But the creature smiled at her, and whispered her name. "Lenore... I never meant to hurt you, Lenore. I just long to touch you again..."
"You bastard!" Nathaniel shouted. "Bastard, I swear I'll kill you this time, I—"
"Lenore!" Now its voice was soft, almost tender. "You're my wife. You wouldn't kill me. You couldn't kill me."
He started walking toward her. To her horror, she found herself nearly frozen by the power in his black eyes. She needed to be moving away. She needed to find her weapon, to run, to fight...
"Lenore..."
"You're not Bruce!" she cried out. "You're not Bruce. You've stolen his body, and you've kidnapped his soul. But you're not my husband. My husband was never cruel, never, never evil. You're not Bruce!"
The thing stopped then, and hissed in fury. But then its lips cracked into a dry smile again. "Kiss me, wife. Join me. Be with me now, damned through eternity. Let my lips touch yours, let my blade caress your throat..."
He had taken a step toward her again. "Before God, no!" Nathaniel cried out, taking a swift step before her, and slashing with his sword. He caught the creature right across the belly, but there was no blood, and the thing barely staggered back. "Damn you, you'll not touch her!"
But it came forward again, closer and closer. It struck out savagely at Nathaniel with a wicked punch, throwing him back against the wall as if he weighed no more than the feather pillow. Nathaniel slammed hard into the wall. Lenore heard the hard crack of his head against it. He fell to the floor. For a moment, Lenore thought that he was dead. Oh, so nearly! His eyes opened. He tried to rise. The demon was approaching him. He shook his head, fighting to clear it. Any second, and the creature would be upon him once again with its fierce, inhuman strength...
There would be no chance again.
"Dear God, Nathaniel, don't pass out! Live! It's a shapeshifter!" Lenore cried out. "It has to be beheaded and burned. The head, Nathaniel—you have to sever its head."
The creature paused, its eyes pure black fire and fury upon her.
"You!" It pointed at her. "I'd not have hurt you, Lenore. Now you will feel my kiss, oh, yes, wife, I swear it..."
She wrested the knife from the little sheath and raised it at the creature coming so swiftly toward her. She backed away, terrified.
"A kiss, my love..."
It reached out a hand. Like icicles, his fingers curved over her naked flesh. He drew her to him. Closer. She tried to raise the knife, but he slapped her hand with such force that the bones were nearly shattered. Her feeble weapon fell to the floor. Closer. She could smell his fetid breath. Like death. It swept over her. His eyes, blackness, seemed to consume her. Any second now, his lips would touch hers with their rancid whisper of the grave...
"Demon bastard!" she heard in a rage. The creature was tapped on the shoulder. Icy fingers eased from her flesh as the Bruce-demon turned to meet this new aggressor, come back to life.
"Ah, Yank! You'll die so slowly..." the monster began, straining back to pitch forward with its deadly blade, its whisper still so sibilant and chilling.
But it wasn't to be. Not this time. Nathaniel was ready. His sword was up and poised even as the demon finished its turn. The silver cavalry blade began to whip through the air, catching the creature right at the throat with a sound.
The head was nearly severed.
There was no blood to fly...
Lenore screamed as the thing set its hands to its head, trying to steady it. She crouched down on her knees, hugging her arms to her chest as she screamed again.
It steadied the head for a moment. It stared at her.
"Lenore..."
For a moment, it was so achingly Bruce's voice. For a moment, it seemed that the evil left the eyes.
"Lenore, Lenore, Lenore..."
The tenderness was gone. The evil lit like fire in the eyes.
The thing was reaching for her again...
"No!"
It was Nathaniel, roaring out the word. And his sword swung again, hard and sure.
And this time, the head came loose from the creature's throat. It flew across the room to strike the wall.
Head and body fell. Still. Dead.
Lenore screamed again and crouched on the floor, shaking uncontrollably. Nathaniel's arms came around her, and he hunkered down, engulfing her with his tenderness. He held her for long moments, whispering to her. Then, when her shaking began to ease at last, he spoke softly.
"You said—we have to burn it?" he asked.
She looked up at him with her tear-streaked face and nodded.
"Come on. We've got to get our clothes on. And we've got to get a fire going and cremate this thing before someone finds us here. I can just see trying to explain this to a Confederate officer!"
She rose swiftly, her terror and shock abating with the realization that if she didn't move, she could still cause great danger for Nathaniel. She dressed mechanically, and he did the same.
"Throw me that sheet!" he told her, and she did, and she turned her back to him while he picked up the head. A great sob shook her.
"Lenore."
She turned. He had the head wrapped. "That was not your husband, not my old friend," he told her.
She nodded, saw the pain and empathy in his eyes, and nodded harder. "I know that, Nathaniel. Matty told me that the only way the real Bruce could ever rest would be for this creature to die. I'm all right. I'm really all right."
He nodded, pulled out a blanket, and wrapped the other half of the body. He hefted the trunk over his shoulder, then strained to reach down for the wrapped head.
Lenore gritted her teeth and hurried forward to get it for him. He looked at her.
"It isn't Bruce."
She followed him down the stairs and listened carefully to his instructions so that she could help him get a good fire burning quickly. She gathered the driest kindling she could find, lots of it. He built three fires, then found a plank and some bricks so that he could stretch the torso out over the flame. Finally, he placed the head in the center, and struck matches to his boots to light the flames.
The kindling caught quickly. A massive blaze arose very fast. His eyes, blue, penetrating, met hers across the flame. She ran to him, and he set an arm around her. He kissed her deeply. She tried to pull away from him. "You've got to go!" she whispered frantically. "Rebs will be all over in a minute!"
"I know," he told her regretfully. "I love you, Lenore."
"Don't love me—" she began.
"But I do. And I want to hear that you love me."
"Nathaniel, no—" she began softly again. But she broke off because he was suddenly spinning around, the soldier, ever wary, so quick to hear movement, so quick to draw his sword from its scabbard again.
He'd waited too late. A very worn and ragtag group of Reb soldiers had drawn around them.
Their leader, a lieutenant, dismounted from his horse and walked toward the blaze and the two of them. Lenore felt her heart leap. It was Jim Sawyer, tall, slim, a once-handsome young man with curling blond hair and lean features, a native son of Petersburg, a neighbor, a longtime friend. Maybe there was hope.
He looked at the blaze, and he looked at the two of them. He tipped his hat to Lenore, and nodded to Nathaniel, and she realized that Jim had known Nathaniel before the war, too. Of course, she thought. They had both been West Pointers, military men.
"Before I take you in, Colonel McKenna, I'd be willing to listen to an explanation for this."
Nathaniel lifted his hands. "I wish there was one I could give you, Jim. I really wish that there was."
Lenore escaped Nathaniel's arms and rushed to Jim. "It was the murderer, Jim, the—the demon."
To her relief, he stopped dead cold and stared into her eyes. "The murderer?"
"The boys! who were killed last night were killed by this—man," she said.
To her surprise, he smiled slowly. His eyes shot to Nathaniel's. "You managed to kill...the murderer."
Nath
aniel nodded stiffly.
Lieutenant Jim Sawyer cocked his head, still grinning. "Boys!" he called out to the small mounted company behind him. "This fire needs to burn good. Real good. We've got to keep it going, all right?"
His men dutifully dismounted and came to the fire, poking the kindling to keep it alive, adding more to it. They all watched as it blazed.
"Thank you!" Lenore told Sawyer, staring at him curiously. "Thank you, you can't realize how many lives you might have saved by not stopping us. You—"
"I've known about this a long time," Jim Sawyer told her, and smiled. "And I've got some good friends out of New Orleans. The tales they can tell you on a winter's night are incredible, of course. A man or a demon, this fellow belonged in the fires of hell, he may as well start taking the heat here on earth."
Jim Sawyer turned and stared at Nathaniel and saluted. "You'd better go, sir. Quickly. While these men are busy."
Nathaniel nodded, and extended a hand to Sawyer. "Thank you," he said.
Sawyer nodded gravely. "Time might come real soon when you might be returning the favor for me."
Nathaniel lowered his eyes for a moment, then met Sawyer's stare once again. "It would be a privilege, sir, to help you in any time of distress."
Sawyer saluted once again and turned away. Nathaniel kept staring at Lenore. She came to him, clutching his hands. She looked into his eyes. "Go!" she urged him.
"As soon as you tell me you love me," he whispered.
And he meant it. He wouldn't move. "Damn you!" she said softly. "Damn you. I love you. Now go away! Please, God, go away!"
And so he turned. And while the fire burned, he became one with the darkness.
The terror was over.
And he was the enemy, once again.
Epilogue
Petersburg, Virginia June 1865
The war had taken its course. It had all been painfully very much as Nathaniel had said it would be. Petersburg could not withstand the brutal beating it had taken forever. Lee realized that he would have to abandon the city, and it fell.
And for the South, it was then a swift downhill slide to defeat. Lincoln came to Petersburg after the city fell. He was greeted by a tomb of quiet. Union soldiers marched through the streets.
Lenore waited, but she didn't see Nathaniel. He had been sent in pursuit of Lee's army, she heard.
There was no way then for the Army of Northern Virginia to hold Richmond.
Lincoln walked in the streets of the Southern capital.
Then, at the beginning of April, Lee came to the sad conclusion that there was nothing more that he could do. He was beaten. And so he surrendered his army to the Union General Grant, and he said farewell to his troops. There were still some Southerners on the field. But the war was, for the most part over.
Then Lincoln, who had claimed "Dixie" to be his favorite song, the tall gawky man who had fought so hard to keep his Union intact—and who just might have been, in the end, the true hope for a dignified peace—was assassinated at Ford's Theatre in Washington, D.C.
It was over. Truly over. The last men surrendered on the field. Andrew Johnson took over as president, trying to rule with a Northern Congress who had many members hell-bent on revenge.
And so Petersburg, like the rest of the South, began the long struggle up from her knees.
Dr. Tempe was still in town, and Lenore spent many long days with him. They were somewhat easier now. They saw expectant mothers and children with runny noses as well as men trying to adapt to peace with whatever injuries they had sustained.
She had been blessed in the end, she thought. Both her grandfather and her little brother had made it back in from the trenches. Teddy had turned fifteen at the end of May.
And Lenore had to admit that he was older than his years; the trenches had made him old. He had been left at an inn right in the center of the city by a dying friend, so he and their grandfather worked on righting the place, and she pitched in whenever she could. She had been with Doc Tempe a long time now. She wasn't ready to leave.
Matty was still with her, too, of course, and on a Friday late in June, when Lenore returned from her hours at the hospital, Matty had her a very hot bath waiting. Lenore sank into it, and closed her eyes. Defeat was bitter, but life was sweet, and she was learning to enjoy it again. If only there weren't the awful aching...
The loneliness that nothing could quite cure.
"You need to find that Yankee soldier of yours," Matty told her, laying out fresh clothing before the fire for her and eyeing her with her stern dark gaze. "Find him, and leave the past behind."
Lenore lifted a hand. "Can we ever really leave the past behind?"
Matty paused, folding a bright towel over her arms. "Some things, yes, we leave behind. Nightmares. Things that are lost to us, that we cannot bring back. Bruce Latham is gone, peacefully now. He was a good man. By God's grace, he rests in heaven."
Lenore watched Matty, and sighed. Matty was right. Some things, you had to let go. The war was over. She had almost convinced herself that her meeting with the shapeshifter that had stolen her husband's form had been a dream. That Nathaniel seizing her had been a dream...
That falling in love had been a dream...
Dreams were gone. Faded with the bugle calls that no longer sounded. She had to look to the future. Here, they needed to rebuild.
"I can't leave home," Lenore said softly. "I'm needed here."
Matty shrugged. "As you wish." She stopped speaking, staring out the window to the rear yard behind the kitchen. She frowned, then she looked at Lenore. "Maybe fate will give you a hand."
Lenore sat up, staring at the woman. "What—"
Matty was smiling then. "Indeed, missy! Sometimes, it seems, the good Lord will step in even for those who haven't the good horse sense to help themselves!"
"Matty—"
"Get dressed, Miss Lenore. You've got company."
Matty disappeared. Lenore leaped from the tub as fast as she could and stumbled into her clothing. She was struggling to do up the little buttons at the back of her dress when there was a knock at the kitchen door.
"Hold on!" she cried out. "Matty, where in the devil—"
But the door opened, swung in.
And he was standing there.
He looked different. He wasn't wearing his blue anymore. His face was drawn, certainly worn, and yet his eyes were beautifully bright. His hair was neatly trimmed, and he was wearing a handsome red vest, a very attractive dark frock coat, and fawn breeches. For a moment, she couldn't believe that he was standing there.
"Nathaniel?" she whispered.
He strode into the kitchen, looked from the bath to her flushed face, and smiled. Before she could move, he had come to her. Hands on her shoulders, he swung her around and started doing up her tiny buttons.
"Seems I was always trying to undo these things when I was with you before," he said softly. "But then, I understand that I'll have to be going through your grandfather and a very grown-up brother if I want to have things my way, so I guess I'd better fight against instinct and make sure this dress is on you instead of off you."
The buttons were done. She swung around, staring at him.
"Nathaniel—"
He dropped to a knee. "Lenore, marry me."
"Nathaniel, I can't leave Petersburg—"
"Then I shall move into it."
"The people will hate you—"
"They'll learn to love me. That is, if you do." One of his dark brows arched over his eye. "You do love me. You told me that you did, that night before the fire."
She nodded. She dragged him to his feet. "Nathaniel—"
His turn. He drew her into his arms. Kissed her.
Tasted her lips, savored them, kissed her more and more deeply.
"Marry me?" he whispered at last.
"You'll really stay here?" she asked him incredulously.
He nodded. "The war is over. Our demons are all laid to rest. I love you, Lenore."
She threw her arms around him.
"Say it!" he whispered.
She leaned back and met his eyes. "I love you, Nathaniel. With all my heart. Yes! Yes, I'll marry you!"
Once again, his lips touched hers.
Exhilaration filled her. Happiness, excitement.
Indeed, she loved him.
And he was right.
Their demons were all laid to rest...
AND I WILL LOVE YOU FOREVER
Prologue
Glenraven
Isle of the Angels
The Land of the Scotia
The Year of Our Lord 897
The massive wooden door to her room in the highest corner of the keep was suddenly slammed open and he stood there, the breadth of his shoulders nearly blocking all light from entering. Yet the light glittered behind him. It fell upon his shoulders, making them bronze, making the ripple of muscles on his arms all the more apparent. It fell upon his hair, which was blond like the sun, blazing with hints of red.
The day was not so warm, yet he was not heavily clad for the battle he had fought. Leggings barely covered the length of his thighs; a sleeveless tunic, trimmed in fur, fell to his hip.
His sword, held ever ready at his side, dripped with blood.
His eyes, bluer than the deepest sea and colder than the ice of winter, fell upon her own.
And he smiled.
"The day has been won," he said simply. "I have won it."
Fire seemed to dance upon her. Little sparks of searing fire darted along her spine, sweeping up and down. Her heart began to pound, and she met the blue triumph in his eyes.
Indeed, he had come this far. He had won the day.
"I have won the prize, lady," he added softly. "And the prize is you."
She could scarcely breathe. As battle had waged here between the various factions, as she had seen the contenders time and time again—as she had fought them off!—she had felt that curious sizzle in her heart and blood and body whenever their paths had crossed. Aye, they were enemies, for he was of the heathen scourge who had sailed across the seas, and she had been born here, on the very bed that stood between them. Before, they had fought their battles with words.
Heather Graham's Haunted Treasures Page 17