Charon's Crossing (A Paranormal Romantic Suspense Novel) (27 page)

It was one thing to kill a man in the heat of battle.

Matthew had done that before, with little compunction. With the stench of blood in your nostrils and the cries of the wounded ringing in your ears, you acted instinctively to survive.

But it was another thing entirely to take the life of someone who had no weapon, especially when that person was a woman.

He could feel the softness of Catherine's flesh as she struggled under the pressure of his hands and see the terror in her eyes as they grew cloudy. The frailty of her bones and sinew were no match for the strength of his. She was dying and that was what he'd wanted.

Wasn't it?

"Dammit to hell!"

Matthew's cry, as much of self-disgust as of anger, mingled with the roar of the sea as it beat against the shore. His grip on her throat loosened. Just as she began sinking to the sand, he slid one arm under her knees and hoisted her over his shoulder with no more ceremony than he'd have given a sack of flour about to be loaded aboard his ship.

It was hard going, making his way up the narrow path to the house, and he gave a grunt of relief when he was finally able to drop her onto the settee in the drawing room. She was no lightweight, that was for sure.

Not that she carried any excess fat on her body. Matthew's gaze swept over her as she lay sprawled before him. What she wore left little to the imagination. Her skimpy cotton chemise, if that was what it was, clung to her high, rounded breasts; her legs were bare under a pair of what he assumed were incredibly abbreviated men's trousers. They were shapely legs, long and elegant, and suddenly he imagined them locked around his waist, driving him ever deeper into her while her eyes, dark with desire, fixed on his.

"Hell," he said sharply.

He knelt down beside the settee, took her shoulders roughly in his hands and shook her.

"Open your eyes," he demanded. After a couple of seconds, she did.

He saw the flood of emotions play over her face. Confusion first, then slow comprehension, then fear as she suddenly remembered.

"You—you tried to kill me," she said in a shaky whisper.

Matthew let go of her and rose to his feet. That same sense of self-disgust and anger was washing through him again. He cloaked it with a cold glare and an even colder tone of voice.

"Unfortunately, I did not succeed."

Her hand went to her throat and his gaze followed. It was hard not to flinch at what he saw. The imprint of his thumbs on her pale golden skin was just now beginning to fade.

He swung away from her, walked to the French doors, and threw them open.

"Some air will do you good," he said brusquely.

She was standing when he turned around again. Her shoulders were back, her hands were on her hips and her feet were planted just slightly apart. It was a classic posture that spoke of defiance and he felt a grudging admiration for her ability to carry it off, though she could not control the faint but perceptible tremor of her mouth that told him she had not quite overcome the fear she was so determined to mask.

"Get out!"

Matthew's lips drew back from his teeth. "An excellent suggestion, madam. If only I could comply."

"I'll give you ten seconds. If you're not out the front door by then, I'll—"

"Please, spare us both the dramatic threats." His lips curved again in that smile that was not a smile, the one that sent a shudder along Kathryn's spine each time she saw it. "I cannot leave here, much as I wish it. As for your posturing... there is nothing you can do to enforce your demand. You know it as well as I."

He was right, but how could she admit that? She was trapped in the middle of nowhere with a lunatic ghost and...

A ghost.
A ghost?

Kathryn clamped her teeth together to keep them from chattering.

He laughed, as if he could read her thoughts.

"You find it disconcerting, to learn you are hostess to me?" The smile fled his face. "Trust me when I tell you I find it more so to be your unwilling guest. How do you think it feels, to realize you are no longer flesh and blood but are, instead, a spirit?"

"I don't know. And I don't care. Either you get out or I'll—I'll call the police."

He laughed. "They would probably call you insane." He lifted one hand in a sweeping gesture that took in the entire room. "Besides, even if they believed you, they could not catch me. Shall I walk through a wall to make my point?"

"No," Kathryn said quickly. "Don't... don't do that." The last thing she needed was to see him slip through a wall. Or turn into a column of dazzling light. It was taking all her courage as it was, just to stand here and face him like this.

After a moment, she cleared her throat.

"What did you mean when you said you could not leave?"

"I meant exactly what I said. I am trapped here, held within the boundaries of Charon's Crossing as if by an invisible wall."

"But—"

"Do not 'but' me, Catherine." His voice was sharp, his eyes dangerously bright. "I assure you, it is a fact, one that pleases me no more than it pleases you."

"What are you doing here? I mean, why are you—are you..."

"Haunting this house?" The taunting smile touched his lips again. "It isn't necessary to dance around the subject. I am a ghost. Ghosts haunt houses. There's little logic in pretending otherwise."

She nodded. He made it sound so matter-of-fact but there was nothing matter-of-fact about finding yourself standing around in broad daylight, having a polite little chat with a—a delusional blob of ectoplasm.

A strangled sound caught in Kathryn's throat. She turned away hurriedly and made her way out of the drawing room, through the foyer and into the kitchen. He was following after her. She could hear his footsteps.

How interesting,
the still-rational part of her brain mused thoughtfully.
I never knew you could hear ghosts walk.

His hand fell, hard, on her shoulder.

"What do you think you're doing?"

It was a good question and she searched for an equally good answer.

"I'm going to make some coffee," she finally said. "Any objections?"

"Coffee?"

His tone seemed almost wistful. She turned and looked up at him.

"Yes." She smiled politely. Maybe you were supposed to deal with a crazy ghost the same way you dealt with a crazy human being, by being calm and pleasant and by not doing-what instinct was telling her to do, which was to throw up her arms and run screaming from the house. "Would you like a cup?"

Would he like a cup? Matthew almost sighed. That was like asking a drowning man if he'd like someone to toss him a line. Lord, he hadn't had a cup of coffee in... in...

His smile faded. It was such a simple question, yet he had been doing his best to avoid it. Now, he knew he could avoid it no longer.

"What year is it?" he said.

"What do you mean, what year is it? Don't you—"

"Damn you!" She gasped as his hand bit into her flesh. "Answer the question, madam. What is the year?"

He didn't know the year? Kathryn took a breath. This was getting worse by the minute.

"It's—it's 1996."

What had she expected? That he would cry out? Fall to the floor in shock? He did neither of those things. He simply stood there, his eyes locked with hers, but she could see the swift flare of his nostrils and the sudden pallor of his skin.

"Nineteen ninety-six?" he repeated hoarsely.

She nodded. "Yes."

"Then, I have been de-... I have been here for 184 years?"

Kathryn nodded again.

"Sweet Jesus," he muttered. "One hundred and eighty-four years..." His hand fell from her shoulder. "It cannot be!"

"It is."

"Nay! So many years cannot have passed."

"I can't help it if you don't want to hear the truth. There's a calendar in my checkbook. Do you want to see it?"

"Your check...?" Matthew shook his head. It mattered not that she was speaking in riddles again. All that counted was the sudden realization burning inside his head: "But if I have been... if so many years have passed, then you cannot be... then you cannot be..."

"Your Catherine."

He nodded. "Yes."

Kathryn's eyebrows lifted. "I'm not. I tried to tell you that, remember? But you wouldn't listen."

"But you are her image," he whispered...

Except that she wasn't. She was not Catherine.

Oh God!

Matthew took a step back, his eyes riveted to her face. There was surely a resemblance. A striking one. But that was all it was. A resemblance, nothing more. And, in his heart, he had known it all along.

She was not Catherine.

For days, for eternity, he had planned an act of vengeance he had hoped would bring him release. Now he realized that his plans had been for naught. Vengeance was as useless as love in this godforsaken horror in which he was trapped.

He made a sound midway between a groan of despair and of fury. Questions whirled in his brain like whispers of madness. If she was not Catherine, if she was not here so he could bring their ugly little morality play full circle, why was this happening?

Why had he been called out of the blackness that had contained him?

Was it all some hideous game, played by a cosmic jokester? Had he been drawn out of the darkness so he could wander the halls of Charon's Crossing forever, a doomed prisoner of Catherine's perfidy and of the moment of his death?

He shook his head sharply, forced his gaze to focus on her. Her face was pale, her bottom lip was caught between her teeth.

"Why are you here, then, if you are not Catherine?"

"Because I inherited this miserable house!"

"Nay. It cannot be so simple." She flinched as he slammed his fist on the counter beside her. "I cannot have been called from the darkness for no purpose!"

"Listen, I don't know why you've been—"

"Who are you?" he said.

"My name is Kathryn Russell, but with a
K.
K-A-T-H-R-Y-N."

Kathryn. Not Catherine. Kathryn.

"You are her progeny."

"Her descendant. Yes." She tried to smile. "Several generations removed."

He remembered that last instant of his life, that second when he had felt his blood draining away. His own words, borne on his dying breath, echoed in his ears.

May you rot in hell, Catherine Russell,
he had said,
may neither you nor your issue ever know love or peace...

Was he supposed to take this woman's life in place of Catherine's?

He looked down into her eyes. Her head was tilted back; he could see the pulse racing in the shadowed hollow of her throat. She was frightened, even more than she had been on the beach. And well she might be. She was his to do with as he liked, to torment or to destroy...

His throat constricted. As a boy, his uncle had dumped him in an orphanage. It had been an ugly, brutal place and he had escaped it within a year, running off to Boston, talking his way into a berth as cabin boy and thus into a career at sea.

But first he'd had to endure those twelve months in the orphanage. It hadn't been easy. The place was run by the Reverend Silas Wickett, a narrow-lipped, bloodless man who raised his helpless young charges on a diet of unflinching piety, daily whippings and thin gruel. The bounty of the countryside—sweet apple cider, brown bread thick with honey, and mutton stewed until it fell from the bone—was reserved for the reverend's own table.

Matthew had quickly learned how to survive. He raided the pantry for raw potatoes and withered apples and dug for wild onions beside the creek in early spring. And he set snares for the cottontails that lived in the meadow behind the orphanage and learned how to roast them over a smokeless fire.

Then, one autumn evening, he'd come upon a snare which held not a dead rabbit but a live one. The tiny creature had been caught by the leg; it had stared at him through wide, liquid eyes, eyes filled with terror. And in that moment, he had hated himself and hated the rabbit, for he had known then that he would not be able to kill it...

Kathryn cried out as he grabbed her and shook her like a rag doll. Then he flung her from him.

"Damn you," he snarled.

She cried out as he began to shimmer. By the time he had become a column of spiraling silver light, her face was buried in her hands. She sensed to look at him now might be to court death.

Eventually, she peeped out between her fingers and mercifully found herself alone.

* * *

The morning sun was not just hot, it was hell. It beat down on Kathryn like the fist of a giant determined to bring her to her knees. Her shorts and shirt were soaked, most of her nails were broken, and she knew that by this evening her back would feel as if it were broken, too.

She sighed and wiped her forearm across her sweaty forehead.