Page 4

“You had no right to her. No right. You ignored our warnings. You had your chance to leave her and you didn’t.”

Dear God, no. This can’t happen. I can’t make her suffer—

His limbs wouldn’t move fast enough.

The razor-sharp edge of the blade whipped across his neck.

Mikhail stared at the man. Stared into dark, evil eyes of a townsman he’d recognized toolate. His body spasmed. The pain didn’t come immediately, only the heartache of failing his beloved. That heartache was worse than the panic that filled him as he tried to breathe, only to fill his lungs with blood. The same blood that pulsed and poured out of his arteries, his veins, with each beat of his heart.

As darkness closed around him, the man tugged down the cloth that hid his face and smiled.

“Shame you didn’t learn your lesson. She was never meant for you.”

Blackness swelled across his vision.

He listened to the faint beat of his heart slowing…slowing…

He breathed nothing more than liquid. Blood bubbled along his tongue and at the corner of his mouth as he sagged onto his back. The fading sunlight and the fiery canopy of the fire quickly faded from his sight.

His last conscious thought was of his beloved. Her smile. Her eyes. Her kiss.

Her love.

A love that shattered as he breathed his last breath on the dead leaves.

Part I

1

“All will be well. I’ll return soon, my beloved.”

The shocking coldof the water splashed over his face and dripped off his chin. Nothing could erase the memories. Nothing could ease the ache in his chest.

The nightmare began when he awoke. The dream resided in the slumber-induced nightmare he never wanted to leave.

Bryce Hampton stared back at his reflection, his skin pale, his bare chest shimmering with beads of sweat. His eyes glowed almost preternaturally green. His hand throbbed along the lines of the birthmark that cut across his palm. Two unusual occurrences that always followed his waking from these tragic dreams. Dreams that had haunted him for as long as he could remember.

Only now, instead of once a week or once a month, he suffered the repetitive agony every damn night.

Ever since I foundher.

“What’re you going to do?” he asked his reflection.

He swore his eyes flashed, but then again, nothing about this made any sense to him. Nothing…excepther. The very thought of the ghost in his dreams made his heart race and his body burn with such fire, such life. His day-to-day existence paled in comparison to the vivid energysheinfused into his blood.

His entire life, he believed those dreams and nightmares to be nothing more than a boy’s meager fantasy. Never in a million lifetimes would he dream of finding her. At a random club in Hoboken, of all places.

What were the chances?

Fate.

Bryce groaned and splashed his face again. The chill of the water washed away residual sleep, but never the void residing in his chest like an old friend. A constant reminder of the love, joy, and happiness that filled his subconscious mind in sleep before terror and torment struck. The overwhelming fear of never seeing her again. Never hearing her soft, musical voice whisper words of love and adoration in his ear. She had always been so real, so disturbingly real, in those dreams. As real as the heaviness that weighed in his belly every morning.

Empty.

Her absence left him empty.

The jingle of his alarm sounded from his bedroom. Rubbing a hand down his damp face, he returned to his room and shut the annoying ringer off, then set out his clothes for work. The darkness of winter’s early morning hours seeped through the curtains, a cold glow steeped in deep gray, the only light that of the street lamps, a dull, gloomy yellow.