A Novel of the Darkyn By Lynn Viehl

Thierry jumped down from the roof and landed on the small oval balcony outside Jema Shaw's bedroom. The French doors here had none of the security devices attached to them, as they did on the first and second floors. Only a bra.s.s hook and eye lock stood between her and the rest of the world.

He became angry. Does no one in this place care for her safety? He took out his dagger and inserted the blade in the seam of the frame, and then hesitated. If she is awake, she will see the window open. She will cry out.

He could not jump from here to the ground without risking broken bones. Alex, Cyprien's doctor, was far away in New Orleans. There would be no one to heal his wounds this time.

The lace curtains had been drawn and the lights switched off, but that did not guarantee that Jema Shaw was sleeping. He listened for a movement from within but heard nothing. Silently he pressed one hand against a frost- whitened pane of gla.s.s, closing his eyes to block out the snow falling around him.

Where are you, little cat? He had not used his talent with a human unknown to him since New Orleans. This girl was different-the others had spoken of her illness. He would have to take care not to hurt her. Are you sleeping? Do you dream now?

When Thierry's talent first touched a human mind, he saw color in his own. A glimmer of silver appeared inside his head when he found her, deep in slumber but not yet dreaming.

There. For the rest of it, he would need to touch her.

The blade slid easily into the seam. Thierry lifted the lock's hook up from its eye catch, and then eased the door open an inch. Now he could hear the whisper of her breathing, the slow beat of her heart. He shrugged out of his cape, leaving it and the snow covering it out on the balcony, and slipped inside.

Unlike the rest of the mansion, this room had none of the trappings of wealth. Jema had been given but a few cast- off pieces of furniture, their paint scratched, their wood scarred and stained with age. Two squat oil lamps, the sort he had not seen in a century or more, sat as dark and cold as the room. He could smell that she had burned a few candles, pitifully scented to imitate the fragrance of real flowers. No wood in the fireplace; no comforting blaze to warm her.

Even the lace of the curtains appeared yellowed and old.

The shabbiness of the room enraged him more than the flimsy look. This is how they treat the great Dr. Shaw's daughter?

Like a poor relation, banished to a garret?

Thierry walked over to the bed. It was cramped and small, and all that covered the sleeping girl was a sheet and a faded, patched blanket. She huddled beneath them, motionless but for the slight rise and fall of her chest. One hand lay open-palmed next to her cheek, the other tucked with a fold of the blanket under her chin.

She even sleeps like a cat. Tenderness flooded through him as he reached down to draw back the edge of the coverlet.

She wore a nightdress of soft material printed with tiny blue flowers. One tug on an ivory ribbon released the collar and bared the slim column of her throat to his gaze.

There, beneath the delicate skin, the pulse of her lifeblood danced.

The sight caused Thierry's dents acerees to emerge, and his hunger swelled. He had not touched a woman in weeks, not since losing control with Cyprien's sygkenis. He no longer trusted himself, so human men had provided his sole nourishment since leaving New Orleans. There was no temptation of thrall with them.

He still longed to feel a woman under his hands. To hear the sounds she made as he took what he needed from her. To give her what little he could in return- She is ill.

Thierry forced the thought of pleasure from his mind and pressed the tips of three fingers to the side of her throat.

When he closed his eyes, the silvery color of her mind was there, glowing like the moon on water, deepening as she responded to his gentle compulsion and moved across the dark borders into the realm of dreams.

Thierry followed her and waited until her dream took form, for only when it did could he become a part of it.

Colors and light flooded his mind, forming and shaping themselves to Jema Shaw's specifications. It was always disconcerting at first, to be so completely immersed in the dark, connected by thought alone, and then find himself- In Jema Shaw's bedroom.

Unlike the dreaming girl, Thierry was still fully conscious and aware of his physical reality, so it was as if he had become his own mirror self. Yet in the dream, he saw Jema's room quite differently. He saw it through her eyes, and everything that he had dismissed as worn, worthless and insulting to the daughter of the house was actually held in great affection. Jema treasured the old things around her; had in fact collected them carefully over the years. Her prize possession was the ancient blanket under which she slept, something she regarded as priceless as a museum artifact.

More so, for it had been cut and sewn and sandwiched together by the hands of her father's mother, a woman who had died before Jema's birth.

Not castoffs, he thought, trying to understand. Antiques. Heirlooms.

In the real bedroom, Jema slept on. In the dream realm, she sat up and looked straight at him. "h.e.l.lo. Who are you?"

Questions in dreams had to be answered with caution. The wrong words could cause the sleeper to awaken suddenly. Thierry did not want Jema to fear his presence, or anything about him. If she did, she would never tell him that which he needed to know. Before he moved out of the shadow concealing him, he covered himself with a hooded cloak, so that she would not be startled by his unfamiliar face. "I am whoever you wish me to be."

She laughed. "That's convenient."

Thierry sat down on her bed-her two-hundred-year-old Colonial American bed, another much-cherished acquisition-and took her hand in his. "Perhaps I could be someone you trust. Someone for whom you care."

Jema's smile faded. "No. I don't want you to be anyone like that. If you are, you'll leave." The colors and shapes of the room rippled for a moment; the surface of a clear pool struck by a heavy stone. "I know I'm not here to be loved, but I'm tired of being alone."

He touched her cheek. Her skin felt hot and damp, the way it might after she wept. "I won't leave you. I want to know everything about you." He might have to risk some questions, in order to coax her into telling him about Miss Lopez and the hall of artifacts.

She drew back and her voice turned cool. "Why?"

Why, indeed? Thierry suddenly realized that he had no business here, not with this lonely, neglected little cat. They had said she was not long for this world, and what few months or years she had left to her should be lived to the fullest, in peace. All he could truly give her was madness and pain. He should slip out of her dream, out of her bedroom, and out of her life. He saw himself doing so, quite clearly. "I need you."

Jema reached up and touched the edge of the hood covering his face, but did not try to push it back. "What are you?

Are you Death?"

Thierry could not speak. Could not deny what he was.

"No, not Death," she murmured. She picked up one of his hands and examined it. His nails had grown long again, thick and pointed, like talons. "You've come from the painting over my desk."

The painting. Thierry remembered it now. The same nightdress, the same silky ribbons had adorned the figure of the sleeping woman. His cloak was not unlike the shadow cast over her bed; the form of a man whose hands were not those of a man- Now he understood her dream. We have become the painting that she loves. "Yes."

"I'm glad." She brought his hand up and pressed her cheek against it. "I've waited so long for you. Will you come back to me again?" He closed his eyes, almost breaking from the dream before he gave in to temptation. "Yes."

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