Secret Sanctuary.
Amanda Stevens.
Prologue.
The sky had been clear all day, but as evening fell, storm clouds moved in from the sea, blocking fragile moonlight and deepening shadows across a bleak and eerie landscape. The wind had picked up, too, stirring dead leaves over the necropolis.
There was something in that wind. Elizabeth Douglas thought with a shiver. Something evil.
She glanced at the luminous dial on her watch. Almost midnight. Time for the ghosts to rise....
She and her friends huddled just inside the cemetery walls as they gazed in trepidation at the shadowy formation of headstones and crumbling mausoleums. Silhouetted against the darkness, marble angels stood with bowed heads and furled wings, celestial sentinels as cold and silent as the graves they watched over.
Elizabeth didn"t want to be here. She wanted to be anywhere but here. Spending the night in St. John"s Cemetery as part of a sorority initiation was just plain crazy, not to mention against the rules. They"d all be in big trouble if the school got wind of what they were doing.
"Do you think we"ll see Leary"s ghost tonight?" Claire Cavendish asked nervously. A pale, slender girl, she was even more skittish about the coming night than Elizabeth. Claire jumped as the heavy, iron gates clanged shut behind them in the wind. "They say he rises every five years."
"Oh, come on," Kat Ridgemont scoffed. "You don"t really believe all those stories about ghosts and witches, do you? That stuff was made up just to attract tourists. None of it"s true."
"What about those women who were murdered in Moriah"s Landing fifteen years ago?" Claire challenged. "Did they make that up, too?"
"Claire!" Brie Dudley warned in a low voice.
Claire clapped a hand to her mouth. "Oh, G.o.d, Kat. I"m so sorry. I forgot."
Kat shrugged. "It"s okay. I forget sometimes myself."
But Elizabeth didn"t think that was true. Kat"s mother was thought to be the first victim of a serial killer who had terrorized Moriah"s Landing fifteen years ago. Before his gruesome reign ended, three more young women had lost their lives, and Elizabeth knew that in spite of what Kat said, her mother"s death still haunted her. The killings haunted the entire town because the murderer had never been caught.
Gooseflesh p.r.i.c.kled the back of Elizabeth"s neck. She fervently wanted to believe they had nothing to fear tonighta"from the killer or from Leary"s ghosta" but she couldn"t seem to shake her disquiet.
But at fifteen, she was the baby of the group. The other girls were 18, and Elizabeth was always conscious of the age difference. She wasn"t about to be the first to suggest they turn back.
"Elizabeth?"
She blinked as the beam of someone"s flashlight caught her in the face.
"You okay?" Brie asked worriedly. "You"re being awfully quiet. You haven"t said a word since we got here."
Elizabeth shrugged. "I"ve just been thinking."
Kat glanced over her shoulder. "About McFarland Leary?" she teased.
"Who else?" Elizabeth tried to say lightly, but her tone sounded a bit defensive even to her.
"You believe in ghosts, too, don"t you?" Claire whispered beside her.
Elizabeth hesitated. She wasn"t sure what she believed in. She just knew there were things in this world that couldn"t be explained.
"Look!" Tasha Pierce said on a breathless whisper. "There it is!"
Tasha and Kat were in front, and they came to a stop as Tasha angled her light over Leary"s grave. Weather and time had worn smooth the face of the headstone, until all but a faint trace of carving remained. But they knew it was Leary"s grave.
Lightning flickered overhead as wind gusted through the cemetery. Shivering, Tasha tucked her blond hair inside her collar. "We"d better get started before the storm hits."
The girls dropped to their knees, forming a circle around the grave. Tasha placed her flashlight in the center, then removed an ornate wooden box from her backpack and held it up to the light.
"Inside are five scrolls," she intoned solemnly, her voice rising over the wind. "All but one are blank. Whosoever chooses the image of McFarland Leary must enter the haunted mausoleum. Alone."
Elizabeth was the last to draw. The others had waited for her, and now they all unrolled the tiny scrolls they"d each selected.
Beside her, Claire gave a horrified gasp. She held up the slip of paper so that everyone could see the etching of McFarland Leary.
Of all the girls. Claire was the least prepared to enter the haunted crypt alone. She was the most sensitive, the most easily frightened.
Elizabeth swallowed back her own fear. "I"ll go in your place, Claire."
"No," Brie said. "You"re the youngest, Elizabeth. I"m not letting you go anywhere alone. I"ll go."
"I will." Tasha wadded up her scroll and stuffed it in her pocket. "This graveyard is full of Pierces. They"ll protect one of their own."
"I say none of us go." Kat slammed the box shut and glanced around the circle. The wind whipped her black hair straight back from her face, making her look almost otherworldly. "They can"t make us do this. Hazing went out with the Dark Ages."
There were murmurs of a.s.sent all around, but Claire shook her head and got to her feet. "It"s not really hazing. Not the bad kind anyway. It"s a tradition, and besides, I don"t want to be the cause of any of us getting blackballed."
Kat scowled. "Who gives a flyinga"""
"I care," Claire said softly. "I can do this. I need to do this. I"ll be fine."
Ignoring their protests, she picked up her flashlight and headed toward the ancient, crumbling mausoleum. In the intermittent flickers of lightning, Elizabeth could see a broken cross silhouetted against the stormy sky.
Slowly, Claire climbed the stone steps, opened the door, and then, glancing back only once, stepped through the dark portal. For a moment, they could see her light playing off the walls, and then the door creaked shut behind her.
"I"m going in there with her." Kat started to get to her feet, but Tasha grabbed her hand.
"No, wait. Maybe this really is something she wants to do on her own. Besides, we"ll be right here if she needs us."
"Then we have to do our part," Brie said. "Are we all agreed?"
"Agreed," Elizabeth murmured, but guilt washed over her because as frightened as she was for Claire, a part of her was glad she wasn"t the one inside that crypt.
"Once we join hands, the circle must not be broken," Tasha warned. "Physically or mentally."
Elizabeth squeezed her eyes closed as the girls joined hands, forming a protective circle as they summoned the natural forces of earth, air, fire and water to guard Claire from the ghosts of McFarland Leary and any other evil creatures who might roam the night.
But for just a split second, Elizabeth"s mind wandered, and she thought about Cullen Ryan, a boy she"d had a crush on for ages. In trouble with the law, he"d dropped out of high school the year before and left town in the middle of the night. Elizabeth had no idea where he"d gone, or if she would ever see him again. But she prayed that wherever he was, he was safe, too.
And at the very moment when her concentration was weakened, when the spiritual circle was broken, thunder cracked overhead and a scream ripped through the darkness.
Claire!
The girls scrambled to their feet and raced toward the mausoleum. The door was stuck at first, but Kat managed to shove it open. The beam of her flashlight chased away shadows and shimmered off cobwebs suspended from the ornate ceiling. The scent of death and decay permeated the air, but there was no sign of Claire.
Elizabeth"s heart started to pound with a terrible fear, a horrible premonition. She knew what had happened. While she"d been thinking about Cullen, the protective circle had been broken. The evil had been allowed in, and now Claire was gone.
And it was all Elizabeth"s fault.
Chapter One.
Five years later...
Elizabeth peered through her rain-spattered windshield as she wended her way around the curving drive toward the lighted mansion. February-bare oaks reached skeletal arms across the narrow lane, entwining with one another to form a natural arbor through which only thin tendrils of light could creep. The night was very dark.
Comprising well over a hundred acres of landscaped grounds, the Pierce compounda"hidden from prying eyes by eight-foot, ivy-covered stone walls and thick stands of evergreensa"was a masterpiece of design and privacy. The focal point was a lavish brick colonial owned by William and Maureen Pierce, the town"s most prominent citizens.
A Pierce ancestor had founded Moriah"s Landing in 1652, and the descendants had lived there ever since. The family remained active in many areas, most notably politics and science. Rumor had it that William and Maureen"s lavish masquerade ball tonight was not only to continue the celebration that had begun on New Year"s Eve to commemorate the 350th anniversary of the town"s founding, but to help launch their eldest son"s first political campaign.
Elizabeth liked Drew Pierce well enough and she thought he"d make a fine mayor, especially considering she didn"t particularly care for the current one, Fredrick Thane. But in spite of the gossip regarding Drew and the potential for fireworks when Mayor Thane made his appearance at the ball, Elizabeth wasn"t looking forward to this night. She"d never been particularly adept at socializing, and a masked ball was a little out of her league.
But then, disguising herself as someone other than who she truly was might not be such a bad thing, she decided. A seventeenth-century n.o.blewoman, dressed to kill in a lavish gold ball gown with a plunging neckline, might know how to seize the momenta" should one present itselfa"as Elizabeth Douglas never had.
She tugged at that neckline, discomfited by the amount of cleavage showing. Her new WonderBra, she decided, was truly that.
A bolt of lightning temporarily blinded her, and she slowed the car. Dark, roiling clouds hung low on the horizon, and over the sound of her car engine, she could hear the ominous rumble of thunder.
Earlier, when the first raindrops had pelted the roof of her cozy cottage, she"d hurried over to the window to stare out, thinking with a fatalistic shrug that, naturally, it would storm tonight. It always stormed in Moriah"s Landing on momentous occasionsa"such as, she"d been told, on the night twenty years ago when Kat Ridgemont"s mother had been murdered. And fifteen years later, on the night Claire Cavendish had vanished from the old haunted mausoleum.
Claire had been found in the cemetery several days later, her body tortured, her mind so tormented she hadn"t been able to tell anyone what had happened to her. She"d resided ever since in a mental hospital a hundred miles west of Moriah"s Landing, and every time Elizabeth drove up to visit her friend, she was stricken with guilt.
Which wasn"t rational, she knew. There was nothing she could have done to save Claire that night. She and the other girls had never even seen who took Claire. To this day, the authorities still didn"t know how the a.s.sailant had managed to get inside that mausoleum, subdue Claire and carry her off without anyone having seen anything.
At first, the girls had been under a cloud of suspiciona"a sorority initiation ceremony gone terribly awry. But they were all so distraught, so terrified that the police had finally believed their wild tale.
To think that any of them would have done such a horrible thing to poor Claire....
Rounding a sharp curve. Elizabeth was momentarily facing eastward, and in the distance, she caught a glimpse of the Bluffs, a towering stone castle perched on the edge of a steep cliff that fell sharply away to the sea. It was there, on the jagged rocks below the castle, that Tasha Pierce had met with a horrible fate of her own, only one month after Claire had been found. It had been storming that night, too.
First Claire and then Tasha.
There were only three of them left. Elizabeth thought. She, Kat and Brie. And poor Brie hadn"t exactly led a charmed life. She"d had to drop out of college after becoming pregnant, and she"d struggled ever since to take care of her fatherless child and her ill mother.
Elizabeth frowned. Sometimes she couldn"t help wondering if they"d unleashed something terrible that night. Something evil. Sometimes she wondered if she and Kat would be next.
But then, Kat had already suffered. Her mother had been murdered when Kat was only three years old, and the killer had never been apprehended.
That left only Elizabeth.
As lightning fired the eastern sky, the castle came into sharp relief for just a split second. It was miles away, but Elizabeth could have sworn she saw a dark figure lurking on one of the turrets.
David Bryson, she thought with a shiver. The man who might or might not have killed her friend, Tasha.
Pulling up in front of the Pierce mansion, Elizabeth waited as two valets came rushing toward the car to meet her. One carried an umbrella which he used to shield her from the rain when she stepped outside, and the other climbed behind the wheel to park her new Audi. Elizabeth winced as the tires squealed against the wet pavement, but to her credit, she didn"t look back. Instead, she wrapped her velvet cloak more tightly around her as she hurried up the granite steps.
As if of their own accord, the ma.s.sive oak doors swung open, and Elizabeth stepped inside. Her cloak was removed from her shoulders, and she took a moment to arrange the shimmering folds of her gown. When she glanced up, she caught her breath.
She"d been to the mansion before, but it had been a long time ago. before Tasha"s death, and Elizabeth had forgotten the elegance of the place, the sheer opulence.
A set of inlaid marble steps led down to an immense, sunken hall with a chessboard floor of black and white. Directly across the foyer, a magnificent staircase was crowned by a ten-foot cathedral window through which sunshine would pour in the daytime. Tonight, however, lightning flickered through dark clouds as rain slashed against the gla.s.s.
Below the window, the staircase split, curving gracefully on either side of the landing to a s.p.a.cious gallery, brilliantly illuminated by crystal chandeliers and wall sconces that danced like candlelight.
To the left of the foyer, another set of double doors opened into a ballroom, and Elizabeth glimpsed the dazzling swish of costumes as swaying bodies seemed to float over the dance floor.
It was like stepping back in time. The women were adorned in glittering jewels and swirling silk ball gowns from another era, another century, while the men were festooned in everything from military uniforms to brocade breeches and powdered wigs.
And the flowers! Every hothouse from Moriah"s Landing to Boston must have been emptied to accommodate such glorious arrangements, most of them done in red and white in honor of St. Valentine"s Day. although the celebration had very little to do with the holiday. Red and pink cyclamens hovered like b.u.t.terflies around a colored fountain that had been set up near the buffet tables, and heart-shaped candles floated in the water among fragrant rose petals and gardenia blossoms.
A more romantic setting, Elizabeth couldn"t imagine, and here she was, dateless as usual.
As she lingered in the hall, reluctant to join the throng, a woman dressed in a gorgeous blue gown and an elaborate mask of peac.o.c.k feathers drifted out of the ballroom toward her. The woman lowered the mask, and Elizabeth smiled, happy to see a friendly face.
Although she didn"t know Rebecca Smith all that well, the two had hit it off when Elizabeth had gone into Threads, a design shop in town that Becca managed, looking for her costume. Becca had gently but firmly steered her away from the more austere designs that Elizabeth had automatically gravitated to and talked her into a golden fantasy concoction with a tight-fitting bodice that laced up the back and a skirt that swirled about her ankles when she walked.
Elizabeth raised her own swan-like mask to her face and pirouetted for Becca. "Well," she said. "How do I look?"
"Breathtaking," a male voice said behind her.
Elizabeth whirled, her gaze going immediately to the man who stood at the top of the entryway steps. He"d just come in from the rain, and the shoulders of his black cape glistened with moisture. He shrugged out of the heavy mantle, handing it to the butler without a glance, his gaze never wavering from the two women who stood below him in the foyer. He was dressed all in black, like a phantom, and the golden mask that covered one side of his face was at once hideous and beautiful.
As he slowly descended the stairs, Elizabeth had to fight the urge to step back from him. There was something about him...
"My name is Lucian LeCroix," he said in a voice as dark and liquid as the night. Before Elizabeth had time to catch her breath, he took her hand and lifted it to his lips.
"Pr-professor LeCroix?" she finally managed to stammer.