Winter's Touch (Immortal Touch Series) (3 page)

“I’m still going to marry you one day,” she announced, and cheerfully skipped home.

~*~*~

For two years he
somehow managed to avoid the little nuisance, until one day he saw the moving van parked in the driveway next door and assumed he was rid of her for good.

He was mistaken.

It was only her father who left, and for many days after that he’d catch sight of her sitting quietly in the swing in her back yard, twisting the chains idly back and forth while staring at the ground beneath her feet. The shrill sounds that frequently emanated from next door - high-pitched shrieks and giggles that pierced his ears - ceased.

He was glad of it.

CHAPTER TWO

The Second Mistake

“Was it another bad dream?”

Abigail
Spencer reached across the bed to touch Eva’s trembling arm as the girl crawled into bed beside her.

“Yes. Can I sleep with you?”

“Of course, honey.” Abby tucked the covers in around her daughter’s small, cold body. “What was it this time? Do you remember?”

“Not really.”

“Well, it couldn’t have been all that bad then, could it?”

Eva
yawned. She couldn’t explain to her mother how she saw anonymous people being slaughtered by some faceless psychopath in her dreams. Or how the nightmares came to her routinely once a month, almost like clockwork. Usually she could brush them off and drift back to sleep but once in a while they were so
real
, as if she were there in person instead of hiding beneath the blankets in her bed, safe in her own room.

So
horribly, sickeningly real.

Once a month. Ever since she could remember, and she
would soon be ten. Her birthday was just four days away.
Tick, tock. Tick, tock.

Her mother attributed it to
the loss of her father. When she was seven years old, Doctor Edwin Spencer had taken off with his twenty-year-old dental assistant and never looked back. He divorced Abby, married
The Tramp
, and started a new family. Forgot the old one ever existed. The photos of him were stored in a box in the basement because none of it ever happened, right? The man holding Eva as an infant on her first day in the world, steadying her on the pink bicycle with training wheels, smiling as she blew out the candles on her birthday cake...he wasn’t real. He was a ghost. Nothing but a distorted memory.

But
she was over it. At least, she thought she was. Anyhow, she was certain the nightmares had nothing to do with her father.

They had something to do with the man next door.

Oh sure, Mr. Winter was friendly and polite to both Eva and her mother. Outwardly he seemed perfectly normal. Tall and slender, strikingly handsome, intelligent and articulate. Owned a vintage bookstore over on 4th Street. Brought home groceries occasionally, put his trash out by the curb on Wednesdays, paid a neighborhood boy to keep his grass cut. Nothing out of the ordinary there.

Except there
was
.

It wasn’t even the
strange coincidence that he was always away from home on the nights when she had the bad dreams, although that was part of it. She’d begun to notice the pattern while spying on him covertly from her second-floor bedroom window. Sometimes he took a travel bag and was gone for a day or two. Sometimes he was only out for a couple of hours.

It
wasn’t that. It was the
memory
, the vaguest shadow of something that eluded her consciousness no matter how hard she tried to remember. Something that had transpired between them when she was very young. Something strange.

She needed to find out. The nightmares would never stop
until she did.

It was on
a chilly October night one month later that she mustered enough courage to investigate her suspicions. And it was without a doubt the most foolhardy thing she could have done.

~
*~*~

Her blood was the first thing he noticed.

The very moment he entered the car he smelled it, tickling his nostrils and tempting his senses. AB-negative. The rarest of wines, the Matsutake of mushrooms. Fragrant and enticing and crouched in the floorboard of his back seat.

Evangeline
.

Now what was she up to?

Julian smiled to himself. The night had suddenly taken an unexpected turn and this pleased him, possibility of imminent trouble notwithstanding. He’d play along with her little game. It would alleviate some of the dreariness of the mundane task at hand.

Whistling softly, he started the BMW and slid
Midnight Syndicate into the CD player.

~
*~*~

What the crap was I thinking?

Curled into a tight little ball directly behind the driver, Eva pressed her cheek against the back of the seat and closed her eyes. She was having second thoughts, and third and fourth ones too, but it was way too late for that now. What did she think she was going to accomplish by stowing away in his car? Wasn’t it better to suffer through twelve bad dreams a year than to wind up dead in a ditch somewhere?

Maybe it wasn’t too late to get out of this.
He hadn’t seen her. Once he reached his destination, she’d just wait until he got out of the car and she could slip out and he’d be none the wiser. She’d
walk
home.

Of course,
who knew how far he was planning to drive? He didn’t bring his overnight bag but that didn’t really mean anything. And it was so very dark out tonight. Why hadn’t she at least thought to bring a flashlight?

But no.
No!
She wasn’t going to chicken out. She had to know, once and for all. There would be no peace for her until she did. Until her sleep was uninterrupted by cabalistic visions of blood and blond hair.

His choice in
music wasn’t helping matters. Why couldn’t he just listen to some old 80’s rock like her mother did? Was it really necessary to play something that sounded more appropriately fitting for a haunted house in a theme park? She shivered, thankful for her fleece lined jacket. The night was growing cold, and he didn’t have the heater on.

Forty-five minutes
. That’s how long it took before he finally stopped the car, and she only knew this because of her purple glow-in-the-dark watch. It was the longest forty-five minutes of her young life.

She waited anxiously for him to get out of the car, all the while wondering how she was ever going to get home.
Wherever they were, it was pitch dark other than the faint glow of moonlight. There were no comforting city lights. She didn’t have money for a cab, even if she could find a place to call for one. Her mom was going to
kill
her! What the heck was she going to tell her?

And
...why was Mr. Winter just sitting there?

Her heart nearly stopped beating
altogether when she heard his voice, quiet and matter-of-fact, speaking to let her know that he’d been aware of her presence the whole time.

“
Well, Eva. Are you ready?”

She didn’t answer, concentrating instead on her breathing and trying not to hyperventilate. The driver’s side car door opened, then
slammed shut. Her heartbeat took on a pounding rhythm that she could literally see as the front of her jacket pulsed rapidly. She closed her eyes tightly.

The door beside her opened, and she
very nearly shrieked.

Nothing happened.

Reluctantly, she opened her eyes and saw him kneeling in front of her, smiling as if her behavior was
most
amusing. It was the first time she’d seen him up close in years. Not since...since...

“I know you,” she said then. It was
a strange thing to say, but as soon as she’d looked into those black eyes he’d suddenly become as familiar as her own reflection in the mirror. As if she knew everything there was to know about him. Her pulse slowed to a normal beat and she sighed dreamily, feeling a bit sleepy suddenly. Well, maybe not sleepy exactly. More like the time she had her tonsils out and woke up all groggy and out of it.

“Yes, you remember now, don’t you?” His
refined British accent was as smooth as silk. Straightening, he held out a hand to her. She took it, and let him help her out of the car.

“Remember what?”

“Come now. You must be here for a reason. What might that reason be? I wonder.” He studied her curiously.

“I don’t know.”
Eva struggled to recall. There was something...something beyond the compulsion to discover the source of her nightmares. That part was incidental. Her inquisitive nature had been aroused once, years ago, when she’d still been naïve enough not to see the horror in it.

In
what
, though?

“You
eat people,” she suddenly recounted. Snippets of a bizarre and morbid conversation began to float back into her consciousness.

He laughed softly. “There now, it’s coming back to you, isn’t it? You almost have it. So odd that you have any memory
of it at all. You shouldn’t, you know.”

“You told me to forget.”

“But you didn’t, did you? Naughty girl.” He tilted his head slightly to one side and surveyed her, considering. “And now the question is, what shall I do with you?”

Eva
waited patiently, unafraid. The moment she’d looked into his eyes every ounce of fear had evaporated. The hazy, dreamlike state into which she’d fallen infused her with a calm detachment, a shadowy aura of disembodiment. None of this was real.

“You want to watch, don’t you?” A chilly breeze blew strands of
flaxen hair into his eyes, and he brushed them away before reaching for her hand once again. “Come along then, little one. I’ll show you how it’s done.”

She put her small hand in his larger one and walked beside him, taking two steps for every one of his.

“Look around you,” he instructed her. “What do you see?”

She turned her head slowly to inspect the area. In the midst of the surreal night they were following an isolated dirt road, with nothing but dense woods on either side of them. “Trees. The moon. Stars.”

“Look farther ahead.”

She focused her attention in front of her. “I see a light. There’s a house just up ahead.”

“That’s right. Who do you suppose lives there?”

Eva shook her head, uncomprehending.

“His name is Shawn Mat
heson. Eighteen years old and still hiding in the closet, so to speak. I found him online.”

“Why is he
hiding in his closet?” She didn’t get it at first. Then the meaning dawned on her, but she was too embarrassed to admit it.

He
seemed to find her ignorance comical. “He believes himself to be homosexual, my dear. This possibility frightens him. To the extent that tonight he will decide to take his own life. Do you understand now?”

“
Not really. How do you know all that?”

“Simply by chatting with him. He was more than willing to rendezvous with me tonight.
Well, not me per se. I used a different profile and photo, of course. Really, sometimes it is just too easy.”

“
Why is he meeting you? I thought you said he wanted to...you know, off himself.”

“Oh, he’s quite suicidal, I assure you. He just
isn’t aware of it yet.”

“
Then how do
you
know?” she persisted as they neared the small wood-frame house.

“Sh. Watch now, and you’ll
get the idea.” He pulled a pair of gloves from the pocket of his black Burberry trench coat and slipped them on, just as the front door opened and a young man with curly chestnut hair emerged. In the sickly yellow glow of the porch light, he spotted them standing underneath a sprawling oak tree just across the road. He approached, obviously nervous, hands shoved tautly in the pockets of his tight blue jeans.

“
’Sup, dude. Where’s...um, where’s Michael?”

“Unfortunately he was unable to
keep his appointment. He sends his regrets.”

“Oh. You a friend of his or somethin’?”

“You might say that.”

“
That’s cool. But why didn’t...” Shawn pulled his rapt attention from the alluring man long enough to notice her. “Who’s this?”

“This? Why, this is just my little student. She is here to observe and learn.” Mr. Winter ruffled her auburn curls lightly as the boy took a step backward
s, flustered and more than a little rattled.

“Hey man,
what the...that’s messed
up!
I mean, I don’t know what kinda weird shit you’re into but I don’t...I don’t do that kinda stuff...”

So fast that neither he nor Eva saw it coming, the man’s hand shot out and grabbed Shawn by the throat, forcing him to look directly at him.