Dark Enchantment (3 page)

Damned if they weren’t tag-teaming her. “Might I remind you that you’re already packed—for the horse show in Canada. A show you’ve been champing at the bit for months to get to.”

At Michaela’s mock-horrified grimace, Arianna admitted, “Okay, pretty lame.”

Michaela, a champion show jumper, had been looking forward to the Royal Horse Show in Toronto for months. Due to some business matter, her absentee-celebrity parents would be attending. Having always disparaged their daughter’s equestrian skills, it was to be Michaela’s first face-to-face—or as Michaela had so eloquently phrased it, “in your face”—opportunity to prove them wrong. “Look, Arianna, I’ve been thinking, I don’t have a darn thing to prove to those two. I’m really not that hot on going anymore.”

Arianna snorted. “Yeah, right.”

“Save it, kid. I’ve been planning to register for the Dublin Horse Show next August anyway.” Michaela calmly refilled their coffee cups from the carafe on the counter. “Now’s as good a time as any to make an advance trip to Ireland to set things up. So. You can either postpone your flight until later today, or I’ll just follow you on over tomorrow.”

Arianna groaned inwardly. Once the girl latched on to something... Well, let’s just say that a crocodile with its jaws locked around its prey had nothing on her. “Look guys, you know I love you, right?”

Tara leaned toward Michaela conspiratorially. “Uh-oh, better roll up your pants legs. I got a feeling it’s gonna start getting deep in here.”

“I’m
serious
.” Arianna’s voice went soft and low. “You two have always had my back. And I...well, I honestly don’t know how I’d have made it through this past week without you.”

Tara’s eyes filled and she looked down, picking at some invisible spot on the kitchen counter with her fingernail. “I hear a ‘but’ coming.”

“
But,
” Arianna conceded, “this is something I have to do alone. Have to do
now
. I can’t explain it, except to say that knowing I’d be leaving today...going to fulfill Da’s final wishes... Well, it’s the glue that’s been holding me together.”

As one might expect, Arianna had related to them only her father’s “wishes” to have his ashes scattered from the cliffs in County Clare, as stated in his will. Smart girl that she was she had purposely left out any mention of his visit from beyond the grave, a thing she had yet to get even her own head wrapped around.

Not to mention that an I-see-dead-people confession would have gone over like a sack of cement. They would have probably considered it their collective duty to have her committed—for her own protection.

“You know, that’s another thing I don’t get.” Tara rinsed out the dishcloth and draped it over the faucet to dry. Leaning a hip against the counter, she crossed her arms. “Remember when we booked the graduation trip to Ireland? Your dad got so freaked about it we had to cancel. And as much as you travel on business, you never went back there...to spare his feelings.”

Of course, how could Arianna forget. Ireland was the land of her birth. And yet, contrary to her snappy comeback of earlier, it really was a foreign country to this Irishwoman-raised-American. To make matters worse, while growing up, there had been no old family photos, no cozy talks about the life she and her father had once shared there with her mother. Subjects, he had made abundantly clear, that were strictly off-limits.

Consequently, whatever had happened in Ireland all those years ago...whatever anguish had caused him to dissociate himself from everything and everyone he had ever known and loved...remained to this day shrouded in mystery.

Old family secrets, Arianna reflected sadly. Secrets her father had taken with him to the grave.

To spare his feelings, Arianna had stood firm, refusing to give in to what, at times, had amounted to a near compulsion to return to her birthplace. Because nothing on earth…
nothing
…had been worth the risk of putting that haunted look back in his eyes. Or of unlatching the yawning black jaws of grief she had watched swallow him whole, time and again, throughout her childhood.

Tara cleared Arianna’s empty plate away, and Arianna propped her elbow in its place, chin in hand. “Twenty-five years…and he never got over losing my mother.” She stared off into space and sighed, her tone low, wistful. “Well, at least they’re together now.”

“Blows my mind he held onto the family home in Ireland all these years,” Tara said, rinsing the plate and stacking it in the dishwasher.

“Never even mentioned it to me,” Arianna said. “Just had the place privately deeded into my name, the paperwork stored with his will in his safe deposit box.”

And then, there was the key to the property
, Arianna thought to herself.

The key he had transcended death itself to place personally into her hand.

Chapter Three

“T
o the left, to the left.” As she turned onto the N18 out of Shannon Airport, Arianna hummed the words to an old Beyonce song like a mantra, a reminder to drive on the
wrong
side of the road. Not to mention that she was driving from the
wrong
side of the car while shifting with her
left
hand. Not realizing that manual transmissions were standard on rental cars here, she had neglected to request an automatic when making her reservation.

She checked her watch, added the requisite five hours. It was ten forty-eight P.M. Irish time. Great planning, she thought, arriving here at this hour of the night. Exhausted—she was absolutely
fried
—and still had to find her way to the old family home in Ennistymon.

A flicker of lightning caught her attention and she glanced up. No moon, no stars, suggested a heavy cloud cover, she concluded as moisture began to mist the windshield.

Arianna successfully circumnavigated her first Irish roundabout, exiting onto the N85 west toward Ennistymon. The route took her through a long, dark tunnel of interlocking leafy branches into the small village of Corofin. As she left the town center behind, a bold flash of lightning took a snapshot of lush green hills and wooded farmland. The pristine acres divided by crumbling stone walls and overgrown hedgerows made a perfect picture postcard.

With a deafening crash of thunder that had Arianna’s heart leaping from her chest, the gently weeping sky flew suddenly into a foot-stomping tantrum. Visibility was reduced almost to zero, so she slowed to a crawl. Even with the wipers on high, she was straining to read the half-Gaelic, half-English street signs posted at the intersections.

Just as she was thinking she had missed her turn-off, Arianna was thrown forward with a bone-jarring
thunk
and the grinding sound of steel eating pavement. And as her right front end slammed violently into a moon crater-sized rut concealed by the racing floodwaters, her engine sputtered and died.

Fingers crossed, Arianna turned the key in the ignition.
Nada.
Zilch. Terrific,
She powered on her cell phone.
Roaming…roaming…
No Service.
“Aaagh!”

“What the hell do I do now?”she muttered, trying to decide whether to stay put and wait out the next Great Flood, or abandon the ark in search of civilization and the use of a telephone.

Split seconds later, cannonball-size chunks of hail began to plummet from the sky, making her decision for her.

“Welcome home to Ireland,” she groused, her voice drowned out by the deadly barrage of frozen artillery bombarding the car.

Staring straight ahead, wrists draped over the steering wheel, she felt a shiver of unease slide between her shoulder blades. With a quick check to be sure the doors were locked, she did a mental inventory. What specific event could have triggered this disconcerting sense of
déjà vu
?

Finally her lips tightened in disgust. “Michaela and her damned vampire romance.”

In the chapter Arianna had finished just prior to landing, the heroine’s car had broken down on a deserted country road, while a ferocious electrical storm raged around her.

“Well, duh...”

Of course, in
Love’s Midnight Passion,
a tragic vampire hero had come rushing to the fair lady’s rescue. Arianna sniffed. The way her luck was going lately, she figured any encounter with the
undead
she experienced would have to be with Count-freaking-Dracula himself.

Then again, this was Ireland, she reminded herself, not Transylvania. Which meant that any close encounters of the supernatural kind would more than likely be of the faerie folk variety. Hordes of tiny winged creatures, flitting from bush to bush—

But no, her luck, she would run into a member of the Dark Fey, the evil fairies she had learned about in her Ancient Legends and Folklore class in college. There were tales of the changelings, known as child stealers. And then there were the messengers of death, the wailing banshee.

Then, of course, Irish literature was rife with stories of the
coshta-bower.
Though invisible to the naked eye, the coffin-laden death coach could be heard on many a cold and moonless night, the clip-clop of phantom horses’ hooves and the clatter of buggy wheels echoing eerily over the cobbles. But then a sudden silence would fall. As the story went, this signified that the headless coachman had reined in at some poor soul’s front door, there to impart death and destruction with two resounding knocks—

Two loud thumps on the driver’s side window jerked Arianna upright in her seat. With a squeal, she scrambled over the gearshift, almost impaling herself in the process. Her body plastered against the passenger door, she stared at the windows, blinded the dark and impenetrable curtain of rain. But then, even as the wind continued to shriek and rock the car, the rain suddenly stopped. Abruptly. As if someone had reached out and shut off a spigot.

Arianna had always prided herself on her keen sixth sense, which went instantly on red alert whenever she was in danger. And, right now, she felt like a porcupine, the hairs on her arms and legs bristling as that precognitive spidey sense wailed like a fire alarm.

At that moment, an eerie whistling sent her exhausted brain into overdrive. What was that? The haunting nicker of spectral horses? Or, maybe, the creak of phantom carriage wheels? With sweeping brushstrokes, her overblown imagination began to paint a hideous portrait on the canvas of her mind. It was of the hell-spawned coachman, with his severed head tucked beneath one arm, his other hand...
jiggling the door handle?

A bit back scream held Arianna’s throat in a chokehold.

Over the clamor of the storm, she heard a voice. It sounded male and very angry.
“Oscail an doras!
Anois!”

The strange utterance was foreign and compelling. It struck a chord of terror within her. “Oh, God. Oh, God.”
Had the words been a black magic incantation?
she dared to question.
A diabolical spell conjured in a devil’s tongue?

Arianna grappled madly for strands of reason. As she did, she became aware of a strange glow reflecting off the dashboard. With visions of alien abduction invading her beleaguered brain, she stole a cringing peek into the rearview mirror.

Headlights. On low beam. You idiot!

“Open the door, I said.
Now!”
Same voice, but in English this time…English with an Irish accent.

Hello-o-o-o… Irish accent? Might the man have been speaking Gaelic? You think?

Cursing her own stupidity, Arianna lifted a leg over the gearshift and slid back into the driver’s seat. She was reaching out to unlock the door, when…

“Open the bloody door!” the man bellowed. “Or I’m coming in after you!”

Poised just above the lock release, her hand jerked to a halt. Now, there was no way she had touched that button— knew damn well she had not. And yet, in horrified disbelief, she heard the tumblers disengage. She made a mad grab for the door handle, but, too late. She could feel it being wrenched from her grasp. “No!”

Rampaging winds surged into the car, tearing at her long, blonde hair, and effectively blinding her to the masculine arms that were reaching for her.

A third degree black belt in
Tang Soo
Do
karate, Arianna believed she was well able to defend herself in any situation. Now, however, as this man’s long fingers wrapped around her upper arms, she could feel a strange sort of paralysis coming over her. Muscles weak, energy sapped, she felt herself being hauled out of the small foreign car as if she weighed no more than a matchstick. Strangely, as soon as he released her to stand beside the back door, strength flowed back into her body.

Standing spread-legged against the buffeting wind, she caught only a glimpse of the dark-haired stranger as he ducked his head inside the car. After a cursory look around, he pulled back out of the vehicle…all six feet, several darkly masculine inches of him.

Too pissed off at being manhandled to properly appreciate the view, Arianna braced for battle as the guy turned to face her. Her jaw dropped, heart tripped, literally stumbled in her chest.

She stared at him. “You can’t be real,” she choked out in a whisper. And yet, there he was. Framed in a savage backdrop of wild and raging tempest was the erotic dark angel of her secret dreams.

In that ethereal world, he had been beautiful. But here, ‘in the flesh’, the man was striking beyond belief. And there was that mysterious allure that had nothing to do with the exotic setting. She studied him silently. The way the low beams of a black Land Rover cast his body all in shadow. The light reflected off his hair, all wind-tossed and damp from the moisture-laden air. A shade so black it held hints of indigo accentuated the unusual, almost colorless, green of his eyes.

And as the man returned her stare, fixed her with those mysterious eyes, the thought came to mind that there really was something of the vampire about him. An unnatural stillness. That unmistakable ripple of reigned-in power.

The strong angle of his jaw, darkened with late-night stubble, added a rough masculinity to what would have otherwise been almost too-perfect features. His was a fallen-angel face, she mused. A face sculpted for the singular purpose of stealing a woman’s soul.

She let her eyes wander south. A black leather jacket, unzipped, revealed a strong body. Not gym-bulked, which she detested, but naturally sleek and tightly muscled from hard, physical work. Further down, low-slung black jeans fit his long, long legs to perfection.

Arianna raised her gaze to his face—and collided again with those fathomless eyes. The slam of preternatural power felt like a mule-kick to the chest. A sensation she had experienced before. On a dream spun Irish shore.

“This can’t be happening,” she murmured. But, while her mind rebelled, her stuttering heart knew no such perspicuity. “Is it really you?”

As the impulsive words spun past her lips, Arianna willed them back inside her mouth. Lucky for her, the question had been lost, swept away by a whirling gust of wind. Relief rocked her. It would have been mortifying, to say the least, if he had heard her, since not an inkling of recognition warmed the glacial green of those achingly familiar eyes.

Still, this man’s likeness to her illusory lover was uncanny. Not only were his facial features and build a dead ringer, but he even wore his too-long black hair in an identical fashion.

He even dressed as she remembered, favoring black.

And the resemblance didn’t stop at the identical-twin good looks. No, it went far deeper, into the underlying essence of the man. This one exuded the same dark elegance, the same vibration of otherworldly power. It was as if he were either the personification of her dream lover, or the other’s double.

And yet, with all their similarities, Arianna sensed something intrinsically different about this man, as well. Something colder, harsher; something fraught with danger. Yes, there was a definite dark side to his nature, she concluded, as if he were the other’s evil twin.

Vampire
. Again, the word whispered tauntingly in her ear.
And really, wouldn’t that explain everything? The hypnotic thrall transmitted over thousands of miles. His masterful seduction in her dreams—

Suddenly, Arianna’s whimsical musings crashed to a halt as the entire Western Hemisphere seemed to explode around them. Lightning hissed through black velvet, turning night into day. As the jagged bolt of fire plowed into a nearby tree with a deafening roar, a thunderclap to herald the apocalypse rocked the earth beneath her.

And, though the wind wailed like a banshee, there was not a single drop of rain.
Her gut tied in a knot of terror, Arianna shouted above the tumult. “Something’s just not right here. We’ve gotta find shelter, get out of this storm!”

But he just stood there, unfazed by the naked display of nature’s rage. He was an avenging angel, her mind reasoned, in command of the dark forces erupting all around them. His lips moved then, as if to whisper a prayer. Instantly, the gusting winds ceased. Of the vicious storm, only sizzling forks of lightning in the distance remained.

“Who…
what
are you?” Arianna whispered, her voice cracking.

The man’s eyes were hooded, dark and impenetrable. And then they lowered, began to rove her body. Arianna bit back a low moan as fingers of heat danced arousal over her flesh. The feeling was intimate, palpable, as if he were physically touching her.

She saw him frown, give his head a shake. With that, the erotic sensations ceased.

The strange interlude left Arianna juggling a confusing jumble of emotions. There was fear, of course, and anxiety. But underlying that was a raw sensual hunger, an aching sense of intimacy. Feelings all at odds with one another, as if each vied for supremacy.

And all the while, her survival instincts were screaming at her.
“Run from him! Run as far and fast as you can and don’t look back.”
Something told Arianna that if she ignored this internal warning, life as she knew it would never be the same again.

The enigmatic stranger had yet to speak. But, as if he had sensed her inner turmoil, his gaze sharpened on hers. Arianna could feel herself falling, tumbling into the deep, dark depths of those captivating eyes. Intriguing, she mused, the way his irises seemed to refract the lightning. Transformed into dizzying, multi-faceted prisms, his eyes became a nebulous shade of gold-flecked green she had never seen before.

Except in her dreams….

Arianna gave herself a mental shake.
You gotta get a grip
. Death coaches and vampires and dream lovers incarnate—Oh, my.
Seriously?

She needed to snap out of it, get back on the road. Not that her silent companion seemed to be in any hurry to offer assistance. Lounging against the back door of her car, he stared at her, arms crossed over his chest, his broad shoulders straining the leather of the bomber jacket he was wearing. It was a relentless assessment bordering on impolite.