Something turned in his stomach at the thought that Fane’s rotted corpse could still be locked away in that secret cellar. Then again, in two hundred years, someone would have surely found the body. Stabbed, his neck cut open like a gutted fish, and no perpetrator to be found behind a door that locked from the inside, other than a single arm of a faceless victim. Would people have thought the arm itself came alive and delivered justice? Laurent smirked to himself at the thought.
“What’s going on? You’re coming or not?”
“Sorry, I just…” Laurent sped up to escape Dionysus’s prying eyes. “I’m coming.” He left the hallway behind and caught up with Beast, suddenly wishing to feel his strong arm around him again.
Words sung by a woman with an oddly deformed voice became clearer, as did the sounds of conversation and the smell of food and coffee. Hound let out a muffled bark through the bone he was still holding between his teeth and rushed down the corridor. Laurent and Beast followed through two pairs of tall doors and a rather large chamber that contained billiard tables and smelled of tobacco as intensely as if a whole party of smokers had just left it.
The next room was the size of a theatre, filled with comfortable-looking seating facing one of the televisions similar to the ones at the mall. This one was huge, almost the size of a billiard table.
The modern age seemed to have frescoes too, but they were crude, done in solid color, dark, and vulgar. As they walked through the television room, naked women gave Laurent lusty grins from pictures on the wall, where they lay on pillows in front of a red-skinned, horned man who was clearly meant to depict the devil, yet had none of the subtlety of the creature’s dangerous grace. This one had an enormous prick pushing at the front of his pants and rings attached to his nipples. He gazed upon the women like the personification of infernal lust.
The old Laurent might have looked away, but there was no point in avoiding such lewd depictions after having made a pact with a demon himself.
There was a clear break beyond the tall rooms that must have been the repurposed Fane mansion and the newer structure they entered next. Here, floors were made of something that seemed like a mixture of rubber and plastic and squeaked under the soles of his boots. The architects had provided no adornment to the walls, which made all the rooms and even corridors seem like boxes stacked together for convenience. He saw more of the disturbing frescos, more smooth, shiny pictures of naked bodies and devilish creatures, and the walls were painted a variety of intense colors, the subtlety of reliefs or coving forgotten.
After passing through a narrow corridor they finally entered the room where at least a dozen people sat on sofas, chatted and ate. Just above the doorway Laurent noticed a sentence written in crude lettering.
Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.
Chapter 12 - Laurent
Laurent swallowed at the infernal message above the door as Beast nudged him forward, into a room drowned in red. Paintings of flames and dancing skeletons covered the crimson walls, and sofas of burgundy leather gathered around a low table with the legs of a goat. There were scarlet cupboards in the area likely used for serving food, and the carpet was the color of dark cherries crushed into the floor by heavy boots.
The noise overflowing into all the corridors and chambers of the clubhouse originated here, although Laurent couldn’t see any musicians or instruments. The music—a painful concoction of hoarse shouting, banging, and a screech that sounded as if someone were scraping their nails against a chalkboard—was a constant buzz in Laurent’s head.
When the people gathered in the chamber noticed him and Beast, some of the conversations died down, and he could sense curious gazes penetrating him without even the pretense of politeness.
“Nothing to see here,” said Beast in a tone that suggested he meant the exact opposite. He nodded toward a counter dividing the space from another chamber, which shone with polished metal. “Leave the tray in the kitchen and come back.”
Now that Laurent could see everything so clearly, he wasn’t all that sure if he wanted to. Most of the men were giants dressed in black, and judging by the clothes of the women, none of them were respectable ladies. Even in comparison to the women Laurent had seen at the mall, the abundance of naked flesh on show here was stifling his voice. Was this a brothel?
Choosing to stay civil and not say anything that could be considered rude, he put the tray on the polished surface by the kitchen, watching Beast walk over to the sofas to be greeted with smiles and pats on the back.