Stealing Kathryn

Stealing Kathryn

Jacquelyn Frank

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EDITORIAL REVIEW: *New York Times* bestselling author Jacquelyn Frank invites you to explore a strange and sensuous world of darkest desire ruled by an extraordinary being who is about to meet his earthly match… Sandman. Angus. Morpheus. He is known by many names, except his true one, Adrian. When he departs his world, it is to enter the sacred space of sleep, and he is not there to sow sweet dreams. Adrian’s mission is to reap the dark energy of nightmares, work that has twisted his soul as well as his once-handsome face. Now, he lives only to await the day darkness finally overcomes him…and to collect exquisite reminders of what he’s lost… But there is one treasure that stands apart. Having risked everything to obtain her, Adrian soon realizes his mistake. For Kathryn has a wholly unexpected power over him, not only for what she represents, but for what for she is: a soul with desires as strong as his own, tempered by compassion that could save Adrian from his self-made hell—or condemn them both… Praise for the Novels of Jacquelyn Frank “A lush narrative sure to please readers who have longed for new gothic and darkly romantic tales.” —*Booklist* on *Gideon* “Frank’s *Nightwalker* series depicts an engrossing alternate world, drawn in prose that is lush and lyrical.” —Linda Howard

PROLOGUE:

:

“Light. Now.”

The stifling blackness was cut almost rudely by the sound of a striking match. The torch made of rag and kerosene caught the puny flame, held it, and exploded in a flare of fire.

The light chased the darkness back into tighter packs of shadow, where it hesitated at the borders of its ragged, imperfectly constructed circle of illumination. It wavered wanly at its edges, as if it knew it was nowhere near powerful enough to obliterate the darkness and dared not push its limits.

“Light, Master,” the torch holder announced needlessly. His eyes were gobbling up the sight of the magnificent twisting flames. His pupils had dwindled to tiny, brackish pinpoints at the sudden brightness. His eyes hurt, but still he stared at the delicious fire as it licked and devoured its fuel. He continued to gaze at it in utter fascination even after his eyes had burned dry from the near heat and his neglect in remembering to blink.

“Closer, Cronos.”

Cronos finally blinked, wincing at the painfully sudden lubrication. Then he obediently shuffled forward, his spindly legs working hard not to trip over themselves. The Master, he knew, would have no patience for his usual clumsiness this eve.

Something told him that this night was special, different from all the others. He could almost hear the complex, ominous machinations of the Master’s thoughts.

He moved forward, the light progressing with him and creeping slowly along the floor before it began to hesitatingly encircle the Master, as if afraid of the darkness it battled back from around the enormous cloaked figure.

“Stand.”

Cronos froze midstep.

Gingerly, without moving himself or the torch a millimeter closer, he put his raised foot down. He released an anxious, shaky breath as quietly as he could. Then, willing himself not to be entranced by the torch flames again, he looked with curious expectancy to the Master.

The Master’s back was to him, so all he could really see was the expanse of the coal-black cloak stretching across his broad, bulky shoulders. From there it cascaded in massive, flowing folds to the bare stone floor, where it swept the dust-laden gray slab. Upward, the Master’s head was covered, hidden completely within a deep-hooded cowl.

Cronos was glad of this. It was always easier to watch when he could not see the Master’s chilling features. Yet he knew the Master was well aware that he was watching. Cronos kept his simple thoughts carefully neutral.

There was no movement for many heartbeats.

Then slowly, the Master extended a pale, long-fingered hand from the ebony abyss of himself. A large onyx ring glittered from the third finger of this hand, flames catching the facets until it looked as if the ring was burning as well. To Cronos it was a most fascinating effect. Almost too fascinating for his easily distracted mind.

The hand reached farther.

To the mirror.

The mirror was a breathtakingly eerie thing and it, too, never failed to earn Cronos’s attention. It was the shape of an inverted triangle that spanned the entire height of the wall, nearly two feet taller than the Master’s towering figure. The glass gleamed with dark foreboding, a wicked midnight blue and perfectly unflawed. There was an iron framework bordering its three edges. This brown-black ornate edge curled forward toward the glass in arching fingers of twisted metal, looking rather like the Venus flytrap plants up in the Master’s study.

The Master’s hand continued heading for the blue glass mirror, every inch of motion a proclamation of respectful reverence.

Cronos always held his breath at this point, waiting, wondering, almost hoping that this trap, too, would spring, closing upon the Master and gobbling him up like insignificant fly meat.

Fearfully, Cronos checked his thoughts, though the Master likely was not listening to them presently. It was safer not to take any chances, however. And no matter how anxious he was for his own safety, Cronos still could not look away.

There was no reflection of light where there should be in the inky, watery glass.

Only a ghostly reproduction of a pale hand reaching…

The Master’s fingertips touched the glass gently, stroking downward in an almost loving caress. His hand turned palm side up, slowly, so slowly, as a lover might do when carefully cupping a woman’s soft, full breast.

Then with precision and intensity, the fingertips trailed patiently upward.

The Master’s head turned, just enough so that Cronos could see beyond the borders of the cowl.

Eyes of malachite and black widened slightly as they fixed on the progress of his own hand against the mirror. They were large, haunted eyes with pupils that flickered with swift-moving phantoms of death, suffering wraiths, and impending misfortunate fate. Set into deeply shadowed sockets, the eyes seemed to fairly glow with their wicked splendor.

This eerie illumination was fringed with lush, spiky lashes that curled upward in abundance. These lashes were deceptive, mockingly emulating those of an innocent, wide-eyed child whose lashes seemed to go on forever. These were not innocent. They were reaching.

Reaching. Reaching toward thick black brows. Brows that seemed to curl down in their centers, as if attracted toward the lashes. Both were waiting.

Waiting for the tiniest morsel of a fly.

Cronos’s stomach turned sour and he shuddered as he looked quickly to the floor. He could never look long upon those eyes, even when they weren’t trained piercingly upon him. Even when they weren’t boring into him and sucking…sucking at his frantic, twisted soul.

Little fly that he was.

But he quickly drew his faint courage back around himself and looked eagerly back to the mirror and the thing he knew was about to happen.

Gently, without a ripple or a single smudge of a fingerprint, the Master’s hand slipped into the blue waters of the glass.

The Master drew in an audible breath. It was almost a sound of pleasure, echoing in the vast room before disappearing in the refuge of the smothering shadows. He leaned forward slightly until his wrist had become enveloped by the mirror as well. An oppressive feeling of power began to bleed forbiddingly into the room. The torchlight quavered and dimmed, beaten back by this new, overwhelming darkness.

Suddenly, an electric blue and white finger of energy, like a small bolt of lightning, jumped from one of the curling tendrils of the mirror’s iron frame. Cutting a quick, jagged path to the Master’s wrist, it touched and ricocheted off. It rebounded in a precise V, heading directly to the framework on the opposite side of the mirror.

This one spark was the first of a cascade of similar bolts of static energy, each starting from and ending at a new claw of the reaching frame.

A charge built in the room, causing Cronos’s hair to stand on end in long gray spikes. The mirror was alive with lightning now. The Master’s eyes reflected the blue-white glow with unearthly intensity and a hunger for its power.

Then the mirror went abruptly dark and forbidding again. Yet the hot, nerve-tingling charge of power continued to fill the room until it created a whining hum.

The Master yanked back his hand, suddenly alive with movement as he shoved the cowl back from his head. A contorted growl erupted from him as he tore the entire cloak from himself, revealing his ghostly white, naked flesh.

He stepped up to the glass in such a way that one step might take him entirely through, his muscles flexing and twitching with potency and expectation.

The step was taken.

Cronos blinked once as the Master disappeared.

The torch guttered once before dying.

Chapter 1

He entered her sleeping mind with an unexpected thrust of force. But he should not have been surprised by her resistance. She always resisted sleeping, it seemed, as if she didn’t have time for it and wished she could do away with the restful state completely.

Not that it was going to be restful now that he was there.

At the moment there was no cohesion to the visions in her mind, the things surrounding him merely remnants of the electrical impulses and memories of things from the boring waking world in which she lived. He didn’t understand why anyone would want to wake up. The worlds of the mind were so vast and creative and could keep a person entertained forever.

Of course, they could also torment them endlessly, he conceded with a private little smile to himself. The emotion-evoking land of nightmares could range from simple guilt and self-induced fears to the roaring dramatics of beasts and the running from or falling to certain death.

The latter was a somewhat lazy method, he felt. It took the finesse of a true artist to work an environment and the mind of his subject in such a way as to turn every part of her own psyche into an antenna of fear, emitting the emotion in powerful, satiating waves of energy. Energy he needed. Energy he craved.

He found her at the very center of her mind, the exhausted need for sleep having forced her under, and her uncooperative imagination was simply tossing up flickering images of a sick girl in bed or her father’s robust laugh.

“No, no, this will not do at all,” he murmured.

He painted their surroundings in perfect pitch of night, the sparkle of stars above and below them as if they were flying among them. She was, as yet, unaware of him, but she responded to the change in her surroundings with awe and wonderment. Her heart raced at being unsure of her footing. Physics and reality were suspended, but her mind had a hard time accepting that.

When a subject first began to dream, the person was only a black shape of himself or herself. Like a person in a head-to-toe body stocking, the subject had no color, no hair, no skin or bone. Just the semiformed black mannequin the subject’s perspective allowed for at first. But depending on the nature of the dream, that would quickly change. The heavy and encumbered could become thin and spry, the ugly could become beautiful, and the beautiful could become plain; all according to the subconscious needs of the dreamer at hand.

But what he liked about this particular woman was that she never once altered her base appearance. The moment she began to dream with him, the blackness would melt away, giving shape to her tall frame with its wickedly long legs and the wide expanse of hips that filled out every outfit she wore with such a nicely pronounced curvature that led to an equally delectable backside. She was busty as well, every movement making her curve in one way or another. Her face was something else, though, aristocratic and elegantly planed, the look of a stern but beautiful schoolteacher. Perhaps it was the tight and strict ponytail she kept the incredible length of her chestnut hair in or it was her gray eyes that made her seem so severe at first, but then she would smile or cry and it would all change. Or she would become gloriously angry and her beauty would truly explode.

He was convinced that this was the way she looked in the waking world. There was never any variation and, in his opinion, there was hardly any need for it. The changes in her appearance came later, by his hand, when it suited his mood, and it was rarely anything more dramatic than the nature of her clothing.

Tonight she was flying and her usual jeans and T-shirt were unacceptable. With a thought he dropped a long white gown over her head, the simple silk flowing from shoulders to toes, outlining the curved perfection of her body, clinging to the beauty of her breasts and their outthrust nipples. She liked the gift, the pleasure clear on her lovely face, and he couldn’t help but stare at her just a few moments longer. They had so little time together, and…

…and there were rules he must follow.

Shapeless and dark, he thrust himself up against her from behind, his arm ringing her shoulders and his brute’s body like a solid wall of muscle and masculinity against her. She startled, her hands immediately going to the arm that held her so tightly. She didn’t call out a name, telling him that she didn’t have any notable men in her life whom she felt would come up on her like this. Why the idea should please him, he didn’t know. Nor did he care.

He wrapped his hand around her neck, the delicate length of her throat so unexpectedly narrow compared to the rest of her voluptuous body that he had a moment of fear that he had grabbed her too hard. Then he laughed at himself because it was only a dream, and grabbing her too hard was a part of the nightmare to come.

He could see into her mind, all her thoughts and emotions, all the trials of her life…and most of all, every fear she had ever had. It impressed him that she did not have very many things that scared her. She was as tough as she was beautiful. But everyone had fears no matter how tough a person was, and she was no exception. He merely enjoyed the challenge for what it was. She began to struggle against him in earnest, her feet and legs flailing as she tried to kick him. But she couldn’t hurt him here in this place. Not really.