From between the trees, a second man appeared in front of her. He was stunning in a different way from the first. His face lacked any traces of feminine beauty but was no less compelling. The moonlight shone like a spotlight on his bronze skin and on the damp golden brown waves skimming his shoulders. He, too, was bare-chested and bloody, with a dagger in hand, but he was taller and broader than the man at her back.
The lighter one pressed his hips against her bottom. Through the thin material of her swimsuit, his erection probed her. Startled, she jerked forward.
Ugh! What the hell?
“Let go of me,” she snapped, trying to squirm free as he whispered foreign words in her ear. “I said let go of me, you creep!”
The bronze one narrowed gold-flecked brown eyes and gave a sharp jerk of his head at the one behind her. The wrist over her collarbone slid down slowly toward her chest, the tip of the dagger snagging and cutting her bikini strap. The blade peeled the material away from her breast.
She cursed, struggling to escape, and the knife nicked her skin. The slice stung, then burned. She froze and sucked in a breath.
The bronze one scowled and clenched his jaw, his liquid brown eyes capturing her gaze. “He thinks to taunt me with your naked beauty, but no distraction will prevent me from avenging every injury he visits upon you and on those who came before.”
Her jaw dropped. “What? I don’t know what’s going on, but I don’t want to be part of it,” she said.
The bronze one moved too fast for her eyes to follow, but suddenly they were fighting and she was caught between them, pinned in place by their battling bodies. She could do nothing, not even breathe.
“Stop!” she screamed and sat bolt upright. Panting and shaken, her mind raced.
A damn dream, she realized. Just a nightmare!
Her eyes darted around the room, finding the familiar . . . her Christmas tree strung with white lights and covered with plump bulbs, the wrapped gifts beneath it, the scent of gingerbread and vanilla icing.
Harry Connick Jr. crooned carols, and an empty wineglass sat next to the stack of photographs she’d been reviewing for inclusion in the article she’d been working on. The door to the deck was closed, bolted. She wore a navy nightshirt and thick socks, not a wet bikini.
Her galloping heart faltered, and she pushed back her sweat-dampened hair.
“More dreams of him and that ring,” she murmured, trying to shake off a sense of foreboding as her heart churned.
The dreams are getting closer together. She rubbed her arms.
In college, she’d found an antique ring while walking through a deserted section of campus. She’d felt compelled to slide the crude ring on, and it had circled her thumb possessively as she studied it. The ring’s raised feature had been a coin capturing the image of a long-dead Roman emperor, and there’d been a deep scratch scoring the coin’s face, as if someone had tried to X the emperor out.
Only after she’d stared for a long time did the realization dawn that the grit on the ring wasn’t dirt. It was dried blood. She’d taken the ring off, but she couldn’t bring herself to simply turn it in to campus security’s Lost and Found collection.
Being a journalism major, she’d investigated, trying to determine how the ring had been lost and by whom. There had been no recent fights or assaults, no missing persons, and no inquiries or postings about a lost ring.
“It’s like this ring fell from the sky,” she’d told a friend, and the image stuck. Kate pictured it falling and landing with a thunk. She saw the fresh blood on its surface explode outward into tiny flecks as it struck the ground. The vision was so vivid that at moments she could almost believe she’d seen the ring fall rather than having found it on the ground while walking.
Then, three days after she’d discovered the ring, it disappeared from her dorm room and she’d begun dreaming about the bronze-skinned man. Often she dreamed of him standing on rooftops or swooping through the air. He either wore the ring or dropped it.
Sometimes in her dreams, he wasn’t alone; she was in his arms. They kissed in places she’d never been. And in one deeply erotic dream, he made love to her on a mountain ridge under an amber sky. That dream left her twisted in her sheets, aching for him, and she woke breathless.
Recently, the dreams had taken a darker turn. There were scenes of him fighting with another man, the one with white-blond hair and alabaster skin. She was often caught in the middle. What the hell does it all mean? she wondered.
The memories of her dreams of the bronze man haunted her by day and chased her by night. Over the years, she’d tried to put a name to his face. She’d looked through thousands of student photos and had asked questions on message boards and alumni loops. No leads ever panned out. The man was a ghost. A ghost who lived in her subconscious and tantalized her. A mystery that could not be solved, but would not fade. For someone like Kate, it was torture.
She’d begun to imagine that the ring had some sort of supernatural power, which initially had seemed ridiculous, but then she’d wondered, Why not? Magic existed. Muses and vampires proved that—although the vampires were all gone now, and the magic wielded by the muses was subtle and led to great things like Pulitzer Prizes rather than to unsettling recurring dreams that always left her wanting more. More information. And more of him.
Determined to photograph the sunrise from a new vantage, Kate washed down a breakfast taco with milk and pulled on her ski jacket. She adjusted her camera strap and hung it from her neck, then clicked her boots closed. She took a deep breath as she stepped out onto the deck, bracing herself. The cold clean air startled her lungs in the best possible way.
Once on her skis, she set out at a brisk pace, thinking about the upcoming night. As an aspirant—a human chosen to receive muse attention and magic—she would attend the muses’ exclusive holiday party. It was an invitation coveted by most of the world, and she’d been excited about it for months. This was her chance to celebrate her and Alissa’s accomplishments. With Alissa’s help, Kate had won awards and climbed to the top of her profession in seven short years.
Dawn’s first light emerged, and Kate slowed to a stop. She raised her camera and trained the lens in different directions. So often, she chose the mountains for a backdrop, but this morning she wanted the endless expanse of snow stretched over what in summer was a field of yellow wildflowers.
She popped out of her skis and lowered herself to rest her knee on the trail. The contours of the drifted snow were even more breathtaking from the new angle. Finding her shot, she waited for stronger light and saw a beam of it. She chased it with her camera, centering it within the frame. As her finger depressed the button, she paused. Something disturbed the snow’s perfect lines. She zoomed in, and her breath caught when she realized it was a hand, pale and unmoving.
She shuddered, lowering her camera. Shocked, a part of her wanted to return home and call the police, but the investigative reporter within her moved of its own accord. She dropped the camera against her chest, not even bothering to cover the lens. She snapped her boots back into her skis and pointed them off the trail.