Christine Feehan - Dark Dream (Dark Series - book 7)

She was silent a long time, so long he thought she might not be able to continue. Sara didn’t take her gaze from his chest. She recited the words as if she’d memorized them from a textbook, a classic horror story. “I loved it, of course. It was everything I expected it to be and more. My brother and I could explore to our hearts’ content and we went everywhere. Even down into the tunnels our parents had forbidden to us. We were determined to find our own treasure.” Robert had dreamed of golden chalices. But something else had called to Sara. Called and beckoned, thudded in her heart until she was obsessed.

Falcon felt the fine tremor that ran through her body and instinctively drew her closer to him, so that the heat of his body seeped into the cold of hers. His hand went to the nape of her neck, his fingers soothing the tension in her muscles. “You do not have to continue, Sara. This is too distressing for you.”

She shook her head. “I found the box, you see. I knew it was there. A beautiful, hand-carved box wrapped in carefully cured skins. Inside was a diary.” She lifted her face then, to lock her eyes with his. To judge his reaction.

His black eyes drifted possessively over her face. Devoured her.

Lifemate.

The word swirled in the air between them. From his mind to hers. It was burned into their minds for all eternity.

“It was yours, wasn’t it?” She made it a soft accusation. She continued to stare at him until faint color crept up her neck and flushed her cheeks. “But it can’t be. That box, that diary, is at least fifteen hundred years old. More. It was checked out and authenticated. If that was yours, if you wrote the diary, than you would have to be...” She trailed off, shaking her head. “It can’t be.” She rubbed at her throbbing temples. “It can’t be,” she whispered again.

“Listen to my heartbeat, Sara. Listen to the breath going in and out of my lungs. Your body recognizes mine. You are my true lifemate.”

For my beloved lifemate, my heart and my soul. This is my gift to you.

She closed her eyes for a moment. How many times had she read those words?

She wouldn’t faint. She stood swaying in front of him, his fingers, a bracelet around her wrist, holding them together. “You are telling me you wrote the diary.”

He drew her even closer until her body rested against his. She didn’t seem to notice he was holding her up. “Tell me about the vampire.”

She shook her head, yet she obeyed. “He was there one night after I found the box. I was translating the diary, the scrolls and scrolls of letters, and I felt him there. I couldn’t see anything, but it was there, a presence. Wholly evil. I thought it was the curse. The workmen had been muttering about curses and how so many men died digging up what was best left alone. They had found a man dead in the tunnel the night before, drained of blood. I heard the workers tell my father it had been so for many years. When things were taken from the digs, it would come. In the night. And that night, I knew it was there. I ran into my father’s room, but the room was empty, so I went to the tunnels to find him, to warn him. I saw it then. It was killing another worker. And it looked up and saw me.”

Sara choked back a sob and pressed her fingertips harder into her temples. “I felt him in my head, telling me to come to him. His voice was terrible, gravelly, and I knew he would hunt me. I didn’t know why, but I knew it wasn’t over. I ran. I was lucky; workmen began pouring into the tunnels, and I escaped in all the confusion. My father took us into the city. We stayed there for two days before it found us. It came at night. I was in the laundry closet, still trying to translate the diary with a flashlight. I felt him. I felt him and knew he had come for me. I hid. Instead of warning my father, I hid there in a pile of blankets. Then I heard my parents and brother screaming, and I hid with my hands pressed over my ears. He was whispering to me to come to him. I thought if I went he might not kill them. But I couldn’t move. I couldn’t move, not even when blood ran under the door. It was black in the night, not red.”

Falcon’s arms folded her close, held her tightly. He could feel the grief radiating from her, a guilt too terrible to be borne. Tears locked forever in her heart and mind. A child witnessing the brutal killing of her family by a monster unsurpassed in evil. His lips brushed a single caress onto her thick cap of sable hair. “I am not vampire, Sara. I am a hunter, a destroyer of the undead. I have spent several lifetimes far from my homeland and my people, seeking just such creatures. I am not the vampire who destroyed your family.”

“How do I know what you are or aren’t? I saw you take that man’s blood.” She pulled away from him in a quick, restless movement, wholly feminine.

“I did not kill him,” he answered simply. “The vampire kills his prey. I do not.”

Sara raked a trembling hand through the short spikes of her silky hair. She felt completely drained. She paced restlessly across the room to her small kitchen and poured herself another cup of tea. Falcon filled her home with his presence. It was difficult to keep from staring at him. She watched him move through her home, touching her things with reverent fingers. He glided silently, almost as if he floated inches above the floor. She knew the moment he discovered it. She padded into the bedroom to lean her hip against the doorway, just watching him as she sipped her tea. It warmed her insides and helped to stop her shivering.

“Do you like it?” There was a sudden shyness in her voice.

Falcon stared at the small table beside the bed where a beautifully sculpted bust of his own face stared at him. Every detail. Every line. His dark, hooded eyes, the long fall of his hair. His strong jaw and patrician nose. It was more than the fact that she had gotten every single detail perfect, it was

how

she saw him. Noble. Old World. Through the eyes of love. “You did this?” He could barely manage to get the words past the strange lump blocking his throat.

My Dark Angel, lifemate to Sara.

The inscription was in fine calligraphy, each letter a stroke of art, a caress of love, every bit as beautiful as the bust.

“Yes.” She continued to watch him closely, pleased with his reaction. “I did it from memory. When I touch things, old things in particular, I can sometimes connect with events or things from the past that linger in the object. It sounds weird.” She shrugged her shoulders. “I can’t explain how it happens, it just does. When I touched the diary, I knew it was meant for me. Not just anyone, not any other woman. It was written for me. When I translated the words from an ancient language, I could see a face. There was a desk, a small wooden one, and a man sat there and wrote. He turned and looked at me with such loneliness in his eyes, I knew I had to find him. His pain could hardly be borne, that terrible black emptiness. I see that same loneliness in your eyes. It is your face I saw. Your eyes. I understand emptiness.”

“Then you know you are my other half.” The words were spoken in a low voice, made husky by Falcon’s attempt to keep unfamiliar emotions under control. His eyes met hers across the room. One of his hands rested on the top of the bust, his fingers finding the exact groove in a wave of the hair that she had caressed thousands of times.

Once again, Sara had the curious sensation of falling into the depths of his eyes. There was such an intimacy about his touching her familiar things. It had been nearly fifteen years since she had really been close to another person. She was hunted, and she never forgot it for a single moment. Anyone close to her would be in danger. She lived alone, changed her address often, traveled frequently, and continually changed her patterns of behavior. But the monster had followed her. Twice, when she had read of a serial killer stalking a city she was in, she had actively hunted the beast, determined to rid herself of her enemy, but she had never managed to find his lair.