FIFTEEN

KAY's DREAM

"We were invited to a party today," Kay told Evan from the bed; he stood in the bathroom brushing his teeth. "On Saturday night," she added after a few seconds.

He rinsed out his mouth, looked at his teeth in the mirror.

Straight and even. He'd never had any problems at all with his teeth, no braces and very few cavities. "Whose party?" he asked.

"The head of the history department at George Ross. Her name is Dr. Drago."

Evan stiffened suddenly, then relaxed and put his toothbrush in its proper place near the drinking cup. He grunted and said, "Did you meet her?"

"Yes, I did. A very strange meeting, too. Someone was prowling around my office this afternoon; or I thought someone was, but I'm probably wrong. Anyway, I met her in her classroom and we talked for a few minutes. Do you remember that large house just outside the village? That's hers."

Evan switched off the bathroom light and walked into the bedroom. Kay sat in bed with her knees up, supporting the July issue of Redbook. The soft glow of the night table lamp at her side cast a canopy of shadows across the ceiling. "A formal party?" he asked her, crossing to the bed.

"No, nothing like that. She said it's just going to be a get-together for some of the faculty members."

He drew aside the sheets and slid into bed, sitting up against his pillow. "What does she look like?'

"Oh, she's dark-haired. Kind of a big woman, I guess." She was silent for a moment, and Evan looked at her. "Her eyes," Kay said.

"They're very...striking and...its funny...."

"What's funny?"

She shrugged. "Nothing. She's a very distinctive woman. Her gaze is...direct, strong. And her eyes are the most beautiful greenish blue I've ever seen. Really."

Evan smiled. "You sound like someone else I talked to today."

"Oh? Who?"

"A woman named Anne, who works over at the library. I've already heard about this Kathryn Drago from her. Did you know she is also the mayor of Bethany's Sin?"

"My God," Kay said in amazement. "How does she find time to plan parties?'

"And she began the historical society that operates that museum over on Cowlington Street. I'd say she has a pretty full schedule, wouldn't you?"

"For sure. But she seems like a very composed, well organized woman."

"I'd say she has to be. You know, I'm catching in your voice something I heard in that librarian's. A swelling admiration. Of course, I agree the woman's to be admired and respected, but you should have heard the lady at the library. It bordered on hero worship."

Kay was silent for a moment. "There's something about that woman," she said finally, "that commands respect. Yes, that's the word I was looking for, commands. When I stood before her I felt...

small. As if she were of a huge, looming stature and I was absolutely insignificant. Does that make any sense to you?"

"Awe," Evan said. "It was sheer awe. And maybe a little nervousness about being the new kid on the block." Kay closed her magazine and put it aside, but she didn't move to turn off the light.

Instead, she sat very still for a while, and Evan took her hand and held it gently. "Sorry," she said. "I was thinking about something."

Then she lapsed into silence again.

"School? Got some bad boys and girls in your classes?" He saw she was distant, her eyes unfocused and glassy. "Hey," he said softly.

"What's wrong?" He waited, then nudged her. "What's wrong?" he asked when she looked at him.

"Thinking. About - and I don't know why - that woman's eyes.

The way she stared at me."

Evan stroked her arm, feeling there a tension that seemed to radiate out of her as if a spring were being wound at the center of her soul. Tighter and tighter and tighter. "Her eyes?" he asked, watching her carefully. What is it I'm feeling? he asked himself. Something's wrong.

"Yes. When she stared at me I...couldn't move. I really couldn't.

Those eyes were so incredibly beautiful and so...incredibly strong. I felt very strange on the drive home, as if even my bones were trembling, but by the time I picked up Laurie and got home, the feeling had gone, and instead everything seemed...especially right, as if everything's moving as it's supposed to."

"Everything is." Evan said, and kissed her cheek. Her flesh was tight and cool. "Do you want to go to Dr. Drago's party?"

Kay paused. "Yes," she said Finally. "I do."

"Okay. we'll go. I'd like to see what this superwoman looks like, anyway. Why don't you turn off the light now?" She nodded and reached over, switched it off. Darkness eagerly filled the room.

Evan moved beneath the sheets for Kay, kissing her cheek again and then her lips, very lightly and gently at first, in the way he knew she liked. Melding his body against hers, holding her tight and soothingly, he kissed her lips and waited for her to respond.

But she didn't. She drew the sheet up around her and, without saying a word to him, moved very slightly away.

He was stung and confused. He wondered if he'd done something wrong: hurt her feelings? inadvertently forgotten something? He started to ask her what was wrong when he realized her flesh was cooling; it startled him at first, but he lay motionless beside her with a hand on her bare shoulder and thought he could actually feel the warmth being drawn from her flesh. She was silent and breathing regularly, but because he couldn't see her face, he didn't know if her eyes were open or closed. "Kay?" he said softly.

No answer. "Kay?" Silence.

She didn't move. Evan lay awake beside her for a long time.

Her flesh felt strange: cool and clammy, like the wrinkled flesh of a person who has sat for hours in a tub of tepid water. Or like the cooling flesh of a corpse. Still, her breathing was normal, shallowing now as she slept. Evan leaned over, gently moved Kay's hair away from her face, and looked down at her features. She was a beautiful woman: sensitive, highly intelligent, tender and caring. He knew that he loved her, had always loved her, and he knew also how much he'd hurt her in the last few years, and despised himself for it. She sought above all permanence and security, and Evan realized he'd broken her dreams again and again because of his own insecurities and the raging inner fears that threatened sometimes to leap from his throat.

He'd led both Kay and Laurie down one terrible cul-de-sac after another, and the bitter realization of how much he'd shaken both their lives cut to the marrow of his bones. They deserved better than what he'd been able to give them; sometimes he wondered if they might be in better shape without him. But he'd never voiced those thoughts; he'd only considered them.

He looked at Kay awhile longer, then lay back and closed his eyes. As he drifted toward sleep, he thought he felt Kay move suddenly beside him, as if something had disturbed her, but in another moment he decided it must have been his imagination. As the darkness took him, he suddenly envisioned that etching of Artemis in the library. Saw the staring eyes. Thought of Kay's reaction to Kathryn Drago. Drago. Drago. The name thundered hollowly within him.

And then, finally, he slept without dreaming.

But Kay did not.

She had found herself in a strange and foreign place where the sun burned red and high and vultures spun in dark circles above a death-littered plain. Bodies were strewn in bloody heaps, and the trash of battle lay scattered about her feet. But the implements were...different. Swords and spears, crushed helmets, battered shields, breastplates. And other things. Dead and dying horses , human arms and legs ripped from their sockets, decapitated trunks of bodies. Here a black-bearded warrior begging for mercy, the blood oozing from a gash in his belly. And Kay found herself approaching the man, and as her shadow lengthened and fell across him, he looked at her with blind terror in his eyes and held up his hands before his face. She stood over him, watching.

And knew that she wanted to destroy him. To reach inside and wrench out his dripping intestines. To grind him beneath her boot.

He spoke, in a dialect Kay didn't understand at first, but then the words seemed to take meaning inside her head: "...spare my life...in the name of the gods spare my life ...."

Kay knew the others were watching. She felt the hate rise within her like bitter bile. "Here is my mercy," she said, her voice sounding low and guttural and not like her own at all. And in the next instant her arm had come down, the weapon grasped in her hand cleaving the air with an eerie whistling noise. The ax blade bit into the warrior's throat, bit deeper, deeper, as a spray of blood arced into the air and the man's mouth came open in a silent scream, deeper, deeper, the blade singing in her grip, deeper.

The head toppled into the bloody sand, mouth still open, rolled a few feet, then lay still. At her feet the body began a death-dance trembling, the neck stump still pumping blood. Until slowly the heart ceased beating. Kay stepped across the corpse, picked up the head by the hair, and lifted it high above her. Blood dripped down onto her shoulder, making an old spear scar appear fresh again. She held the head up before the others and opened her mouth, and from her mouth there came a scream that both terrified and thrilled her, a long, wild, piercing scream that echoed off across the plain. The others took up the war cry until the earth shook with it and there was no other noise in the world. Then she whirled the head above her and flung it to the ground with a force that shattered the skull, making the brains ooze out like brown jelly .

Her horse, huge and lean-flanked, was waiting for her. She reached it in a few strides, swung onto it, and slipped the ax into a lion's-skin pouch that hung across her mount's shoulder. Ahead there was a pall of dust against the horizon. The three point riders were approaching from the horizon, the hooves of their horses throwing up spirals of sand and stepping nimbly, with experience, amid the clutter of war. The riders drew up their mounts, their eyes glittering with excitement and blood lust, and one of them, Demondae the Dark, pointed to the west and said the last of the enemy were crawling on their bellies in the heat now, gnawing sand between their teeth and crying for the touch of death. We can give them death in a single shadow of the sun, Demondae said, her face still splattered with gore from the ax blow that had cleaved an enemy warrior to the spine. Under her the black, gleaming horse moved excitedly, senses still keened by the clash and bellow of battle.

They began to track the enemy into the west, their approach frightening the vultures, which immediately took to the sky, wheeling about the half-eaten corpses of men and beasts.

Kay felt the singing blood and knew it was not her blood that sang. Through eyes slitted against the harsh rays of the sun she looked disdainfully down upon shattered bodies and knew it was not her eyes that saw. A long, jagged scar ran down her left thigh to the knee, the mark of earlier battle, but she knew it was not her flesh that bore the scar. No, no. The blood and eyes and flesh of another.

Someone fierce and terrible and hungering for destruction as one hungers for food and drink. Someone who had hacked off a man's head and shouted a war cry ages old. Someone else within her.

Now hunting down prey in the red, streaming rays of the sun.

Looking from side to side like an animal scanning the wilds for danger. Drawing a breath: sweet breath, sweet stench of decay and men's blood. Feeling the raw power of the steed between her smooth-muscled thighs. Kay could read this entity's mind, could hear its thoughts and feel its blood flowing through her veins like rivers of carnage. Perhaps I shall take one of them. I shall claim the strongest and drag him back behind my horse like baggage. And then I shall slowly strip the flesh from him as one would strip the flesh...

No. Kay heard her own voice as if through a distant, time-lost tunnel. No....from a piece of rotted fruit. Until he screams...

Please. No. Please. I want to...I can't breathe...I want to wake up I want to wake up...

...for mercy, and then I shall split his skull...

Please. Please. Let me go. Let me go.

...and eat the warrior's brains from the cup of bone. I can't breathe I can't...I want to...I can't...please...

"Please..." Kay heard her voice echoing echoing echoing within her head, and suddenly the field of battle and the searing sun began to melt like an oil painting that had started to run together, the colors merging into a gray ness unlike either life or death, and she was coming through a cold, cavernlike place. Something clicked. An orb of light. Not the sun. No more bodies. No field of carnage. Where am I? I don't know I'm lost I'm lost I don't know where I am or who I am or why...

"Kay?" Someone spoke softly. A man. The enemy is here, the destroyer of all things good and beautiful. Men. "Kay?"

She tried to focus on him, tried to bring the picture fragments together. For an instant she saw him with a dark beard and eyes widened in horror of her, and a cold, pure, lightning-like hatred ripped through her, but then she heard herself say I'm Kay Reid and I've been sleeping and I've awakened. The dream feeling rippled within her, leaving a tenuous heat in her blood, and then was gone.

"Oh, my God," she heard herself say, and realized she was staring fixedly at the lamp he'd switched on. "Hey," Evan said, his eyes swollen with sleep. He nudged her lightly. "Where have you been?"

"Where have I...been?"

"Yes," he said. "What were you dreaming about? You started thrashing around there, and you were saying something, but it was too low for me to hear."

Kay suddenly reached out for him and held to him tightly. He could feel her heart pounding in her chest.

"Was it a nightmare?" he asked her, genuinely concerned now.

"Oh, God, yes," Kay said. "Just hold me for a minute. Don't say anything, just hold me."

They lay together quietly for a long while. The silence was broken when that dog down the street began to bark. "Damn dog,"

Evan said irritably. "Whoever owns it should muzzle the thing at midnight. Are you feeling better now?"

She nodded, but was lying. She felt very cold inside, as if part of her soul had remained in the cavern that had opened for her when she'd first fallen asleep. She felt weak and drained; the same feeling, she realized, that had overtaken her when she'd met Kathryn Drago in the amphitheater. Stop it! she told herself harshly. That doesn't make any sense! It was a nightmare and that's all! But for the first time in her life a sliver of her brain refused to believe that totally, and fear flooded through her like waters that have been swelling behind a dam for years until the dam begins to crack. Just a little bit, but enough to weaken the concrete of reason.

"I thought nightmares were my department," Evan said, trying to cheer her up but realizing at once that he'd said the wrong thing.

Her face clouded over with doubt. He was silent awhile longer, still holding her, still feeling the beating of her heart. Whatever it had been had frightened the hell out of her. He said, "Want to talk about it?'

"Not yet. Please."

"Okay. Whenever you're ready." He'd never seen her so disturbed about a dream, for God's sake, because she wasn't like him, and seeing her this way bothered him a great deal because she had always been so strong and logical before.

"You...asked me where I'd been," Kay said. "And it seemed like I was really somewhere...very different.Or part of me was. I don't know; it's so strange I don't know how to explain it." She paused.

The dog barked. Barked. Barked. "I was on a...battlefield of some kind. There were bodies and swords and shields lying on the ground.

The bodies were...mutilated. Headless." She shuddered, and he began to stroke the back of her neck to calm her. "I even...killed a man." She tried to smile , but the muscles wouldn't respond; her face felt frozen. "I cut his head off. God, it was so...real. Everything was so real."

"Just a dream," he told her. "Not real at all."

"But I could even feel the heat of the sun on me. My body was different; my voice was different. I remember..." She pushed back the sheets suddenly to look at her left thigh.

"What is it?" Evan asked, his eyes narrowing.

Her thigh was smooth and unmarked except for a few freckles near the knee. "I had a terrible scar on my leg in that dream. Right there." She touched the leg. "It was so real, so very real! And we were hunting down other men to kill them."

"We? Who else?"

"Some others." She shook her head. "I can't remember now.

But I do know that part of me...wanted to find those men. Part of me wanted to destroy them because I hated them as I've never hated anyone in my life. Not just to kill but to tear them to pieces. To...oh, it's just too terrible to think about!"

"Okay, okay. Then don't think about it. Come on, lie back on the pillow. That's right. Now. I'm going to turn out the light, okay?

And we'1l go back to sleep? It was a dream, that's all."

"Funny," Kay said softly. "I remember saying that to you so many times."

Fragments of his own dreams came back to him in a flurry of hideous shapes, like things crawling out of a murk. He shoved them back, closed a mental door against them. Behind that door they roiled malevolently. "Light's going out," he said, and turned it off.

Kay drew nearer to him, afraid of that vast empty space between them.

Down McClain Terrace that dog barked on, its voice rising.

Then abruptly stopped.

"Thank God for small favors," Evan muttered.

"It was so real!" Kay said, unable to shake the dream images. "I could feel the weight of that ax in my hand! And I could feel the horse moving beneath me!"

Evan lay motionless. "What?'

"I was riding a horse," she said. "A large one. I could feel that strength underneath me..".

"A horse?" he whispered.

She looked at him, hearing something in his voice that she didn't understand. His eyes were open; he was staring blankly at the ceiling.

"Were the others...riding horses as well?" Evan asked after what seemed to Kay like long minutes.

"Yes."

He was silent.

"Why does that particularly interest you?" she asked.

"It's nothing. You did know that Dr. Kathryn Drago raises horses, didn't you?"

"Yes, I did."

"There you go, then," he said. "That explains your dream. Or at least part of it. Maybe you're overanxious about attending that party or something; was Dr. Drago in your dream?"

Kay thought for a moment. "No, she wasn't."

"Well, anyway, that explains the part about the horses." He yawned and glanced over at the night-table clock. Ten minutes after four.

Overanxious? Kay wondered, her brow knitting. She had to admit she was nervous about Saturday night; nervous about meeting those people, and nervous, strangely, about being so close to Kathryn Drago again. It was the aura of power that woman radiated, she decided, that unsettled her so much. What would it be like to possess that much power? To have that much influence over other people?

She wondered what Dr. Drago's husband would be like. A large man with a powerful, imposing personality? Or the opposite of her: rather small and mild? Certainly wealthy, in either case. It would be interesting to see.

The terror and revulsion of her dream had faded now, and she was sleepy again. Evan hadn't moved for a long while, and Kay assumed he'd fallen asleep. She moved as close as she could to him and let herself drift.

But in the darkness Evan's eyes were still open.

Every so often they moved, as if at the ceiling could be found the way out of a hideous and closing cage.