Crystal Gardens (39 page)

At the head of the table there was a spectacular wedding cake trimmed with astonishingly realistic roses. Evangeline knew a moment of panic when she made to cut the cake and noticed the flowers.

“
Molly
. Not
those
roses.”

Molly leaned close and lowered her voice. “They’re sugar roses, ma’am. Don’t worry, I didn’t pluck them from the garden.”

Lucas and Evangeline spent their wedding night in the ruins of the Roman bath deep in the heart of the Night Garden. If the location struck some as an unusual choice for the start of a honeymoon, no one was foolish enough to remark upon that, either. Nor did anyone comment when Lucas was seen hauling a stack of cushions, pillows and fresh bed linens into the maze the day before the wedding.

It was now a matter of local pride that the new master and mistress of Crystal Gardens were not what anyone would call an ordinary couple. No one could expect them to spend their wedding night in the ordinary fashion.

T
HE ENERGY
in the second pool chamber was good.

Lucas picked up the bottle of champagne that he had just opened and filled two glasses. He carried the glasses to the edge of the sparkling pool where Evangeline sat, her dainty feet dangling in the water. She had changed into a nightgown. Her hair was tumbled around her shoulders and her eyes were filled with the endless mysteries that he knew he would be exploring for the rest of his life.

He handed her one of the glasses and sat down beside her. He had removed his boots and his shirt was open but he was still wearing his trousers. He rolled up the bottom edges of the pants and put his own feet into the pool.

“Congratulations, Mrs. Sebastian,” he said.

“On my marriage, do you mean?” Her eyes warmed. “Thank you, Mr. Sebastian. As it happens, I am quite pleased myself.”

“I was referring to your remarkable success with the publication of yet another chapter of
Winterscar Hall
.” He raised his glass in a small
toast. “You did it—you actually managed to convince your readers that the man they had assumed was the villain of your novel is now the hero. Only a very fine writer, indeed, could have pulled off that clever twist.”

She smiled and took a sip of the champagne. “Thank you. I must admit, I was fortunate enough to be inspired by none other than my very own husband.”

“Who is always happy to be of service.”

“That,” she said, “will be very convenient.”

He touched her cheek, leaned over and kissed her.

“I love you, Evangeline.”

“I love you, Lucas.”

A fierce joy welled up inside him. He set his glass aside and put hers down beside it.

He gathered her into his arms and kissed her.

The effervescent waters of the ancient pool sparked and flashed, reflecting the energy of love.

FROM

BY

A NOTE FROM JAYNE

Welcome to Rainshadow Island on the world of Harmony.

In the Rainshadow novels you will meet the passionate men and women who are drawn to this remote island in the Amber Sea. You will also get to know their friends and neighbors in the small town of Shadow Bay.

Everyone on Rainshadow has a past; everyone has secrets. But none of those secrets are as dangerous as the ancient mystery concealed inside the paranormal fence that guards the forbidden portion of the island known as the Preserve.

The secrets of the Preserve have been locked away for centuries. But now something dangerous is stirring….

Y
ou belong to me,” the vampire said. “Soon you will understand that you are meant to be my bride. No matter what happens to me in this place, I will escape and I will come for you.”

Marcus Lancaster’s voice was rich, compelling and resonant, the voice of an opera singer or the ultimate con man. He accompanied the words with a sly whisper of compelling energy that shivered with promise.
I can fulfill your deepest desires
.

Rachel Bonner did not doubt for a moment that he truly did want her but she was certain it was not because he had fallen in love with her. Lancaster was one of the monsters. That crowd didn’t have the capacity to love. They were inclined, however, to be obsessive in their desires and, therefore, quite dangerous.

“I knew this was a waste of time.” Rachel gathered up her notepad
and pen and got to her feet. The silvery charms attached to her bracelet shivered and clashed lightly.

“You cannot run from me, my beloved,” Lancaster said. He reached up with one well-manicured hand and touched the ear stud in his left ear. The small item of jewelry was made of black metal and set with a stone that was the color of rain.

The gesture was casual—made in an absent manner, as if Lancaster was not aware of what he was doing. But the hair on the back of Rachel’s neck stirred. A chill of intuition raised goose bumps on her arms. Her palms went cold.

Lancaster wore another piece of jewelry, too, a discreet signet ring engraved with the image of a mythical Old World beast, a griffin.

She had shut down her senses so she wouldn’t have to view Lancaster’s aura, but there were traces of his energy on the table and everything else that he had touched in the room. She could not abide the way he was watching her. She had to get out of there.

She looked at the one-way mirror set into the wall as she went toward the door and raised her voice a little to make sure her unseen audience could hear her.

“That’s it, Dr. Oakford—I’m finished here. There’s nothing I can do with this one.”

She did not have to see the faces of Dr. Ian Oakford and the other members of the clinic staff who were observing the therapy session to know that they were all reacting with shock and outrage. Ditching a patient the way she had just done was extremely unprofessional. But she no longer cared. She’d had enough of Oakford and his team, enough of their research, enough of trying to fit into the mainstream world of clinical para-psychology.

A woman—at least one who had been raised in a Harmonic Enlightenment community—could take only so much. Her parents and
her instructors at the Academy were right. She was not cut out for mainstream life.

Most people would not have known Lancaster for what he was. Tall, blond, blue-eyed and handsome in a slick, distinguished way, he was a natural-born predator who moved easily among his prey. But the dark side of Rachel’s talent for aura healing was the ability to see the monsters and recognize them for what they were.

Lancaster had made a tidy fortune in the financial world. But a few days ago he had shocked his associates and his clients when he had voluntarily committed himself to the Chapman Clinic. He claimed to be plagued with severe para-psych trauma induced by the death of his wife several months earlier. His symptoms consisted of nightmares and dangerous delusions—precisely the severe symptoms required for someone to be admitted to Dr. Oakford’s new research program at the clinic.

She opened the door, stepped out into the hall and signaled to the waiting orderly.

“You can take Mr. Lancaster back to his room, Carl,” she said. “We’re finished.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Carl moved into the therapy room.

“Time to go, Mr. Lancaster,” he said in the soothing, upbeat tone he used with all the patients.

Lancaster chuckled. “I think I make Miss Bonner nervous, Carl.”

He got to his feet with leisurely grace, as though he were still dressed in the elegant silver-gray suit and white tie that he had been wearing when he walked into the clinic. Credit where credit was due, Rachel thought. Lancaster managed to make the baggy shirt and trousers that were standard issue for all patients look like resort casual attire.

“Do you think she’s afraid of me, Carl?” Lancaster infused his mellifluous
words with just the right tincture of regret. “The last thing I want to do is frighten her.”

“No, Mr. Lancaster, I’m sure Rachel isn’t afraid of you,” Carl said. “She has no reason to be afraid of you, now, does she?”

“An excellent question, Carl. One that only Rachel can answer.”

Rachel ignored both of them. The tiny stones set into her charms were starting to brighten. That was not a good sign because she was not consciously heating the crystals. They were reacting to her anxiety, a strong indication that her current state of psychical awareness and control was anything but harmonically tuned.

This was it, she thought. Lancaster was the last straw. She was going to hand in her resignation. The money was good at the clinic and the work provided the illusion that, in spite of what everyone back home said, she could make a place for herself in the mainstream world. But she had not signed on to deal with monsters like Marcus Lancaster. Nor was he the only one enrolled in the research trial. There was a very good reason why the patients in Oakford’s project were housed in a locked ward.

She was an aura healer. She needed to use her talents in a positive way.

According to mainstream theories of para-psychology, energy-sucking psychic vampires were a myth—the stuff of horror novels and scary movies. But Rachel had met a few in her time and she knew the truth. The monsters were real. The good news was that most of them were relatively weak. They tended to pursue careers as con men, cult leaders and politicians. They preyed on the emotionally vulnerable and the gullible.

Nobody denied that such low-level human predators existed, but few thought of them as vampires or monsters. Psychology textbooks, therapists and clinicians had invented more politically correct terms to describe them. The diagnostic descriptions often involved the phrase
personality disorder
, or para-sociopath. But the ancients back in the Old World had got it right, Rachel thought. So had the philosophers who had founded the Harmonic Enlightenment movement and established the Principles of Harmonic Enlightenment. The correct description for the Marcus Lancasters of the world was
evil
. When that particular attribute was coupled with some paranormal talent, you got psychic vampire.

The question that was worrying her the most was why Lancaster was attracted to her. She knew it was not love or even simple lust that had made him fixate on her out of all the members of the clinic staff. She had learned at the Academy that it was the prospect of controlling others that fascinated the monsters. By the nature of her own psychic ability and training, she possessed a high degree of immunity to their talents. But she suspected her immunity was the very quality that had drawn Lancaster’s attention. She was a challenge to him. Seducing and controlling her would affirm his own power.

The problem for the creeps was that they were incapable of achieving any degree of inner harmony. They spent their lives trying to fill the dead zones on their spectrums. No Ponzi scheme was ever lucrative enough, no cult was ever large enough, no business empire was ever sufficiently profitable, no position on the academic or political ladder was imbued with enough power to content a vampire.

And for the subset of vicious monsters who were drawn to death and violence, no amount of torture and killing could satisfy the bloodlust.

But monsters had dreams, too, Rachel thought. Evidently Marcus Lancaster had concluded that controlling her would fulfill some of his own dark fantasies.

Ian Oakford was waiting for her at the end of the hall. Last month, when she had met him, she had done a little fantasizing of her own. Ian was an intelligent, good-looking man with a very buff build and a lot of stylishly cut brown hair. He was endowed with the strong-jawed,
trust-me-I’m-a-doctor presence that the patients and most of his female staff found appealing. Rachel was convinced that he could have had a lucrative second career as an actor playing a doctor in pharmaceutical commercials.

Not that Ian wasn’t already doing very well for himself. He was still young by the standards of the profession, but his talent for para-psychology, combined with a lot of drive and ambition, had taken him far. Six months ago he had been appointed director of the new research wing of the Chapman Clinic. The funding from drug companies had quickly followed. He had several clinical trials in various stages of progress.

At that moment, however, Ian did not exhibit the kind, reassuring air that people liked in those engaged in the healing professions. Behind the lenses of his designer glasses his gray eyes glittered with anger. His square jaw was rigid.

“What do you think you’re doing, walking out of a therapy session like that?” he demanded.

His voice was tight but controlled. Ian prided himself on never expressing extremes of emotions of any kind. He viewed such displays as a symptom of instability in the aura. He was right, of course, at least according to the Principles, and she had admired him for his self-mastery. But she did not need her talent to tell her that he was furious. She didn’t blame him. He had taken a huge risk bringing her onto his research team. Her professional failings reflected badly on his judgment.

She braced herself for the inevitable. This was it, the end of her first really good job in the mainstream world. Her parents would breathe a sigh of relief. They had warned her about the difficulties she would encounter when she left the Academy and the Community.