As Twilight Falls(10)
Author: Amanda Ashley

She jumped out of the chair at the sound of footsteps, her hand pressed to her heart in relief when she recognized Darrick walking toward her.

“What are you doing here after dark, Kadie?”

She waved her hand toward the chair. “I was reading and I . . . I fell asleep and when I woke up, I was afraid to go outside, and then a vampire showed up. . . .”

“What? Who?”

“I don’t know. But something scared him off and then you came in.”

Darrick glanced around the room, then shook his head. “Saintcrow,” he hissed.

“What?”

“Nothing. Come on, I’ll take you home.”

“How did he disappear so fast?”

Vaughan shrugged. “He didn’t really disappear.”

“Well, he certainly vanished from sight. What else would you call it?”

“Vampires can move faster than the human eye can follow.”

“So, he just left the room at the speed of light?”

“Something like that.” Vaughan opened the door for Kadie and followed her outside. “Vampires get stronger as they get older.”

“Really? How long have you been a vampire?”

“A little over five hundred years.”

Kadie blinked at him. Five hundred years. Try as she might, she couldn’t believe it. Sure, people were living longer these days, with more and more men and women living to be over a hundred. But five hundred?

“It’s true,” Vaughan said. “I was turned in 1513. Henry the Eighth was king of England.”

Kadie turned that over in her mind as she crossed the street toward her house. She had always been fascinated by Henry the Eighth and his second wife, Anne Boleyn. Kadie had always questioned Anne’s wisdom in defying Henry. Had Kadie been the queen at the time, she would have taken young Elizabeth and fled the court. In Kadie’s opinion, being queen wasn’t all it was cracked up to be, especially if you were married to Henry, who had divorced two wives and beheaded two others.

They had reached the house. Kadie stopped at the door. “Thanks for walking me home.”

“If you’d really like to thank me . . .” His voice trailed off as his gaze moved to the pulse throbbing erratically in the hollow of her throat. “I know a way.”

Kadie shook her head. “No. I know you’re stronger than I am. I know fighting is useless. But I’ll never surrender to you willingly. I don’t care what you do.”

“Is that right?” He closed in on her, his hands flattening on the door on either side of her head. “Look at me, Kadie.”

She tried to look away. She tried to close her eyes, but she had no will of her own. She stared into his eyes and all thought to resist fled her mind.

“I want to drink from you,” he said. “And you want me to.”

“I want you to.” She hadn’t meant to say the words aloud, but they passed her lips of their own accord. She stood there, helpless, as he brushed her hair aside, then lowered his head to her neck. She felt a faint sting as he bit her. It wasn’t really painful, but the thought of what he was doing filled her with horror and disgust.

When he released her from his preternatural power, she slapped him as hard as she could, then escaped into the house and slammed the door.

She stood there, breathing heavily. Had he gone? Stepping closer to the door, she pressed her ear to the wood, but heard nothing. Was he still there?

Going to the window, she peered outside. At first, she saw nothing, but then, from the corner of her eye, she saw movement. She stared at the scarf fluttering in the breeze for several minutes. Vaughan had gone, but he had left a black silk scarf tied to the porch rail.

The scarf was still there the next morning. Black. The color of death. Removing it from the railing, Kadie let the silk slide through her fingers. If she wore it, she would be admitting to everyone, and to herself, that she belonged to Darrick Vaughn. A shiver of unease slithered down her spine as she wadded it up and shoved it into her back pocket.

Feeling a sudden need to get away from the house and everything it represented, she quickly changed out of her nightgown and into a pair of jeans and a sweater, grabbed her car keys, and left the house, deciding a drive was just what she needed.

At the end of town, she turned onto an unpaved road flanked by stands of timber that grew taller and closer together the farther she went.

She turned off the road onto a trail that wound through the forest, hit the brake when she saw a deer bounding away. Easing her foot off the brake, she continued down the trail, her troubles momentarily forgotten when she saw a pair of deer grazing on the sparse grass. Braking, she spent several minutes admiring the animals. They were such beautiful, graceful creatures with their large eyes, big ears, and delicate legs. She watched them until, for no apparent reason, they turned and bounded out of sight.

Kadie drove on, her gaze darting left and right. Could this be a way out of town that no one else had found?

After a number of twists and turns, the trail ended at the foot of a mountain that appeared to be made of solid rock and went up and up, seemingly with no end in sight. Backing up, she turned left onto another trail. She’d gone about a mile when she saw the cemetery. Curious, she grabbed one of her cameras. Maybe she could get some good shots as long as she was out here.

She opened the rickety wooden gate and walked toward the nearest grave. It was marked by a wooden cross and nothing more. Glancing around, she saw row after row of weathered wooden crosses. No headstones. No flowers. No names or dates to identify the dead. Just crosses of various sizes. Maybe it wasn’t a real graveyard. Whoever heard of burying people without identifying the deceased?

She shook her head. It was just one more piece of the increasingly strange puzzle that made up Morgan Creek.

Ignoring a growing sense of unease, she took several photographs. “Good thing I don’t believe in ghosts,” she mused. But it sure felt like she was being watched.

As she approached one of the graves, she was struck by a sudden coldness, as if she had stepped into a freezer. A TV show she’d watched claimed that cold spots indicated a ghostly presence.

Deciding she had enough pictures, she left the graveyard. She wasn’t a Ghostbuster and if spirits of the dead lingered here, she didn’t want to meet one. She had enough supernatural creatures to deal with, thank you very much.

She thought about the peculiar graveyard as she fastened her seat belt, then put the SUV in gear.

A short time later, she reached a fork in the road. Wondering if she would ever find her way back to town, she turned right. She hadn’t gone more than a mile or so when she came to a large, square house made of gray stone. There were turrets at the corners of the building, which gave the place the look of an old English castle. Thick iron bars covered the front door and the windows.