A WHISPER OF ETERNIT

Page 7



There was someone in the upper house. Dominic St. John felt the presence of another immediately upon waking. Rising, he took a deep breath, his senses reaching out, testing the night air much the way a nocturnal animal might sniff the wind for danger.

He smiled faintly. He was in no danger from the woman upstairs. He could hear the water draining from the tub, smell the fresh, clean scent of her as she moved into her bedroom and slipped something silky over her head.A nightgown, perhaps?

A wave of his hand and half a dozen candles sprang to life, casting flickering yellow shadows on the gray stone walls. No one living knew that there was another house beneath the one above, a rather cozy place if one didn't mind cold stone floors and walls without windows.

Rising, he laid out a change of clothes, all the while following the woman's movements.

He wondered who she was and what had prompted her to buy a house that had been empty for more than five years. Many people had come to look at the place in the last decade. A few had attempted to live there, but he had not wanted their company and it had been an easy thing to drive them away. Dark thoughts planted in their minds, objects that moved or disappeared completely, the whisper of a cool wind down the back of a neck when the air was warm and the night was calm. He grinned faintly. It was all so easy.

Donning a clean black silk shirt, a pair of black trousers, and a pair of soft black leather boots, he followed the narrow passageway that led to the back of the fireplace in the parlor. There were many such walkways in the old house. A wave of his hand and the hidden passageway opened.

Dissolving into a fine gray mist, he drifted through the parlor and down the hallway to the kitchen. The smell of roasting meat made his stomach clench even as the scent of animal blood stirred a hunger deep within him.

The woman stood at the stove with her back toward him. She stirred something with a long, wooden spoon,then lifted it to her lips for a taste.

"Hmm, not too bad, if I do say so myself," she murmured. Laying the spoon aside, she sprinkled salt and pepper into the pot.

The woman glanced over her shoulder as he floated into the kitchen. Had she sensed his presence? Such a thing seemed unlikely. Few humans had the ability to detect his nearness when he was in an incorporeal form.

She was not classically beautiful, but she was a remarkably pretty woman, with delicate features and fine, unblemished skin. Her honey-colored hair fell in a thick braid past her waist. Her eyes were brown with tiny gold flecks, fringed by long, dark lashes. Her slender figure was clad in something long and silky and pink. Not a nightgown, as he had thought, but some sort of lounge-around-the-house dress.

Dominic grinned as he drifted out of the room.

He had not wanted anyone to occupy the house in the past, but this one could stay. There was something about her… something he would pursue at a later date, when his hellish hunger had been appeased. Perhaps one day he would even introduce himself to her, but not now. Now he needed to