Dark Series, The Color of Seven and The Color of Dusk (Books We Love Special Edition) (11 page)

“Well, saying it and then seeing that—”

“I call it casting out. I just empty my mind and think about where I want to be, and there I am. Here, could you take these?”

She held out her hands and took the two wine goblets he held. He retained possession of the wine bottle and she saw a light jacket tossed over his arm.

“There’s a spot I like very much down by the riverbanks. And I think this should keep you warm enough,” he said, moving his arm slightly to indicate the jacket.

Ria looked down at the glasses in her hand. They had the feel of fine crystal. “How old are these?”

“I don’t know exactly. They were my grandmother’s.”

Ria immediately slowed and began to feel for irregularities in the grass before she stepped. “I’m stumbling around in the dark carrying two hundred year old crystal?”

Paul laughed. “
Grandma
ma
’d
be pleased to see them put to use.”

“Don’t you need a jacket or something?” Ria asked.

“No. I mean, I know it’s getting a bit nippy. I know when it’s cold and I know when it’s hot. But the cold and the hot don’t bother me. Here we are. Can you see?”

Paul stopped on a mound overlooking the Ocmulgee River. The lights of the city played over to their left, and directly in front of them, the lights of I-75 burned brightly. The headlights of the passing cars swept past them, moving rapidly.

“How beautiful!”

“Isn’t it?” He sat the wine bottle down and reached for the glasses. Then he sat himself, bracing his back against the base of a marble statute that stood on the hill.
He gestured for her to
join him
and draped his jacket over her shoulders, along with his arm. He pulled her gently back and settled her comfortably against his shoulder as if they’d known each other for years.

“And now,” he said, “now that you’re a captive, explain, please
.
J
ust how in the hell
did
you kn
o
w a man named Paul Devlin ever existed
?
And why you’re not screaming in terror to find out he still does.”

She did, leaving nothing out. He sat in silence as she wound down her explanations.

“Well?” Ria asked, when she could stand the silence no longer. “Aren’t you going to say anything?”

He sighed. Then he gave a soft laugh.

“And I thought my cover story was such a good one.”

“Oh, but it was! I mean, it is! Nobody else would ever have doubted a thing you said. Nobody.”

“Except you.”

“Except me.”

“You being the type of girl who watches dead people live and then goes to the library to look them up. You know, most sane people would
’ve
run out of the house screaming. What’s the current phrase?
Oh, yes!
‘
What planet are you from, anyway?
’
”

“Oh, you were easy to find. You just have to know where to look.”

Paul shook his head. “You just don’t get it, do you? You’ve been watching dead people live, Ria. And you never turned a hair. And tonight. It just didn’t occur to you that it might not be the smartest thing in the world to sit there and watch me wake up? Knowing what I am?”

“Well, it’s a little hard to be scared of a man you’ve watched cry over his wife’s things. And anyway, I don’t know what you are.”

Paul raised one eyebrow. “You don’t? C
’
mon, Ria Knight. Tell me another one.”

“But I don’t, not exactly,” she protested. “I mean, I know what you seem to be, what you’re closest to, but so many things don’t fit. After all, you ate and drank and you never so much as glanced at my jugular vein—”

“Certainly I did. It’s amazing, just like everything else about you.”

“Paul.”

“Sorry. You know, wh
en I was in medical school—you
said you knew from the old society registers that I studied in Scotland?”

He felt her nod against his shoulder.

“Well, since it was too far to come home to America during holidays, I used to ‘holiday’ in London. That’s what the English call it, going on holiday. Lord, I loved London.
Anyway, there was one type of little book they used to sell at the bookstalls called ‘penny dreadfuls
’
.
Forerunner of today’s horror novels, you know, like Stephen King, Dean Koontz—”

“Robert Bloch, Ramsey Campbell, Rick McCammon, Clive Barker, John Saul, Graham Masterson.
I’m addicted.”

“You who
read Shakespeare because it’s soothing?
”

“I am a lady of many and varied tastes and talents.”

“You don’t say,” Paul said dryly. “Anyway, they were full of monsters
. W
erewolves and goblins and ghouls and vampires. I’ve thought of them often over the years, poor misbegotten creatures.” He smiled slightly and continued. “There was a time, long ago, when I did stalk prey and guzzle blood.”

He felt her start against him. “Oh, not for a long t
ime. And not human, never—well,
except for—no, I stand with that,
never human. Not all creatures who walk upright on two legs are human, even if they look it. But the woods are full of prey.”

“And you don’t now?” Ria hesitated. “But if you are what you seem to be, don’t you need it? Sometimes?”

“I did at first. But I learned to control that need. And I hunted less and less and finally, one night, I just decided I wouldn’t. And if that decision did destroy me,” he shrugged
,
“
s
mall loss to anyone. But it didn’t.”

“So all the old legends are like you. A curious blend of truth and fancy. The blood’s an addiction and not a necessity?”

“Oh, it’s a necessity. At first. But it can be overcome.”

“But you eat and drink and cast reflections.”

“You actually checked to see if I cast a reflection?”

“Well,
duh.
But that was more on the idea that you might be a ghost than a vampire. The eating and drinking were really messing me up on both those theories, though, I got to tell you.”

Paul laughed. “Actually, I think that part of the legend, the no reflection part, came about because of the speed
with
which we can disappear.”

Ria sat, struck by the word
‘
we
’
.

“Are there others? Like you?”

“Oh, I’m sure there must be, somewhere, or have been in the past. All the legends start from something.
But the eating and drinking—I
just do that ‘cause it tastes good. I don’t have to eat and in fact, sometimes I’ll go for days without it. I just enjoy it. Especially the variety the world has now. Imagine, having ice anytime you want it! Which you’ve had all your life. The luxuries people take for granted now.”

“What do you do for money?” Ria asked, a tad of hesitation in her voice. “I mean—”

“Well, life’s been a great deal easier since they invented ATMs and the internet,” he said, and grinned. “I used to have to bank by mail and that was really the pits. And I’ve had some lucky hits on the stock market.
Managed to get in very early with some
very
lucrative companies. And I do mean early.”

Ria laughed. “
As in you own a lot of original blue-chip stock?”

“Y
es, ma’am.”

Ria laughed. “I didn’t see a computer anywhere.”

“Well, I cheat a little on some things. I can ge
t in the library anytime I want
you know
,
and before
the smartphone era,
I’d use their computers. And I check out library books without a card, but nobody’s ever objected. Had to slack off on buyin
g ‘em, place is getting crowded. You’ve no idea how many books have just appeared as donations on the library counters one morning
over the years
, hope they got used.
”

“You own original
blue chip
stock and you’ve got a
smartphone.
Dracula never had it so good.”

He grinned and shifted and pulled it out of his pants pocket.
“Right here.
Latest version. I love gadgets.
”

“Where do you charge it?”

“I only use it for quick surfing, most of the time it’s off.
When it needs charging, I plug it in at the cemetery gatehouse before I, ah, turn in for the day, loose wall board up there I hide it behind, nobody’s ever noticed.”

“And what else do you cheat on?”

“Showers,” he said without hesitation. “Hot showers are the single greatest invention of the Twentieth Century. Always an empty hotel room around somewhere. I sort of consider things like that Macon’s compensation for past services I rendered the public a good while back. Nobody knows about it, of course. The past services I mean. And damn lucky for the town it doesn’t.”

“And that past service would be?”

“I guess you want to hear all the gruesome details?”

“Every last one.”

Paul sighed and settled back against the stone he was using for a backrest.

“You live in my house and you’ve seen my family. So of course you know Joshua.”

“Sure.”

“Well, Joshua fell into some very bad company.”

“And you decided to do something about it.”

“I’ve always been a bit impulsive.”

“You charged into the middle of something dangerous enough to turn you into this for a servant? A houseboy?”

Paul’s laugh floated out over the Ocmulgee.

“I see the house didn’t give up all the family secrets. Joshua wasn’t my servant. Or my houseboy.”

“Then what was he?”

“My brother.”

Chapter
Thirteen

T
he turbulent events of the summer of 1888 broke and swirled
around a boy named
Joshua Devlin
. Insofar as the Devlin family was concerned, anyway.
It was the hottest summer many Macon residents could recall, though fortunately for them, few of them had any idea of just how much hotter, metaphorically speaking, it
almost was.

In that summer of 1888,
Joshua
was sixteen years old
, a
slender handsome boy caught in the hormonal imbalance
of
adolescence.
Back then even the medical doctors didn’t understand the extre
me physiological changes
of puberty. Certainly Jo
shua didn’t
know
his exuberant ups and his crashing downs were
the common lot of all teenagers
and nothing unusual at all
.

He damn sure knew t
he structure of his entire world shatter
ed
and re-form
ed
when he was twelve years old
, though
.
That
he’d never forget.
At
seventeen, he still carried the scars of
that
personal reconstruction.

Roughly five foot eight inches in height,
he was
three inches shy of the five eleven he’d attain,
probably 145 pounds in weight. He would never be heavy. His skin glowed with the creaminess of café au lait, milky brown
. His
eyes were large and lustrous
, h
is features almost chiseled
. His
hair, while not straight, did
n’t
have quite the same texture
expected with his skin tone.

Joshua Devlin
was a mulatto
.
Until he was twelve
, he
’d
thought his mother died at his birth and Dr. Everett Devlin, the doctor in attendance, had take
n
him in and given him his last name.
Everybody thought that, and nobody was surprised.
Doc Everett was notorious for his gruff exterior and his soft heart.

He’d been a happy child.
He didn’t have a father, but he had Doc, who’d begun taking him on his medical rounds when Joshua was only six years old. In his earliest memories, he sat on shady back porches with his primer on his lap, watching Doc’s horse and buggy.
Anybody living in Doc’s house was sure going to know how to read.

He didn’t have a mother, but he had Sadie, the copper-skinned and regal mistress of Doc’s household.
Sadie didn’t smother him with embraces and endearments, but
his clothes were clean
,
his meals delicious
and ample
. In
the midst of the childhood fevers of measles and chickenpox and scarlet fever, she
was there with
damp
cloths
, cool water, and freshly simmered broth.