Desire 6/?
Author: Aphrodite Roslin
Book or TV: TV (I'm afraid I haven't even begun to read the series. I know, I lose at life :D)
Rating: PG-13
Characters: Bob, Harry, OFCs
Spoilers: Bob's a ghost!
Disclaimer: Jim Butcher owns The Dresden Files. Harry owns my soul. Bob owns my heart.
Summary: Harry Dresden wanted a little hired help. What he got was a whole world of trouble, courtesy of one beautiful strange young woman. And this time, he's in way over his head. (Okay, yeah, the summary's kind of corny and nondescriptive, but give it a shot please. It's my first story ever written for this fandom! :D)
Author's Note: Sorry for the long wait. I made this chapter extra long and juicy to make up for it. :D
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Harry Dresden hates surprises. At least he does now. Nothing good ever comes from them. So you can imagine his disdain when he awoke to find himself in an entirely strange place. The floors were wooden and very dusty, and the walls were the most boring shade of brown it had ever been the wizard’s displeasure to gaze upon. The rest of the room seemed empty as far as he could tell, apart from one solitary, navy blue chair. This wasn’t right. The last thing he remembered was falling asleep under that creepy willow tree. How the hell did he get here…wherever here was?
“Harry?” a familiar voice spoke softly yet urgently in his ear. He knew that tone; he just couldn’t picture the owner.
“Wake up!” the voice said more loudly this time as a hand connected sharply with his face.
“Aw! What the hell are you doing?” Harry complained, grabbing his sore cheek as he slowly sat up.
“Waking you,” the voice answered. Blinking a few times to clear his vision, Harry gradually focused on the face in front of him.
“Sera? What’s going on? How’d we get here? Where is here?” Dresden questioned rapidly. Sera held up one hand to silence him.
“I’m sorry, Dresden, but it had to be done,” the sorceress replied vaguely, her voice no longer the sweet American-made tone he’d come to know and love.
“Uh, what had to be done? And what’s up with the new accent? Planning a trip?” This earned him a prompt smack across the face. “What was that for?”
“Your idiocy. Someone has to knock it out of you,” Sera glared. “And the accent to which you were referring is mine. It took me years to perfect your American way of speaking. It’s barbaric really. In a few short centuries you imbeciles have managed to thoroughly butcher the English language. Honestly, I feel like washing out my mouth after every word I utter in your ridiculous inflection.”
“I’m confused,” Harry admitted after a long hesitation. Rolling her eyes, Sera stood from her position kneeling next to Harry and made her way over to a small, wooden table Dresden had had his back to. A sharp pang of fear and realization shot through the wizard at the site of what lay upon the table’s surface. There, placed delicately on a velvet cloth in the middle of the table, was a skull decorated in a sadistic display of ancient runes.
“Come out, please,” Sera spoke softly, the arrogant air to her voice seemed to have faded ever so slightly as she spoke to the spirit within.
There was a flash of orange and red light as the ghost materialized before them. Taking a moment, Bob gave the appearance of stretching his cramped limbs. Sera watched wordlessly as the former sorcerer gave their surroundings the once over before his eyes slowly came to rest on the man on the floor.
“Harry, are you all right?” the spirit questioned with a worried look in his eyes. Typical Bob, always thinking of him first.
“Yeah, Bob, I’m fine. You?” Harry replied, trying to appear casual.
“Still dead,” Bob nodded. “Did she hurt you?”
“Only my pride for now,” Dresden smirked. Bob gave him a relieved grin in return.
“I hate to break up what looks like a wonderfully touching moment between skull and boy, but we don’t have much time,” Sera spoke loud and clear, her tone demanded complete attention. Both men’s heads snapped around to face her.
“Okay, Sera, or whoever you are, what the hell is going on here?” Harry demanded once more.
“We don’t have much time,” she reiterated. “My master will be here very soon, but I wanted a chance to speak with you before he ended this,” Sera explained.
“Ends what? What master? Sera…”
“Harry, stop it!” Sera scolded. The wizard did as he was told, not wanting to piss off someone who could set him on fire with their eyes. Instead, he watched as the woman approached his best friend, circling him like a lion to its prey.
“I couldn’t believe it when I first saw you, you know. You look so different,” Sera began speaking so softly that Harry had to strain to catch it all. “How long ago were you ordered to change your hair? It had to be fairly recent. I like it better long myself. It’s how I always remembered you.”
“Remembered me?” Bob ignored her questions, posing one of his own.
“Of course. I dream about you every night - your eyes, your smile, your voice, your touch, your scent - at times it was almost too much to bear. I’ve missed you so much,” Sera’s eyes filled with tears as she spoke, staring at Bob with a look of love and long deeper and more real than anything Harry had ever experienced. “Now you’re here. You’re right here in front of me, and I can’t even touch you.”
“Who are you?” Bob questioned nervously. Dresden had never seen his friend so agitated. Sera looked slightly hurt, but she hid the emotion swiftly.
“I suppose I should have expected this. After all, six-hundred years is a long time, isn’t it?” Sera gave a nervous laugh. Bob remained a stone wall. “My name isn’t Sera Bain exactly. I was born Seraphina of Bainbridge -” Bob’s resolve crumbled, her words bringing him instantly to near hysterics.
“No,” he whispered desperately, his eyes appearing glazed and unfocused on the wall to the right of the sorceress.
“- Daughter of Hrothbert and Winifred -”
“No. Stop this. You can’t be,” Bob continued to ramble under Sera’s increasingly loud explanation.
“- On the 20th day of the 9th month of the year one thousand, four hundred and three.”
“I said stop this!” Bob shouted, causing Sera to jump slightly and her speech to end rather abruptly. “You will stop this now! My child is dead! She is dead and so she has been for more than six hundred years! I held her in my arms as she drew her last breath! I dug her grave and laid her to rest with my own two hands! And I will not allow you to desecrate her memory with your lies!”
No longer able to contain herself, Sera burst into tears. Her cries were the most heart wrenching sound Harry had ever heard.
“No! No! You’re wrong! You’re child never died! You were deceived! She lived and so she does still, trapped in a punishment worse than any death!”
“I will not hear you! Stop this at once!” Bob continued to shout, the unshed phantom tears building to an impossible level in his eyes.
“I won’t! Father, please, you must recognize your own daughter!” Sera begged, her face now soaked with her own tears.
“My child is dead!” Bob refused to hear her, the overwhelming grief and horror now running freely down his nonexistent cheeks.
“I’m afraid you’re gravely mistaken about that, Master Hrothbert,” a new, seemingly disembodied voice echoed off the walls, cutting off any further interaction. All three heads turned toward the open door across the room and to their left. The silhouette of a tall, slender man was clearly visible from their positions.
“Master, I was -” Sera began, meaning to explain herself. Then suddenly the mysterious stranger was standing next to her, close enough to touch. Harry blinked a few times and shook his head. How the hell did he…he was just…
“No need to explain yourself, my dear,” the man whispered. Dresden could see his features fairly clearly now. There was nothing special about the guy. He was tall with a slender/medium build, brown hair, brown eyes, and a pair of very outdated circular spectacles. “After all, how could I expect you not to be excited. You haven’t seen your precious daddy in more than six hundred years. You have every right to damage what’s left of his fragile spirit in front of his boyfriend.” The man gave a crooked-toothed smirk that made Harry’s skin crawl and he gave a small, involuntary shudder.
“Ah, Mr. Dresden, why don’t you come on over and join the party?” the creepy new guy requested. Harry obliged immediately. He’d been itching to get to Bob’s side since Sera had begun upsetting him.
“Party, eh? If I’d known I would have brought some chips and dip,” the wizard attempted bad humor as he moved to stand so near to his best friend that, had they both been corporeal, there shoulders would have been close enough to touch. He was ignored, however, as the creep only seemed interested in addressing Bob.
“I’m sorry, how rude of me to forget to introduce myself. My name is Jonas Belden. And I believe you’ve already met my lovely Seraphina. Don’t worry, there’s no need to introduce yourselves, I already know you both quite well. Isn’t that right, my dear?” Belden stroked one long finger down Sera’s right arm, and though she tried to hide it, Harry didn’t miss her flinch.
“Beautiful, isn’t she?” Belden continued, keeping up his perverse caresses. “It’s a shame how she turned out. Such a waste of such exquisite…power.”
“Look what is going on here?” Harry questioned, growing increasingly frustrated.
“Patience, Mr. Dresden. All will be explained. For now, just sit back and enjoy the show,” Belden smirked. Harry felt queasy.
“The show? That’s how you think of this, you sick son of a bitch?” the wizard demanded.
“Harry,” Sera warned quietly.
“No, I want to know just what the hell is going on here!” Harry directed his anger at her now. “You drug us into this! I trusted you!”
“Because I told you to,” the sorceress replied.
“What?”
“One of Seraphina’s many talents,” Jonas answered for her. “She can be quite the charmer if you don’t know what to watch out for. She may have her father’s eyes, but she most certainly inherited her mother’s allure.”
“You mean this whole thing…”
“Was a setup? I’m afraid so. But it’s not all bad news. The girl took much longer than usual to finish the job. I think she’s taken a liking to you,” Belden’s smirk never wavered. Sera kept her eyes intently focused on the ground.
“Now, where were we? Oh yes, the great Hrothbert of Bainbridge’s long lost child,” the creep continued. Bob stiffened once more. “You really did think she was dead, didn’t you?” Jonas gave an amused laugh.
“She is. She was sick. I sat at her bedside for seventeen days before the illness took her whilst Winifred worked day and night on something, anything to make her better,” Bob was practically screaming now.
“And when nighttime came you would lay in the bed with me and sing me lullabies. You always held onto me so tight, and I never wanted you to let go,” Sera cried quietly. “I hardly ever saw mother, but when I did she would bring me this strange potion. I can still taste it to this day. It was so bitter and putrid, but I drank it all because she said it would make me feel better. It never did, though. I just kept getting sicker.”
“A very clever and well organized story, but when you built the coffin and dug the grave in which you buried you’re only child with your bare hands, it takes more than a few crocodile tears to convince you that it was all a lie,” Bob attempted to speak stoically.
“Your lover betrayed you, Hrothbert,” Jonas continued Sera’s speech. “Winifred wasn’t trying to cure her sick baby. She was poisoning her on purpose; keeping her sick until the time was right, and the girl’s false death could be achieved.”
“Stop this. I won’t hear it. Winifred would do no such thing!” Bob interrupted.
“She waited until you were at your weakest and staged your daughter’s death,” Belden ignored him.
“All she ever wanted was a child! She would never do anything to harm her!” Bob insisted. Sera snorted.
“That is why she did it, father! The next time I woke up after my last night with you, I was in a carriage with mother. She told me I was going to live with a new family because living with the two of you wasn’t safe anymore. She knew something terrible was coming, and she was trying to save me from it. She just gave me away like a horse or a dog!”
“You lie!”
“I do not! I cried for you until the tears would no longer come! Every night I would lie awake for as long as I could waiting for you to come and take me home! But you never did! You never came for me!”
“You were dead!”
“And from what I understand, you have a very impressive talent for raising the dead,” Jonas interrupted once again. “So the real question is, why didn’t you revive your precious little girl whom you claim to have loved so much?”
“I did. Or I tried, rather. But Winifred -”
“She stopped you, didn’t she?” Belden questioned. “She talked you out of it? The two of you had a chance to have your sweet little girl back, and Winifred didn’t want it? Now why would she do something like that?”
“Bringing someone back from the dead would break one of the highest laws of magic,” Bob responded promptly. “She was protecting us as well as our daughter.”
“Maybe. Or maybe she didn’t want you to find out what she’d done. Maybe she wasn’t the beautiful saint that you want to believe she was,” the creep continued. This time, Bob made no protests. Instead, he simply stood there, lost in his thoughts.
“Winifred, she…had a garden. Our daughter, she loved to play there. Seraphina had a special name for it,” Bob spoke the unsaid question slowly, his eyes remaining focused on the stone floor beneath them.
“Amorwe,” Sera replied with fresh, unshed tears in her eyes. Bob’s entire body shook with the startled breath he took. “I called it that because the flowers were at their most beautiful in the early morning, while the dew was still on the ground. The garden seemed to come alive then. Mother even taught me this simple spell that would summon butterflies for me to play with. It was my favorite place in the entire world. You’d even give me lessons there if I pouted hard enough.”
Raising his eyes slowly, Bob began to move forward toward the girl. His movements were hesitant but also determined. Once he was face to face with her, he raised his right hand with a question in his eyes. Understanding immediately, Sera nodded her head subtly, keeping her eyes locked with the spirit she called father. Having been granted permission, Bob delicately traced his nonexistent hand along the sorceress’s face. She shivered but gave him a sweet smile before he placed his hand gently inside her chest. Harry wasn’t sure what was going on, but whatever it was brought the once all-powerful sorcerer to his knees.
“Oh, dear God,” he whispered, nearly sobbing once again. “It is you.”
“Yes, father,” Sera nodded, the fresh tears now spilling down her cheeks.
“But how…?”
“A very good question, my lord,” that extremely annoying man interrupted once more. “You see, in Sera’s case the apple did not fall far from the tree. In fact, your sweet little girl became everything you did and so much more.”
Bob stood as the man spoke. Sera slowly backed away from her father’s ghost ever so slightly.
“I’m not sure I understand,” the spirit replied.
“Oh, Seraphina was a very bad girl in her last mortal years, weren’t you darling?” Jonas told him vaguely. “Why don’t you enlighten our new friends?” Sera didn’t move. “That was not a request. That was a command!”
“I…I was never happy with my new family,” Sera began slowly, keeping her eyes focused on the ground. “I already told you how I set my new sister’s dress on fire. It wasn’t an accident. We didn’t get along. I was a freak. They had no magic and only kept me because of the threats my mother made to them were any harm to befall me. But I lived. I learned to control my abilities through stolen literature and shear force of will. I married, and I had a son.” Sera chanced looking up for a moment.
“I named him for you, father. He looked just like you,” Bob gave no reaction, and Sera returned her gaze to the ground. “My husband had the gift as well. It was quite the relief to be with someone who understood what I was. And our son began to display his future talents at the age of four. He was so beautiful.” Sera hesitated for a long moment.
“Get on with it!” Belden ordered. Sera obeyed.
“Then my husband started leaving without warning. Sometimes he would be one for days and offer no sort of explanation to where he had gone. So one day, I followed him. I followed him directly to my self-righteous little sister’s home. I saw them through the window. They were fucking like animals! I just…I couldn’t contain myself! I had never felt such absolute rage! And I…my son…he was only seven…and I…” The woman stopped, her face wet with tears once more.
“Don’t worry, my dear. I won’t make you explain what you did next,” Jonas smirked once more. “Would either of you care to guess?”
“Why are you doing this, you bastard?” Harry finally spoke up. “Is this fun for you? Torturing innocent people do something for you?”
“Innocent people? These people who stand before us are anything but innocent, Mr. Dresden. Would you care to venture a guess as to what this pretty little thing did to her husband and her adopted sister whilst the sister’s children slept in the next room?” Belden’s smirk never failed. If anything, it grew.
“No. You’re just going to tell us anyway,” Dresden responded.
“She set them on fire,” the creep nearly laughed. “She burned them alive, and not quickly I might add. It was a slow, agonizing death ignited in the heat of passion. And guess where your girlfriend started. You got it, on the very extremity that was used to betray her. The sister’s five-year-old daughter walked in and found them screaming and melting. Now tell me, Mr. Dresden, does that sound like the actions of an innocent woman?”
“Sera?” Harry turned to the woman who raised her eyes to his in return. “Is this true?”
“Yes,” she whispered. “And you’re a good person, Harry, so I know you’ll try to find the good in this, but don’t waste your time. I’m not like you. I’m not a good person. I killed my husband and sister while her children watched, and I would do it again given the chance. I burned in my own private hell for five hundred years, and I would still do it again.”
“What?” a very confused Harry Dresden continued.
“Ah, yes. Punishment was a bit steeper back in the day, wasn’t it?” Belden began, obviously enjoying every moment of this sickness. “The high council saw fit to punish young Miss Seraphina by doing unto her as she had done unto them. She was cursed with immortality, so she can never die nor age even a single day, then placed in a prison of magical fire. The flames ate her slowly to the bone then allowed her to regenerate over and over again for nearly five hundred years. The punishment was to be for ten centuries, but my great great grandfather devoted his entire life to finding her prison and find it he did. He freed her and bound her to this silver locket.” Belden reached behind Bob’s skull on the table and lifted the item in question for all to see.
“Her power belongs to us now. It has been passed on from eldest child to eldest child until it finally came to me, and my plans could finally be set into motion.”
“You enslaved her to gain access to her power?” Bob questioned with a dangerous look on his face.
“That’s right. Very clever on my grandfather’s part. At first the High Council wasn’t very pleased, but once they were able to examine her leash, they felt his work was adequate to keep control over her. And knowing my family as they do, it was obvious that being our little slave girl would be enough punishment in itself. Isn’t that right, sweet heart?” Jonas laughed as he shoved his hand roughly up Sera’s blouse, causing her to let out a startled sob.
“Stop that!” Bob demanded. Jonas adopted a dangerous look of his own. Removing his hand from the woman’s shirt, he stomped over until he was nose to nose with the pissed off spirit.
“I don’t take orders from ghosts,” Belden spat. “Seraphina! It’s time!”
Book or TV: TV (I'm afraid I haven't even begun to read the series. I know, I lose at life :D)
Rating: PG-13
Characters: Bob, Harry, OFCs
Spoilers: Bob's a ghost!
Disclaimer: Jim Butcher owns The Dresden Files. Harry owns my soul. Bob owns my heart.
Summary: Harry Dresden wanted a little hired help. What he got was a whole world of trouble, courtesy of one beautiful strange young woman. And this time, he's in way over his head. (Okay, yeah, the summary's kind of corny and nondescriptive, but give it a shot please. It's my first story ever written for this fandom! :D)
Author's Note: Sorry for the long wait. I made this chapter extra long and juicy to make up for it. :D
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Harry Dresden hates surprises. At least he does now. Nothing good ever comes from them. So you can imagine his disdain when he awoke to find himself in an entirely strange place. The floors were wooden and very dusty, and the walls were the most boring shade of brown it had ever been the wizard’s displeasure to gaze upon. The rest of the room seemed empty as far as he could tell, apart from one solitary, navy blue chair. This wasn’t right. The last thing he remembered was falling asleep under that creepy willow tree. How the hell did he get here…wherever here was?
“Harry?” a familiar voice spoke softly yet urgently in his ear. He knew that tone; he just couldn’t picture the owner.
“Wake up!” the voice said more loudly this time as a hand connected sharply with his face.
“Aw! What the hell are you doing?” Harry complained, grabbing his sore cheek as he slowly sat up.
“Waking you,” the voice answered. Blinking a few times to clear his vision, Harry gradually focused on the face in front of him.
“Sera? What’s going on? How’d we get here? Where is here?” Dresden questioned rapidly. Sera held up one hand to silence him.
“I’m sorry, Dresden, but it had to be done,” the sorceress replied vaguely, her voice no longer the sweet American-made tone he’d come to know and love.
“Uh, what had to be done? And what’s up with the new accent? Planning a trip?” This earned him a prompt smack across the face. “What was that for?”
“Your idiocy. Someone has to knock it out of you,” Sera glared. “And the accent to which you were referring is mine. It took me years to perfect your American way of speaking. It’s barbaric really. In a few short centuries you imbeciles have managed to thoroughly butcher the English language. Honestly, I feel like washing out my mouth after every word I utter in your ridiculous inflection.”
“I’m confused,” Harry admitted after a long hesitation. Rolling her eyes, Sera stood from her position kneeling next to Harry and made her way over to a small, wooden table Dresden had had his back to. A sharp pang of fear and realization shot through the wizard at the site of what lay upon the table’s surface. There, placed delicately on a velvet cloth in the middle of the table, was a skull decorated in a sadistic display of ancient runes.
“Come out, please,” Sera spoke softly, the arrogant air to her voice seemed to have faded ever so slightly as she spoke to the spirit within.
There was a flash of orange and red light as the ghost materialized before them. Taking a moment, Bob gave the appearance of stretching his cramped limbs. Sera watched wordlessly as the former sorcerer gave their surroundings the once over before his eyes slowly came to rest on the man on the floor.
“Harry, are you all right?” the spirit questioned with a worried look in his eyes. Typical Bob, always thinking of him first.
“Yeah, Bob, I’m fine. You?” Harry replied, trying to appear casual.
“Still dead,” Bob nodded. “Did she hurt you?”
“Only my pride for now,” Dresden smirked. Bob gave him a relieved grin in return.
“I hate to break up what looks like a wonderfully touching moment between skull and boy, but we don’t have much time,” Sera spoke loud and clear, her tone demanded complete attention. Both men’s heads snapped around to face her.
“Okay, Sera, or whoever you are, what the hell is going on here?” Harry demanded once more.
“We don’t have much time,” she reiterated. “My master will be here very soon, but I wanted a chance to speak with you before he ended this,” Sera explained.
“Ends what? What master? Sera…”
“Harry, stop it!” Sera scolded. The wizard did as he was told, not wanting to piss off someone who could set him on fire with their eyes. Instead, he watched as the woman approached his best friend, circling him like a lion to its prey.
“I couldn’t believe it when I first saw you, you know. You look so different,” Sera began speaking so softly that Harry had to strain to catch it all. “How long ago were you ordered to change your hair? It had to be fairly recent. I like it better long myself. It’s how I always remembered you.”
“Remembered me?” Bob ignored her questions, posing one of his own.
“Of course. I dream about you every night - your eyes, your smile, your voice, your touch, your scent - at times it was almost too much to bear. I’ve missed you so much,” Sera’s eyes filled with tears as she spoke, staring at Bob with a look of love and long deeper and more real than anything Harry had ever experienced. “Now you’re here. You’re right here in front of me, and I can’t even touch you.”
“Who are you?” Bob questioned nervously. Dresden had never seen his friend so agitated. Sera looked slightly hurt, but she hid the emotion swiftly.
“I suppose I should have expected this. After all, six-hundred years is a long time, isn’t it?” Sera gave a nervous laugh. Bob remained a stone wall. “My name isn’t Sera Bain exactly. I was born Seraphina of Bainbridge -” Bob’s resolve crumbled, her words bringing him instantly to near hysterics.
“No,” he whispered desperately, his eyes appearing glazed and unfocused on the wall to the right of the sorceress.
“- Daughter of Hrothbert and Winifred -”
“No. Stop this. You can’t be,” Bob continued to ramble under Sera’s increasingly loud explanation.
“- On the 20th day of the 9th month of the year one thousand, four hundred and three.”
“I said stop this!” Bob shouted, causing Sera to jump slightly and her speech to end rather abruptly. “You will stop this now! My child is dead! She is dead and so she has been for more than six hundred years! I held her in my arms as she drew her last breath! I dug her grave and laid her to rest with my own two hands! And I will not allow you to desecrate her memory with your lies!”
No longer able to contain herself, Sera burst into tears. Her cries were the most heart wrenching sound Harry had ever heard.
“No! No! You’re wrong! You’re child never died! You were deceived! She lived and so she does still, trapped in a punishment worse than any death!”
“I will not hear you! Stop this at once!” Bob continued to shout, the unshed phantom tears building to an impossible level in his eyes.
“I won’t! Father, please, you must recognize your own daughter!” Sera begged, her face now soaked with her own tears.
“My child is dead!” Bob refused to hear her, the overwhelming grief and horror now running freely down his nonexistent cheeks.
“I’m afraid you’re gravely mistaken about that, Master Hrothbert,” a new, seemingly disembodied voice echoed off the walls, cutting off any further interaction. All three heads turned toward the open door across the room and to their left. The silhouette of a tall, slender man was clearly visible from their positions.
“Master, I was -” Sera began, meaning to explain herself. Then suddenly the mysterious stranger was standing next to her, close enough to touch. Harry blinked a few times and shook his head. How the hell did he…he was just…
“No need to explain yourself, my dear,” the man whispered. Dresden could see his features fairly clearly now. There was nothing special about the guy. He was tall with a slender/medium build, brown hair, brown eyes, and a pair of very outdated circular spectacles. “After all, how could I expect you not to be excited. You haven’t seen your precious daddy in more than six hundred years. You have every right to damage what’s left of his fragile spirit in front of his boyfriend.” The man gave a crooked-toothed smirk that made Harry’s skin crawl and he gave a small, involuntary shudder.
“Ah, Mr. Dresden, why don’t you come on over and join the party?” the creepy new guy requested. Harry obliged immediately. He’d been itching to get to Bob’s side since Sera had begun upsetting him.
“Party, eh? If I’d known I would have brought some chips and dip,” the wizard attempted bad humor as he moved to stand so near to his best friend that, had they both been corporeal, there shoulders would have been close enough to touch. He was ignored, however, as the creep only seemed interested in addressing Bob.
“I’m sorry, how rude of me to forget to introduce myself. My name is Jonas Belden. And I believe you’ve already met my lovely Seraphina. Don’t worry, there’s no need to introduce yourselves, I already know you both quite well. Isn’t that right, my dear?” Belden stroked one long finger down Sera’s right arm, and though she tried to hide it, Harry didn’t miss her flinch.
“Beautiful, isn’t she?” Belden continued, keeping up his perverse caresses. “It’s a shame how she turned out. Such a waste of such exquisite…power.”
“Look what is going on here?” Harry questioned, growing increasingly frustrated.
“Patience, Mr. Dresden. All will be explained. For now, just sit back and enjoy the show,” Belden smirked. Harry felt queasy.
“The show? That’s how you think of this, you sick son of a bitch?” the wizard demanded.
“Harry,” Sera warned quietly.
“No, I want to know just what the hell is going on here!” Harry directed his anger at her now. “You drug us into this! I trusted you!”
“Because I told you to,” the sorceress replied.
“What?”
“One of Seraphina’s many talents,” Jonas answered for her. “She can be quite the charmer if you don’t know what to watch out for. She may have her father’s eyes, but she most certainly inherited her mother’s allure.”
“You mean this whole thing…”
“Was a setup? I’m afraid so. But it’s not all bad news. The girl took much longer than usual to finish the job. I think she’s taken a liking to you,” Belden’s smirk never wavered. Sera kept her eyes intently focused on the ground.
“Now, where were we? Oh yes, the great Hrothbert of Bainbridge’s long lost child,” the creep continued. Bob stiffened once more. “You really did think she was dead, didn’t you?” Jonas gave an amused laugh.
“She is. She was sick. I sat at her bedside for seventeen days before the illness took her whilst Winifred worked day and night on something, anything to make her better,” Bob was practically screaming now.
“And when nighttime came you would lay in the bed with me and sing me lullabies. You always held onto me so tight, and I never wanted you to let go,” Sera cried quietly. “I hardly ever saw mother, but when I did she would bring me this strange potion. I can still taste it to this day. It was so bitter and putrid, but I drank it all because she said it would make me feel better. It never did, though. I just kept getting sicker.”
“A very clever and well organized story, but when you built the coffin and dug the grave in which you buried you’re only child with your bare hands, it takes more than a few crocodile tears to convince you that it was all a lie,” Bob attempted to speak stoically.
“Your lover betrayed you, Hrothbert,” Jonas continued Sera’s speech. “Winifred wasn’t trying to cure her sick baby. She was poisoning her on purpose; keeping her sick until the time was right, and the girl’s false death could be achieved.”
“Stop this. I won’t hear it. Winifred would do no such thing!” Bob interrupted.
“She waited until you were at your weakest and staged your daughter’s death,” Belden ignored him.
“All she ever wanted was a child! She would never do anything to harm her!” Bob insisted. Sera snorted.
“That is why she did it, father! The next time I woke up after my last night with you, I was in a carriage with mother. She told me I was going to live with a new family because living with the two of you wasn’t safe anymore. She knew something terrible was coming, and she was trying to save me from it. She just gave me away like a horse or a dog!”
“You lie!”
“I do not! I cried for you until the tears would no longer come! Every night I would lie awake for as long as I could waiting for you to come and take me home! But you never did! You never came for me!”
“You were dead!”
“And from what I understand, you have a very impressive talent for raising the dead,” Jonas interrupted once again. “So the real question is, why didn’t you revive your precious little girl whom you claim to have loved so much?”
“I did. Or I tried, rather. But Winifred -”
“She stopped you, didn’t she?” Belden questioned. “She talked you out of it? The two of you had a chance to have your sweet little girl back, and Winifred didn’t want it? Now why would she do something like that?”
“Bringing someone back from the dead would break one of the highest laws of magic,” Bob responded promptly. “She was protecting us as well as our daughter.”
“Maybe. Or maybe she didn’t want you to find out what she’d done. Maybe she wasn’t the beautiful saint that you want to believe she was,” the creep continued. This time, Bob made no protests. Instead, he simply stood there, lost in his thoughts.
“Winifred, she…had a garden. Our daughter, she loved to play there. Seraphina had a special name for it,” Bob spoke the unsaid question slowly, his eyes remaining focused on the stone floor beneath them.
“Amorwe,” Sera replied with fresh, unshed tears in her eyes. Bob’s entire body shook with the startled breath he took. “I called it that because the flowers were at their most beautiful in the early morning, while the dew was still on the ground. The garden seemed to come alive then. Mother even taught me this simple spell that would summon butterflies for me to play with. It was my favorite place in the entire world. You’d even give me lessons there if I pouted hard enough.”
Raising his eyes slowly, Bob began to move forward toward the girl. His movements were hesitant but also determined. Once he was face to face with her, he raised his right hand with a question in his eyes. Understanding immediately, Sera nodded her head subtly, keeping her eyes locked with the spirit she called father. Having been granted permission, Bob delicately traced his nonexistent hand along the sorceress’s face. She shivered but gave him a sweet smile before he placed his hand gently inside her chest. Harry wasn’t sure what was going on, but whatever it was brought the once all-powerful sorcerer to his knees.
“Oh, dear God,” he whispered, nearly sobbing once again. “It is you.”
“Yes, father,” Sera nodded, the fresh tears now spilling down her cheeks.
“But how…?”
“A very good question, my lord,” that extremely annoying man interrupted once more. “You see, in Sera’s case the apple did not fall far from the tree. In fact, your sweet little girl became everything you did and so much more.”
Bob stood as the man spoke. Sera slowly backed away from her father’s ghost ever so slightly.
“I’m not sure I understand,” the spirit replied.
“Oh, Seraphina was a very bad girl in her last mortal years, weren’t you darling?” Jonas told him vaguely. “Why don’t you enlighten our new friends?” Sera didn’t move. “That was not a request. That was a command!”
“I…I was never happy with my new family,” Sera began slowly, keeping her eyes focused on the ground. “I already told you how I set my new sister’s dress on fire. It wasn’t an accident. We didn’t get along. I was a freak. They had no magic and only kept me because of the threats my mother made to them were any harm to befall me. But I lived. I learned to control my abilities through stolen literature and shear force of will. I married, and I had a son.” Sera chanced looking up for a moment.
“I named him for you, father. He looked just like you,” Bob gave no reaction, and Sera returned her gaze to the ground. “My husband had the gift as well. It was quite the relief to be with someone who understood what I was. And our son began to display his future talents at the age of four. He was so beautiful.” Sera hesitated for a long moment.
“Get on with it!” Belden ordered. Sera obeyed.
“Then my husband started leaving without warning. Sometimes he would be one for days and offer no sort of explanation to where he had gone. So one day, I followed him. I followed him directly to my self-righteous little sister’s home. I saw them through the window. They were fucking like animals! I just…I couldn’t contain myself! I had never felt such absolute rage! And I…my son…he was only seven…and I…” The woman stopped, her face wet with tears once more.
“Don’t worry, my dear. I won’t make you explain what you did next,” Jonas smirked once more. “Would either of you care to guess?”
“Why are you doing this, you bastard?” Harry finally spoke up. “Is this fun for you? Torturing innocent people do something for you?”
“Innocent people? These people who stand before us are anything but innocent, Mr. Dresden. Would you care to venture a guess as to what this pretty little thing did to her husband and her adopted sister whilst the sister’s children slept in the next room?” Belden’s smirk never failed. If anything, it grew.
“No. You’re just going to tell us anyway,” Dresden responded.
“She set them on fire,” the creep nearly laughed. “She burned them alive, and not quickly I might add. It was a slow, agonizing death ignited in the heat of passion. And guess where your girlfriend started. You got it, on the very extremity that was used to betray her. The sister’s five-year-old daughter walked in and found them screaming and melting. Now tell me, Mr. Dresden, does that sound like the actions of an innocent woman?”
“Sera?” Harry turned to the woman who raised her eyes to his in return. “Is this true?”
“Yes,” she whispered. “And you’re a good person, Harry, so I know you’ll try to find the good in this, but don’t waste your time. I’m not like you. I’m not a good person. I killed my husband and sister while her children watched, and I would do it again given the chance. I burned in my own private hell for five hundred years, and I would still do it again.”
“What?” a very confused Harry Dresden continued.
“Ah, yes. Punishment was a bit steeper back in the day, wasn’t it?” Belden began, obviously enjoying every moment of this sickness. “The high council saw fit to punish young Miss Seraphina by doing unto her as she had done unto them. She was cursed with immortality, so she can never die nor age even a single day, then placed in a prison of magical fire. The flames ate her slowly to the bone then allowed her to regenerate over and over again for nearly five hundred years. The punishment was to be for ten centuries, but my great great grandfather devoted his entire life to finding her prison and find it he did. He freed her and bound her to this silver locket.” Belden reached behind Bob’s skull on the table and lifted the item in question for all to see.
“Her power belongs to us now. It has been passed on from eldest child to eldest child until it finally came to me, and my plans could finally be set into motion.”
“You enslaved her to gain access to her power?” Bob questioned with a dangerous look on his face.
“That’s right. Very clever on my grandfather’s part. At first the High Council wasn’t very pleased, but once they were able to examine her leash, they felt his work was adequate to keep control over her. And knowing my family as they do, it was obvious that being our little slave girl would be enough punishment in itself. Isn’t that right, sweet heart?” Jonas laughed as he shoved his hand roughly up Sera’s blouse, causing her to let out a startled sob.
“Stop that!” Bob demanded. Jonas adopted a dangerous look of his own. Removing his hand from the woman’s shirt, he stomped over until he was nose to nose with the pissed off spirit.
“I don’t take orders from ghosts,” Belden spat. “Seraphina! It’s time!”