No.
There was just a hint, a whiff, of something lingering in the air like the remnants of a fire, long doused, but still not dissipated.
He approached the caretaker"s cottage and looked through a window. He saw only the form of a man, sleeping soundly.
He returned to the house and up the stairs. Before retreating to his bed, he stepped onto the balcony and peered into her room again.
She slept. Again he thought of an angel. It was the color of her hair, the play of light and shadow, he thought.
She possessed not only beauty but vulnerability, evoking every protective instinct within his body.
He was tempted, beyond sanity and reason, to go to her.
In her sleep, a frown suddenly creased her brow; she tossed and turned. The temptation to go to her grew to sweeping proportions. He longed to ease whatever so furrowed her brow, to sweep her up, hold her safe against... Against all evil.
The frown faded; she seemed to sleep in peace again.
He mentally gave himself a shake.
He had only met her that night, he reminded himself irritably. He hadn"t come here to succ.u.mb to a sudden, startling-even overwhelming-attraction.
He was a professor; a scholar. A man who studied ancient fears and superst.i.tions, human belief in an intangible battle between good and evil, older than time.
He had come for whatever it was that had created the fading miasma in the night.
He had followed it here.
He gritted his teeth. If it was here. If only there were something real and concrete, something palpable, some proof....
He forced himself to turn away and return to his room.
He had the sense that whatever had awakened him was only the beginning.
Dreams haunted her. Strange dreams of a different time and place.
In the bowels of a castle, she moved, certain of what she would find. And they were there, just as she had suspected, as she had known. They wore the elegant trappings that were a part of their lives; sweeping gowns of jeweled satin and velvet.
But the finery tonight was black.
Some wore masks, hiding their ident.i.ties even from those who consorted with them.
Some played as if at a game, seeking love potions, powers to divert their enemies, strength to rise in life, to acquire greater riches.
The potions were often poison, and the game was deadly, for there were those who had died, those who would die in future. It had not been easy to find the root of these goings-on, for those who acted in this theater of the bizarre protected their sources.
That night, there was an altar. The game being played had nothing to do with the old pagan beliefs in the power of the earth and sky, the G.o.ds and G.o.ddesses of water or the harvest. The woman leading the pageant was referred to as a witch, but what she practiced was pure Satanism.
There was a babe on the altar, drugged into silence. As the witch murmured over it and cried out that she offered the greatest sacrifice to her dark lord, an alarm sounded.
It began with a clang of steel. The king"s armed men had discovered the lair.
Those who had bowed down before the rite of darkness screamed and tried to flee, not so easy a task, for in their secret catacomb, they had set themselves up to be trapped. She backed away, hiding, watching....
Blood was spilled. There was a melee, a cacophony of shrieks, shouts, warnings, the sound of steel against steel.
There was the innocent babe, now screaming and crying upon the altar.Did she dare?
Her discovery of this place deep in the earth, beneath ancient stone, had been perfect for all she needed. Perfect for escape.
But the child. She had not counted on the child!
There was no choice.
She ran toward the child, held it in her arms....
The nightmare scene that played out behind her eyes caused Jessica to twist and turn, to fight to awaken. The vision began to fade...
Then returned.
But now she was on horseback, racing across the country.
Her pursuers followed. It was as she had intended; it was what she had known she must do. And still...
What had come before had been worse. Far worse. And what she had done before had cast her into far greater danger.
"Die!" someone screamed from behind her.
No! She awoke completely, bolting up into a sitting position.
Jessica looked around, shaking. She rose, held still for a minute, listening. What had caused such a torment to come to her in the night, a horrible dream so real that it had seemed as if she could have reached out and touched the people in it?
The house was quiet.
She walked out on the balcony, deeply disturbed.
The sky remained red. Tense, she waited. And waited.
But there was nothing. Still, she felt as if something had been there....
At last she returned to her bed, where she lay awake a long time. It was her lodger, she thought, suddenly irritated. The man talked about history as if he had been there. It was all his is fault. He had sent her dreams skidding back bizarrely in time.
He should have been a football player, not a scholar, she thought. A quarterback, calling the shots and knocking other players out of his way as he raced down the field to make the touchdown himself.
She groaned aloud.
He was right next door, such a short distance away. She closed her eyes, and she didn"t dream, but in her mind"s eye she saw herself simply walking out her door, opening his, rousing him from sleep.
Talk about nightmares. She groaned and buried her face in her pillow.
Bryan came down so early that he thought he would have to wander the streets to find coffee, but he found the kitchen already occupied and in full swing. Stacey was standing by the coffeemaker, waiting with her cup in hand. There was a man sitting on one of the stools by the center butcher-block table, reading the paper; he was almost skeletally thin, but he had a wiry strength. His face was weathered and brown, his hair a bit s.h.a.ggy. He wore jeans and a T-shirt and looked up, an expression of alarm on his face, as Bryan walked in.
"h.e.l.lo," Bryan said, casually stepping forward and offering a hand. "Bryan MacAllistair."
"Uh..." The man looked at Stacey, as if seeking her help, then turned to Bryan. "h.e.l.lo. I"m Gareth."
Nodding, Bryan released the man"s hand. He knew the other man was still watching him suspiciously as he walked over to the counter, helped himself to a mug and greeted Stacey. "Good morning. I wasn"t actually expecting to find anyone up."
"Gareth and I are early birds. Jessica only wakes early on demand," she said lightly. "Ah, coffee"s done." She picked up the pot and offered it to him.
"You first. We academics are good at pouring our own coffee."
She flushed slightly. "You"re our only lodger at the moment. I can whip up breakfast whenever you want. Actually, I can whip up whatever you want."
"Now there"s an invitation. Actually, I thought I"d take a walk-it"s not often you get the streets to yourself here. And you don"t have to hang around waiting to cook for me if you"ve got things to do."
"I"m just going to be hanging around the house for a while. Not a problem."
"Thanks, but don"t worry about me." He finished his coffee and set down his cup. "That was great. The best I"ve had in New Orleans. Gareth, nice to meet you. I"ll see you both later."
He knew they both watched him go.
And he knew they started talking about him the minute he was gone.
It was late afternoon by the time Jessica rose and got going for the day. Still, it disturbed her to notice how dark the sky had become by the time she reached the hospital. And that shade of red.
In the hospital parking lot, she just stood looking up for a moment and found herself growing angry with herself. Staring at the sky changed nothing.
She strode to the reception desk and asked for Mary"s room. A friendly nurse gave her directions, and after buying a fresh bouquet of flowers in a pink vase, she made her way to the proper section of the hospital. She saw that Jeremy was there, head bowed, sprawled in a chair across from the foot of the bed. He had obviously been keeping watch for a long time. His exhaustion was evident.
"Hey," Jessica said softly.
He started and looked up. A smile crossed his weary features. "Hey."
"How"s she doing?" Jessica asked.
He shook his head. "No change. But I think her color is a little bit better. Her dad just made her mom leave for a while. She opens her eyes sometimes. She"s breathing. She doesn"t talk, doesn"t seem to hear...and doesn"t react when someone touches her. I don"t think she feels anything."
"Well," Jessica murmured, setting her vase of flowers on the bedside table and studying the girl. She looked like a fairy princess, doomed to sleep for a hundred years, beautiful, silent, pale. "What do the doctors say?" she asked Jeremy. He shrugged, then indicated the IV. "She was scratched up some...I guess we all were, after that night. But they keep giving her blood. Her counts are all off, and they can"t figure out why."
"How are her folks doing?"
"Better." Jeremy said. "Her brother and her two sisters come with her mom, and that seems to help keep her calm. Her father keeps everything low key." He looked directly at Jessica at last and offered a rueful smile. "No one believes me."
"About what?"
He laughed hollowly. "She was bitten by a vampire. A real one. Not some doped-out kid who thinks he"s a vampire."
Jessica made a pretense of straightening Mary"s covers, carefully moving the girl"s head as she did so.
"You don"t have to hide what you"re doing from me," Jeremy said with a sigh. "There are puncture marks on her neck. The doctors insist they"re stab wounds from the thorn bushes around the castle."
"I see," Jessica murmured.
And she did. There were puncture marks on Mary"s neck.
"And she doesn"t talk?" Jessica asked.
"Not yet, not that I know of."
"And what do the doctors say about that?"
"Shock."
Jessica straightened the girl"s hair and saw a silver cross around her neck.
She took a seat beside Jeremy, reached over and squeezed his hand. "I saw you made an appointment with me."
He nodded. Then he looked at her, and a dry and weary grin twisted his mouth. "You may not believe me, but you"ll listen to me.
And if I talk to you and go over the entire story once again, maybe something-somewhere, somehow-will make sense to me."
"I"m very happy to see you, you know that."
"What if she dies?" he demanded suddenly, his voice a whisper.
And there was something more than just the dreaded pain for the loss of a friend that lurked behind the anguish in his question.
"Let"s not think that way," Jessica said.
"I can"t help it," he murmured.
She hesitated. "Jeremy, you haven"t been contacted by anyone who had anything to do with the party at the castle, have you?"
He stared at her, confused. "Contacted? h.e.l.l, no. I wasn"t the one who got the invitation in the first place. Mary got it from some girl on the street. Why?"
"No reason. I"m just hoping you can put everything that happened behind you. What about Nancy? Have you seen her? How is she?"
"All right. She"s doing all right," Jeremy said, his eyes falling dully on Mary again. "She comes in and sits with Mary sometimes." He shook his head. "You don"t understand. Mary could be...well, she could be careless of other people sometimes, but not out of malice. She just loved life. She wanted everything. She wanted to make a mark, I guess you"d say," he finished lamely. "But she wasn"t mean. She wasn"t...wasn"t evil."
"No one"s suggested that she is," Jessica said firmly.
"I"m so afraid." Jeremy said softly.