Keith had only been back in the house for a second, just long enough to set a couple of steaks down on the counter when he heard the scream. A deep guttural sound, like a lamb being slaughtered, the noise penetrating his senses on every level. Without hesitating, he tore through the house and dashed up the stairs.
He found Madison pressed up against the counter, her eyes wide, her mouth slack as she breathed erratically and stared straight ahead. Her pulse jumped rapidly in her throat and her bare breasts heaved with the effort to pull in oxygen.
Though completely naked, Keith hardly noticed, looking from her to the empty space in front of her and back again.
"Madison!" He shouted, quickly going to her side and grasping her shoulders. "Madison, what is it?"
Madison turned to face him, her eyes rolling back in her head, her knees buckling as she collapsed in his arms.
Keith noted the sheer terror on her face before she fainted, he gently cradled her in his arms and laid her on her father's bed. Afterward, he walked back into the bathroom to turn off the shower and began searching the area. He started in the general vicinity of where he'd seen Madison's eyes fixated, but when he found nothing amiss he opened the linen closet and looked down the laundry shoot.
Nothing. He saw absolutely nothing out of the ordinary in the bathroom. Not even a spider. Not so much as a cobweb in that bathroom.
So what the hell had she'd seen?
Or did she see anything at all?
Keith grabbed a robe off the back of the door, laid it on top of Madison, and sat down beside her, lightly rubbing her back.
"Madison. Madison, can you hear me?" He asked quietly.
She started to moan, her head lolled from side to side.
"Madison, come on, come back to me."
"Who are you? What do you want from me?" She mumbled, her eyes closed tightly, her body covered in goosebumps and quivering slightly.
Keith stood abruptly, he looked around the room, and yet he saw nothing. But he could feel it.
Why hadn't he recognized it before? The dampness in the air, that cold breeze that hovered slightly out of reach. He looked down at Madison again, she'd curled up into the fetal position, clutching the robe to her, and yet, she was still on the verge of unconsciousness.
What the hell had she seen in that bathroom? Or more accurately, who had she seen?
He suddenly remembered Robert's last words. Of all the conversations he'd had with Robert, the many times they'd talked about history, ancestors, about magic and Robert's gypsy heritage, Keith had been skeptical. Better than most, Keith understood that sometimes things are not as they seem, and there are other things in this world that could never be explained.
But this idea that she might be the one? That she may be the key to it all? He shook his head. Nonsense. Complete fiction. But how else did he explain it?
"Remember," he whispered.
But who was he?
His voice urged her onward. Her paws ate up the ground beneath her, the pale light of the moon spearing through the trees to show her the way. Not that she needed it, she'd hunted these forests for years, every corner of this land. Her nostrils flared, pulling in the smells of the night. The decay of vegetation, the dampness the evening rain had left behind, she smelled it all, but nothing stood out stronger than the scent of blood.
She skidded to a stop at the edge of a clearing, her claws digging into the earth, churning it up as she grabbed for purchase. The scent of blood had become overwhelming here, and a shadow lingered underneath a lone oak tree covered in moss. The clouds began to cast a halo around the moon, light spilling into the clearing but stopping inches short of the imposing tree.
Breathing deeply, she began to change. Her bones cracked and snapped in fits and pops as her body became more erect. She squeezed her eyes shut tightly to ward off the pain. She braced one large paw up against the trunk of a small spruce tree, bending it with the force of her agony. She clawed into the bark until it scraped the sensitive flesh of her budding fingers, moaning as her spine finally straightened, the worst of it finally over.
Putting one barefoot in front of the other, she took her first wobbly steps into the light. The clouds shifted, shadows danced on the ground, but the figure shrouded in darkness under the tree never wavered, never moved.
Fear began to choke her, each breath harder than the last, grasping at her throat she willed her lungs to work, but the cloying scent of death rattled her to her very core. She forced her feet to carry her closer to the large oak, a single step at a time.
She fought the urge to turn and run, she willed her lungs to drag in one breath after another. As the clouds continued to shift in the sky above her, casting light where none had been, the aging tree finally started to give up its spoils.
A boot.
She saw a man's boot, worn and scuffed, splattered with blood. Her heart hammered in her chest as she inched closer, covering her mouth with her hands to hold back the bile scalding her throat. She'd hunted many a deer in these woods, but a man? This kind of death seemed foreign to her.
The boot belonged to a leg, a long lean leg, his trousers ripped and torn, his skin sliced and covered in crimson. He had his left leg tucked up under his right thigh, his shirt in tatters. What had done this to him? An animal?
No. A man. He'd been sliced and diced by the sword of a man. She sensed his pain, his fear, and his agony. His energy surrounded her, engulfed her body and brought her to her knees in front of him.
The ground cried out beneath her as it swallowed his blood. His soul demanded revenge against those that had ripped him from his vessel before his time. She found a familiarity in his angst. She'd met him before, she'd known his touch. She'd loved him.
As the light of the moon reached his face, she let out a blood-curdling scream.
The Duke of Uradel.
Madison gasped, abruptly sitting upright and crashing into Keith's body as he continued to lean over her. Her eyes wide in fear, she looked around the room, searching for something, someone. But she saw nothing.
"Madison," Keith urged, holding onto her shoulders, trying to ground her in the here and now. "Madison, you're safe. I'm here. You're okay, look at me."
She tried to hold onto his voice, finally locking eyes with him and calming the instant she did. Her breathing slowed, her heart rate lowered, and the tremors vanished as she stared into his cool gaze.
"It's okay," he told her again. "You're safe."
She closed her eyes, repeating his words. "It's okay, I'm safe."
"Do you want to tell me what happened?"
Madison took a minute to let her emotions settle. With Keith beside her, she found it easier to calm down and relax, but somewhere in the back of her mind, that fear tried to reach out to her again. She looked around, she sat on the bed, a robe wrapped around her, Keith there next to her. But how did she get here?
Madison remembered turning on the shower, but after that? No, that wasn't quite right. She'd turned on the shower, and the bathroom filled up with steam, so she flipped the switch for the fan... and then?
The man.
The man from the painting.
Madison shivered. She'd seen him, there, in the bathroom with her. Clear as day she'd seen him! Not some kind of trick of lighting or something, the man from the painting had definitely been there in the bathroom with her. She'd been scared, so scared, and she... she what? She fainted?
She honestly didn't remember.
"What," she hesitated. "What happened?"
Keith stood, trying to put a little distance between them, hoping it would make her a little more comfortable.
"You fainted, don't you remember?"
Madison looked at him quizzically. She didn't remember him being in the bathroom with her. Why didn't she remember that? "I, I don't." She admitted. "The last thing I remember is turning on the shower and flipping the switch for the ventilation fan, and..."
"What? What happened Madison?"
She laughed and shook her head, pulling the robe tighter around her, "Nothing, it was nothing, I must be going crazy. You probably think I'm nuts."
Keith knelt in front of her, attempting to reach out, but pulling up short at the last second when Madison flinched. "You're not nuts," he said softly. "You obviously saw something, and it scared the shit out of you. I'd sure like to figure out what you saw though."
Needing a minute alone to figure it all out for herself, Madison peeked around the door to the bathroom and looked back at Keith. "I'm going to skip the shower for now, but if you'll excuse me, I need to get dressed."
Keith realized that he wouldn't get any more out of her, so he stood and excused himself, telling her he'd go and get dinner started.
She waited for him to go, feigning a smile when he stole another glance at her before disappearing down the hall and breathed a sigh of relief, not entirely sure what had happened, she wanted to work it out in her own mind before she said anything to Keith about what she really saw. She'd felt like enough of a fool without having to admit it to him.
Madison got up and walked to the threshold of the bathroom. The hairs on the nape of her neck stood on end. She noticed an energy here, it surrounded her, cold, with an underlying sense of anger, even a little pain.
Closing her eyes, she tried to get a grip on herself. Ghosts, they didn't exist. Right? She must have imagined it. That's all. The painting in her father's office had left an impression on her, a strong one, and she must have conjured the man up, nothing more. Her imagination playing tricks on her.
Of course, that certainly didn't do anything to ease her growing sense of panic.
After going to the closet and slipping into a pair of sweatpants and a baggy t-shirt, Madison left the room, stopping in front of her father's office for a minute before heading downstairs to face Keith, still not sure what to say to him.
Her father's office was nearly dark, she made out the shadow of the painting on the back wall, but she couldn't see it. Remembering her earlier time lapse, or more aptly, her lost time, nosing around in her father's office, Madison dared not walk into the room again. Instead, she reached around the doorframe feeling her way up the wall until she came across the light switch and flipped it on.
The room lit up quickly, the painting illuminated by the pale yellow light, and despite her ghostly encounter, she saw nothing sinister looking about it. Only a beautiful portrait. The colors, the brush strokes, whoever painted it did so with love and expertise.
The woman looked young and pretty, her big blue eyes alight with mischief. The man strong and masculine, but with a touch of grace, compassion even. Before she realized it, Madison had walked into the room, and she stood in front of it, unaware of her movements until she reached out a hand and ran her fingertips lightly over the canvas.
"Remember." The voice whispered softly.
Startled, her hands clawing at her t-shirt, Madison turned and fled the room.
What was happening to her?
Throughout dinner, though he eyed her skeptically, Madison remained thankful that Keith let the earlier incident go after she explained how she hadn't slept much in the past few days with everything going on and that she thought she'd seen a huge spider in the bathroom.
She claimed to be deathly afraid of spiders, and though she had a healthy respect for them, it couldn't have been further from the truth. There honestly wasn't much in this world, at least when it came to animals, that Madison truly feared. But not wanting to sound like a candidate for the looney bin, she figured it best not to mention she'd seen a ghost.
Or assumed she had.
Because the idea of actually seeing a ghost sounded completely crazy, didn't it?
Keith nodded as if he understood her explanation and finished getting dinner on the table. He'd thrown a couple of steaks on the grill, his so rare she almost expected it to moo and managed a nice salad and a baked potato to go with it.
Of course, Keith did without the potato, though he did have a salad. The way his shirts seemed to stretch across the expanse of his chest, said that he obviously took good care of his body, but as she loaded up her potato and dug in, a world without carbs seemed unfathomable to her.
Upon sitting down, Keith placed a large pitcher of ice water in the center of the table, along with a bottle of white wine after pouring a glass for Madison and insisting it would help take the edge off.
The only thing missing from the evening would have been some soft music and candlelight. For such a casual meal with a virtual stranger, Keith certainly appeared to have pulled out all the stops. That or he simply enjoyed hosting. He did have an air of sophistication about him like he might have been from another time. He was like a puzzle, and Madison seemed to be having a hard time putting the pieces into place.
Keith finished his food, and after putting his dishes in the dishwasher he cleared away the remnants of dinner, leaving Madison with only her own dishes to deal with.
"I uh, I have a date tonight." He admitted nervously, his gaze shooting to the floor before their eyes met.
His bashfulness seemed almost endearing to Madison, she laughed softly when she joined him in the kitchen to clean up after herself. "Well, don't let me keep you." She told him while closing the door to the dishwasher and drying her hands on a nearby towel. "I'm sure I can manage to keep myself occupied for the evening."
Keith moved away from the counter where he'd been leaning with his arms folded across his chest, taking a step or two closer to Madison in the process. He looked like he wanted to reach out to her, but he didn't, letting his arms drop to his side instead.
"Are you sure you're going to be okay?" He asked with a concern that truly warmed her heart.
Madison nodded, tempted, as he had seemingly been, to lay a reassuring hand on him as well. The need to touch him overwhelmed Madison, she hadn't been prepared for it. And she couldn't for the life of her understand it. Every inch of her body urged her to reach out to him, to connect on the most basic of levels.
Like some magnetic current trying to pull them together, Madison saw the pained look on Keith's face and realized it affected him too. There was something here, something that both frightened and excited her at the same time.
Keith finally broke their strained eye contact, pulling open a drawer and taking out a pen. He scrawled something down on a notepad that hung on the refrigerator before tearing off the top piece of paper and handing it to her.
"That's my cell phone number," he said, setting the pen on the counter and stuffing his hands into the pockets of his slacks. "If you need anything, don't hesitate to call."
Madison closed a fist around the small sticky note and smiled gently. "Thanks."
With a curt nod, Keith turned to leave, Madison watched him go, waiting until he'd nearly disappeared into the foyer before remembering something and going after him.
"Hey, Keith?" She called out, catching him as his hand reached for the front door.
"Yes?"
"Sorry, um, I uh, I wanted to ask you about tomorrow." Madison stammered, having a hard time getting the words out when he turned to face her and some sort of déjà vu overtook her in one fell swoop. The look on his face, the soft smile that ran the length of it, little crinkles forming around his eyes, his lips full and only half-cocked now as he watched her watching him, it all felt so familiar.
The oddest sensation came over her like they'd been here before. But that seemed impossible. Shaking her head to clear the fog, Madison tried desperately to get ahold of herself. Unsure whether the house or the sheer delirium from lack of sleep caused the uneasiness, it agitated her.
And as she stood there debating mentally with herself about what she should do to abate the weirdness surrounding her, Keith continued to watch her contently, a myriad of expressions flitting across that pretty face of his.
"What about tomorrow?" He asked, finally cutting through her mental haze.
Madison rubbed a hand on the back of her neck as she regained control of her thoughts and emotions. "Sorry, I really need to get some sleep." She exhaled audibly for effect. "Anyways, I've been going over this whole situation in my head, a lot actually."
"And?"
"And I'd like to help."
Madison's heart did a little somersault when Keith's slow smile widened and he closed the gap between them, his hands falling gently on her shoulders like an afterthought, or not a thought at all.
"That's great!" He blurted, pulling away quickly, as if their mere contact had scorched his hands. "I mean, that's fantastic news. We're lucky to have you here Madison."
With a gulp to smother the heat and excitement that had bubbled up, Madison's gaze remained steady on his. Confused about this thing between them and not completely sold on the idea that it wasn't some sort of mind trick, she soon realized it grew more intense the longer they hung around each other.
She had to ask herself if it had been this way throughout the day. She didn't think so. She'd certainly found him attractive and caught herself admiring him more than once during their afternoon together, but the gravitational pull between them hadn't been nearly this disconcerting.
So how did she explain it?
For that matter, why had she been experiencing any of the thoughts and emotions she'd had since coming here? And suddenly it hit her.
The house.
From the moment she'd walked in the door she'd sensed it. Something calling to her, pulling at her and clogging her ability to think rationally. But did a house do all that?
She didn't have time to dwell on it though as Keith spoke again, the internal warning system going silent in her mind while his words filtered through. "I really need to go, but I'll meet you here for breakfast in the morning okay? Say, 6:00 am?"
Feeling utterly lost, and not for the first time, a little frightened, Madison nodded, trying to reassure not only him but herself. She needed time to figure out what plagued her, and while part of her didn't want him to go, she'd never be able to focus with him in the house.
"Oh, one more thing," Madison called out before he shut the door.
"Yeah?"
"That safe Al told me about, can you tell me where it is?"
"Sure, it's in the closet in the office. Have a good night." He said with a smile, quietly closing the door behind him and leaving her to her own devices.
Madison sighed. In the closet in the office. Of course, that's where it would be.
Her father's office, probably the last place she wanted to be, turned out to be exactly where she needed to go. She assumed the answers to all her questions would likely be found in there much to her dismay.
Now that Keith had gone, Madison seemed to breathe a little easier. The air didn't appear as thick, and the fog that had surrounded her nearly dissipated. She simply didn't understand it. Earlier, when they'd worked together on the ranch, she hadn't experienced even a small degree of the things she'd encountered this evening.
It had to be something about the house.
She had no other way to explain it. Sure, her mind had gone a little wobbly the first time she'd laid eyes on him, and yes, she'd noticed an intense desire to be near him, to touch him, but that might have been lust. Simple animal attraction.
This, this seemed like something else.
Almost eerily similar to how embarrassed she'd been when Keith had found her staring mindlessly at the painting in her father's office, or even like that pull surrounding her when she'd peeked in on it the second time around. The energy. The whispers. The ghost.
The ghost.
Before she had any idea how she'd gotten there, Madison found herself in her father's office once again, the light on, standing on the other side of the threshold staring at the painting in front of her.
Madison groaned. "This is insane!" She yelled in frustration.
Marching over to the painting, Madison lifted it slightly off the wall, making sure she wouldn't break anything when she took it down and satisfied that she wouldn't, she pulled it off the wall and took it downstairs where she set it on top of the kitchen counter.
She meant to have a talk with Keith tomorrow about that painting, surely he knew more about it than he'd first said. Whatever she might be able to learn about the damn thing, she became determined to find out. No stupid painting would have enough power over her to drive her to the brink of insanity.
By the time she walked back into her father's office, after making a pit stop in her bedroom to get the envelope with the combination to the safe, the peculiar sensation that had been plaguing her all evening finally subsided. She found no menacing aura, or malevolent force surrounding her. The office appeared like any other room in the house. A plain old ordinary room.
Strange indeed.
If she'd been firing on all cylinders Madison might have noted that the house didn't plague her, but the painting. However, having put the portrait out of her mind, for now, she focused on the task at hand. Going through her father's belongings.
Her eyes widened in both shock and surprise when she opened the door to the rather small safe and the huge stockpile of contents didn't automatically spill out. As full as that thing looked, how any of it stayed in place now that she'd removed the barrier holding it all in was beyond her.
He had so much stuff. SO MUCH STUFF. Madison figured she'd never get through it all in one night. Hell, it would probably take her every night for the next month or longer to get through it.
But obviously it had been important to her father that she did, and for that reason, she promised herself she'd spend every night in this office if she had to until she'd looked through each and every item.
Letting out a long breath, Madison grabbed a file folder from the top of the pile and got to work.
After his rather odd evening with Madison, Keith stopped by the cottage for a minute to check on Jewel, grabbing his sports coat on the way out once satisfied that she and the puppies would be fine for the next few hours without him, he headed off to meet his date.
He used his drive into the city to reflect on his time spent with Madison so far. After all the conversations he'd had with Robert, the things he'd learned through him, as well as on his own over the past couple of weeks following Robert's death, he still hadn't been prepared for her.
Deep down he realized that she had that something special, something, different. And though he trusted Robert implicitly, as much as he didn't want to fall victim to folklore and fiction, he had to admit to himself after the strange encounter earlier in the bedroom and the ensuing events, that Robert had quite possibly been right and his insane ancestors hadn't been crazy after all.
But that would mean, no, he didn't want to go there. Not now, not ever if he had it his way.
Some things in this world didn't and probably never would make sense to him, and this, all of this craziness and nonsense appeared to be one of those things. While willing to entertain a lot of crazy theories, myths even, because such things would never be, or at the very least, hadn't so far, been factually substantiated, the things that Robert proposed sounded extremely far-fetched, even to someone like him.
But how else did he explain it? How did he explain the sudden attraction, no, that wasn't right, more like a pull, a forceful push even, something powerful and stronger than any sensation he'd ever dealt with before.
And yet, it hadn't happened right away.
Sure, he'd noticed the tightening in his gut, the tension, the lust, from the moment he'd laid eyes on her. Madison was beautiful after all. She had the exotic beauty of her gypsy ancestors, but with the flare and grace of her American heritage as well. Curves in all the right places, a mouth he wanted to devour, and the face of an angel.
But in his time on this earth, Keith had seen plenty of beautiful women, some probably even more so than Madison. So needless to say, as pretty as she might have been, the physical attraction didn't draw him in.
Even with all the impossible things that Robert had told him about his daughter, about her past, her history, though surely her beauty and the larger than life persona that Robert had created played a role in his initial reaction to the girl, that strange occurrence hadn't happened until that moment in her father's bedroom. That's when he began to feel enticed by some mystical force he didn't see.
Definitely weird. He and Robert had been warned long ago, though not in any specific terms, that the painting, a picture of which they took with them on their visit to Germany had been cloaked in dark magic, though he'd never really questioned what that really meant until now. Until he'd found Madison staring at it, completely unaware that she'd been lost in some sort of trance.
And that's exactly what it looked like.
While Madison had gotten herself together after the incident in the bathroom, Keith, having recalled how she'd looked when he'd found her in the office, in a similar state to the one she'd been in the bathroom before collapsing in his arms, he'd quickly started the grill and slipped downstairs into the safe room.
The safe room, hidden behind false wall panels in the basement powder room, a place Keith hadn't yet thought to mention to Madison, housed an intricate camera and security system, as well as a cellar stocked with almost anything one might need to survive for at least a couple of months.
As he came to trust Madison, and he assumed he would at some point, probably after she'd gone through the contents of her father's safe, and he could better judge her ability to keep an open mind, Keith would decide how much of the truth he wanted to give her.
For now, though, he'd keep her father's paranoia to himself, as well as the secret room downstairs that he used to keep tabs on everyone and anyone that ever set foot in his house. Not that all rooms had cameras, of course, some, like the bathrooms, merely had voice recording equipment. But the office, as well as every other "common" room in the house, had dual capabilities.
So in the few minutes that Keith had to spare, he found the monitor for the office and rewound it to earlier in the day. He'd watched as Madison slowly walked into the office, while she approached the painting, and ran her hands gently over the canvas, then proceeded to stand there for the next three hours, staring at it.
Such a peculiar thing. Peculiar indeed.
He found himself even more shocked when he fast forwarded to the live footage and saw her in that exact same spot once more. He had to do a double take to make sure he wasn't seeing things. But nope, live footage. Madison had gone back into the office after her freak out in the bathroom.
She stood in front of the painting in her sweats and a t-shirt that while too big, did nothing to hide her feminine curves. Keith swallowed, images of the two of them flashing through his head. Images of him touching her bare back, running his hands over her shoulders, along the smooth column of her throat.
Blinking away what he assumed had to be visions of lust, he watched Madison reach out once more to touch the rough canvas.
And suddenly he'd heard it.
A whisper, hardly loud enough for the microphone in the faux AC vent to pick it up, but with his keen sense of hearing he'd been able to make it out clearly.
"Remember."
Startled, Keith took a step back. So freaked out by that one simple word, and the flood of images that flitted through his head, he scrambled out of the room, almost forgetting to put the wall panels back into place.
How he'd managed to pull himself together before Madison appeared downstairs a few minutes later he'd never be sure. But he'd managed. He'd even found a way to keep a straight face when she'd told him the lie about the spider in the bathroom.
Yeah, a spider his ass.
But before he called her out on it, before he demanded a more reasonable explanation, an unfamiliar sensation crept over him. One of calm, of serenity, but laced with an underlying degree of anger and pain.
He had to fight to control himself as every fiber of his being pulled him in her direction. Robert's words came back to haunt him.
"She's the one."
Yes, he understood that now. As much as he didn't want to believe it, any of it, he couldn't deny it now. Only, there had to be darker forces at work here. He seemed sure of it. Things that he and Robert didn't know, wouldn't have known, and he'd have to figure out how he would fight them and keep Madison safe.
Because he had promised Robert that he would keep Madison safe.
Gripping the steering wheel as he reached his destination, Keith steeled his resolve. "I promise." He whispered harshly to himself before turning off the ignition and stepping down from his truck.
Keith found his date sitting at a table by herself with a cup of coffee and a book. She smiled sweetly as he approached.
"There you are," she purred. "I was starting to think you might not come."
"Sorry," he apologized with a seductive smile of his own. "I had dinner with the new manager of the farm."
His date pouted a little, her bow-shaped mouth turning down. One of the features Keith liked most about her. Those long full lips, he couldn't wait to bite into them.
"And here I assumed we would have dinner together." She whined in her thick sultry voice.
Keith took her hand in his, kissing the tips of her fingers as he pulled her to her feet. "Darling," he whispered, "I have a better idea, why don't we skip straight to dessert?"