Beyond The Pale Part 14

"Or we can"-he paused for dramatic effect-"look for a Holiday Inn or Motel 6."

"I think that's a better idea," I said very softly. I looked over at him and down at his lap. I could see clearly that he was hard and ready. "I guess the sooner the better."

We found a Holiday Inn at the next exit. Darius seemed to know the drill all too well. He pulled up in front of the office, went in, and was back with the room "key"-they're just cards these days-in under five minutes. We opened the door, pushed into the room, and didn't bother turning on the light. Enough illumination from the lamps in the parking lot outside penetrated through the curtains, casting everything in a soft gray glow. Darius double-locked the door, slipped on the chain lock, and we began pulling off our clothes. So much for our mutual resolution to abstain. I had been love-starved for so long that my resistance was not just weak; it was nonexistent.

Our clothes dropped hastily on the floor at our feet, we stood there naked, facing each other. We stepped in to each other till our bodies gently met with the exquisite sensation of two lovers touching full-length, face-to-face, breast to chest, belly to belly, skin to skin. His arms pulled me closer to him. Then, unexpectedly, a metal object pressed painfully into my chest and burned my flesh. "Ouch," I cried, and pushed away. "What the..."

"Sorry," Darius said, and he unclasped a large golden crucifix, took it off, and put it down on a table. Bejeweled, at least three inches long, and affixed to a heavy chain, the crucifix gleamed even in the dim light. My skin was painfully tender where it had touched me.

Darius took me again into his strong, muscular arms and I forgot everything else except being held by him. His lips came down on mine, feeling hard and soft at the same time. His tongue rubbed against my teeth, pushing in and filling my mouth. He tasted like peppermints and pine forests. Trie kiss lengthened and ignited the fires smoldering inside us.

Darius picked me up and carried me over to the nearest double bed. He laid me down and looked at me as I rested there on my back, my raven hair spread out behind my head.

"You are so beautiful," he said. He knelt down next to the bed. He kissed my b.r.e.a.s.t.s; he kissed my stomach. His lips trailed down to my wet, dark center and began teasing me into gasps of pleasure. His fingers played with my nipples. I burrowed my fingers into his soft hair and held his head. I was dizzy with sensation. I was moaning with enjoyment. I never wanted the feelings to end.

I was panting hard when he lifted up his head and stood up, climbing over me and straddling my body, his knees on the bed on either side of my shins. He lowered himself slowly, tantalizingly. I shut my eyes and waited for his long, hard shaft to enter me. And so it did, as Darius uttered a long, low moan. He went deep into me, join-ing our flesh as tightly as his kiss had joined our souls, and I rode through the heavens as the rhythm of our bodies moved us as one in an eternal dance.

We climaxed together, breathing hard and calling out in joy and delight. Then he collapsed on top of me for a moment, before rolling off and making us two separate beings once more. But I felt joined to him still, and despite all my reasoning and doubts, he had stolen my heart.

Darius lay there next to me, our arms touching, his hand holding mine. We stared upward into the dimly lit room, not talking. Then he said, "I never expected this. I never knew I could feel this way."

We were quiet for a moment; then Darius went on: "Daphne, I can't promise you anything. Not because I don't want to. But because as long as I'm doing what I'm doing, my first commitment can't be to you. I can't ask you to understand that. I need you to accept it, because right now I can't change it."

"Darius, I don't know if I can ever accept that, but I don't want empty promises from you. I'm glad you're being honest with me." But behind my words lurked the reality that I didn't know that Darius could ever be honest with me, and I certainly couldn't be honest with him.

"Daphne," Darius said, "I know this sounds nuts, and maybe you don't believe in love at first sight, but the first time I saw you, walking through the East Village, I was drawn to you. That didn't make sense to me. You were a stranger on the street, and yet I was pulled to you with a force I couldn't understand. I tried to deny it and called it crazy. After that I couldn't stop thinking about you. You became an obsession, filling my fantasies, showing up in my dreams. When I approached you in front of the jewelry store on Madison Avenue, I couldn't wait to get close to you and touch you. You know that old saying, 'The heart has its reasons that reason never knows.' And I believe in fate, and that I have been searching for you my whole life. It may still be a mystery why I am meant to be with you, but I've seen too much in the war-torn corners of this world to believe in accidents. I survived things that should have killed me and walked away when everyone around me died. There had to be a reason, and perhaps that reason was you."

I wanted to say I had been searching for him my entire life too, but it wasn't true. Even so, I also believed in destiny, and I agreed with him that whatever brought us together, our meeting wasn't an accident. There is some great scheme for all things, some divine hand directing everything, and yes, watching even when a sparrow falls. So I did say what I meant from the bottom of my heart. "I believe we were meant to be together, Darius Bella CHI's. Maybe it's just for now, just for tonight, though. I can't say it will be forever, because forever, I know, is a long, long time."

He turned to face me then and looked at me. I looked back at him without words, but we spoke to each other with our eyes, feeling happy at the proximity of our bodies, the closeness of our hearts.

The hours pa.s.sed in the blink of an eye. To get to Exeter by midnight, we couldn't linger any longer. Irrevocably changed, we returned to the car and drove off into the cold, uncaring night.

Fern Hall, as a plaque on a stone pillar read, was nothing like I expected. It sat way out in the country with no houses visible for miles around. Mist rose up from the swampy landscape as we drove through a tunnel of thickening night. The windshield wipers swept back and forth as the fog closed in until we could see just a few feet in front of us. Then, without warning, our headlights had illuminated the sign for Fern Hall.

Darius and I left the car parked on the side of the road. We got out and Darius went around to the trunk. He opened it and pulled out a large knapsack. It sounded as if it contained tools, because it clanked when he threw it over one shoulder. Then he handed me an old dark sweater. Since the bright yellow of my jacket was not a terrific color choice for cat burglars, I slipped the sweater over my head, and it was so large it hit me at midthigh. We started up the dirt drive, not talking, and Darius gave my hand a quick, rea.s.suring squeeze. Our footsteps didn't make a sound as we continued through the fog up the unpaved driveway. I can see in even the dimmest light, so I didn't stumble. Darius, however, cursed under his breath when his foot hit a stone and he nearly fell down.

After we had gone several hundred feet, the house loomed up like a white phantom, a few lights like candles burning in the windows of the second floor. In the center of the drive the gra.s.s was long, uncut and stiff. Now it made a crunching sound beneath our feet that sounded like little animals chewing on little bones. The night air cut right through my layers of clothing, leaving me with a feeling of cold, numb dread. Low fog clouds covered the moon, diffusing what little light there was. Bare tree limbs gently reached out and snagged the dark sweater of Darius's I wore over my jacket as if to pull me back, as if nature were saying, Don't go, don't go Don't go, don't go.

The house, when we got close enough to see it in its entirity, looked old and run-down. Decay covered it like a shroud. A large piazza surrounded by statues of nymphs fronted the house, but most of the sculptures were broken, becoming eerily grotesque figures with missing heads or arms. In some places just an empty plinth stood next to the neglected piazza. Weeds had sprung up between the terra-cotta paving stones. Everything about Fern Hall was silent and dead.

The only thing that gave a clue to the billionaire living inside was the sleek black Mercedes parked in the center of the piazza, its color as dark as the windows on the first floor. The entire scene was drenched in gloom and shadows. A gray cat crept along the foundation and ran around the corner of the house, while a dog howled somewhere far away and an owl hooted. I began to shiver from head to toe. A smell of dampness and fresh dirt hit my nostrils. It was a smell that caught in my throat and reminded me of somewhere else, somewhere I had been long ago.

Nevertheless the house had once been grand. I could see that in its graceful design, even though its stucco was peeling, and a wrought-iron balcony missing some railings sagged crazily across the second-floor facade. The steep roof was slate, crowned by four huge chimneys, one on every side of the house. They looked like cruel black fingers reaching up into the murky sky. The windows were tall and narrow, mullioned and magnificent... at least, I guessed the windows were magnificent from as much as I could see of them behind the iron bars that covered every single one, first and second floors. The bars looked new and unbreakable.

Flanked by stone pillars, the front door was also new, metal, and not one to be kicked in. Plan A was definitely f.u.c.ked.

I looked at Darius. He looked back at me. "Plan B?" he whispered.

I took off the old sweater and handed it to Darius. He stuffed it into the knapsack. I smoothed my hair, raised my chin, and marched up to the front door.

I reached for the bra.s.s knocker. It was in the shape of a dragon's head. As I raised the bra.s.s ring, the door moved, startling me. It was ajar just a crack. So much for security. I pushed it open. Inside, a s.p.a.cious hall was unlit, but not pitch black. I could see wide stairs of a dark wood leading upward. A astonishing round stained-gla.s.s window formed a backdrop to a landing where the stairs split to ascend grandly on opposite sides. I motioned for Darius to come up to the door. He joined me.

"Let's go in," he whispered.

I had a really bad feeling about all this. He gave me a little push. I didn't move. "After you," I said.

Darius shoved the door wide open and went into the hall. I came in behind him. The smell of dampness and dirt was even stronger inside the house.

To our right, behind beveled French double doors, lay a huge formal living room. Against the far wall a low-watt bulb burned in a Tiffany lamp on top of a grand piano. The upholstered Victorian-style furniture was dark red and overstuffed. Nothing around us moved. No one was here.

We entered through the French doors and crossed the living room. Near the piano a door stood open to reveal a short hall. At its far end was a kitchen. Our feet made a clicking sound as we started down the hall on a bare wooden floor. Except for our footsteps, the entire house was silent as a tomb.

The ceiling of the kitchen soared at least ten feet above us. One wall of the large room contained a gigantic fireplace, its firepit black and deep, like an open mouth waiting to be fed. A double granite sink and granite counters ran the length of the outer wall. Illumination came in the horizontal window above the counters from a security lamp outside. We could see well enough to walk single file through the room to a door at the kitchen's far end.

The old planked wooden door was padlocked. It didn't need a Do Not Enter sign to tell us that it was off-limits. I thought at once that it must be a storeroom where the New Guinea art was stashed. Darius looked at me. I nodded.

Darius put down the knapsack and took out a set of lockpicks. Most padlocks are easy to remove, and he opened it so quickly that it slipped off and fell to the floor with a loud thud.

"s.h.i.t!" he whispered, and I looked around behind me, fearful that someone had heard it, even though the walls were thick and the first floor of the house appeared empty.

Darius pulled open the door. There was no room behind it, just the dark, forbidding emptiness at the top of a steep stairway that led down into blackness. The door led to the bas.e.m.e.nt. Wafting through the open door, the dirt smell hit me hard. My brain was buzzing, trying to remember where I had smelled that particular harsh, choking odor before.

Darius replaced the lockpicks in his knapsack, put it back on his shoulder, and moved forward as if he were about to start down the stairs. "Wait!" I said sotto voce. "You're not going down there, are you?"

"Yes," he said.

"No, don't! Let's go back. I think this is a bad idea," I whispered. I clutched his arm, holding him. "Let's go look upstairs."

"You can stay up here if you're frightened," he said, and gently shook me oft.

I looked around the gloomy kitchen with its squat six-burner stove and huge pots and pans hanging from a ceiling rack, the yawning fireplace, the black-topped counters. The whole place was giving me the creeps. I thought I heard a board creaking above my head.

All my instincts were screaming, Don't do this Don't do this! but I said "Okay, I'll come with you." I didn't like this whole setup at all. I had to force my legs to move through that battered, ugly ancient door.

Darius started down the stairs slowly, hugging the wall, trying not to make any noise. I was right behind him, my hands on his shoulders. The air was so dank I could barely breathe. We were about halfway down when I could hear the squeaking. I knew what it was.

"Darius, wait!" I said. "I hear rats! There are rats down here. And there's no light at all." Even my bat eyes couldn't see in absolute darkness.

"Hold still a minute," he said, and reached into his knapsack. He pulled out a Maglite flashlight, the heavy black kind with the long shaft that cops carry because it can also be a weapon. He turned it on and we kept going slowly, one step at a time, down the stairs.

The squeaking was louder at the bottom. I didn't like this at all. Somewhere in the recesses of my brain a memory was trying to emerge. What was it? It had to do with the rat sounds, the dirt smell, the stone walls. Just then Darius shone the light across the cellar. There they were-hundreds of huge gray-brown rats that ran from the light. Unlike cute little pink-eyed Gunther rats, these were river rats, which are as big as cats and have mouths filled with sharp rat teeth to feed an insatiable appet.i.te.

Darius shone the light higher. Stacked against the far wall were wooden crates. No, they weren't small crates that could house the New Guinea collection. They were unmistakable long rectangular boxes: coffins. Dozens of coffins were stacked to the ceiling. Then I remembered the Transylvanian castle where I had seen all this before-this was a vampire's lair.

"Darius," I whispered urgently, "we have to get out of here." I tugged on his arm.

But Darius had already taken a crowbar out of his backpack and was walking over to the coffins, swinging his Maglite back and forth to scare away the rats. I reluctantly followed. He handed me his knapsack and flashlight. Then, using both hands on the crowbar, he pried a coffin open. I screamed as rats poured out of the interior. In the bottom of the coffin was dirt, dank and loamy. Darius pried open a few more. Except for the rats and the dirt, they were all empty. I wanted out of here. This was my own personal nightmare come to haunt me.

Darius, breathing heavily, his shoulders sagging, his arms heavy at his sides, turned toward me. His long hair had pulled loose and blew wildly around his head as a wind came out of nowhere and howled around us. Darius spun his head from left to right, his eyes wildly searching for the source, and he let out a terrible cry in a high voice I had never heard from him before. "He's heeere! He's heeeere!" He pulled the knapsack roughly from my hands and brandished the crowbar like a weapon with the other.

I quickly stepped away as I cried out, "Darius!" He looked at me, but his eyes were unfocused and open so wide I could see the whites all around them. He didn't seem to see me at all. "Bonaventure! Bonaventure!" he howled in that weird voice that cracked with something like insanity. Darius frantically turned one way, then the other, as if he were looking for the source of the strange, awful wind that tugged at our clothes with a gale force. The crucifix around Darius's neck had come out of the sweater and gleamed on his chest, seeming to possess a light of its own, I took off running for the stairs and barely was able to stay in front of Darius, who was close behind me. My overriding thought was to get out of the house. I wasn't afraid for myself; I was terrified for Darius, who seemed to have lost his mind.

! dashed through the kitchen and down the hall, but when I got to the door into the living room, I stopped and froze. The flashlight slipped from my hands and hit the floor with a crash. Bonaventure sat at the grand piano. He wore a black velvet evening jacket and a white silk ascot. Catharine, in a sheer white dress, lay pale and limp on the red sofa, her blue veins showing through her translucent skin, her golden hair spread out like a halo around her face. Delicate satin ballet slippers covered her tiny feet.

Bonaventure was seated at the piano, his back to me, and didn't turn around to acknowledge me. Instead his fingers crashed down on the keys, playing the opening bars of the overture from Bizet's opera Carmen Carmen. The notes he played were the "Fate"' theme. Da, da, da, da, dum. Dum, dum Da, da, da, da, dum. Dum, dum. He repeated them several times as he threw his head back and laughed crazily. Afterward he abruptly stopped playing and slammed the cover down on the keys. He turned to look at me.

"Welcome to my home," he said, and every syllable resonated with a heavier Eastern European accent than he had used with me before. "I am surprised to see you, my dear Miss Urban. I thought I left you... indisposed. I'm glad you weren't too inconvenienced by your little rest in the exercise room. I apologize, but a situation arose unexpectedly. It would have been, well, unacceptable for you to witness it. The whole incident was unfortunate, but unavoidable." He smiled a hideous smile and pulled his cape around him, while he hunched down on the piano bench looking more than ever like a malevolent black toad.

"Now, do introduce me to your friend." he said.

Darius moved out of the shadows behind me. "I am Darius Bella CHI's," he announced loudly. Bonaventure jumped up when he heard those words, knocking over the piano bench. Darius continued talking: "But I think you already know that, Bonaventure Bonaventure."

"Yesssss," Bonaventure hissed, "your reputation precedes you," and he began to transform into the vampire I had realized, albeit too late, that he was.

"No!" I screamed as Darius threw down the crowbar and pulled a stake and a mallet out of his backpack. "No, don't don't." Before I could stop him, Darius threw himself at Bonaventure, putting the full force of his fury into his charge. He plunged the stake into Bonaventure's heart, and the vampire went down on the Oriental carpet. Darius was on top of him in a flash, the mallet in his hand pounding the stake deeper into Bonaventure's chest. Bonaventure screamed and screamed, and then with a groan his form began to crumble and smolder until only a pile of dust remained on the carpet.

My horror was palpable. My hands were trembling. I was breathing fast. I was shaking from head to toe, trying not to let myself transform. Darius looked at me but his face was blank, his eyes unseeing. He turned then toward Catharine, who had pushed herself back against the cushions, her eyes wide with terror.

"No, please, no," she cried.

"It must be done," Darius said in a voice that sounded flat and disconnected from his body. "You are his creature. You are not human."

"No, oh, please," she said in her little-girl voice, her hands stretched toward Darius, pleading with him. "It wasn't my choice. He took me from my home. I don't want to die. Please, no."

I couldn't bear this anymore. As I stood unseen behind Darius, I tore off my clothes and let myself change. I grew in size as my shape transformed into the great fantastical winged creature within me. The air rushed in a whirlwind around me. Tingles of electric power surged through me. My fur glistened and sparked, shooting light into the room, and a rainbow spray of colors danced across the walls. Darius spun around. I will never forget the look on his face. It was a combination of absolute shock, wide-eyed horror, and-what bothered me most-a look of undisguised hurt, as if I had betrayed him. I had, but he had also betrayed me.

"Do not touch her, human," I hissed. I reached out with one mighty wing and effortlessly batted him across the room. He sailed through the air and crashed into the far wall, sliding down it and sitting stunned on the floor.

"Look at me, Darius!" I commanded. "Look at me!" He raised his head slowly and stared at me. "You need to know what I am. I am one of them them. I am what you most hate and fear. Yet you kissed and stroked me. Yet you loved me. I am who I am. But you! You are all J warned me you were-a vampire hunter. Worse than that, you are a wanton killer. You think you are destroying evil, yet you are destroying life life," I hissed. "Bonaventure was a criminal, but it was not being a vampire that made him so. He should have been brought to justice, but not by you. You you. You had no right to murder him. And you have no right to kill this woman. To kill had no right to murder him. And you have no right to kill this woman. To kill my people my people."

I flew over to Catharine and gathered her frail body in my arms. "She is an innocent," I said, turning my gaze upon Darius and pinning him to the wall with my eyes. "You shall not have her; you shall never have her. Or me!" I rose above the floor and flew to the door. Darius didn't rush me. I was relieved at that. I would have had to hurt him if he did. Perhaps he was incapacitated by the blow I dealt him. Unmoving, he remained sitting immobile against the paneled wall. I looked back at him before I took off into the night sky with Catharine. It may have been my imagination, but I thought I saw tears in his eyes.

Chapter 13.

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of pa.s.sionate intensity.

-W. B. Yeats

I didn't fly far with Catharine. I landed in a tree, and I hanging upside down as bats do, waited until I saw Darius leave the house, jog down the driveway, and drive away in the Taurus. Bats aren't long-distance fliers, and despite my immense strength, flying carrying a full-grown woman taxed my abilities.

When I was sure Darius was gone for good, I flew back to Fern Hall. Crying softly and not speaking, Catharine had clung to me tightly the entire time. I set her down carefully in the vestibule. I flew into the living room, quickly transformed back to human shape, and hastily collected my clothes. Among them, there on the floor, was the sweater Darius had given me to cover my jacket. He must have flung it out of his knapsack before he left. My heart sank. I picked it up. I put it to my face, and it smelled of him. I hesitated and then tied it around my waist under my jacket. It was all I had of his. I couldn't bear to leave it behind.

Catharine waited patiently in the hall until I reemerged. I closed the French doors behind me. I didn't think she should go back in there, where the dust from Bonaventure's body lay dry and desolate on the rug. I had noticed that the stake Darius had pounded through his heart was gone.

"What would you like to do?" I asked Catharine as gently as I could, She looked up at me with tearful eyes. "I want to go home," she said.

"Where's home?"

"Far away. In Dubrovnik, Croatia. But perhaps for now you can take me back to New York? To the apartment?"

"Of course I can. Can you get your things quickly? We don't have many hours until dawn."

"I understand," she said. "It will take me only a few minutes. And I must get Princess. She's locked in the bedroom. Bonaventure didn't like her hair on the furniture. She wasn't allowed to come downstairs."

With that she rushed up the stairs. I sat on a bench in the hall and tried to think, and tried not to think. I wanted to just sit and sob my heart out, but this wasn't the time or place. I had to stay focused on what I had to do next. Right now that was to drive Catharine back into the city and get home by six A.M. It was already nearly two. I hoped I didn't get a speeding ticket on the way.

When Catharine came back down, she looked less like a frail victim than I had ever seen her. She had changed into a pair of jeans. She wore a jean jacket over a black turtleneck. Her long hair was pulled neatly back. She didn't look more than sixteen years old. She had a cat carrier in one hand and a small valise in the other.

"Catharine," I said. "I need to ask you something, and I need you to tell me the truth."

She looked at me with wide eyes. "You saved my life. I owe you everything. I will tell you anything I can. I am so grateful. So very grateful."

"Where are the pieces of art from Herr Schneibel?"

"I don't know. We didn't get them. We tried, but they were gone."

"What do you mean?"

"We took the limo down to Ca.n.a.l Street. Bonaventure had arranged for a small truck to meet us there. When we arrived, there was no truck. Bonaventure left the limo and ran upstairs. He was gone for only a few minutes. When he came back, he was enraged. I was very frightened then. When Bonaventure is angry, I try to stay away from him, but there was nowhere to go in the limo."

"What did he say? What did he do?"

"He didn't tell me anything, but he made a call on the car phone. I think it was to his bodyguard, Sam Bockerie. Bockerie was supposed to be driving the truck. No one answered, so Bonny left a message on the machine. He told Bockerie to bring the art to Pennsylvania. He said Bockerie had forty-eight hours to deliver the art. If he didn't, on the forty-ninth hour he would die. Bonny's voice was chilling. I could barely breathe while he was speaking. It was terrible, the way he said what he did. I can't describe it. It wasn't a warning. It was a curse." She began trembling.

"It's okay, Catharine. Bonaventure is gone. He's gone forever. I'm sorry about what happened tonight."

"Don't be sorry, Miss Urban. It wasn't your fault. I will miss Bonny, but I am free now. I am no longer a prisoner. I can go home."

"Let's get out of here," I said. She handed me the keys to the Mercedes. "Thanks," I said, and I took them and her valise too. We went quickly out to the car, and I drove away as fast as I dared.

I didn't want to turn on the radio. Listening to love songs would be pure masochism after what had happened tonight. I did want to cry until the tears couldn't come anymore, but that would have to wait. I needed to drive, and wanted to avoid wrecking the car. It had been such a terrible night, and yet it had been such a happy one. For a few minutes I had had everything I ever wanted-a man to love and one who loved me. Then within hours it had all vanished, and I was left with this huge emptiness inside.