in my chair. “I’m fine with you being reluctant to give me personal details. Your life story is important to me, and I’m sure it will come up in future sessions. But we don’t need to cover all of that ground right away—”
“I am Kalleos of Paxos,” the gorgon insisted, folding her arms beneath her heavy breasts. The way she did that was actually quite distracting. “That’s all you need to know, Dr. Jackson.”
I was already shaking my head. “Kalleos, why are you here?”
There it was. With Sulphurine and Tarja, I’d been slow to come around to the actual reason both women had taken up residence at Beldame. In Sulphurine’s case, sheer physical attraction had been the reason I’d delayed; with Tarja, it had been more how frightening she was. But in both cases, I realized now I’d made a mistake in waiting.
It was important to understand a resident’s problems. Only then would you be able to start solving them.
Kalleos cocked her head to the side. The snakes moved with her—all of them. Suddenly dozens of the little serpents were all staring at me, bristling like the quills on a hedgehog.
Interesting. Were those snakes a clue to the gorgon’s emotional state?
“You want to know why I’m here?” Kalleos asked. She made it sound like a challenge.
“Of course,” I said, leaning forward. “I’m your counselor—your therapist. I need to know—”
Kalleos removed her sunglasses.
And I found myself matching my gaze with that of a serpent’s.
Kalleos’ eyes were just as golden as they’d appeared over the rim of her sunglasses. The irises were jet black, shaped like crescents, with flecks of gold surrounding them. She stared deep into my face leaning forward with something like an exultant expression.
I couldn’t help it; I flinched. Everything I’d heard about gorgons told me that I ought to be turning to stone right about now, transformed into a statue by the baleful gaze of Medusa.
Kalleos didn’t blink. “Are you feeling anything, AJ?”
I was so stunned I didn’t even realize she’d finally stopped calling me Doctor. Was I already a partial statue? Had my feet turned to clay while I wasn’t looking?
I resisted the urge to glance down and check. Instead, I steadied myself and looked within.
I felt something. Maybe. A gentle wave of numbness, like pins and needles spreading over my skin. But I could have just as easily been imagining it. It very well might have been nothing at all, just a side effect of the scare Kalleos gave me.
“I…” I paused, thinking. “Maybe.”
Kalleos made a face. “You’re not feeling anything!” she cried, sounding surprisingly angry. “I can’t petrify you at all!”
Maybe you can petrify one part of me, I thought.
It maybe wasn’t a very nice thing to think. But Kalleos was a beautiful woman—I couldn’t help but notice that. Even with the scales and the fangs, she gave most human actresses and models I’d seen a run for their money.
Part of me was dimly curious what it was that made every monster girl so much hotter than an ordinary human. I made a mental note to ask Sulphurine about it the next time we were cuddling.
“You’re right that I haven’t turned to stone,” I said, musing. “Was that something you expected to happen, Kalleos?”
Kalleos looked upset. Not at me, but at herself.
She hung her head, which put the writhing snakes a little bit too close to my chair for comfort. I pressed my back against the chair, trying to ignore the sounds of hissing coming from above Kalleos’ skull. It wouldn’t do to let myself look scared now.
“Now you see,” the gorgon whispered. “My shame. Why I can no longer show my face on the Isle of Paxos…”
I nodded. Honestly, this was about what I’d expected.
“You’re a gorgon who can’t turn people to stone,” I said. She was going to fit right in with the succubus who used to turn into a giggly, awkward mess any time she tried to have sex and the vampire who couldn’t drink blood. “That has to be difficult to accept.”
“You have no idea!” Kalleos lifted a fist into the air, anguish making her look like a Grecian sculpture. “Turning people to stone is what I’m made for! A gorgon who has lost her ability to petrify is like a fish who has lost his ability to swim!”
Something she’d said caused a record skip in my brain.
“What do you mean, lost?” I asked.
Kalleos whirled on me. “You thought I could never turn a man to stone?” she asked haughtily.
There was something undeniably sexual about the way Kalleos stared at me. Her heaving breasts, her golden eyes. They touched something deep and primal inside of me—the same thing that pushed the ancient Greeks to build boats and conquer the Mediterranean, that got men to jump off of cliffs and ride rollercoasters and explore outer space. It was an exciting, frightening feeling, and it made me wonder if maybe her gaze hadn’t had something of an effect on me, after all.
I made a note on the pad and turned my attention back to the gorgon. “I’m not sure what to think,” I said. “The distinguishing feature of a gorgon is the ability to turn creatures to stone, is it not?”
Kalleos laughed derisively. “I was once the best at turning men to stone!” she insisted. “No gorgon on the Isle of Paxos could petrify a target half as fast or as thoroughly. And as for those pretenders on Antipaxos—” she spit on the carpet again, “—forget it!”
I really need to stop her from doing that, I thought. Maybe buy a spittoon before our next appointment. At least that way it wouldn’t end up all over my floor.
“So you were previously able to control this power, and now you’re not?”
Kalleos nodded.
That was interesting. Both of the patients I’d helped so far had been born without their supernatural abilities: Sulphurine the succubus who freaked out before sex, Tarja the vampire who detested the taste of blood.
I’d never had a patient who had a supernatural ability, only to lose it.
A surge of confidence filled me. Fixing whatever was wrong with Kalleos had to be easier than solving Sulphurine’s and Tarja’s problems. With the perfect therapy locale at Beldame and several supportive women around me, I felt certain we were on the right path.
