Love's Secret Domain

The name was familiar to him. Marion Francis. Daniel didn’t know where he’d heard it before, but he had. Or read it. But the camera and microphone in Adalia’s room had heard it as such. Marion Francis. It was on the tip of his tongue but he just couldn’t get to the bottom of why he knew the name.



What Daniel could do was to have Maria followed. His people watched her talking to her son. Luke, Maria’s son, pulled Google up and all they found were several articles on Francis Marion, the so-called “Swamp Fox” of the American Revolution. Certainly not someone that Adalia was likely to be friends with. Further down the line turned up a bishop, but certainly the girl would have mentioned he was clergy. Finally towards the end of the long list was a small list of founders of the Order, the self-same order that Maria was working for.



Surrounding the name was all manner of legalese that seemed to imply that Marion Francis, whomever he was, would take the blame and burden of the Order should it fall into bankruptcy. What it also, in the long term, stated was that Marion Francis, whomever he was, was the sole proprietor and owner of this tax-exempt religion.



Thomas Kracken was not a stupid man. He was the enigmatic and charismatic cult leader of the Order, and also the patriarch or the Kracken family. In the early 80s, many of these religions were being found out and levied with heavy taxes for their evasion. In order to keep himself free from blame and in order to keep his wealth secured, he renamed his own son Marion Francis and used his social security numbers just in case. Phineas was so young at the time he couldn’t object and with a few people paid off it went through.



As it was, none of this had changed, and in fact, little was discussed of the Order in the readings of Thomas’ will. Daniel assumed this was because the company was incorporated. He hadn’t come to the Order as a follower, or even as a business graduate. What he’d been was a hustler. Someone that Thomas had picked up somewhere along the line, finding his ass tight and his morals flexible.



Back then; Daniel had been a lanky teen with a dark brown shank of hair that usually flopped down into one of his chocolate colored eyes. His skin held a warm tan glow of a boy who spent a lot of time on the streets. Daniel remembered where Thomas picked him up. It was in LA. He’d sold his guitar and everything he’d owned for a bus ticket from Arizona to Hollywood with that same idealistic hope that he’d make it. What he made was $10 per blowjob in older men’s cars.



The logic of the streets was something that he’d picked up on with an almost innate sense. By the time Thomas found him, the boy was shifty and wily way beyond his years. Admiring the man’s hair and actually enjoying the rough way in which he fucked, Daniel was the sort of natural ass kisser that Kracken loved.



It wasn’t hard to get himself invited to one of the ceremonies, he was both alarmed and aroused by it. But what had truly interested him in all of it was the 17-year old girl who sat with a look of utter disgust on her face above everyone else in the room. Her fiery red hair cascaded over her naked body and shimmered in the flickering candlelight as the orgy of old flesh consumed itself in black robed waves around the room. Daniel only half noticed the older man who was sucking him off, his hips responded in time to the thrusts of the man’s mouth as he clocked the goddess on the throne. What would it be like to fuck her? She was like a porcelain doll, a cherubic blasphemy, fondling and examining her fingers, her mind a million miles away.



He was a few years older than the girl, he found out later. And to get to her, you had to be high up, indeed. And being high up in the Order meant having a lot of money or a lot of muscle to guard her. Daniel had neither of these things. All he did have was a sheer force of will and a savage ambition. He allowed Thomas to use him as a fucktoy and acted as a personal assistant to the man. What he found from this was that he was in for a load of competition for the young girl’s attentions. Not that he hadn’t figured that would be the case, but it didn’t take him long to figure out that the girl’s own father was in love with her and would have him for his own if it weren’t for the fact that sharing her was so profitable.



What took longer to sniff out was where she went one weekend a month. She would vanish from his sight, although the guards seemed unalarmed by this, Daniel couldn’t get an answer from anyone as to where she went. Thomas was the only one who really knew, the guards for the most part had no idea. That was the first time he’d ever heard that Thomas had a son. Phineas Kracken. Old, odd sort of name. And he came home one weekend every month and on holidays and that was whom Adalia vanished with. It took months for him to find out that the boy had no mother. It took him even longer to get a full appreciation of the situation. Adalia was in love and it wasn’t with him or her father or any followers or bodyguards, but her brother. The only way to keep her in the game was in keeping Phineas alive and out of the family business.



However, Daniel didn’t particularly believe in the divine origins of Adalia. Though he would call her an angel, he meant it only in the most figurative of senses. He never believed or felt the power that Thomas claimed that she had. Even though her blood gave him an ecstatic feeling, he did not believe it was anything other than the fact that he was so taken with her. Because of this, he thought little of sending the limo out for Phineas that Thursday night, knowing that there was a ceremony on, and knowing that it would invalidate Adalia’s deal with her father. Thomas wouldn’t be to blame, really. She couldn’t be angry with him over it, it was Daniel’s choice to do this. He thought himself very clever.



Phineas was a very shocked boy when he recognized the large man in the plain black and white attire walking into his Advanced English class that afternoon. “Get your things, kid. You’re going home, special event.”



Of course, the chauffer had no way of knowing this wasn’t authorized; he assumed that it was time for the child to enter into the business. For his part, Phineas’s eyes widened for a moment and then he quickly packed up his books and dashed back to his dorm room. He tossed clothes into a bag and was back down and into the car in less than 20 minutes. Sitting in the back seat, he was overwhelmed with excitement. He hadn’t been notified he’d get extra time with Adalia, didn’t know what he’d done to earn it, and didn’t much care either. His pale fingers traced the pattern of Adalia’s name against the weft of the plush fabric on the seat. Occasionally he watched outside, signposts of the closing distance ticked off one by one as he became more and more restless. He’d forgotten to bring a book to read along the way, not that it made much difference, even when he had one he was generally too excited to concentrate on reading.



Arriving after dusk at the mansion, Phineas was rather shocked that there were so many cars around. He stepped out of the car to see a tall, lanky older man with a shock of dark brown hair that flopped into his eyes waiting for him. He thought he’d seen the man around before, but he wasn’t clear on whom he was, one of his father’s “friends” as far as he knew, or even cared to know.



“Phineas? I’m Daniel, glad you could make it.”



Phineas looked at the man for a moment as he slung his backpack over his shoulder and then stepped forward to clasp hands with him. There was something odd about this man and Phineas couldn’t place it. Perhaps it was that almost greedy expression on his face as they met, or the fact that Adalia wasn’t there as she usually was, wiggling with excitement until he was almost out of the car when she’d pounce on him, scattering kisses over his face and speaking in breathy tones about how much she missed him. But tonight theas nas no Adalia, just this Daniel person, not even his father was here which made Phineas’s eyes taper with suspicion.



“Nice to meet you, Daniel,” the 16-year-old greeted.



“Come on inside, the party’s just starting,” Daniel cooed as he put a disingenuous arm around Phineas and half walked with and half pushed the boy into the huge double doors.



“Where’s Adalia?” Phineas asked as they started to head down some steps in a part of the mansion he’d always avoided; the part of the mansion where his mother was beheaded. His heart started to thrum in his chest in a furious fear. Were they going to behead his sister? Or was it him? His footfalls were heavy with dread, but if Adalia was indeed in there with a wire around her neck, he would rescue her, somehow, he didn’t know how he’d do it but he would. Either thathe whe would die with her. No matter what, he would not leave his sister to this alone.



To his surprise, when the loathsome doors were opened, inside was a huge crowd of people clad in black wearing masks. They were all facing front where the sound of grunting was emanating from. At the time, Phineas was still fairly short, so he had to move forward a bit, terrified of what he might see. All of these people, how could he rescue her… or maybe it had already happened? Slowly the contours of the familiar pale skin of his half sister came into partial view, her arm extended, body sagged in surrender and skin gripping the hard marble of the altar on which his mother’s body was defiled. He took a deep breath and moved his eyes up her form and saw with relief that her head was attached, although her eyes were closed and her expression pained.



Following the line of her shoulder, he saw a livid red cut across her wrist and the blood dripping into a copper wide-mouthed receptacle, her pale form was just a few shades lighter than usual. Dragging his eyes slowly down between her legs wrapped between her thighs was his own father. His silvery hair cascaded down his shoulders as his head fell back in his explosion of pleasure, or at least it was. Now his father seemed to be looking right at him and several of the robed spectators were holding their ears and backing away from him. He hadn’t even realized his screamin he he tried to move forward to his sister.



“Get him out of here!” Thomas barked.



Adalia drowsily sat up, though she was weak from the blood loss, her eyes fixed on Phineas and then widened in abject terror.



Large arms wrapped around Phineas and held the squirming boy back from getting to Adalia. With no thought at all, Phineas bared his fangs and sunk them deep into the arm in front of him, causing other robed people to panic and drive back.



Thomas was shouting to get Phineas out of the room until Adalia’s small, pale foot shot out into his face with a hard snap, breaking his nose. She wriggled from his grasp as his hands rose to his face in the stunned pain of cartilage jabbing up into his sinuses.



With slowly less enthusiastic punches, the guard was trying desperately to get the slight boy off of his arm. He punched desperately into Phineas’s side, trying to get him to let go, dragging him back a few steps, but his jaws were as locked and secure around the man’s arm as his eyes were locked on his sister’s amber eyes. He only let go when Adalia finally scrambled to him and grabbed his arm to run out of there with him. Daniel was ready at the door and stood there with his arms folded. He was utterly unprepared for one of Adalia’s rages. With a kick to his scrotum and a hard slam of her elbow on the back of his neck, he was down. Phineas had dragged the guard by his teeth in his arm still up to that point, but with the pause managed to release him and the two were off up the stairs.



“You weren’t supposed to see. You weren’t supposed to know. That was the deal that was always the deal, why? Why were you there?” she squealed in anguish as she threw him into her room. Immediately she’d moved to her large oak wardrobe and using all of her body weight was shoving it over in front of the door.



After a shocked moment, Phineas moved to help her move it, the two of them finally getting the large piece of furniture securely in place. “I don’t know, a car showed up. You weren’t there to greet me. I was so scared. I thought he was… I thought you were going to…” he put his hands up to his throat as if he could feel the wire there around his own neck.



“What? No… oh…” she said as her adrenaline started to ebb out of her small body. She looked desperately at the bed for a moment, but instead slid down the side of the wardrobe to sitting on the floor, only then realizing again that she was naked. She gave a half-hearted effort to cover herself, but it wasn’t as if she weren’t used to being naked, nor was this the first time Phineas had seen her unclothed. It was the circumstances that made her ashamed. “No, he wouldn’t kill me. I’m worth too much to him.”



“He… are you a prostitute?” he asked sincerely as he slid down the wall to sit near her.



Adalia snorted and rolled her eyes. “Sort of. Father’s built this whole empire on my blood,” she said as she weakly held up her arm. “The fucking is because he’s a pervert.”



“But… what empire?”



“They worship me. You know my blood has healing properties. Father says I’m half angel. I don’t know about that. I think it’s the same shit he sells these other old perverts. There’s something queer about my blood, we all know that. But… I dunno,” she said as she looked down at her still bleeding wrist and then extended it again to offer it to Phineas.



He shook his head and took off his thin white t-shirt to wrap it tightly around her injured wrist. He wanted no part of what those people took from his sister. And she looked pale enough as it was. “No, thank you. But no. God, Adalia, why didn’t you tell me? The whole time? Why? Why would you keep it from me?” He was sad for her, although partially he felt betrayed that she’d keep such a huge thing from him.



“I… if I didn’t then… I have to do it or he’ll take you away, Phineas. He’d kill you. It’s the only way I knew how to keep you alive until we’re old enough to escape. You’re in school, getting a good education. I want the little house. And the pink car. With the cat,” she said as her eyes filled with tears of shame and hurt for the expression on Phineas’s face.


fir first Phineas covered his face with his hands and he whimpered, “The cat.” He felt so helpless. His sister was enduring so much, so much for him. And he wasn’t able to protect her at all. He was weak, the failure his father always said he was.



Adalia started to sob, thinking he hated her that he couldn’t look at her because of what a disgusting person she was, that she’d done all of these things. She’d covered it over for good reason, but she’d made a pact with the devil nevertheless. “Oh god, Phineas I’m sorry, I’m so sorry!”



“Nooo! Adalia! No!” he cried out as he reached for her, pulling her tightly into his arms and over his legs. “No… I’m sorry. Sorry I’m so weak, that I can’t save you. You deserveeoneeone strong and I’m so weak!”



“You’re not weak, Phineas. We’re just young. We’ll have our time, Phineas, we will. We have to,” she sobbed to him. She reached up to push her finger against his tooth andcaugcaught her wrist to stop her.



“No, I’m going to be stronger. You’re weak now, I’m not taking from you while you’re still so pale from…” he gestured with his other hand. “I’m going to be strong for you, Adalia. I’m going to get you out of this one way or another. Tomorrow I’ll ask father if I can… if I can join up in this. Maybe I can help you that way. At least I’ll be there,” he plead.



**



“Nice trick there, Dolly,” Dl drl drawled. “Maria won’t be coming back, by the way. We… dismissed her,” he said as he held the elderly Hispanic woman’s head up by her thick black hair. The expression on her face spoke of the horror that Adalia was now expressing in her chilling scream of haunted frustration.



**



Almost out of the hotel room, the phone started to ring again. Phineas was tempted not to answer it. The last thing he needed to hear was another threat from the Order, although, it did let him know that he should expunge the money from that account now on the off chance they hadn’t frozen it yet. Then again, the last call gave a hint that he was on the right track. He must be getting close if they found him and threatened him.



Hesitantly, he finally reached out for the black rotary phone, shifting the blue, stained jacket he’d pulled on against the chill Delaware air.



“Mr. Francis? My name is Luke. Your sister is in Manhattan. She is staying at the Marmara Hotel. Meet me at the 92nd Street Y Wednesday at 2pm that gives you two days to get here. They killed my mother over contacting you and I want to know why.”



“Luke, who—“



But the line was dead. It could be a trap. It could be sincere. But at the moment it was all he had.