Free The Devil's Workshop by Alex Grecian Page A

following you,” Jack said.
    “I don’t know. I mean, yes, they’re looking for me.”
    “And where will you hide?”
    “Here. Down here.”
    “But this is my home. You may only hide here if I allow it.”
    “Why are you chained like that?”
    “Come closer.”
    He heard the stranger shuffle in place, undecided.
    “It’s all right,” Jack said. “I can’t hurt you, can I? You can see that. So where’s the harm?” Every word scorched his dry throat. He savored the pain. “Come and take this off my head so that we might see each other and converse like the gentlemen we surely are.”
    The stranger didn’t move.
    “What’s your name, little fly?”
    “Cinder . . . My name is Cinderhouse, but I fail to see how that matters.” The stranger, Cinderhouse, feeling brave now after his initial confusion, feeling like Jack couldn’t hurt him, chained and hooded in the dark as he was. Jack smiled again. Such a perfect little fly, a tender morsel already caught in Jack’s web, but still unaware of the danger.
    “Oh, it matters to me, Mr Cinderhouse. Do you mind if I call you Peter?”
    “But that’s not my name.”
    “It’s not meant to be a name. It’s a title.”
    “I don’t understand.”
    “Tell me, do you understand this:
Exitus probatur
?”
    “What?”
    “Never mind. They’re not close. The men following you. They’re far away, aren’t they?”
    “I don’t know where they are. I think I killed one.”
    “We have time before they follow you here. You’re quite safe with me, Peter. I can protect you.”
    “Don’t call me that.”
    “But why not? I should think you’d be honored.”
    Cinderhouse shuffled closer, the soles of his shoes dragging grit from the floor.
    “Take the hood from my head and face me,” Jack said.
    There was a long moment of silence, and then Jack could feel the presence of the other man, hovering close, and suddenly the canvas was lifted and dull orange light sliced through Jack’s eyes and stabbed into his brain. He hadn’t even known that his eyes were open; there was no difference in the darkness either way and he had long ago lost track. Now his eyelids slammed shut and he gradually lifted them again, a fraction of an inch, letting them grow used to the idea of something besides their accustomed blackness. He let his eyes deal with the light, droplets of color filtering through his lashes, and concentrated on listening to Cinderhouse. The other man had stepped back from him, was loitering at the mouth of the cell, no doubt planning to run.
    Frightened little fly.
    “If you leave, you will never fulfill your destiny.” Jack’s voice waslittle more than a whisper, filling the space, echoing from stone to stone. “If you leave now, you will always be lost and afraid, running here and there like a rabbit until you are caught.”
    “Who did that to you?”
    “I did.”
    “I meant the chains. Who chained you here?”
    “I told you. I did.”
    “You didn’t chain yourself.”
    “Of course I did.”
    “How?”
    Such a stupid little fly.
    “You’ve heard of a man, lived centuries ago, who worked miracles? A man who walked on the surface of the sea, laid his healing hands on the sick, and turned water into blood?”
    “It was wine. You’re talking about . . . He turned water into wine.”
    “Did he? Perhaps we read different accounts.”
    “What does that have to do with . . . ?”
    “Oh, it has everything to do. The man I speak of, when he had done what he needed to do to establish his power, he allowed lesser beings to take him, to tear his flesh and spill his blood on the thirsty ground.”
    “He died.”
    “Do you think so? I don’t. No, he had gone too far to die, taken too much power into himself. He allowed them to think he was gone and then he showed them that power. But only when he was ready and only after he had prepared his disciples.”
    The light didn’t hurt so badly anymore and Jack’s eyes were fullyopen, drinking in