Someone was following me.
I slowed my pace slightly, keeping to the shadows, moving in utter silence.
My mind open, probing, tracking the curious fool. Only one.
No threat to me.
I never should've done it; taunted them the way I did. I knew better, and to this day I've no idea what possessed me to tell them my name, watch them go pale, and then walk away. I'd frightened the fools, deliberately frightened them. But it was no less than they deserved.
They'd built themselves up a hefty debt over the generations. Turning on one of their own the way they'd turned on me so long ago.
Murdering Dante. I paused along the roadside where the heather bloomed its last and its scent was heavy in the air, lowered my head as the pain swept over me along with the autumn wind. They'd surrounded the castle, and brutally put their torches to our home, our sanctuary, forcing us to run for our lives. But we'd only found the rising sun awaiting our desperate flight. Its golden rays, so beautiful, so deadly. I remember the searing, the blistering of my flesh, the horror that surged within me as I saw thin tendrils of smoke rising up from my own body. I'd been the lucky one that cold morn. By burrowing deep into a haystack in a field--a field I'd once worked at my father's side--I found shelter. But for Dante. knew him to be dead. For I never saw him again after that day, and I've no doubt he'd have contacted me somehow if he'd survived.
Lifting my head, I sent my senses out, realizing that in the flood of memories this place evoked, I'd lost track of my follower. But the stalker had stopped as well, and stood now several yards away, just watching, and thinking herself protected by the darkness. I almost smiled at her innocence, turned, and began walking again, wondering how far her courage would take her.
I'd left this place after the attack. Traveled, saw the world, lived in so many places I barely remember them all. But of people, of others like myself and mortals the same, I saw little. I can list the name of every person I've ever had words with in the past two hundred years, and that's how few they've been.
Dante drilled it into me, again and again.
"Trust no one, Donovan. No one. And most especially, no mortal."
I could hear the sea in the distance now, and the road ran away from the farmers' fields and began to slope sharply upward, among rises too steep, and far too rocky, to be tilled. She was still following.
So long as we'd lived by Dante's words, we'd been fine. A lonely life, it was. But safe, peaceful. Satisfying in so many other ways.
The time we had, endless time--or so we believed then--to learn of music and art, to read and to write, to experience and to savor the things our mortal lifetimes would never have given us time to know.
But then Dante had fallen in love, and it had all ended. He'd told the girl the truth, and it seemed to me she must have run all the way back to that ignorant mass of villagers, so eager was she to tell our secret and see us destroyed.
Dante had been right from the start. Trust no one, and particularly, no mortal.
As I crested the hill, the wind blew in from the sea more fiercely, and I loved the feel of it. My wind, my sea. So familiar despite the bitterness I'd known here. I sat down amid a small outcropping of boulders along the roadside. not because I was tired. The castle towered before me, no sign of the fire that had nearly killed me a century ago. Dante had willed the place to me, and I'd had it restored, or partially so. I kept it up, always, ready for his return. I'd long ago given up hope he'd ever come back . but somehow I couldn't let go of this place.
My good friend was gone, and I was alone in the world. There was no room to doubt that. And yet some foolish sentimental urge had drawn me back here to the very place where he'd been brutally murdered.
Back to this place, to the castle, to my ancestral home--to her. I'd been drawn to see her again, to assure myself she was still safe and well.
She was nearly upon me now, the wind whipping her hair into wild chaos. Her eyes narrowing as she squinted into the darkness, trying to see where I'd gone. She thought she was stepping lightly, but I heard every footfall. Not that it would have mattered. She had a scent about her, one that was sharply different from the others--from any other mortal I'd encountered. Dante had told me that some did, and he'd told me what it meant.
Among other things, vital things, it meant that I was forbidden to harm her. By whose decree, I never knew. Never asked. Besides, I never was much for rules. But I couldn't have harmed her if I'd tried.
She came closer. Her long skirt snapped in the sea wind, whipping her ankles. Her blouse. sinfully snug-fitting, and molding to her breasts as if trying to squeeze them. She stood there a moment, so close I could feel her there. And after a fruitless search for me, she lowered her head in defeat.
But still she remained, letting the wind buffet her body, and I do believe she was thoroughly enjoying its vicious embrace. But then she turned to go.
I stood slowly, silently.
"Are you looking for someone?" She sucked in a loud, violent gasp, spinning toward me, her hands flying to her chest as if to keep her heart from leaping out. Then she paused, blinking at me in the darkness, drawing several open mouthed breaths.
"Lordy, you near scared the life out of me!" I smiled then. Her accent was no longer as pronounced as it used to be, and I knew that was because she'd been away for a time. But it remained enchanting to me. My own had faded until it was barely discernible anymore.
"I was beginning to think," I told her, "that nothing frightened you."
She gave a tilt of her head and a shrug.
"Well, it takes a good deal more than an old folktale and a stranger showin' up in the village, claimin' to be a ghost."
"I never claimed to be a ghost."
"You said you were Donovan O'Roark."
"Because I am."
She narrowed her emerald eyes on me. She had witch's eyes, Rachel Sullivan did.
"Can you prove it?"
My gaze dipped to the pale, slender column of her throat, and impulsively, I put my fingers there and felt the blood churning beneath her skin.
"I could..."
Her eyes sparkled. It was true, nothing frightened her. She smiled at me, and it took my breath away.
"Going' to bite my neck, are you?" she asked.
"If I did, would you run screaming to the villagers, and return with a mob bent on doing me in?"
Tipping her head back, she laughed softly, a deep husky sound. Her neck. so close, so smooth. She brought her gaze level with mine, obviously amused.
"I'd be more likely to bite you back, Donovan O'Roark, and don't you forget it." I could say nothing. She robbed me of words, of the power of speech, of coherent thought, with that flippant reply.
"But the proof I had in mind," she went on, "was running more along the lines of paperwork. A driver's license, you know, or something of that sort."
Swallowing hard, I retrieved my wallet from my back pocket, extracted my identification and showed it to her. A man in my position did well to keep things such as these up-to-date, and there were many ways of doing so, none too complex. She took it, her fingers brushing mine, perhaps deliberately.
She had to squint and finally pulled a cigarette lighter from her deep pocket and, turning her back to the wind, used it to see by.
Nodding sagely, she handed it back to me.
"So you really are a descendant--named for your most infamous ancestor, no less." She bit her lower lip.
"Is this your first visit to Dunkinny, then?" She asked it as if trying to hide the question's importance to her. I thought it best not to answer.
"Why were you following me, Rachel--it is Rachel, isn't it?"
"Indeed, Rachel Sullivan, with a few notorious ancestors of my own."
The back of my neck prickled to life at the mention of her ancestors.
Treacherous women, women I'd known too well. She went on.
"The Sullivan women are somewhat known for scandals. Perhaps I ought to warn you of that right off.
"Twas one of my own who four generations ago screamed accusations against Lord Dante, and got him killed, or so the legends have it."
It was true, Laura Sullivan had been her name. My throat went dry.
"An' they say another Sullivan woman was promised to marry Donovan O'Roark himself--the first one, that is. But when he rose from his coffin, she cried for his blood."
"Yes," I said softly, hearing her shrill voice again in my mind, shouting, "Kill it! Kill it before it destroys us all!" "Alicia," I muttered.
"Really? I never heard her given name before."
I only shrugged.
"So have you come to pick up where your forebears left off, Rachel? To destroy me?"
She slipped her arm through mine, and turned us toward the castle, walking slowly.
"You're a funny man, Donovan. But you know as well as I those are only silly tales. No truth to 'em, or at least, so little 'tis barely recognizable anymore. No, I have a far different mission.
But I'll be needin' your help. "
"My help?" She had my curiosity piqued. And yet I feared her. It was too uncanny to be mere coincidence, and a shiver worked up my spine as I wondered if perhaps it was the destiny of the Sullivan women to destroy me--if they'd keep coming, generation after generation of them-- until they saw the task completed.
And now I was thinking as foolishly and superstitiously as my people.
"Tell me of this mission, then. What is it?"
She looked up at me and smiled, eyes wide and green as the sea, full of innocence and mischief like the eyes of the child I remembered.
"I've come to learn all your secrets, Donovan. All the secrets of Castle Dante, and the truth behind the legend."
My heart tripped to a stop in my chest. My voice hoarse, I said, "If I told you all of that, pretty Rachel, I'm afraid I'd have to kill you."
Pressing closer to my side, clapping her hand to my arm and leaning her head on my shoulder, she laughed. A husky, deep sound, genuine amusement ringing in its voice.
"I do love a man with a sense of humor," she said.
"I can tell we're going to get along, Donovan. Why, we'll be best friends 'fore we're done."
She was warm at my side, and far too close to me. And I relished her nearness. for the lack of human companionship wears a man down over the years.
She was here to destroy me. I had no doubt of that. And yet I couldn't bring myself to send her away. She couldn't force me to tell her anything, I told myself. She couldn't learn anything I didn't wish her to know. What harm would it do to let her accompany me to the castle?
Inside me, I heard Dante's dire warnings: Don't do it, Donovan. Don't spend another second with her. She's dangerous! She's a Sullivan, dammit. Send her away, or kill her now and be done with it. We stopped, the wind blocked now by the towering mass of the castle itself. Before us two massive doors made of broad beams, and held together by black iron bands, stood like sentries awaiting the password.
"Ever since I was a little girl, I've wanted to see inside this castle," she said, so softly it was as if she were that little girl again, right now.
"But my parents forbade it, and filled my head with so many foolish old tales that for a time I was frightened to death of sneaking up here the way the older ones did."
"For a time?"
"Aye. Later I changed my mind. He was no monster, the man who lived here.
I crept around this place often, once I'd made up my mind to that. So childish, hopin' for a glimpse of a man long dead."
"But you didn't go inside?"
"I couldn't. I always felt..." She drew a deep breath, let it out all at once.
"You'll laugh at me."
"No," I said.
"I won't. Tell me."
She looked up, right into my eyes, and hers were honest, sincere, beautiful.
"I always thought this place seemed... sacred, somehow.
And. and it was my own blood kin that denied it, ruined it. So to me, my setting foot inside would have been. a sacrilege. " " And now? "
She eyed the castle doors, shivered a little.
"Maybe I was wrong.
Maybe I'm the one who'll make it all right again, somehow. " She lowered her head, sighing.
"I'm different from the others, you know."
"Yes, I know."
"They tell the tale, again and again, and they all shudder with fear of the creatures they claim lived here once." She placed a palm against the chiseled stone, closed her eyes.
"But not me. The first time I heard the tale I was all of three years old, and I cried. For hours, no one could comfort me. To me, it wasn't a horror story, it was a tragedy. One man, rising from the dead only to be driven out of the village by his own family. Another, murdered only because he dared to love." She met my eyes and smiled.
"To tell you the truth, back when I was still child enough to believe in the old tales, I thought of your ancestor as... as a friend. My own guardian angel."
"And now?" I asked her.
"And now I'm an adult, who knows better than to believe in fairy tales. But it does seem like Providence that you're here now. Just when I've returned home from the States. Just when I'm planning to write my thesis based on the legend, its sources, and its effects on the community to this day.
Just when I'm wondering how I'll ever learn all I I need to know about Castle Dante and the original Donovan O'Roark--here you are. I think it's a sign.
" She was enchanting me, mesmerizing me. Both with her scent, and with her beauty, but mostly with that enthusiasm I and charm and slightly skewed view of the universe. J She had the belladonna antigen, and that was part of the ; attraction--had always been drawing me to her, urging me \ to watch over her. I could smell it in her blood, could sense it there. Every immortal had that antigen before they received the dark gift. If not, they wouldn't trans- form ... they'd simply die. Dante had told me these things, and he'd warned me as well of the allure mortals with the antigen had for us... the attraction. And it was said to run both ways.
I knew all this. But knowing it did nothing to dampen its effect on me. As a child she'd been harmless, no threat to me at all, just a little girl in need of a protector. But now. She stared up at me from emerald green eyes.
"Will you take me inside, Donovan? With you fulfill my childhood dreams and show me your castle?"
And like a man held prisoner by a Gypsy enchantress's spell, I nodded, searched for my key, and opened my haven up to my enemy.
