Beauty and the Beast by Laurel Cain Haws Read Free Book Online Page A

by his father on the pipes, he could distinguish precisely where tapping originated, what type of pipe was being used, and then separate and relay simultaneous messages coming in, so they all reached their intended destination. It was hard, demanding work, and he loved it. He was close to the same age as Vincent, and the two had grown up together like siblings.
    “Pascal, it is so rarely that we see you anywhere but in the pipe-monitoring chamber! Who is manning the pipes now?” Vincent asked.
    “I left Zach in charge. He has learned the code very quickly, and I think he enjoys it almost as much as I do. I just couldn’t resist seeing you get this. Cullen had been working on it ever since we learned that you had a baby with Catherine and were searching for him. Well, this is about as long as I can stand being away from those pipes, so I’m going to head back there now.” Pascal strode toward the door.
    “Good-bye, Pascal,” Vincent and Diana spoke simultaneously and laughed. “Thank you for helping Cullen to bring this to us,” Vincent said as he walked with Pascal to the doorway.
    After Pascal disappeared down the passageway,
    Vincent returned and sat on his bed, lying back against his pillows. Diana watched him take a beautiful white ceramic rose out of the suede pouch around his neck.
    She stopped humming. “Vincent that is lovely. Where did you get it?”
    “Catherine gave this to me when we celebrated the first anniversary of when I found her. She told me that it had been given to her by her mother when she was little to comfort her whenever she was sad or afraid. She made this pouch necklace herself for it, so I could wear it and have something of hers always near me.”
    He picked up Catherine’s crystal necklace from around the conk shell and handed it to Diana to see. It was a two-inch long pillar-shaped crystal with unique angles, coming to a point on the lower end, securely held at the upper end by a finely crafted gold ring with teeth, attached to a delicate gold chain. “I brought the crystal back from the Crystal Cavern far below here, and Mouse shaped it, set it, and made the gold chain for it. That was my anniversary gift to Catherine. I wanted her to have something from our world, and she never took it off. I found it after her death, in the cave where she pulled me back from madness, after Paracelsus kidnapped Father and deceived me. She must have lost it in the struggle with me.” Vincent took the necklace back from Diana, putting it back around the conk shell, and lay back again on his bed as Diana resumed humming. He fell asleep to her humming and the steady soft tapping on the pipes of community members talking with one another in other parts of the tunnels, with the rose still in his hand.
    As she hummed to Little Jacob in her arms, Diana’s mind went back over the recent terrifying events, events which nearly claimed the life of Vincent’s child. With one emphatic word, “VINCENTF she had managed to stop him from tearing limb-from-limb the man, Gabriel, who was responsible for Catherine’s death, and who was about to snuff the life out of his baby as well. Vincent had been vastly relieved to see that Diana was alive, because Gabriel had lied and had told him she had been killed on his orders by his men. She had wanted to spare Vincent further psychological devastation which killing Gabriel would have caused.
    Gabriel was a master manipulator, and had managed
    to goad Elliott Burch, a wealthy architect and real estate developer, into betraying Vincent. Elliott had been in love with Catherine from the moment he first laid eyes on her. Vincent had revealed himself to Elliott after Catherine’s death, in a desperate attempt to find his baby, and Elliott had agreed to help him. In a moment of jealousy over Catherine’s love for Vincent, and in his own greedy desire to have his empire restored by the very man who had destroyed it, Elliott had succumbed to his human weaknesses. He had led