other. Her father's hand covered his cheek but the blood seeped through his fingers. Trissa's vision was awash with it as she scrambled from the bed. A haze of red descended on her, blinding her, fuzzing in her ears, choking off her air. She threw the knife away from her with a force that clattered it against her dresser mirror, cracking it.
"You little bitch! You could have killed me!"
"I'm sorry! I'm sorry! I didn't mean to--" But did she? My God, her heart screamed, she did. She did.
She wanted him dead. She hated him. "No. No. No," she whimpered as she backed away from him then turned and fled. Out of the room. Out of the house. Into the night.
Chapter Three
The cemetery and the railroad tracks marked the boundaries of his meandering that rainy night as Nicholas roamed the quiet side streets sprouting from Trissa's bus route. He had gotten himself thoroughly lost the first time he'd tried blazing new trails from the bus map. He had wandered the streets until dawn that day before he crossed a street that would lead him home.
Since then he had armed himself with a city map and a small flashlight for his quest for Trissa and the dragons that made her so unhappy. But this night he wouldn't need them. All he had to do was walk east until he reached the tracks, turn south along the gravel right of way to the next dead end leading west to the stone and black iron fence of Calvary Cemetery.
Gilmore Street to Switzer Avenue to Robin to Thrush, then Baden to Church to Christian. Brick and frame bungalows lined the streets with tiny lawns and just-budding forsythia. He could imagine Trissa living in one of these houses, maybe behind that half-drawn shade or that lighted dormer.
He wished the weather were warmer. He was sure the folks in this neighborhood sat out on their front porches on balmy evenings, chatting about their gardens or city politics or baseball. Maybe Trissa brought her books to that porch swing to study in the golden circle from the light over the door. Maybe when the work was done and the night grew darker, she just sat, searching for the first star and whispering her wishes.
And maybe he was a damned-fool romantic or, worse, an obsessed lunatic. Questing white knight or predatory beast? Or were they both just the same?
Nicholas kicked at a chunk of blacktop in the graveled embankment along the railroad track and tried to rid his mind of the predator-prey imagery. His motives were honorable, he reminded himself. Rescue, only rescue. He was more Lancelot than Bluebeard. Wasn't he?
Wasn't he?
He shuddered as the face of Cynthia, cold and still, finally and unalterably at peace, floated before him as if in answer to his question. Grinding at his closed eyes with his clenched fist in a vain attempt to rub the memory away, he felt the black shadows descending on him.
This was wrong. He was wrong. It was not Trissa who needed him. He needed her. Driven by his bitter memories of one he'd loved and couldn't rescue and another who'd come to him too late for saving, he needed salvation from his guilt. He needed Trissa to save him from the blackness again. He needed her to guide him from the shadows so he wouldn't be lost.
And as much as he knew he needed her, that was how much he knew he mustn't have her. He must turn away from this madness now before it was too late. Blinded by the swirl of his own shadows, he missed his footing across a rain gully and stumbled to his hands and knees in the gravel. Puzzled, he stared dumbly at the white scrapings on his palms and the beads of red springing up along them.
"Nicholas. Nicholas. Nicholas," came the fluttering whoosh and thump of his blood in his ears as if to remind him who he was and who he was losing. The blackness was broiling up through his veins and would soon fill and drown him. When he managed resurface again, he knew he'd be far away from here and Trissa would be only a memory. The submergence was always swift and unexpected.
It had never taken this long before. He had never struggled this hard against it.
"Let go," he heard the murmur in his brain. Was it his voice or someone else's? "God take you, Nicholas!" he heard the deep, masterful command, and he felt himself sinking