Taken by a Vampire (Vampire Queen) - By Joey W. Hill Page 0,186

treasure hunt.

At the crest of the path the forest opened up before her. A mowed, grassy field sloped down to a large pond, where the docks were stocked with paddleboats and canoes. The moon hung low over it, creating a silver lake, and the light pointed her to her destination.

Cutting off the path, she headed across the tended field. He waited for her inside a large gazebo, meeting her on the steps with a half smile. When he reached out a hand to help her up those stairs, she hesitated as she always did from the unexpected offer of assistance, but it was barely a pause, since she was eager for his touch. His eyes warmed on her.

“Nerida and Miah will join us shortly, but I figured you’d need a few minutes to get across the compound. Even with your eye for detail, in daylight you’ll find you missed half of it. The children call the perimeter paths The Enchanted Forest.”

“I can’t imagine how you ever bring yourself to leave.” Of course, she could say that for every place he’d taken her thus far.

He winked. “Mel kicks me out when I overstay my welcome.”

She suspected his art drove him ever onward to see new things, but he likely returned to this place when the ideas were overflowing, so he could execute them in familiar surroundings.

Always insightful, beautiful InhServ. This is a place of refuge, in many ways.

As he guided her into the gazebo, she saw art mounted on the interior walls, the piece directly before her catching her eye. It had been protected in a glass box, the lighting positioned around it making it clear to the viewer at night.

“This is your work.” Alanna drew closer. “But it’s different, and not just because it’s paint. What did you do?”

“Highlighted what was already there.” Evan moved to stand just behind her, his hip brushing her buttock. When she turned her head to look up at him, her hair fluttered across his shoulder, moved by the wind coming from across the lake. She made a move to draw it back, but he captured her hand, held it against his chest, though his eyes were on the canvas.

“You’re familiar with the saying, ‘we don’t see the forest for the trees’?” When she nodded, he added, “It works the opposite way as well. You look at a forest, but do you see the trees? Do you really see them?”

He pointed. “Each has a different shape, different leaves, even if they’re the same species. Some have been scarred by lightning or a bear’s claws during their lives, and that causes them to grow differently. They even respond differently to the touch of the wind, based on the shape of the trunks, the weight of the limbs. We don’t notice because we lack time, patience. Yet sit in one spot and watch, listen, notice, and you see it, how incredibly individual every single thing in life is. And yet”—he stepped back, taking her with him—“in key ways, very much the same. They all reach toward the light, though of course in this picture it’s moonlight.”

When she glanced at him, his gray eyes were intent on the work, studying what he’d done, what he could do better, though he kept speaking. “They all drive their roots into the ground to hold on to their space, to draw strength and nourishment. However, some go deeper than the others. As they grow up, their roots overlap. For some, it’s like fingers tangling together. Others tie knots.”

He drew her attention to a separate canvas, directly below that one. Whereas the upper one showed the forest above ground, the lower one showed what was happening beneath the earth. How the roots did become like fingers or, in the case of thicker tubers, like bodies. Bodies twined in passion or in a fetal waiting position, the nest of roots around them becoming the womb. Another shape was bound up in the more ropelike roots as if bound by a Master, waiting for whatever he desired. And then . . .

She bent to examine it more closely. At the very bottom of the lower canvas, near his signature, was a tiny, whiskered mole, working blindly on his small tunnel, oblivious to all of it.

“As long as you’ve lived, you could have painted historic events, but you seem to paint . . . everything else.” She didn’t mean it as an insult, and fortunately, he didn’t seem to take it as such. He shrugged.

“I’ve