It shone like a promise, a light against the darkness.
Epilogue
Jet breached the water at over thirty miles an hour, gritty determination etching her angular face. She tucked in her tail fin as she did a one-and-a-half backflip before slipping back into the water headfirst.
Bravo, Jet! Shelly pushed the words out in a compressed sound wave. Her cousin was one of the fastest mermaids alive and Shelly watched in awe as Jet’s muscles rippled in a perfect blend of athleticism and poetry. Bet you take first place this time at the games.
Jet grinned and gave a fist pump. She excelled at the annual Poseidon Games held in the South Pacific and was ready for the competition set to begin in three weeks. As a TRAB, Shelly was forbidden to attend. Only the pure, full-blooded merfolk were permitted to participate and visit the grand underwater caverns housing mer-treasure. Spawning with mermen at the games was encouraged to preserve what was left of their race. In mer-society, Shelly’s kind were considered diluted aquatic humanoids, not fit for breeding.
Heading home, Jet called out before disappearing into the moon-drenched swells.
Shelly’s heart panged for Lily, who used to decide when it was time to return to land. She knew Shelly couldn’t stay undersea as long as them and always wanted to spare her pride. Miss you, Lily, Shelly sang into the liquid abyss, knowing there would be no answering reply today, only the eternal crinkling sound of sand and rock as they rolled and tumbled in the shifting tide. Lovely Lily with the siren’s voice that carried for miles and which humans mistakenly took for whale song. Have fun with your mermen.
Shelly no longer feared her cousins would abandon her while in the South Pacific. They’d be back. Jet couldn’t tear away the hope that Perry would one day return and Lily wanted to be with her sister. Besides, they loved her just as she was.
A school of aqua mackerel skittered within inches, sending air bubbles tickling along her torso. Shelly reveled in the lightness of the ocean’s womb, secure and surrounded by its amniotic fluid of life-giving sustenance. After encountering Melkie, she wasn’t sure she’d ever again swim without fear. But not only could she do it, she had found new joy, had come to terms with shape-shifting between worlds.
She belonged.
Her heart was on land with Tillman, yet she had the freedom to come and go as she wanted.
Shelly floated, let the undertow sweep her at will, hair rising straight up from her scalp like the tentacles of an octopus.
Just a little longer.
At last Shelly flicked her tail fin and propelled upward, eager for home.
Tillman awaited as she emerged through the portal and into the shelter. She laid her elbows on the sandy edges of the opening, keeping her body in the water from the waist down. He brushed a strand of wet hair from her face and cradled a large palm against the curve of her left cheek, as tenderly as if she was the most precious, most fragile woman in the world.
“Is anything wrong?” she asked, heart in her throat. “Is Eddie okay?”
He gave a bemused smile. “Sometimes I think you love my brother more than you love me.”
Shelly opened her mouth to protest, but he laid a callused finger against her lips. “You know I’m joking. Nothing’s wrong and I’m lucky you put up with the both of us.”
“Package deal. So what are you doing here?” She made no move to exit. Tillman had only seen her metamorphosis from mermaid to woman twice. Despite his assurances otherwise, she couldn’t forget his shocked look the first time she was forced to reveal her true nature to him. The second time he’d seen her transform, they had both been focused on apprehending Melkie Pellerin. Besides, after a lifetime of secrecy, shape-shifting in front of a human still felt wrong.
Tillman held up her terry robe in one hand. “Aren’t you coming out?”
“I need some privacy,” she said softly.
He arched a brow. “Really? After all the times we’ve seen each other naked, why are you turning shy on me?”
“You know why.”
Tillman tossed the robe to one side and placed both hands under her armpits. The golden specks in his gray eyes shimmered. “Shelly,” he said, voice husky with emotion. “I love every inch of your body in every shape and form.”
She gasped as he dragged her out of the water in one quick movement. The night air was chilly against her damp flesh until he pulled her against his warm, fully clothed body.
A slight moan escaped her lips as tail fin split in two and fish scales dissolved beneath human skin.
“How bad does it hurt?” Tillman whispered in her ear.
“Only a little.”
He tightened his grip around her shoulder with one arm while gently stroking her face with one hand. She wanted to bury her head in his chest, still somewhat embarrassed at this last bit of intimacy.
At last the pain subsided and was replaced by the overwhelming need to be at one with Tillman. He quickly shed his clothes and they kissed, tongues dancing in lust.
A sudden blast of chill swept across Shelly as Tillman pulled away.
“What—?” she began.
He impatiently retrieved the cast-aside robe and spread it upon the sandy ground. Before she could move, he easily lifted her and placed her carefully on top of the makeshift blanket.
“I love everything about you, Shelly. Everything.”
She gazed up at the face she adored and knew so well. “I believe you. And I love—”
Her words were cut off as his mouth landed upon hers again.
Outside, the wind kicked up the sand, which beat upon the steel shed in a staccato drumming. But here, with Tillman’s body pressed against her own, Shelly was protected and uncaring of anything but this man she would love all her life—and who loved her in return.
* * * * *
Keep reading for an excerpt from CHRISTMAS IN SALEM by Heather Graham.
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Prologue
Winters came with a vengeance to Salem, Massachusetts. When settlers had first come to the shores of the then colony, many had not survived. Those who had settled Salem and her environs had been devout Puritans, and they had seen the Devil in the darkness, in the forests that surrounded the land they worked so hard to cultivate. They were, in fact, so convinced that the Devil was in the forest that they believed he also somehow entered their homes—and from this belief came the terror of the witch trials. But people learned the bitter lesson of the cruelty they had perpetuated. Salem’s name became famous in history, the city itself a place dedicated to the awareness of man’s inhumanity to man, where people could learn from the past so that they never again allowed such cruelty and injustice to occur.
By the twenty-first century, the city welcomed any and all, embracing those of different ethnicities and becoming a place where every religion was welcome, from Wicca to Buddhism to the more traditional forms of worship.
Even now, it was easy to understand how people without electric lights, without communication, could play on old grievances, look around the woods where natives they didn’t understand were lurking, where God only knew what might emerge from the never-ending forests and the land beyond, and fear what they didn’t comprehend. When winter came, the wind howled and ice formed on houses. They sat huddled before their fires and feared what lay beyond.
When winter was at its height, darkness came by late afternoon, and they shivered in their homes and prayed for dawn. Then.
But this was now.
And the darkness had never been anything like this.
At first the darkness had seemed to come normally. October arrived, and with it Halloween, Salem’s favorite holiday. November followed, and daylight savings time was gone. Then winter came, and with it, shorter days.
And that was when the darkness began to extend its reign.
People would get to work, stare at the sky and say, “Wow. It’s not light yet.”
Children would get out of school in the afternoon and say, “Wow. It’s dark already.”
The mayor called the governor; the governor called the president.
The president called the experts at NASA.
But they were all completely stymied. Because the darkness had settled only over Salem, Massachusetts.
For the most part, the citizens of that fair and historic city lived with it. But each day they grew a little more concerned, a little edgier. They became prone to rudeness, to attacking one another. They behaved the way people had a way of behaving whenever they were...
Afraid.
With winter came the holiday season. For the city’s Wiccan community, the winter solstice was the day of highest importance, and while they tried to make it a time of celebration, many were short-tempered, their moods as dark as the sky. Hanukkah was not much better. Now as the community moved to welcome Christmas, their shared but unspoken fear was that Christmas Day would dawn with complete darkness, and rather than being the celebration of rebirth it was meant to be, Christmas would bring something evil leaking from the stygian darkness that enveloped the city.
And even in this enlightened day, they began to wonder.
Was the Devil more than a myth, and was he running loose in the world?
Was he back wreaking havoc in the Salem woods—this time for real?
Chapter 1
The bulb Samantha Mycroft was trying to replace was just above her reach. She swore softly—and then felt guilty.
It was Christmas Eve. One was not supposed to swear on Christmas Eve. In the front yard, next to the tall and beautiful pine she was trying to decorate, the motion-activated Santa was singing in Bing Crosby’s voice, cheerfully telling the story of the Little Drummer Boy.
She should not be cursing on Christmas Eve, she thought again.
But, she thought, pausing to look at the sky, this was a most unusual Christmas Eve.
It was dark. Darkness was to be expected at night, of course.
But the darkness had started coming earlier and earlier. At first it had been natural, as fall had come to Salem. But four in the afternoon had become two. And where at first the sun had come out at six in the morning, six had become seven. Then eight. Then nine.
Finally there had been just an hour of light at midafternoon, and today, Christmas Eve, she wondered if even that hour would come, because it had gone from being one hour to fifty minutes, then forty, then thirty....
They kept the Christmas lights on 24/7, which, Samantha was convinced, was why her Never Burn Out! Christmas lights were burning out.
She managed to reach the offending bulb and change it, and then, from her perch atop the ladder, looked up at the sky again.
The news, of course, was filled with the phenomenon. It was centered on Salem, but it had begun spreading—though to a lesser degree—south toward Boston and north toward the Gloucester area. None of the rest of the country was any darker than it normally was at this time of year. Naturally, scientists and meteorologists were having a field day with the situation. They all had theories that explained what was going on, from the extremely esoteric to a strange type of sun flare. How a flare could cause such darkness, Sam didn’t know.
It didn’t matter.
Their theories were all wrong; she knew that much. Whatever was going on in Salem was being caused by a miscreant in the Otherworld.
“Hey! Pretty lights!”
She heard the deep voice and for a moment, she froze. She knew that voice, though she hadn’t heard it in years. It was rich and fluid; it had made her laugh.
And its absence from her life had, once upon a time, made her cry.
She turned quickly, then remembered that she was on a ladder and grasped hold of it, absolutely determined that she wouldn’t humiliate herself by falling off and landing at his feet.
With all the control she could muster, she turned regally to look down.
Maybe she was imagining that it was him.... He had disappeared on a Christmas Eve, exactly two years ago now.
She’d imagined nothing.
There he was. Daniel Riverton in the flesh.
As if on cue, the stupid Santa began singing “I’ll Be Home for Christmas.”
Daniel was tall and appeared lean, but she knew from experience that his shoulders were broad, his chest and arms muscled and honed, and he could move with incredible grace, speed and agility. He was the epitome of “tall, dark and handsome.”
Naturally.
Because Daniel was a vampire. And an exceptional one.
He was striking as only a vampire could be; his hair was coal dark and his eyes were that burning, intense hazel often seen among his kind. When he was passionate or angry, the hazel burned with a golden light that seemed more intense than the sun. He looked up at her now, those eyes of his enigmatic, a slight smile curving his lips.
Leave it to Daniel to come back smiling. She wanted to smack him—smack that smile from his face.
And she also wanted to touch him, feel his arms around her again, look up at him and smile and laugh because they were a duo, soul mates.
Yeah, so much for that.
“How are you, Sam?” he asked softly.
“Fine. What are you doing back in Salem?” she demanded curtly.
It would have been nice if he’d said something like I tried to survive without you but I couldn’t. I had to come back to Salem. I don’t care about rules or regulations or if we’re damned for all time. I can’t live without you.
He didn’t.
“I was called back,” he told her.
“Oh?” she demanded. She was the Salem Keeper of the Vampires. If anyone had been called back, she should have known about it.
“My father,” he explained.
His father. Great. His father, who hadn’t approved of a vampire dating a vampire Keeper. Her parents hadn’t approved, either, of course. But they had kept their disapproval fairly quiet, telling her that she had to make her own decisions about life.
She shouldn’t have had to take on the Keeper role for years, but the International Council had been formed and her parents—having managed the area exceptionally well since their arrival in response to the insanity of the witch trials—had been called to be part of that council. That left her generation, the younger generation, to take on their responsibilities far too soon.
Justin Riverton, Daniel’s father, was a pillar of the community. Or had been. Like her parents, he was now serving on the International Council. Everything, all those departures, had happened at around the same time. Daniel, fresh out of law school, had been swept up in the whole council thing, and now, while he didn’t sit on the council, he worked for it, going from place to place to settle vampire affairs whenever trouble arose and no local Keeper was at hand.
But the real issue was the age-old taboo against Keepers having relationships with their charges.
That was changing now in many places—newer places than Salem, where the old ways died very slowly.
She knew that everyone had considered what she and Daniel shared to be nothing but a fling—a silly school thing that would end. They were both excellent students, bright and responsible from an early age. When it was time for them to end it, they would end it.
Despite that prevailing belief, Sam was pretty sure that both her parents and Daniel’s had conspired to keep them apart. And, she was forced
to admit, her attitude might have had something to do with it. Maybe she’d pushed too hard in her desire for some kind of passionate declaration from him. She’d wanted him to tell her that what they had was too unique, too incredible...too passionate...for him to turn his back on her and leave.
Hadn’t happened.
So the fact that he was here now was doubly galling. Not only was she embarrassed not to know he was on the way, his presence meant that the council believed she couldn’t keep her affairs, her responsibilities as a Keeper—her charges—in order. That what was happening here was somehow her fault.
Which was ridiculous. Vampires might be exceptionally fond of darkness, but they were not known to have any special powers to create it.
“Well. Nice to see you,” she said. There was no reason for her to remain on the ladder—she’d changed the bulb. If she didn’t come down, she would look like a coward.
Sam was the oldest of the new generation of Keepers now in charge of Salem’s Otherworld. It wasn’t an actual title or position, but with all the changes that had taken place, she was more or less the “Keeper of the Keepers.” She was supposed to be calm, cool, stoic—wise at all times. Looking like a coward—or appearing unable to handle Daniel’s sudden reappearance in Salem on Christmas Eve—just wouldn’t do.
She willed her hands not to shake as she started to descend. Maybe that wasn’t such a great plan. She was tall, nearly six feet. But Daniel, though only about six-three, seemed to tower over her. And he was standing way too close to the foot of the ladder. He might have moved to give her a little more personal space, but he didn’t.
“Uh, good to see you, but I have things to do, so...?” she said.
He smiled—well aware that he was blocking her path back to the house. “It’s nice to see you, too. I wanted you to know that, and that I was back in town. I guess we both have things to do.”
“Thanks. Now if you don’t mind, you’re blocking my way into my house,” she told him.
Ignoring her, he asked, “Still the best tour guide in the city?”
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