Heather Graham's Haunted Treasures

by Heather Graham

  Even as Haines spoke, they heard a shrill cry from down the line. Nathaniel spurred his horse, leaping down the trail. Three of his men were crying out, screaming, clasping at injured limbs. Nathaniel saw a shadow disappearing into the trees. He followed hard, his saber drawn.

  He rode into dense foliage and a low ground fog. Mist, mist surrounding him. There was movement ahead. He jumped down quickly from his horse and made his way through the underbrush.

  Suddenly, in the mist, the form of a man sprang before him. He could barely see, but then there was a strange glitter in the mist, and he saw that a knife was raised and that the man was ready to come barreling into him. He swung his sword in an arc just as the man lunged.

  He caught the knife in his shoulder, but hit flesh as well himself. He felt his sword shuddering, felt it as it sliced into the man, a mortal blow.

  But the man didn't fall. Nathaniel heard a strange keening, and his attacker ripped himself from the blade of Nathaniel's sword. Even as Nathaniel clutched his own bleeding shoulder, the man stumbled into the foliage. "No!" Nathaniel roared out again, and ran hard in pursuit.

  But the man was gone, almost as if he had evaporated into the trees, become part of the mist.

  Panting, Nathaniel leaned upon the handle of his sword. He started back to his men. No one, at least, had died. But a number of them were seriously injured.

  As he spoke with the others, Green touched his shoulder. "Sir, you're bleeding."

  "Flesh wound," he said.

  "Still, sir, it's almost daylight now. You can have that bound up and then get some sleep."

  The company surgeon saw to his wound. It wasn't serious. Nathaniel had been the one in good position to strike at an enemy coming after him too wildly.

  He should have killed the man. Instead...

  He closed his eyes, and he saw Lenore again. Running. Her beautiful hair streaming about her.

  And there were cold white fingers reaching out to grab her. There was the glitter of a knife beneath a full glowing moon...

  Tonight was the full moon.

  The light was coming. He stared up at the canvas of his tent, and the urge to see Lenore was overwhelming. He had to know that she was safe.

  And he had to demand to know what she knew!

  Damn her! He groaned inside. He wanted to shake her, hard. He wanted to tell her that they were all in danger. He wanted to tell her...

  That he did love her. And that they had to end this.

  From somewhere, a rooster crowed.

  It was daylight.

  * * *

  Lenore was in the makeshift church hospital, taking down a letter for a young boy from Georgia, when she saw one of the sergeants come in for Doc Tempe, and she saw Doc's face go just as white as the tufts of hair on his head. He wiped his hands on his apron and started out from the hospital in the sergeant's wake.

  She smiled uneasily at the Georgia boy and asked him if they might finish the letter later. Then she hurried after Doc Tempe.

  He was just outside, on the steps. A small company of Virginia infantry had brought two stretchers with sheet-clad bodies upon them. Doc Tempe lifted the first sheet, and a visible shudder ripped through the old man. He replaced it tenderly, then lifted the other. He spoke softly to the sergeant, and the company of men picked up their stretchers and moved down the steps. They were marching for the old office building up the street that was now being used as a morgue.

  She hurried to Doc Tempe, who stared at the men as they left.

  "What happened?" she cried to him.

  He stared at her, startled. He hesitated too long. "What do you mean, what happened? There's a war on out there, young woman!"

  She shook her head wildly. "It wasn't the war, right? It was... something else."

  He opened his mouth, ready to lie again. Then he sighed and shrugged. "Seems like it's our turn this time. Yes, Lenore, it was something else. Those boys were murdered. Nearly beheaded. Chopped right to pieces."

  "Infantry men?"

  "Cavalry. The infantry boys just brought them in. In fact..." He stopped, his eyes on her, his voice drifting swiftly to silence.

  "What?" she nearly shrieked.

  He shook his head sadly. "Now, Lenore, sometimes what we don't know—"

  "Doc Tempe, tell me what you were going to say!"

  He sighed deeply. "All right, Lenore. They were local boys. Boys who had signed up with your husband. Trenton Shaver and Harold McGilvey. They were troublemakers in the past, gave Bruce quite a hard time, from what I understood. But I suppose that's all in the past now. God will judge them, and us all."

  She felt ill suddenly. As if she were going to be sick there on the steps, or at the very least, pass out cold upon them. She fought the feeling, trying to concentrate on the breeze, the coolness of the day.

  What did it all mean?

  That her deceased husband had come back to life in some monstrous form and was now battling the Yankees in a different way?

  Punishing his own men with a terrible vengeance?

  "It can't be!" she whispered out loud.

  "What can't be?" Doc Tempe asked.

  She couldn't tell him. If she were to try to do so, she was convinced that Doc Tempe would say she had been working for the Cause for just too long, and needed an extended period of rest, perhaps locked away somewhere.

  "What can't be?" Doc Tempe repeated.

  "Uh... that it seems to be our men who are being murdered now," she said swiftly.

  He shook his head, staring at her. "Go home, Lenore. Go home and get some sleep. You're done in."

  "But—"

  "Things are quiet enough this morning. Rest, so that you're ready if I need you later."

  She couldn't argue with him at the moment. She nodded, then turned blindly toward the street. She wasn't sure she wanted to rest—if she slept, she just might dream—but perhaps she did need to be away for a while.

  She hurried down the streets, deserted except for a few soldiers running here and there. By daylight, the buildings hit by cannon and mortar fire were painfully scarred, the air had an acrid taste to it, and the sun didn't even seem to shine properly down upon the city. She closed her eyes against the sight of one very badly charred wall and hurried on.

  She burst into her own house, certain that she was alone, and leaned against the doorway. She heard a creaking sound and nearly cried out, then looked into the parlor and saw that Matty was sitting in the rocking chair before the cold hearth, staring at it as if she watched invisible flames.

  "It's gotten worse, eh?" Matty asked her softly.

  Lenore swallowed hard and nodded. "Southern men. Men out of Bruce's company, before he died."

  Matty was silent. Lenore left the doorway and walked toward the chair where the handsome black woman was sitting. She came down on a knee before her. "Matty—"

  Matty raised a hand to Lenore, then handed her an envelope which had lain on Matty's lap. "A soldier managed to hand that off to me this morning," Matty said softly. "I imagine it's from your Yank."

  Lenore stared at Matty for a moment, then ripped open the plain white envelope. There were a few simple sentences upon it.

  What's killing them, Lenore? You know, and we have to stop it. Help me. The old house. This afternoon, daylight. N.

  She let the note slip through her fingers. "But I don't know!" she whispered aloud.

  Matty rose slowly, stretching, as if her old back were sore. Then she turned around. And Matty's back and her bones might have been old, but her eyes were ageless.

  "Don't you?" she asked Lenore.

  "Matty, help me, tell me! Can a man come back? Why would Bruce kill like that? He wasn't a cruel man, he—"

  "Forget any idea that that man out there is anything like Bruce!" Matty warned her.

  "Then what is he?" Lenore cried out desperately.

  "A shapeshifter," Matty said softly.

  "A what?"

  Matty sat again, folding her hands in her lap, sta
ring at Lenore. "A shapeshifter. A demon. When Bruce Latham was shot and dying, the shapeshifter stole the body just as your husband's soul tried to escape it."

  "Oh, my God!" Lenore breathed. "I can't believe this, I just can't! You're telling me that it is Brace's corpse—"

  "I'm telling you that it is a demon. A shapeshifter."

  She was going to fall, Lenore thought, and she leaned against the mantel as she stared at Matty, needing the support.

  "I can't believe—" Lenore whispered again.

  "Aye, miss, and don't believe!" Matty warned her. She waved a hand with beautiful long black fingers in the air. "So many don't believe, and so the demons live on! Men think they battle another man, and so they die! People will not believe what they do not see, and so they die! Lenore, where I come from, one often sees the walking dead. And you cross yourself swiftly, and if the demon seeks to do battle with you, you know how to fight back!"

  Lenore gritted her teeth, walking forward again, coming down upon a knee once again before the old woman she had known all her life.

  "How do we fight it?" she asked softly.

  Matty's black eyes touched hers. "It will not die by gunshot or by a sword wound. The head must be completely decapitated, and then the head and body burned, and the ashes thrown wildly to the wind."

  Lenore stood, amazed to realize how badly she was shaking. But then, she had to go. She had to risk a run through the city and across the river, and she had to reach the house. And she had to do so swiftly, because Nathaniel would be there, and she had to reach him before dark.

  "I have to... behead... Bruce!" she whispered painfully.

  Matty shook her head. "You have to kill a demon. And let your husband go free. He has already left life behind him."

  "Matty, I'm so afraid."

  "Good. You need to be afraid."

  Lenore kissed the old woman on the cheek, then turned as quickly as she could. She drew her long black cape from the hall closet, and hurriedly left the house.

  The streets were still very quiet. She passed a soldier here and there, and occasionally a denizen of Petersburg, trying to mend something destroyed by cannon fire or combing the street for anything at all that might be left to eat.

  A Southern guard stopped her when she tried to leave the city. But another officer came up to him and addressed her as a friend. "Mrs. Latham! Another run out for medication? Jesu, 'tis a sorry day that we risk a lady such as yourself. Meyers, let her pass. She keeps many of us alive."

  She wasn't on a medicine run. But then, she was trying to save Rebel as well as Yankee lives. The Bruce-demon had killed his own men last night. Maybe that would exonerate her for the lie she gave now.

  "Thank you, gentlemen. I will return with what I can!" she assured them.

  Then she was given an escort to the river and a small boat to silently bring her across it to a thicket of trees on the other side.

  But once there, past her Southern guard, she found herself caught once again in the midst of a skirmish, soldiers running here and there, bullets flying. She sank back into the trees, determined not to die now from a stray bullet! She waited, and the shadows came before she could move again.

  Then she ran, sticking to the trees, avoiding the fields where the skirmish had taken place, where Rebs and Yanks alike now looked through the ranks of the fallen, separating the injured from the dead.

  She ran hard, seeing that the moon had risen against a still blue sky, but that the shadows would soon overtake the blue.

  And then it would be night. Darkness, with only the full, glowing moon to light it...

  She paused before the house, for it was dark within already. Shivers seized her as she breathed deeply, then started through the brush once again.

  She paused. Something was moving behind her. She could hear the rustling in the leaves...

  Stark terror held her still. Then she stared at the house. Nathaniel! She started to run again, blindly.

  Something struck her from behind. She fell, and it fell upon her. She started to scream wildly and in terror, picturing her husband...

  Deceased, all this time, the empty eye sockets...

  "Lenore!"

  A hand fell over her mouth. She heard the hushed whisper, and relief flooded her.

  She saw his eyes above her own, blue as the sky, burning, very much alive. Nathaniel. Then he was pulling her up, and into his arms, and his words were angry.

  "You shouldn't have come."

  "You told me to come."

  "You still shouldn't have come!"

  He lifted her into his arms and began walking toward the house. She laced her fingers behind his neck, and for those few moments, she allowed herself just to be happy, to be glad to be with him.

  He pushed open the door with his toe, then closed it, and slid the heavy bolt. Her eyes met the fire and the hunger in his. "I can tell you—" she began softly.

  "No!" he murmured. "We've so little daylight left!"

  She should have protested. She should have told him again that he could not love her.

  That he must not make love to her.

  But she didn't. She met his gaze as his strong strides and steps brought them up the stairway, and back to the bedroom where rose petals still cast their gentle scent upon the sheets. He laid her down upon the bed and gently disrobed her there, then cast aside his own clothing with less than subtle speed, and came down beside her. He enveloped her to the length of his body, touching her with his heat and fire from head to toe.

  They could feel the last of a gleaming red sunset streaking in upon them.

  It felt good upon her flesh. As sweet, as warm, as the feel of his lips upon her. Lips that tasted, savored, traveled. Caressed her naked flesh, teased her breasts. Caught her lips in an endless kiss. Roamed with a fiercer, more savage hunger now, upon her body. His mouth, searing, suckling. Touching her, all over her. A line of fire, created by the tip of his tongue, streaking from the valley between her breasts to her belly, lower, beyond. She cried out, writhing, waiting. Clutching him, her own lips burning into his shoulder, tasting his throat, seeking his chest. Her fingers, closing around him, feeling the pulse, feeling the deep, deep shuddering within his body.

  Then he was atop her. Within her. Moving, whispering. Bringing her swiftly toward ecstasy.

  Whispering...

  That he loved her.

  And she loved him. Loved when he pulled from her. Kissed her lips again, teased her thighs. Came between them.

  Brought her higher and higher until she was crying out.

  Swept her with his need, and brought them both at last to a place where time stood still, to where the world exploded, where only splendor existed...

  She held him to her as she drifted back to a realm of peace.

  "We have to talk," she whispered softly.

  "I know." Held upon his elbows, he rose slightly above her. "I love you. And I know that you love me."

  She fought the tears that glazed her eyes. "We've got to talk about—"

  "Yes." He hadn't really expected a response on personal matters from her. His face was tense and grim now. "I've got to know what's going on, Lenore."

  She nodded. "And you've got to try to believe me, Nathaniel. You wouldn't before—"

  "Tell me, Lenore," he whispered.

  She nodded, then frowned.

  The daylight was gone. The red sunlight no longer shone upon Nathaniel's hard-muscled shoulders, making them gleam a copper-bronze. The world was muted now, touched only by the white glowing light of the moon.

  "I—" she began.

  And then she saw him. Past Nathaniel's shoulders. Coming into the room. He walked, but his footsteps made no sound. It was as if he had shifted into a human shape out of the mist and fog that darkness so often brought.

  Bruce...

  Not Bruce.

  This creature was evil. It had Bruce's face, but not his face. The flesh was white, the eyes were black and glowing. She blinked. Dead eyes. There was nothing
there except for the gleaming black. Nothing there but evil...

  And he was walking straight toward them, a blood-drenched knife held high in his hands. He walked, no, floated, toward them, ready to rip his blade into Nathaniel's neck.

  "Dear God, no!" she shrieked. Nathaniel twisted.

  And the blood-coated knife began to fall.

  Chapter 7

  Nathaniel saw the blade just in time. His arms wound around her tightly, he rolled the two of them to the side in a fierce gesture.

  The blade plunged into the pillow, sending goose feathers flying.

  The Bruce-demon let out a cry of rage, wrenching the knife from the pillow. But by that time, Nathaniel had dragged Lenore from the other side of the bed. He had shoved her fiercely from him, and leaped to the ground to swiftly wrestle his sword from its scabbard, cast there so haphazardly in his haste to be with her.

  He scarcely had it free when the Bruce-creature swung on him again, the knife raised. "Colonel, sir, eh?" it hissed. It was horrible. It was Brace's voice; it was not Brace's voice. It was a mockery of it, making something so horribly evil of the man she had once loved. "Colonel, sir, eh?" it repeated. A whisper, sibilant, horrible. The very sound of it brought chills streaking down Lenore's neck.

  "So you're sleeping with my wife," it continued, staring at Nathaniel with its evil black eyes. It seemed to smile. "It's been good to kill Yanks. It's been all right to kill Rebs. It's going to be ecstasy to kill you!"

  "You don't have a wife. Bruce Latham is dead. You've seized his body, but I'll be damned myself before I'll let you touch his wife!" Nathaniel responded swiftly.

  "I'll have her, and you will be damned!"

  It started to move. Nathaniel had his sword raised, his knees slightly bent, shoulders squared, eyes sharp. Naked, he was somehow exceptionally splendid at that moment, and her heart surged, because she knew that he would face down any danger for her.

  Or die trying.

  "No!" she shrieked. Nathaniel couldn't face this enemy. He didn't know how to kill it.

  She started walking inward from the corner of the room, staring at the demon. She dropped down to the ground, keeping her eyes on the creature, searching for the knife Nathaniel kept in a small sheath—usually at his ankle.