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Going to the Internet, he typed Brenna Flanagan's name into a search engine. Moments later, her name appeared. The info on the Web didn't tell him anything new, but it did have what was purported to be a genuine portrait of the woman, supposedly painted by a man said to have been bewitched by her. A small notation said the artist, John Alfred Linder by name, had thrown himself off a cliff the day he learned of her death.
Roshan stared at the woman's image, completely mesmerized by what he saw. In this portrait, done in color, her likeness to Atiyana was even more pronounced.
She was a rare beauty, was Brenna Flanagan, with hair as red as the flames that had taken her life, and beautiful green eyes flecked with gold. Eyes that held a soul-deep sadness. She had a small determined chin, a finely shaped nose, perfectly arched brows, and lips that begged to be kissed. Draped in a flowing white gown, she sat on a curved settee, her back straight. A large black cat with yellow eyes was curled up on her lap.
A witch, indeed, he thought wryly as he printed the picture. It seemed there was a cat in every movie and every story that involved witchcraft, though the only movie he could recall offhand was Bell, Book, and Candle, probably because he had long been a fan of the enchanting Kim Novak.
Cats were believed to embody demons that performed the witch's tasks. Roshan remembered a scene in the movie where Kim Novak held her Siamese cat in her arms while humming an incantation to make James Stewart fall in love with her, though he couldn't recall the cat's name. Py-something. According to the movie, witches lost their powers when they fell in love. He wondered absently if there was any truth to that.
Reading on, he learned that it was believed a witch could take on the form of a cat nine times.
A section on witches' familiars proved interesting. Such animals were usually cats, ferrets, dogs, or birds. A subsection talked about animals. It was believed that if a dog growled at an empty space, it meant a ghost was present. In Persia, dogs were associated with black magick and were believed to cause illness. Anyone who owned a dog could be accused of witchcraft. The ancient Egyptians believed that cats had souls. It was hypothesized that burying a rooster at the junction of three streams or at a crossroads would avert evil.
He looked at the date of Brenna Flanagan's death and felt an odd shiver run down his spine. All Hallow's Eve, 1692, the same night he was born, the night when the veil between good and evil, past and present, was said to be the thinnest.
He stared at her image until he felt the subtle shift in the air that signaled the coming of a new day, a faint tingling sensation that spread through every fiber of his body, warning him of the sun's rising. It was a feeling he had experienced every night for almost three hundred years, a warning that it was time to seek his resting place.
He glanced toward the window, which was already growing light.
Today would be his last day.
Today, he would put an end to his cursed existence.
He would leave the protection of his house and watch the sun climb over the distant foothills. He would walk in the light of a new day one last time, feel its golden heat warm his preternaturally cool flesh until the near-forgotten pleasure turned to pain and it destroyed him. Like Brenna, he would meet his end in flames. It would, he thought, be a fitting introduction to the fires of an unforgiving hell that surely awaited him.
Rising, he put the book aside and walked out the front door. Descending the steps, he glanced over his shoulder for a last look at the house where he had lived for the last half-century. It was a big old house, with huge rooms and vaulted ceilings. It was his favorite of all the places he had occupied in his long existence.
Turning toward the east, he lifted his gaze toward the horizon, watching in awe as the rising sun painted the heavenly blue canvas with brilliant slashes of pink and lavender and ochre.
It seemed fitting that his last sunrise should be the most beautiful one he had ever seen.
CHAPTER 2
The beauty of the sunrise was quickly forgotten as the sun's blinding light scorched his eyes and blistered his skin. The pain was far worse than anything he had anticipated, and he cried out in agony as his clothing began to smoke and his skin to burn.
He closed his eyes and Brenna Flanagan's image appeared before him. He groaned low in this throat, knowing this was how she must have felt when the flames began to lick her tender flesh.
"Brenna!" Her name was an anguished cry on his lips, a plea, a prayer.
He clenched his hands into tight fists. What madness was this? He couldn't destroy himself, not now. He didn't care what happened to the house or its furnishings, but he had made no provisions for the disposal of his library. He didn't want his collection sold at auction, or worse, sold for a few paltry dollars at a yard sale. He had spent centuries gathering his collection. It must go to a museum where it would be appreciated, where it could be shared with others who would recognize its worth.
And what of Brenna Flanagan? How would he rest in peace when there was still more to learn about her? He had barely scratched the surface. He wanted to find out more about her, wanted to know everything there was to know.
Hastening back into the house, he slammed the door against the glaring brightness of a new day.
He stood in the entryway a moment and then, with a strangled cry, he dropped to his hands and knees. Head hanging, panting heavily, he crawled down the hallway toward the narrow door that led to his lair. Made of the same wood and design as the wall, the door was less than three feet high. Its size and design made it almost impossible to find unless one knew where to look. It led down to a rectangular-shaped room he had built underground. One wall of his lair shared a wall with the basement. Another wall had a door in it that opened into a wall of earth. It was Roshan's bolt-hole. He could easily make his way up through the earth to the surface should the need arise.
Weakened by the rising sun and the excruciating pain that engulfed him, he hit the small lever that opened the hidden door and then, letting himself go limp, he rolled down the long, winding staircase until, with a gasp, he came to an abrupt halt at the bottom.
He lay there, too weak to move any farther. It took the last of his preternatural power to close and lock the door at the head of the stairs and then, with a low groan, he closed his eyes and surrendered to the darkness that dragged him down into blessed oblivion.
He rose with the setting sun, the burns from the day before nearly healed by the restorative powers of the Dark Sleep.
For the next two weeks, Roshan spent every waking moment searching for more information on the woman in the photograph. Brenna Flanagan. He haunted every library and museum within a thousand miles, scoured every search engine on the Web, saving every scrap of information that he found, though the available facts were pitifully few.
