THE HAUNTED KINGDOM 3 by CHARLES E.J. MOULTON (best books to read now txt) 📖

had a difficulty to cease.

Lucinda looked up toward the ceiling, his black cloak blowing in breeze that seemed to come from beyond the tunnel’s end. She twitched with her head as he looked around for something to comment on. The swords met again and Lucinda responded to Alexander’s attack by raising her weapon in both of her hands during a pirouette and aiming at her brother’s waist. Alex lifted, twirled up in the air and kicked Lucinda in the back. She landed flat face down in the water.
Seeing how she sunk down and was forced to slowly lift up from the deep, Alex had to laugh.
“Fooled you there, didn’ I now, Sis’?”
She grimaced, her cape fluttered in the breeze of her own flight.
"Welcome to Hell!"
“A hell where even demons make mistakes” Alex mused.
“Don’t count on anybody making mistakes here” Lucinda spat.
Alexander sneered, flew up to her and clanged his sword against hers a few times.
“You will make a mistake sooner or later” Alex shrugged. “That’s your mistake. Thinking you’re perfect.. No one ever is or can be.”
“Thank you for that response, Socrates!”
“It wasn’t a response, Lucinda!”
“What then?”
“We all make mistakes is what I’m saying” Alex sing songed. “It’s human. But I have something you lack.”
”What’s that?” Lucinda spat.
“Love” Alexander whispered.
“I have love” Lucinda answered. “Besides, too much lovie-dovie creates a brain full of mush.”
“I hate you with every cell in my body and every fibre of being. I know that now.”
“Still nice of you to come, Alex! Why did you?”
”This isn’t a tea-party and I as sure as hell didn’t bring a gift. What kind of question is that?”
The words were as short and fast as they were cold.
"Here! My illusion turned real at last. I caught you thinking about your own place in this world."
Alexander felt like a volcano.
“What does that supposed to mean?”
He had travelled all this way only to be a victim of ridicule?
“That you travelled through illusion to come to something that might be real after all. Doesn’t it feel good to be in reality after all this time?”
The swords met in a vicious clanging of sounds.
“No, for me this is not reality and I know the game you are playing, Lucinda? Don’t try it with me, because it isn’t working.”
Clang. Clang-clang-cling-clang. Clong.
“But aren’t you at least a little happy to see me?”
Clangclang. Clang-clang-cling-cling … Clang.
“Why should anyone even give a rat’s ass if you rot after everything that you have destroyed.”
Cling-clang-clong.
“You don’t wish that you had been able to accept me earlier in your life?”
Clang. Clang. Clang-cling-clong-cleng-clyng. Clang. Clang.
"No! I should’ve killed you before you got to our parents. Then I never would’ve had to be a victim of your games in the first place. I spent thirty years running from you."
Clang.
“Games?”
”Yes, games.”
”What games?”
”Games of envy and intrigue.”
"It's my Hell!" Lucinda answered, matter of fact, and attacked Alex again, twirling around three times and ending up to his left. “Besides, nothing like a good game, so why not try things out? That’s always been my motto. Even back in Yambalah when you and I were a married couple that was who I was. But you were always a stuffy, Joseph.”
"And who are you to determine that just because you want to have fun you have to make someone else miserable? You fell for seduction back then. That’s weak. Haven’t you heard of sharing innocent joy?"
Lucinda was impressed by this comment.
She had not expected such clarity.
Then she grinned. "I am the dark part of you" Lucinda exclaimed, warding off Alex weapon. "I am the dark side of the Sun ... Together we make ..." Lucinda clashed her sword onto his. It made a metal clanging sound that echoed fiercely inside the cave. "... a great team." She raised her eyebrows and turned serious. "We fight a lot ..." She smiled again. "But we love each other anyway!" Evil nodded. "Aren't we sweet?"
There was about ten or twenty more clangs of blade before the stopped in mid air, not knowing who would continue next. They both panted and sweated.
"I am still the leader here, Lucinda ... I am on the good side of reality. Your game is still built on something that has to lose" Alex whispered, trying to convince Lucinda of what he was saying," and you know it !" He sneered. "You can't change that!“
"I don't have a boss. I am independent. I am part of the only independence in creation.”
“Your impatience misleads you to think that your ignorance makes you superior.”
“You speak from your own ignorance. I am superior.”
“Your boss is revenge, Lucinda” Alex screamed and was surprised to hear how loud and young his voice sounded. “You have got to lose. Revenge eats itself. It always has. I am here not because of me, but because of Belinda and my family.”
Lucinda smiled and crashed down her sword again. Alex just managed to raise his sword in time to stop it from burying itself in his neck. “Awww.” She mused to herself, looking heavenward and blinking toward the ceiling with her long eyelashes. “Real feelings. How sweet and honest you are, brother. I think I shall set you free.”
She lifted her sword again and crashed it down on Alexander’s weapon that had to gather all his strength to ward off this attack.
“My freedom is not dependant on your release. It comes from another place.”
Clang. Clang. Clang.
“Besides, Lucinda, no one ever loved you, so you have to ridicule it in order to make believe that it doesn’t matter.”
Clang-clang. Clang.
“You are very dependant indeed. So good and sweet and selfless, aren’t you now brother? Just like when you sent me away because you were too good to keep me in that prison.”
Clang. Clang-clang-clong.
“Admit it, Lucinda. You want to be loved. Everyone wants to be loved.”
Lucinda grew angry now. CLING-cling-CLANG.
“Well, if you know me so well, why haven’t you ever loved me?” There was spite here, but there were waves of hurt as well that made him feel sorry for her. “God damn it, Alex” she said, her voice fading and full of tears. “If you knew that’s what I needed,” she gritted, her eyes closing and her tears streaming down her face, “why did it take forty damn years for me to say that you care. Why did I have to invite you to hell before you started to care.”
Alexander gritted his teeth and attacked his sister again.
“I never wanted to hurt you, Lucinda.” Clang. “You know that.”
“Then why couldn’t you just love me?” Clang. There was anger in her attacks now. Spite and hurt feelings. “Why?”
“You should’ve come to me years ago with this, Lucinda.” Clang-clang-clang-clang-clang. “Not at the edge of a ravine. You should’ve told me this before you kidnapped my daughter. We could’ve sat down together and I could’ve given you your reward and you would’ve been happy.”
”You neglected me, threw me on a wagon like garbage.”
”You killed our own family, disgraced my best friend and burned down our house. I am sorry for overreacting.”
”You neglected me long before that, Alex.”
”When?”
”You don’t know, because you don’t look back far enough. You were always too preoccupied with yourself to notice if someone you disliked was suffering.”
”I didn’t dislike you at the start.”
”You hated me. For some reason you all hated me. So, I found my friends in the dark places.”
”You blame me for your own destruction?”
“Yes.”
Alex flung his sister against the wall. They dropped their swords and they went clanging down the wall. “You were Judas Iscariot, for crying out loud. That had nothing to do with me.”
“Judas saved Jesus, Alexander.”
”He had him crucified, if you recall.”
“Then why do you people pray to a cross?”
”Because it was first when he could prove himself to be stronger than that cross he was on, beating death for the sake of life, that Christianity was born. So the cross becomes a symbol of victory of death.”
“That is all I wanted to hear about my earlier self.”
Lucinda took her brother by the neck and pushed him out in the air and twisted her body so that she would find herself pushing him against the wall. Alex tried to escape her grip, shaking his head spastically, his face now a plethora of wrinkles in her black hands.
“Well, goody-goody” Lucinda went on. “What are you going to say to the demons below us, are they negotiable? Tell them about the flowers and the fleas.”
He punched her in the stomach and ducked under her arms and flew off as she followed him.
They stopped in mid-air. “That’s the birds and the bees, you idiot bitch!”
“Let’s talk about the wind and rain and the sun in the sky and the beautiful way that the moon rises.”
“Don’t start drifting off. We were talking about you.”
Lucinda smiled. “Me. How uninteresting. Let’s talk about you instead. How have you been lately? What are you doing these days? Any new hobbies? Sowing. Alex? Bird catching? How about eating wolves? Or better. Eating family.”
Alex had to laugh. “You do have a dark sense of humour, sister. I’ll grant you that much.”
She laughed along and it seemed that she was willing to do anything to share some joy with her brother. But why? She was out to kill him, was she not? “Thank you, Alexander!”
“You are hooked on your own blood craving. Why? Why have you always been marching towards your own death? You could join the kingdom of God."
She laughed. “You don’t know how silly that sounds.”
”What?”
”Kingdom of God. Me. Impossible.”
She picked up both swords and flew away toward him.
She smiled as she stopped.
“What will happen now, hmm?”
She saw his doubt and had to chuckle, if only to herself.
She threw him the sword.
“Let’s fight a little. Fight a little. Talk a little. Chip-chip. Talk a little more.”
She laughed again, this time from the gut. Her laugh echoed and sounded ominous.
Charon had rowed slowly and was just turning the corner as the laugh cam, animating one of Reficule’s heads to bark.
Good pointed a finger at Evil and for the first time now Evil grew afraid.
“You have no place in this life if you don’t want to turn back to where you redeemer still liveth!”
Lucinda gathered her strength.
“Redeemer still liveth. Hogwash. Who said I was the one that had to change, milky man?”
Alex attacked her now out of sheer spite.
“That was a low blow. I have fought too hard to even sneer at such remarks.”
”And yet you do. There’s fear in you yet.”
Clang-clang.
“In you, as well, I see.”
Clang-clang. Cling.
"And you led us both down because you would not give up trying to hate me ..."
Alexander shook his head. “I am responsible for your revenge?”
Lucinda nodded. “Had you not thought so much about why and what and where and how, had you just shrugged gone on, and sent someone to kill me, I never could’ve planned this masterpiece. Don’t fix what isn’t broken, Alex!”
Lucinda smiled, her fears now vanished. "So, hothead ... you are a fool. Revenge is my nourishment!" Lucinda corrected. "I want only my rights as a pioneer ... God saw that I was nourished by betraying me. My road will lead to victory.“
Good shook his head. "You betray yourself, you fool !"
Clang-clang. Clang-cling. Clang.
"We are