Threshold of Destiny (The Mysterium Secret Book 1)

by Linn Chapel

  Alarmed, Tressa quickly swallowed the sip of tea she had just taken. “What happened?” she asked, wondering if there’d been some new signs of surveillance.

  Holt merely shrugged and held up the estate car key. “They couldn’t find this. They’re not pleased with my plan to take you off into the countryside, but there’s nothing they can do about it.”

  Feeling mystified, Tressa found a plate for herself and filled it with muffins and scrambled eggs. “But where are we going?”

  He only smiled. “You’ll see when we arrive.”

  As soon as Tressa had finished eating, Holt guided her outside. On the way, they passed by Hugh, who was just entering the cottage. The old caretaker beamed at them with approval.

  When they rounded the lilac bushes and came to the estate car, Holt ushered her firmly into the passenger seat. “I’ll drive,” he told her, shooting her a guarded look.

  As he slid into the driver’s seat, Tressa pointed out wryly that she had adapted to the English roads without much trouble, but Holt only laughed. Then she questioned him again about their destination, but he refused to give her any clues.

  The estate car rolled over the little bridge and up the lane toward the highway. In the passenger seat, Tressa speculated uneasily about Holt’s mood that morning. Not only had he been unwilling to divulge their destination, but he hadn’t even kissed her once. She felt just a little exasperated. And confused, as well.

  They followed a winding road past gently rolling fields and copses of trees. As they reached a tight bend, Tressa noticed several dark splotches on the fingers of Holt’s right hand as he spun the wheel.

  “Holt, are those ink stains on your hand?” she asked in surprise.

  Holt lifted both hands from the wheel as if to inspect them. Tressa gasped in alarm, for the car had just reached another sharp bend in the road.

  With the hint of a rakish smile, Holt gripped the steering wheel just in time to swing the car safely around the curve. “You weren’t frightened just then, were you, Tressa?”

  She drew in a fortifying breath. “Stop teasing me, or I’ll do the driving. What about those stains?”

  “I can see that I shall have to divulge my dark secret. Last night, I couldn’t fall asleep for I was restless after all of the dangers were over. I found an old pen that had been stored away in a desk at Windy Top – not one of the troublesome quills from my boyhood, but a new model with a steel nib – new, at least, two hundred years ago. I found a bottle of old ink in the desk, too, but unsticking the cap was a messy endeavor.”

  A little thrill ran through Tressa and she asked, “Holt, were you writing again?”

  He shot her a rueful look as he drove. “I confess to the crime. I’m no better than that bookish fop in Love’s Labor’s Lost. Devise, wit; write, pen; for I am whole volumes in folio.”

  Tressa smiled, for she had read Shakespeare’s play a few years ago and remembered the jaunty line. She murmured, “Have you been writing poetry?”

  “Yes, I’ve begun a poem about the workings of Providence,” he answered easily. “But you’ll see at once that it’s pure fancy, merely a work of fiction,” he continued. “Not a stitch of it comes from my own experience. Who would ever believe in a curse cast by an evil woman, a curse that lasted two centuries? Certainly no one would ever believe that such a dark enchantment could be broken by another woman. It seems to me that the only believable lines are the ones about the rare qualities of the second woman. She is, of course, the fairest in all of England,” he said. He looked at Tressa and added, “and all of America, too.”

  Tressa felt a wave of warmth run through her, but she cautioned him, “Don’t make her too perfect, Holt. Your poem won’t ring true unless her mistakes are also mentioned.”

  “Enough!” he warned sternly. “I won’t allow you to malign her.”

  Holt turned onto a smaller lane that ran through a dense woodland. In the dimness under the canopy of branches Tressa found herself peering into the shadows between the trunks and checking the rearview mirror.

  “Do you think anyone from the Operation has followed us?” she asked nervously.

  Holt shook his head. “Luke scanned the estate car with his red light earlier this morning. I don’t believe we’ve been noticed.”

  Soon he slowed and parked in a small turnout at the edge of the country lane. As Tressa stepped from the car, she gazed about with curiosity. The flush of springtime growth gave a vivid green beauty to the Somerset fields and hedgerows, but otherwise the view from the turnout seemed unremarkable.

  Leading her to a country footpath, Holt said, “Come this way, Tressa.”

  She obeyed despite her confusion. “Holt, will you finally tell me where we’re going?”

  He gave her a sidelong glance as they entered the footpath. “If you must know, to a fishpond.”

  “A fishpond? Are you teasing me again?”

  The dappled light under the trees danced over his lean face as he walked along beside her. “No, I’m perfectly serious.”

  The footpath narrowed and Holt urged her onward, falling into step behind her. After crossing a pasture, they climbed a stile and then crossed another pasture. Soon they were passing through a shady woodland where violets blossomed in tufts on either side of the path.

  A sparkle of light glimmered beyond the trees, catching Tressa’s attention. The woodland thinned as they walked on and the sparkling light grew. Then suddenly, they were standing at the edge of a beautifully landscaped lake. Its calm waters stretched out before them in the sunlight, shining with the vivid, mirror-like reflections of trees and blue sky and drifting white clouds.

  “A fishpond!” she exclaimed, turning to give Holt an accusing look.

  His eyes were gleaming. “We’ve come to a fabled spot, the old Stourhead estate. The public entrance is on the other side of the lake,” he added. He pointed to the far shore, where Tressa could see several visitors meandering past a bank of rhododendrons. “I brought you across the fields by a footpath because I wanted to surprise you. Truly, this lake was once an ordinary pond that was stocked with fish for the master’s table. Then the fever for natural landscapes swept through England. It was a time when architects were hired and grand schemes were hatched. Here at Stourhead, one of the most beautiful lakes of all was formed.”

  Around the shining expanse of water ran sweeps of blossoming rhododendrons like a floral frame. Here and there, tall trees stood in stately clusters with pink azaleas growing at their feet, and all the myriad shades of the leaves and blossoms were mirrored in the calm surface of the lake.

  After her first rush of impressions, Tressa noticed several stone structures amid the lush foliage. Turning her head, she spotted a majestic stone bridge that spanned the water where it narrowed into an outlet.

  “It’s breathtaking, Holt. Was it under construction when you were a boy?”

  “No, it was made earlier, in my grandfather’s time. When I was a young man, I attended a few dinner parties here and toured the stone temples. One of them was built to resemble the Pantheon in Rome,” he said, pointing to a small Roman-style temple with stone columns and a dome. It stood amid mounds of rose and purple rhododendrons, its reflection gleaming white in the lake water. “Inside the temple are statues of the Roman gods, just like the real Pantheon. But I’ve always thought that the mood of ancient Greece and Rome is at odds with the real history of this region,” he said wryly.

  “What do you mean?” asked Tressa.

  “We’re not far from the very spot where King Alfred fought back the Danish invaders over a thousand years ago. His men were weary and badly outnumbered, but he gave them hope, and despite the odds, they prevailed.” Holt shook his head as he gazed around the shores of the lake. “You must think all Englishmen are mad, Tressa.” He shot an assessing glance at her face. “One Englishman might think only of tending his lands and decorating them with statues and temples, while another Englishman might be willing to endure an agony of blood and
sweat and toil to preserve the soul of England.”

  She tried not to smile, for there were both kinds of Englishman in Holt. And he was aware of that, too, she was sure.

  Mildly, she said, “Englishmen do seem a little... eccentric.”

  “Intolerably so?” he murmured, looking away from her, across the lake.

  “No,” she answered truthfully. “I sometimes wonder,” she added reflectively, “why their own inconsistencies don’t seem to trouble them at all, but none of that bothers me. I think it’s endearing.” He had to know how she felt about him. Why the probing?

  A cooling wind stirred the strands of her hair. It passed next over the waters of the lake and the mirror-like reflections broke up into thin, quavering bands.

  Why had Holt brought her here? she wondered uneasily. Did he have nothing else in mind besides showing her a glorious spot in the English countryside?

  Holt turned away from the lake to examine her face. By the way his brows drew together with a look of concern, he seemed to be aware of her confusion. But he made no effort to banish it.

  Peering over Tressa’s shoulder, he murmured, “Come, let us visit the Grotto.” Leading the way along the shoreline, he brought her to the dark entrance of a cave that stood within a fern-draped ledge of stone.

  Stepping inside the entrance, she found herself passing down a dim stonework tunnel. Holt followed close behind and soon they arrived in a dim chamber. Nearby, a window-like opening framed a bright view of the lake’s sparkling blue waters and the sweep of rose-pink rhododendrons on the far shore.

  She had been hearing the sound of rushing water ever since entering the chamber. Turning now, her gaze ran curiously over the stone sculpture that stood within the domed space. It was a statue in the classical style, a powerful depiction of a male figure with long, flowing locks who was kneeling and tipping a stone urn. From the lip of the urn, a current of water gushed steadily forth and splashed downwards into a pool.

  A bit distantly, Holt explained that the figure was a River God, and that the water flowing downward from the urn came from the very source of the lake, an underground spring. He seemed oddly restless, though, and soon he led Tressa to the entrance of another domed chamber.

  On the far side of the dim space, within a shadowed niche, a second statue reclined on a broad pallet. It was a female figure, and the sculpted folds of her Grecian robes gleamed pale and ghostly above a dark pool of water. Naming her the Nymph of the Grotto, Holt led the way further into the chamber.

  Tressa followed, stepping on the smooth stones that paved the floor in concentric circles. She came to stand next to Holt in the center of the chamber. Her gaze traveled from the stone Nymph within her dark recess up to the damp stonework ceiling overhead. “Outside, the scene is so peaceful, so bright,” she murmured. “But in here, it feels almost eerie.”

  Holt said in a low voice, “Yes, it feels as if we’re halfway down an invisible descent. One way leads back up to the green and living world above, while the other leads down to the darkness of the earth and rock below. It seems as if by a single step, we could enter more light... or deeper darkness.”

  He fell silent then, and all Tressa could hear was the faint gush of water coming from the River God’s urn in the other chamber.

  Then he said, “I just remembered that another temple on the far shore of the lake bears a warning. The words are inscribed in Latin above the entrance. Procul, o procul este profani! Begone, you who are uninitiated!” An unhappy groan escaped him.

  The air inside the dim chamber seemed to become thick and heavy and Tressa longed to use her psychic ability to read his intentions, but she resisted the temptation. Holt wouldn’t like being studied without his knowledge.

  Quietly, she prompted, “What are you thinking about, Holt?”

  After a long moment he answered. “Those words are from Virgil. They’re the warning cried out by the Sibyl as she leads the hero Aeneas into the Underworld. I was remembering how I, too, was brought into an underworld by a female. It was a dark and unnatural world, full of powers and terrors and loneliness, a place from which I thought I’d never escape. Could I have avoided that fate? There had been several warnings, but I was very confident, very sure of myself. I did not give the warnings as much weight as they deserved.”

  As Tressa listened to Holt’s unhappy musings, a wave of apprehension ran through her. The damp air within the chamber began to feel clammy, almost suffocating.

  Ever since Holt had told her about the circle of lights that had surrounded him in Wells Cathedral, she had been hoping that his spirit in the Unseen World had been steadily healing. But maybe such healing hadn’t been taking place, after all. Maybe Holt’s long past as a vampire had been so dark and so painful that he would never overcome it.

  “The Sibyl’s warning reminded me of Eleanor just now, but she hasn’t been far from my thoughts all morning,” Holt added. “Tressa, I’ve been wanting to talk to you about her ever since we left Langley.”

  Tressa stiffened fearfully. She had assumed that there were no longer any obstacles keeping herself and Holt apart.

  “Tell me, what did she say to you at the Gorge?”

  Holt’s question caught Tressa off-guard. Mutely, she cast her thoughts back in time to that painful episode. “Eleanor already knew my name, and who I was,” she replied. “She said that you had been communicating with her by letter, not by phone, because you didn’t like using modern devices. That seemed just like you,” Tressa added. She tried to give him a carefree smile but her lips wouldn’t obey. “She also said that you planned to join her as soon as you were free of – of your responsibility to me.”

  “Just what I thought,” he murmured. “And you believed her. I wonder why?”

  She looked away. “I was already feeling miserable, and Eleanor was very convincing. And she was... well, everything that I’m not,” Tressa added, her voice trailing off.

  Holt threw back his head and laughed at that, but he offered no words of reassurance. The sense of unease that had been plaguing Tressa all morning only increased.

  Holt became serious again. “Were you aware at the Gorge that she was a vampire?”

  “Oh, yes – I already knew that. I had seen her before.” In the dim, hushed chamber, Tressa could hear Holt take in a sharp breath of surprise. “It happened a few mornings ago, when I decided to search for you with the psychic link. I found you, alright, but you didn’t notice me. You were rushing along the shore of a strange lake with black swans, and then you passed inside of a garden maze. I was worried about you, so I followed. In the middle of the maze, I saw you with a dark-haired woman. I didn’t know who she was at the time, but I could tell that she was a vampire, and that she stirred your emotions.” Tressa could still remember the tops of the hedges tossing restlessly in agitation. “I felt like I was intruding, so I left.”

  Holt crossed his arms over his chest and growled, “Everything about Eleanor stirred my emotions in a most unpleasant way. You must have seen parts of her country estate, where she brought me after the attack. Trees covered most of the estate but for the maze and the lake, where she kept a pair of rare black swans. You must have formed the link at a time when I was reliving some of my worst memories. Truly, she’d been uppermost in my thoughts ever since you were watched by a pair of vampires in London. When Wesley telephoned the other night with the news that Eleanor had disappeared from her usual haunts, I knew she might be on her way to Langley.”

  Tressa murmured, “She was the one who killed the rabbit in the woods, wasn’t she?”

  “Either Eleanor or her bodyguard. They must have forsaken human prey for a spell, so that they could hide their presence better.”

  Holt paced restlessly to the pool of water that gleamed darkly in its niche. “I knew she’d try to kill you if she learned of your existence. I could feel my old powers ebbing and with every day that passed, my fears for your safety grew stronger until I felt trapped and strangled by them. If only I’d ha
d more time! Time to plan a defense against her – but the fever made it difficult to think at all.”

  “It’s alright, Holt. Everything makes sense now.”

  “But it wasn’t only Eleanor. You were in danger from your own people at the Operation. You would have been killed in New Hampshire if Peter and I hadn’t found you in time. Then the Operation began to hunt for us in earnest, and the only solution that I could see was to bring you to Langley. While we were hiding, I waited for the fever of my transition to run its course. But I couldn’t change my moods.”

  “You made a good decision,” Tressa said. “We’ve all been much safer at Langley.”

  Holt shook his head. “Even though I’m no longer feverish, I’m still too moody. And opinionated. Two hundred years have apparently had no mellowing effect on my character. I must be unbearable,” he said, glancing her way.

  She met his look and laughed softly. “Don’t be ridiculous, Holt.” She watched him turn away and pace slowly about floor with its concentric rings of stones. “I liked your moods before you became feverish, and I’ve always liked the surprising things you say. You shock me sometimes – but it’s a good kind of shock. You make me feel awake and alive.”

  Holt came to a standstill. A sudden silence filled the chamber.

  Tressa gazed worriedly at his back and a heavy weight seemed to descend upon her shoulders, crushing her. If only she could see his face. “Maybe my own ways are too hard to bear,” she said in a wavering voice. “I have lots of good intentions, but I always run into more problems than I ever expect – problems that can make a mess for other people, like you.” She dragged in a shallow breath. “Especially you.”

  There was no response from Holt, not even a wry laugh.

  She took another shallow, hasty breath that did nothing to steady her voice. “And I’ve been told more times than I can remember that I need to stop daydreaming and become more involved with life.”

  Holt’s back was still turned to her. He seemed completely unaware that she was waiting with her heart thudding painfully for a response – any response – from him.