Dark Series, The Color of Seven and The Color of Dusk (Books We Love Special Edition) (40 page)

* * *

Rose
Arbor
Cemetery
,
Macon
,
Georgia

Ria Knight masters the art of mausoleum breaking and entering. She sits, with dusk approaching and watches the man who introduced himself the prior night as Paul Everett. He lies on the bed of satin in the open casket, not on his back with his arms crossed, but on his side, his hand curled under his cheek. An open book lies beside him, for all the world as though he’s fallen asleep.

He stirs and raises one arm over his head, stretching. His eyes open. They widen at the vision of this unexpected visitor.

Ria speaks. “Dr. Devlin, I presume?”

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

“Every last one.”

* * *

1888 – Banks of the Ocmulgee River – The Rise of Cain

Where he came from, no one knew. He didn’t know himself. Sometimes he thought he’d merely sprung, full-grown, from the depths of the deepest swamps, the darkest bayous, of
Louisiana
.

His name was Cain. His color was seven. His specialty was death. Paul Devlin’s death didn’t work out exactly the way he’d planned. For either of them.

Bottom line of all the gruesome details? Paul now resides in a mausoleum in
Rose
Arbor
Cemetery
and has since 1888. Cain moldered away into bones in a covered cave out by
Stone
Creek
Swamp
, leaving the stake impaled through his heart lying against bare rib bones. Until two teenage drug dealers uncover the cave and pull out the stake, thereby starting the cycle all over again. Because the past, like evil, never dies. It just—waits.

* * *

Rose
Arbor
Cemetery
,
Macon
,
Georgia

Paul sat in silence. He’d talked himself out through the night, sharing that summer of 1888 with Ria. Reliving it. Something he hadn’t done in all the long years of his existence. Then again, no living human except Ria Knight had ever tracked him to his mausoleum, watched him rise, and demanded all the details. He savored the warmth of her body through her jacket as she sat with his arms around her. An empty wine bottle and his grandmother’s old crystal goblets stood beside them. From the look of the sky, he’d talked himself out none too soon.

Something wet dropped onto his hand. He raised it slightly, feeling the liquid run over the skin. He smiled and shifted her to one side to gain a view of her face.

“And what are these?” he asked, watching tears stream silently out of her eyes.

“You know very well what they are. God, how did you do it? And still stay sane?”

He shrugged. “Because I had to. Ria, it’s almost dawn. You said you barely slept last night and now you’ve been up all night again.”

“Won’t kill me. I’ve done it before.”

“And you haven’t eaten a damn thing tonight, either.” He eased her out of his arms. “Wait here.”

“What—” she started. She stopped when she realized she was talking to thin air. She sat and watched the sky. How long till dawn? She watched the pre-dawn traffic speed north toward
Atlanta
and south towards
Savannah
. The cars and trucks seemed intrusive, out of place. She felt she’d been transported to 1888. And still hadn’t come completely back.

“Here.” Paul spoke quietly behind her and she started. Then she sniffed and smiled. Fresh coffee and fast food breakfast biscuits. She catapulted back into her own year.

“Sausage or steak?” Paul asked, digging into the bags.

She laughed.

“What?”

“You,” she said. “Voodoo and bokors and mambos. Tamara and Cain and Blood Drinkers. Sausage or steak.”

He grinned. “And you need to hurry up and decide, ‘cause darlin’, I’m goin’ have to excuse myself in a red-hot hurry in about—” he glanced up at the sky, “twenty minutes, now.”

“Steak.”

He handed her the wrapped biscuit and flipped the lid of his coffee cup, drinking quickly. She did the same and almost spewed the liquid back out.

“Damn! That’s hot!”

“Well, yes.”

“You’re drinkin’ it like water!”

“I told you, hot and cold don’t bother me too much.”

They sat and ate in silence for a few minutes.

“Good cover story, you gettin’ killed out west. The body shipped back home.”

“Papa. He did himself proud. I always thought so.”

“So he did recover?”

“He had a few more years.”

“And Joshua?” she asked, referring to Paul’s mulatto half-brother. After the death of Paul’s mother, Paul’s father shared an epic love story with his housekeeper Sadie spanning over twenty years, against all odds and all conventions of the 1800s. Joshua had fallen into Cain’s grasp that summer of 1888, at least until Paul pulled him out of it and paid for doing so with his life. In a manner of speaking.

“We sent him north that winter. Boarding school in
Boston
.”

“Why do you still use the mausoleum? I mean, wouldn’t a house or an apartment be more comfortable?”

“Too dangerous. Neighbors, you know, unless you’re way out in the country and even then, you have repair people, utility workers. Somebody, sometime, would notice they never saw me in the daytime. Not just seldom, but never. Besides, this is sort of home now.”

“I guess so.”

“I did toy with the idea of getting rid of the coffin, getting a regular bed or at least a mattress, but somehow I never got around to it.”

Ria laughed. “It’s a perverted sense of humor, and you know it!”

“Well, yes. Yes, it is.”

They sat in silence again, both of them watching the sky.

“Paul? What now? You’re not goin’ to just disappear, are you? Never see me again?”

“I should.”

“I don’t see why.”

“Don’t you? You’ve known me for two days and you’ve lost two nights’ sleep already. Real normal lifestyle there. Very healthy.”

“There’s a reason I saw you, your past in the
Orange Street
house. So I’d know you when I did see you. I was
meant
to, Paul.”

“C’mon. I’ll walk you to your car. I don’t have long.” He stood and offered his hand. They moved back up the hill, through the old markers.

Paul stopped at the short wall and spotted her car, parked down a steep hill outside the cemetery walls and gates, the least observable place Ria could think of to park.

“Dangerous place to park all night, don’t you think?”

“Didn’t want to leave it in the cemetery grounds. I don’t think any patrol cars tour through it at night but I wasn’t sure.”

Ria started to jump up on the ledge and Paul stopped her.

“Wait.”

He lifted her up easily and sat her on her perch.

“Now hold on.” He disappeared and reappeared almost instantaneously on the outside of the wall and held his hands up to her.

“I got to admit, that does take some getting used to.”

Paul smiled.

“Now, get on home,” he said. “I have to get back. Maybe five minute to sunrise.”

“Paul, wait! You never answered me. Will you come? Tonight? My house? I mean your house? “

“Ria, you’ve got to sleep.”

“I’ll take a nap this afternoon, I don’t have much on the calendar today. And I’ll sleep some tonight. I promise. You’d have called me again if I hadn’t found you, wouldn’t you?”

“Yes,” he admitted. “Knowing I shouldn’t, I’d have called you. But then I was a man passing through town who’d be leaving in a month or so. There’s no point in even trying to pretend tonight hasn’t changed things and you know it.”

“Don’t kid yourself, buddy. If I’d never known Paul Devlin existed, Paul Everett would
never
have been a casual thing for me, not after the first sentence or two in that book store. And you know it. You felt the click, too, I know you did. Now, will you come?”

“I don’t know. I’ll have to think about it.”

“Oh! That thing about having to be invited—”

“Is pretty much a crock, actually. I can go anywhere. As long as I know where I’m going. I can’t just decide to show up somewhere if I have no idea how to get there.”

“Then you shouldn’t have any problems. It’s your house, after all.”

“I’ll think about it.”

That was the best she was going to get, and she knew it. This might be the last time she’d see him. She moved into his arms and raised her face. He kissed her forehead.

She pulled his head down and gently grazed his lips with her own.

“No, don’t.”

He was afraid to kiss, frightened of the sharpness of his incisors.

“You won’t hurt me, Paul. You know you won’t.” She raised her face again and he did kiss her, gently at first and then, gaining confidence, more deeply.

The old legends raced through her mind. The wicked incisors, the fetid odor of the vampire’s mouth. He tasted of new coffee and fresh biscuits, the hot, sage spice of sausage. The trace smell-taste reminded her of sunup, country mornings, open pastures. Paul hadn’t seen sunrise in over a hundred years. He’d never see it again. And the sun was close.

“Go,” she said. “Tonight. Please.”

“No promises.”

“There’d be lots of fringe benefits. I’d let you use my shower and you wouldn’t have to borrow empty hotel rooms anymore,” she offered.

He laughed at the reference to the night before when he’d proclaimed showers the single greatest convenience of the twentieth century. “That is an advantage I hadn’t considered,” he said thoughtfully. Then he grinned and disappeared.

Chapter Two

Paul materialized directly in front of the small chest. His wife Chloe, the love of his human life, smiled at him from her picture. He lifted it and smiled back. Then he frowned. Ria Knight. Lord God, what to do, what to do?

Of course he’d known she was different the minute he’d seen her. Chloe’d been a lightning bolt from above when he’d come home from medical school in
Edinburgh
,
Scotland
. Ria? Growling thunder, building to crescendo with every moment he spent in her company. And now she’d tracked him, by God, with unerring instinct and steely determination.

All he could offer were hours of darkness. Ria needed sunlight, a man to court her over open picnic baskets in sunny meadows, exchange vows with her under a garden bower. Instead, she’d met him.

He’d made his own peace with destiny. Good books, an occasional good meal, a night spent in the back of a dark theater watching the huge screen, or mingling with the crowds at the malls. He poured over medical journals and hovered invisibly in the emergency rooms and corridors of the local hospitals, still practicing pseudo-medicine of a sort. He’d made himself forget what life was like with …
the one
. He’d come to terms with who and what he was.

And now another woman was …
the one
. Her fascination wouldn’t last, it couldn’t. Sometime, somewhere in the future, she’d meet a man to walk beside her in the sun. If that didn’t happen, before he ruined her life completely, he’d erase himself from her memory. Very easily. The mesmerizing stare of the vampire wasn’t legend. It was truth.

But for a little while, a few weeks, a few months, even a year, maybe, could he have—whatever he could have? He looked at Chloe again and raised his head. His senses warned him as energy drained away.
Sunrise
.

He gently tugged off the ring Chloe’d placed on his finger over a hundred years ago and laid it on the chest beside her picture. With his last remaining strength of night, he fell onto the satin of his coffin. He slept.

* * *

Ria moved through the day mechanically and took a nap during the three open hours on her afternoon calendar. She watched night approach through her windows and paced the length of her living room. Would he come? And if he did, what then?

* * *

Paul rose with the early moon and swung his legs out of the coffin. He moved to the chest of drawers and stared at Chloe’s picture. He changed into fresh clothes. Then he picked up his wedding ring and put it back on his finger. He couldn’t share Ria’s life for any time, no matter how short. Insanity to think so.

He gave himself a mental push and materialized on the banks of the river where he’d relived the summer of 1888 with Ria. He watched the cars pass on the interstate.