Lynn Viehl - Darkyn 1 - If Angels Burn (v1.1) (41 page)

In the real bedroom, Jema slept on. In the dream realm, she sat up and looked straight at him. “Hello. Who are you?”

Questions in dreams had to be answered with caution. The wrong words could cause the sleeper to awaken suddenly. Thierry did not want Jema to fear his presence, or anything about him. If she did, she would never tell him that which he needed to know. Before he moved out of the shadow concealing him, he covered himself with a hooded cloak, so that she would not be startled by his unfamiliar face. “I am whoever you wish me to be.”

She laughed. “That’s convenient.”

Thierry sat down on her bed—her two-hundred-year-old Colonial American bed, another much-cherished acquisition—and took her hand in his. “Perhaps I could be someone you trust. Someone for whom you care.”

Jema’s smile faded. “No. I don’t want you to be anyone like that. If you are, you’ll leave.” The colors and shapes of the room rippled for a moment; the surface of a clear pool struck by a heavy stone. “I know I’m not here to be loved, but I’m tired of being alone.”

He touched her cheek. Her skin felt hot and damp, the way it might after she wept. “I won’t leave you. I want to know everything about you.” He might have to risk some questions, in order to coax her into telling him about Miss Lopez and the hall of artifacts.

She drew back and her voice turned cool. “Why?”

Why, indeed? Thierry suddenly realized that he had no business here, not with this lonely, neglected little cat. They had said she was not long for this world, and what few months or years she had left to her should be lived to the fullest, in peace. All he could truly give her was madness and pain. He should slip out of her dream, out of her bedroom, and out of her life. He saw himself doing so, quite clearly. “I need you.”

Jema reached up and touched the edge of the hood covering his face, but did not try to push it back. “What are you? Are you Death?”

Thierry could not speak. Could not deny what he was.

“No, not Death,” she murmured. She picked up one of his hands and examined it. His nails had grown long again, thick and pointed, like talons. “You’ve come from the painting over my desk.”

The painting
. Thierry remembered it now. The same nightdress, the same silky ribbons had adorned the figure of the sleeping woman. His cloak was not unlike the shadow cast over her bed; the form of a man whose hands were not those of a man—

Now he understood her dream.
We have become the painting that she loves
. “Yes.”

“I’m glad.” She brought his hand up and pressed her cheek against it. “I’ve waited so long for you. Will you come back to me again?”

He closed his eyes, almost breaking from the dream before he gave in to temptation. “Yes.”