into instant throes of ecstasy. Blood lust apparently led to wild arousal.
Despite all the flesh on show, the movie didn’t begin to arouse him. He realized he was far too tense to feel anything other than an unsettling sense of alarm.
A girl rose from one of the couches and approached Nancy, taking her hand. Nancy followed her back and sat down.
Jeremy decided that Nancy could fend for herself. The woman who had approached her was slim and not more than five two. Nancy was giggling and over twenty-one. If she wanted to live on the wild side in pursuit of her craft—or using her craft as an excuse—it was completely her call.
He made his way to the stone stairway and hurried up.
They should have stayed together at the bar, as they’d been told, and just watched.
He reached a long hall lined with doors.
The hall itself seemed far longer than it could possibly be. Perhaps it was the dim lighting and the way the far end of the hall was almost completely dark, adding to the illusion that it went on forever.
On and on…as if in an impossibly long shot for a horror film.
Except this was real.
He told himself that he was only giving in to fear and letting his imagination run wild. Look. All he had to do was look.
No one was in the hallway. He had no idea which door Mary might have chosen.
As he stood there, he felt rather than saw a shadow. No, not a shadow, exactly, a sense of greater darkness. As if something large had cast a pall over the meager light offered by the candles that burned in medieval sconces every ten feet along the walls.
A lump formed in his throat. He was tempted to turn, run back down the stairs and out into the night. Of course, if he did, he had no idea of where he would actually wind up. They had been driven through a dense, fog-shrouded forest, and they hadn’t passed another living soul until they had reached this place, which, from the outside, had appeared to be nothing more than a ruin on a cliff. Yet the urge to run, escape, flee to any other place on earth, tore at him with an urgency that defied all logic.
He would not yield to it. Mary and Nancy were here, and while they were welcome to whatever pursuits they chose, he couldn’t abandon them to this…
“This danger,” he whispered aloud.
Because somehow he knew that his unease was justified. He felt a raw sense of instinctive panic taking hold in his gut.
The shadow was there, real, palpable, evil and malignant.
It was just a shadow, he tried to tell himself. A result of the candlelight, the intense darkness of the night…
“Where are all those psychologists when you need them?” he mocked himself out loud.
He felt the most intense desire to keep looking over his shoulder. There was something there. Something pursuing—no, stalking—him. Slowly, playing with him. He could feel it. Feel the danger, like a gazelle on an African plain suddenly aware that a lioness was silently slipping up behind it….
He spun around. He was alone in the hall.
It was simply the time and place, he told himself. He was in the land of legends, with a bunch of no-life idiots who liked to play at being vampires. It was silly; it was sad.
But fanatics could be dangerous.
And still he felt he was facing something that didn’t remotely resemble a human danger.
He turned back, staring at the doors.
And felt it again. There was a shadow, something…evil.
It was laughing at him, he thought. It knew his fear, thrived on it, and laughed….
They had to get out of there.
“Mary?” he called aloud—almost screaming it. He no longer cared what anyone thought, what ridiculous expectation the girls had for journalistic success. They had to get out.
“Mary?” he called again, and opened the first door.
It was simply too fascinating. Mary was pretty sure she was standing there in wide-eyed wonder. No matter how sophisticated she might have considered herself to be in her own world, she knew she must appear like a lamb in a forest here. Still, this was the kind of thing that made for a great story. People loved to share such wanton and carnal experiences—vicariously. They wanted to be shocked and appalled. They were curious, and satisfying their curiosity sold print. And she? She intended to sell. People were always intrigued by sex and violence. It was unlikely that she would be traveling to any major war zones, so that left sex.
Well, sex and fantasy. The vampire fantasy. It kind of made sense that some guys wanted to act like they were vampires, because vampires had power over women. And some women loved the idea of being taken, dominated….
There was certainly fantasy here, combined with masks…and sex….
First she had stumbled on an intimate ménage à trois. They hadn’t noticed her in the doorway at first, they had been so…involved. Then a husky voice had suggested she join in. Certain her face was a thousand shades of red, she had apologized and moved on.
Another door had led to an empty—but prepared—chamber. And chamber was the right word, not room. The space had been decorated to resemble an ancient dungeon, with shackles on the wall, and whips and chains laid out on a table, ready for use.
She had studied the place as dispassionately as she could, trying for journalistic objectivity, but then, uneasy, she had hurried on with a little shudder. Definitely not her scene.
The third room she found amusing. A very tall, well-muscled man was dressed in a very pink, very lacy nightie, heels and a garter belt. He was admiring himself in a mirror. She excused herself, trying not to laugh as she departed.
But she didn’t feel actually scared until she opened the fourth door.
There was no reason for her fear, really. The room was empty and almost completely dark. Where candles and lamps had burned elsewhere, the only light here spilled in from the hall. When she first opened the door, she saw nothing at all. Then it seemed as if a pair of eyes, fire-colored eyes, stared at her from the deep recesses of the room.
As the light filtered in and her eyes adjusted, she realized it was just a man, sitting alone in the dark. Again she excused herself and hurried on. But even as she closed the door, it seemed as if the darkness still cloaked itself around her. The hall hadn’t changed, and yet it had. It had darkened. As if a giant shadow…
Don’t be silly, she told herself. The candles in the wall sconces were just burning down.
But it seemed as if something chilling had settled in her bones. People. She needed to find people. It didn’t matter what they were doing. He-men dressing in pink lace and frills, writhing bodies involved in an orgy…anyone.
She opened the next door. There was soft light. Comfortable chairs. One wall seemed to consist entirely of a giant television screen. From somewhere, music was playing.
She
