Descent

DESCENT

Chapter Two

Narcissa awoke before Regulus, and took a moment to recall last night's chilling memory. She had never seen or heard a man cry before. It had unsettled her. She had lain next to her cousin for two years. And perhaps she did not know him at all. She thought back to the first time. The first time she had let him. . . .

Regulus bursts through the front door and flees across the moonlit grass, wild panic tearing at him. As he runs he makes a thousand deals with God, just to save her, just to find her unharmed.

He reaches the bottom of the Black estate, where there is dense woodland and a derelict gatehouse tower that stands alone on the edge, as if it were itself a guardian of the lives behind it.

He finds the rotting door open and his stomach lurches with cold horror. The blackness inside is living, breathing, thick and suffocating. He has fumbled for his wand but it is gone. He shouts her name as he gropes for the spiral staircase; he stumbles and finds the first step. On all fours, slowly, he crawls through the darkness, calling her, but finds nothing but his own echo.

He reaches the first level, and stands, and searches. He can't remember the layout of the place, but knows there is no access to the decaying second and third floors. He inches back to the steps, and continues his climb, further up into fear.

Past the forbidden second floor, he calls to her again, and continues on, towards the rooftop. But the stairs stretch longer than he recalls, he is afraid, and perhaps should turn back, his heart is quaking, foreboding is swallowing him, and he feels-

'Out of your depth, Regulus?' came a cool voice from the darkness.

'Narcissa?'

A white light appears at the top of the stairs ahead of him, and illuminates a ghostly, tired, beautiful face, white-blonde hair around her shoulders, a lost look in her eyes.

'Come to save me, have you?'

'I've been frantic; you've been missing for hours! Are you alright?'

'Regulus. Stay a while,' she says in her low provocative tone, before moving out of sight, plunging him into black once again.

'Narcissa? Where are you? Come back!'

'Third floor, Regulus.'

He crawls up to where she had been, and finds her sitting against the wall in a slice of moonlight.

'But——this is forbidden,' he attempts as she gives a wicked laugh.

'Forbidden is just a state of mind, made for those too afraid to try.'

He walks apprehensively towards her and kneels in front of her. He spies a half-empty bottle of Bulgarian vodka next to her.

'Narcissa, why do you do these things to yourself?' he says quietly, shaking his head because he knows the answer.

Her eyes shimmer with angry tears, and she hits him hard in the face, her hand trembling.

'Save your judgment! I don't need it!' she hisses.

He moves his hand to the searing sting where she struck him, and cannot tear his eyes from her as she sits here now, raw and honest and hurting. He tries to conceal his hard, obvious arousal by remaining in the shadows. He finally sees the real Narcissa.

'Take it out on me,' he murmurs, never breaking eye contact.

'Is that what you want?' She crawls towards him slowly.

'Yes,' he whispers.

'Am I what you want?'

'Yes.'

'Say it!'

'I want you! You're all I ever wanted; you know you are!'

She stops inches from his face, and smiles, breathing shallow, half in the shadows, half in the silver from the sky.

'You know, Regulus——you can touch me. If you want to. . . .'

His eyes flicker to the shirt stretched tight across her breasts.

'Narcissa.'

'I know you want to. Everybody does.'

She takes his hand gently, never moving her eyes from his, and Regulus gasps as she pushes his hand beneath her shirt, onto her warm breast.

'Nar-'

'I've seen the way you look at me. I know I'm what you think about——when you touch yourself,' she whispers. She is gambling but is certain she will win. She has seen Bellatrix take men apart and destroy them before. And now she has a prime candidate of her own.

He flushes, pulls his hand away, and looks at the floor.

'Narcissa, sometimes I think you're pure evil.'

She smiles and a flash of cruelty sears through her. She kneels in front of him and she flicks open her shirt buttons one by one. Her other hand slides up her thin, smooth thigh and under her skirt, as she watches him watching her, he is barely breathing.

'Well, I'm certainly pure,' she says, and he stares at her small white cotton underwear as her fingers dance around it's edges, daring him to look, mocking his desire, 'but as for evil——that's between me and the Devil.'

Her fingers disappear underneath the lace of her knickers.

'Narcissa, I beg you not to do this.'

He feels himself being drawn into some deadly trap, playing victim to Narcissa's predator, but he is powerless against the siren's song. If he must die on the rocks. . . .

'Come on, Regulus. Break the cycle,' she drawls softly, a half-smile has settled on her pale features.

'You know how I, you know how much I-'

'Do you want me to stop?'

She moves onto her hands and knees and crawls close to him. Her lips brush his ear as she squeezes between his legs and whispers. . . .

'What is it, Regulus? What is it you wanna do to me?'

He lurches at her and she meets his hard urgent kiss, smiling triumphantly at her own power. The weight of his body pins her on her to the wood floor as they fall backwards. His kiss is sharper, quicker, not as intense as Lucius, but her stomach clutches with excitement as she tastes her own, perfect Black bloodline.

He moves down her body with his kisses, fumbling her shirt open and stops, breathless at the top of her skirt.

'I've wanted you for so long, Narcissa,' he gasps.

She raises a barely-interested eyebrow and stares outside as he slides down her knickers, but gives an unexpected gasp as she feels his tongue. She breathes deep and closes her eyes to the moon, while all thoughts of Lucius are drowned in vodka and the desperate touch of her cousin. . . .

This is how she has made herself survive.

But if Regulus cries, it is because there is something wrong. And no weakness of his will bring her family to its knees.

*

Early evening settled silently on Sofiya as candles were lit on the top floors of expensive dwellings and drapes were pulled shut against the imminent night.

Lucius sat with a single malt, in the window of his large, luxurious town house situated in the most privileged quarter of the city.

He liked to sit here, watching the servants and occasional weekend businessperson scuttle through the cold streets, attending to the demands of whichever branch of the Bulgarian aristocracy they served or hurrying to put in an appearance somewhere they desperately didn't want to go.

That would be his job, tonight. Another appearance. The Bulgarian Ministry had been particularly insistent that he attend tonight's event, although he could not see why, as it seemed to him it was going to be just another evening of tedious small talk and pointless platitudes.

He sighed quietly to himself, surveying the pile of legal papers marked 'Norodna Republika Bulgaria' that had been amassing on his desk ever since he had been dragged back here because of Andrei and his infinite greed.

He had sat at that very desk, young, bewildered and alone, while some Ministry lawyer explained every last detail of the proceedings that had been initiated, the proceedings that had meant he had to leave the UK immediately, even having to sit his final exams back at Durmstrang.

The lawyer had sat, heaped an enormous folder onto the desk and broke the news.

'Lucius Malfoy. Son of Alexander and Reika. You are of British citizenship but attended the Durmstrang Institute here in Bulgaria from age eleven until your parents died prematurely when you were aged sixteen——correct?'

'Yes.'

'At which point you were transferred to Hogwarts School in the United Kingdom where you had an aunt on your mothers side who became your appointed guardian——correct?'

'Yes.'

'And now, you have been asked to return here. I assume you're wondering why. Lucius, your eighteenth birthday two days ago means you are now in a position to claim your inheritance. This includes the entirety of your parent's assets both here and in the UK. The Will clearly stated that you were to be the sole beneficiary. However. A challenge has been mounted under section 2 of the Inheritance (Provision for Family and Dependants Act) 1975 by an applicant named Andrei Malfoy.'

'That's my uncle.'

'It seems before he died, your father was making regular payments to Andrei, of which he has provided the Ministry with documentary evidence. But no provision has been made for him in the Will. His application under section 2 is on the grounds basically that the transfer of the inheritance to you in accordance with the Will is not such as to make reasonable financial provision for him.'

'So he's trying to get my money and the money tied up in the properties.'

'Some of it, yes.'

'Well. You'd just better stop him, hadn't you.'

Lucius sighed and finished the whisky. Here he was two years later. Still in Bulgaria. Still fighting Andrei. And there was still no way he was going to get so much as a sickle. The only reason Lucius's father had been making those payments was to make sure Andrei stayed in the mountains and did not drag the Malfoy name through the mud with his penchant for high-stakes gambling and low-class women. His father should have just had him killed.

Lucius stood, and straightened his tie in the mirror. He approached the door and reached for the door handle, but stopped in his tracks as he was ambushed by images of his life before all this. The most intense vision was at the same time his most despised. . . .

. . . . The thin silhouette running ahead, halts and turns to him, with a teasing flick of her white-blonde hair. She has stopped on the edge of the Forbidden Forest.

'Would you follow me,' she breathes, 'would you walk in dark places with me?'

She disappears into the trees as he reaches her.

He follows, and she is not fast enough because he catches her and pushes her up against a tree.

'I'd walk anywhere,' he softly drawls, as he starts to kiss the side of her neck, 'because everyone thinks Bellatrix is the most wicked of all the Black sisters. . . .'

She smiles in the darkness, and her hand slides down his body and moves into the top of his trousers inside his underwear.

'Oh?' she whispers, in mock-surprise.

'But it's been you all along, hasn't it,' he murmurs, before meeting her kiss in the darkness. . . .

Lucius pushed the visions away as hard as he could, and jerked open the door, slamming it behind him with force that shook the whole building.

*

Later that night, after a bout of particularly heavy drinking at the Ministry event, Malfoy wrenched the hotel room door open in a furious alcoholic passion, the silver keys falling unnoticed to the floor. He stumbled to the mini-bar and poured some finest Bulgarian whisky into a glass, not caring that most of it slopped onto the polished surface.

The tall, dark-haired Rania stalked into the room after him, kicking the door closed behind her. Hands on her hips, she surveyed Malfoy, who was doing his best to drain the glass as quickly as possible.

'Lucius,' she commanded, in a thick Bulgarian accent, 'do not be getting too drunk, now. I am needing you in full——working——order.'

Lucius hurled the glass to the floor, smashing it into a thousand crystal droplets.

'You obviously don't know me so very well, Miss Rania,' he snarled, as he stormed towards her and pushed her violently backwards against the wardrobes. She gave a wicked laugh, and reached a clawed hand for him, grabbing a fistful of his shirt and pulling him roughly up against her.

'So fuck me, blond British boy,' she growled into his ear, as he tore her shirt open and roughly grasped her breasts beneath.

He ripped her underwear away and took her right there, up against the cupboards. She squealed with pleasure and tried to kiss him, but he turned his head away from her.

Memories he had tried so hard to bury were jarring loose from their restraints, his resistance weakened by over-priced vodka and Ministry champagne.

A whisper in the dark, forbidden touches in schoolyard shadows. . . .

Rania grabbed at him like some wild animal, her claws digging into the back of his neck, he squeezed his eyes closed tight.

A trail of ties and skirts and shirts, then white-blonde hair spread across grass under a summer sky and a promise that it didn't have to end. . . .

He slammed Rania harder against the doors, she gave a triumphant yell.

A promise that lay as shattered and broken as the crystal glass he had hurled to the ground. . . .

Lust dissolved quickly into revulsion with his few last desperate movements. The second it was over, he left Rania sliding to the floor as he turned from her, and fought to fasten his clothing.

She moved to the bed and slid contentedly on top of it, reaching for one of her strong-smelling cigarettes.

Lucius stood, his back to her, and bent to pick a handful of the shattered glass from the floor. He crouched, staring at it as he savagely crushed it tight in his pale hand, tiny splinters and deep-red droplets falling to the floor as he forced himself to bleed.

Rania saw he was meaning to leave.

'Where are you going to? It is so late. Will you not stay?'

He stood, and let the remaining glass fall from his lacerated palm.

'No,' he replied, opening the door, 'I won't. And I expect you to stay away from me in the future.'

He slammed the door, and slogged out into the frozen night, taking only a murderous headache and heart full of emptiness with him.