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She had studied the place as dispassionately as she could, trying for journalistic objectivity, but then, uneasy, she had hurried on with a little shudder. Definitely not her scene.
The third room she found amusing. A very tall, well-muscled man was dressed in a very pink, very lacy nightie, heels and a garter belt. He was admiring himself in a mirror. She excused herself, trying not to laugh as she departed.
But she didn’t feel actually scared until she opened the fourth door.
There was no reason for her fear, really. The room was empty and almost completely dark. Where candles and lamps had burned elsewhere, the only light here spilled in from the hall. When she first opened the door, she saw nothing at all. Then it seemed as if a pair of eyes, fire-colored eyes, stared at her from the deep recesses of the room.
As the light filtered in and her eyes adjusted, she realized it was just a man, sitting alone in the dark. Again she excused herself and hurried on. But even as she closed the door, it seemed as if the darkness still cloaked itself around her. The hall hadn’t changed, and yet it had. It had darkened. As if a giant shadow…
Don’t be silly, she told herself. The candles in the wall sconces were just burning down.
But it seemed as if something chilling had settled in her bones. People. She needed to find people. It didn’t matter what they were doing. He-men dressing in pink lace and frills, writhing bodies involved in an orgy…anyone.
She opened the next door. There was soft light. Comfortable chairs. One wall seemed to consist entirely of a giant television screen. From somewhere, music was playing.
She walked in. “Hello?”
No answer. For a moment she felt faint. Dizziness seized her. She closed her eyes. She couldn’t believe it, but she was afraid she was going to black out.
She fought the feeling, wondering just how strong her Bloody Mary had been. She opened her eyes. Somehow, things seemed slightly askew, as if something had changed in the few seconds when her eyes had been shut.
The sense of fear was still gripping her heart.
Run. Go!
She found herself sitting down. The TV came on, and the scene was arresting. A beautiful woman sat at a dressing table. She was in an elegant silk gown, brushing her hair. The room appeared Victorian, though the dressing table had art nouveau elements. There was a large wardrobe with the same elegant wood carvings, and a four-poster bed. Drapes floated in, wafting on the breeze with the same surreal whisper as the brush made, stroking through the woman’s long pale-gold hair.
As Mary watched, a shadow seemed to materialize at the window.
She was afraid. Very afraid. She wanted to run.
And yet she could not. It was as if she had frozen in her chair.
Even as the shadow appeared at the window, she sensed another shadow rising behind her. She could feel the darkness, could feel the chill, the ice, whispering along her spine, as if arctic breath were teasing at her back.
There was nothing there, she insisted to herself.
It was evil, cold, a whisper in black and red….
Whispers didn’t have colors….
This one did. Black, like an abyss. But touched by something…crimson.
Like blood.
Get up, Mary. Run! she warned herself.
But she couldn’t. She could only stare at the screen. The shadow had drifted in through the flowing drapes and was gaining greater form. Materializing.
Her eyes widened. She wasn’t watching TV, she realized. No movie was playing. She was looking through a one-way mirror. The scene was in the next room, and it was really happening.
It had to be a parlor trick, a magician’s act. The shadow was becoming a man. Materializing from the mist, like a vision from every tale told about the evils found in the Carpathian Mountains of Transylvania. It couldn’t be real. It was an act, performed by employees of the private club, something done with smoke and mirrors. Not real.
She would not watch anymore.
But she couldn’t move.
Her limbs were far too heavy. And cold…she was so cold. The chill had traveled from her nape to her spine, from her spine to her limbs. She was frozen as surely as any ice sculpture, her eyes glued to the tableau unfolding before her.
The mist had become a man. Tall, dark, sensual, with burning eyes. Slowly, step by step, every movement filled with…hunger, he approached the beauty at the dressing table….
Mary thought she couldn’t get any colder. But still, the sense of darkness and a fetid whispered breath of cold behind her became stronger and stronger.
Then it was as if she became aware of herself again. She looked down, and a frown creased her forehead.
She looked up. She wasn’t staring at a scene taking place in the next room.
She was staring at a mirror.
Somehow she was the blonde at the dressing table.
And there was a man in black behind her, a man with burning, demonic eyes, with breath as fetid as the grave, as cold as death itself….
From somewhere, she heard her name being called, breaking the chains of ice that held her.
And as the shadow-man smiled and approached, teeth—fangs—gleaming she began to scream.
“You say you have no time tonight,” the Australian complained. “All right, I accept that, but just tell me when. I’m rich. I’ll pay you anything. When may I hire your services?”
The dominatrix was only half listening. She could already have damned the man for distracting her until she lost sight of the American and his blond companion. She gave him her full attention for a minute. “I’m sorry. I never know how long I’ll keep the club open in any one place. I don’t plan that far ahead.”
“But—” he began in protest. He was tall, rich, handsome. He could probably have his pick of dozens of women. He’d come for the excitement, the difference, the ever so slightly naughty, the out of the ordinary.
If only he knew how lucky he was not to receive her attentions.
“You’ll have to excuse me. I have an appointment,” she said, then turned and hurried toward the stairs.
Then she heard it, very faintly. The sound of a scream.
“Wait!” the man protested, following her.
No more time to be polite.
“I said, excuse me.” She gave him a hard shove, and he fell back, smiling. She shook her head. Apparently she’d just made the man’s night.
She turned and sailed up the stairs.
Nancy had begun to grow uncomfortable.
It was one thing to play at being sexually daring, quite another to feel she was trapped. And alone.
She’d taken a seat on the couch next to a petite, ever-delicate woman of around her own age. But the hand that held hers now might have been made of iron. They had chatted casually at first about the beauty of the countryside and, the way Americans loved to visit more than any other nationality, because they were such legend hounds, not to mention the kooks who thought they were vampires, and, worse, the ones who had convinced themselves they actually needed to drink blood.
The woman told her that she had spent many years living in Amsterdam, had visited the States frequently, and was particularly fond of a village in the Ukraine. Nancy realized, as they whispered and the porn flick played, that her second drink was making her exceptionally drowsy. She wanted to move, to escape a situation that was becoming uncomfortably intimate, but she didn’t seem to have the will or the ability to get up. It occurred to her, in the back of her mind, that the woman had never even mentioned her name.
She’d held Nancy’s hand, smoothed back her hair. Nothing too forward at first, and Nancy had thought she could get the woman to talk about this place and what went on here, information she could write about later. Did drugs flow freely? She hadn’t been offered any. Then again, what the second Bloody Mary was doing to her was more than a little frightening. Her companion began touching her more intimately, and she didn’t seem to have the wherewithal to stop her. The woman’s fingers lingered on her knee, crept up under her skirt. The soft, hot brush of her breath seemed to caress Nancy’s throat and her earlobes, yet when Nancy looked, she seemed to be inches away.
“I…I…I’m not gay,” Nancy whispered.
Her companion laughed softly. “You think you need to be gay to experiment and explore?”
Speaking seemed to take a tremendous effort. “It’s just not…not what…I need to leave now.”
“Don’t run away now. I can show you a good time you’ll remember until your dying breath. Pleasure so exquisite—”
“I have to go.”
“Very well. Go, then.”
The woman wasn’t touching her at all, Nancy realized. She could have risen. There was nothing on earth stopping her.
Except…
Except everything was too heavy. The room was too heavy. The darkness was too heavy.
Her limbs were like boulders.
Fingers teased her hair and throat. A touch so light, so seductive, that she couldn’t help responding to it.
She had to get out. Had to rise, had to run.
“There, on the screen,” her companion said. “Watch. My friend is in this one.”
Nancy stared at the movie.
They had gone from a sex tape to a very different scene, something both far more beautiful and far more disturbing. There was a woman, her every movement languid, elegant. Gossamer fabric floated around the woman. Her hair seemed to swish across the screen like silk. The film was provocative in a way that the simple thrusting and panting that had preceded it hadn’t been. Nancy couldn’t stand, couldn’t protest. She could only watch. She felt tears forming in her eyes and she was suddenly scared.
She thought she heard a whisper, but her companion wasn’t talking, only watching the screen.
Still, Nancy was sure she heard words.
Come, sweetheart. Show me your throat. Let me taste all that life rushing through your veins….
Nancy heard her companion moan softly and turned to find the woman looking at her, so at ease, so pleased.
Like a cat with the canary already between its paws.
“Watch, now.”
And she did, because she had no other choice. Her heart was beating so loudly that she could hear its thunder. Somehow she knew that the woman at her side could hear it, too.
“There.” The woman pointed, and Nancy stared.
There was something dark at the right-hand corner of the screen. A mist, red and black…darkening, becoming…something….
A man. A low-brimmed hat hid his features. He was tall. He walked slowly up behind the woman.
The woman turned. Mary.
A soft gasp escaped Nancy. She tried to form a protest.
“Yes,” her companion hissed. “Yes, soon…”
Mary turned.
Saw the man…and screamed.
On the screen, a door burst open. Jeremy. The man looked up, his face shadowed except for his eyes, which glowed like fire. And he had fangs.
The man was undisturbed by Jeremy’s presence. He strode toward him, laughing.
“Yes,” the woman beside Nancy hissed again.
Nancy turned, and her eyes widened in horror. The woman had changed. She had grown. Her eyes were glowing with a pure fire. And her teeth…were no longer teeth.
They were fangs.
Terrified, sure she was hallucinating, Nancy forced her eyes back to the screen.
The man had reached Jeremy, still laughing. He threw his arm out, his hand connecting with Jeremy’s face.
Jeremy went flying, slamming back against the doorframe.
Nancy’s eyes darted back to the woman. She saw the fire in her eyes, felt her own terror rise. Watched the fangs, dripping with anticipation.
And she could do nothing but weep in her soul. The woman’s touch, her eyes…it was as if Nancy had been stung by a paralyzing spider. She could not prevent her own demise. She could not even cry out, only hear herself scream in terror inside her head.
Then there was a shattering sound. As if someone had burst into Mary’s room through a window. The sound changed everything. Or maybe the arrival of whatever…whoever…had caused the that sound. Nancy felt something stirring in her, a sense of herself, of strength. She stared at the screen. There was someone else in that room now…a presence. Broad-shouldered, tall, dominating. A man, and something about his appearance…
What?
Changed everything. Evened the playing field. Gave her…hope.
He was wearing a large, low-brimmed hat and a floor-length leather trench coat, like an old railway frock coat. And he carried what appeared to be a longbow.
The man moved with the speed of lightning, stringing his bow in a blur.
He stood still for a moment, a bastion against the insanity.
