Threshold of Destiny (The Mysterium Secret Book 1)

by Linn Chapel

  Another shiver passed through Tressa. Holt’s arms about her firmed. “I can feel you trembling. You’re awakening too soon, Tressa. Sleep more,” he said.

  Cool fingers touched her forehead. The hypnotic cloud that surged into her mind became even denser and more insistent. With a desperate burst of mental effort, she fended it off, but she was still unable to speak. There was no way to stop him.

  His voice went on, just above her head. “Tressa, you are far too trusting. You should have known how much I wanted to pull you into my arms and kiss you tonight by the river. The feeling is even stronger now, but if I give in to it, the pain of my departure will be unbearable.” He shifted her in his arms. “There’s only one choice left.”

  Suddenly, she felt a stab of pain in her neck and her thoughts sped away, retreating from the awful reality.

  Her mind reached for colors and flung them about like splashes of bright paint. The various hues swirled and firmed and a moment later, she found herself standing on a flagstone path. Nearby, bright purple coneflowers rose above drifts of green foliage. The dreamscape wasn’t very large, for she’d had so little time to create it, but that didn’t matter. She surrounded the pretty garden with a tall green hedge that made her feel safer.

  Turning in a circle to behold her handiwork, she suddenly stiffened.

  Straight ahead of her stood a vine-covered arch that had not come from her own thoughts. Through the opening, she could see a larger garden beyond. Fearfully, she stared at it.

  A shifting pattern of dappled light passed over its vegetation. Then a breeze blew over her, and suddenly she could smell the scent of roses.

  Cautiously, she walked through the arch into the other garden. Mounds of lavender edged the path at her feet. Nearby, just to her left, heavy sprays of roses tumbled over a low stone wall. Beyond the roses grew a massive, well-tended hedge. On her right, half-hidden by shrubbery, she spied the ivy-covered wall of some grand, older home.

  The mysterious garden seemed to be filled with blossoms and everywhere she could see interesting nooks. What would she find if she explored it a little longer?

  Stepping along the path, she felt soft fabric fluttering about her legs. Glancing down, she was startled to find that she was wearing a long dress made of gauzy white fabric. A blue ribbon gathered the dress above her waist and the toes of matching blue slipper-like shoes peeked out from the hem as she walked.

  The change in her appearance caused a quiver of worry to race down her neck. Should she return to the small garden, the safe one that she had made for herself? No, she wanted to see more of this one.

  Stepping further along the path, she spotted a large sundial on a tall pedestal. Coming up to it, she gazed at the bronze dial. The thin shadow cast by the sun showed that it was noon in this strange but peaceful place.

  At the far end of the garden, she found a shady recess under the branches of a spreading oak tree. Within the shadows, a white wooden swing had been suspended from one of the branches. Tressa eased herself onto its seat and gazed in wonderment at the gauzy fabric of her dress. Nearby, in the sunlight, bees hummed amid the lavender blossoms.

  Unexpectedly, the swing moved, and the shock of that motion shattered her peaceful mood. Suddenly, a cool wind was fanning through her hair.

  Someone is pushing me.

  The swing rose higher and higher.

  Who is it?

  Grasping onto the ropes of the swing, Tressa glanced over her shoulder. Behind her stood a dark-haired man who was dressed in the kind of historic clothing she had seen in movies like Pride and Prejudice. When he pushed her again, she saw his face clearly.

  It was Holt.

  She cried out to him in her surprise and he must have heard her, because suddenly a cloud of concern swept over his face. Coming around the swing to face her, he caught her as she rose into the air, lifting her into his arms.

  He carried her through the garden to set her gently down on a stone bench. Seating himself beside her, he leaned closer. His fingers brushed her cheek.

  At his touch, the strange garden shimmered and lost its colors. The stone bench softened, revealing itself to be a sofa. The dappled light of the garden became the lamplight in her living room.

  Through half-closed eyes, she could see that Holt was leaning forward on the sofa, holding his antique pocket watch before her face. The watch gleamed as it turned slowly on its chain. “Sleep more, Tressa. Sleep deeply in the folds of night.” He spoke very softly.

  Thought-numbing power swirled around her mind but the appearance of the watch had warned her of its coming. This time, she was more prepared to resist Holt’s formidable mesmeric power. Allowing her eyes to droop, she pretended to be under the spell of his hypnotic cloud.

  She could still see Holt gazing down at her. His eyes were like dark pools. “You are the bright flame in the midst of an endless winter,” he whispered.

  He rose abruptly from the sofa. “My guilt lends wings to my departure for London. The sooner I am away from you, the better.”

  He crossed the room, leaving Tressa’s field of vision. “Stix has so little patience that I am certain he has wandered elsewhere by now. But I wonder if another soul keeps a silent vigil outside your apartment tonight. Peter’s not as trusting as you are, Tressa, and he’s a man. He probably imagines I wish to overstep the proprieties with you.” Tressa heard the doorknob turn. “If only he knew the truth.”

  The door rasped open and then it was firmly shut.

  Rising from the sofa, Tressa ran across the room to the window. Down below on the street, she could see Holt emerging from the building, once again in record time. To her relief, there was no sign of Peter anywhere near the entrance.

  She wrapped her arms about herself, feeling the pressure of emotions she couldn’t even name, but she knew they were at war with one another.

  She watched Holt walk down the dark street at a human pace. When he disappeared around a corner, she finally turned away from the window and made her way to the bathroom, where she examined the new wound on her neck. Just like the first one, it was healing rapidly.

  But the wound was still evidence, she told herself. Evidence that Holt, despite the growing fascination he held for her, was by no means a normal man.

  The sooner I am away from you, the better, he had said.

  Walking home from the nearby market the next morning with a bag of groceries in each hand, Tressa paused at the corner where Holt had disappeared the night before.

  Did Holt make his home in some hidden den, concealed from human sight? Or did he openly rent an apartment and keep up the appearance of being human? Wherever he was now, she knew that he had to be sleeping. Tonight, he would wake and she’d see him again, but it would be for the last time.

  It was all for the best, she told herself firmly. She knew from her training sessions that he could develop symptoms that might become unpredictable, even violent. And even if there were no symptoms to worry about, Holt would never be a safe companion for her. He was too strong-willed and his past was too dark.

  She wondered again why Holt’s memory of the Thames had entered her thoughts without any warning. Holt had even entered one of her dreamscapes in person! He had pushed her on the swing, and she had felt his strong arms come around her as he had carried her to the bench. She suddenly wondered if he had seen and felt her in that strange garden, too.

  And most worrisome of all, she hadn’t been able to prevent him from preying upon her again last night. No, Holt wasn’t a safe companion.

  By that time, Tressa’s steady pace along the street had brought her to her apartment building. She toted her grocery bags up the stairs and before attempting any other tasks, she took a dose of the iron supplement she had just purchased at the market. With her nursing experience, she had known that a temporary anemia from blood loss had been the reason for the fatigue she’d been feeling.

  After stowing away her groceries, she drew up a chair at her desk and applied herself to the tas
k of catching up on her Patient Care courses, but what little concentration she could muster vanished completely within minutes. Fidgeting at her desk, her thoughts wandered back to her suspicion that Holt was much older than he appeared. She couldn’t seem to stop thinking about him, so she set aside her coursework and used her computer to search for his name – his full name.

  She wasn’t surprised when the search results listed a book entitled English Poets of the Romantic Era: Historic Sources, available in a used hardcover. Among the authors cited, she found the name she had been looking for: John Holton Langley.

  She drew in a sharp breath, for two centuries had passed since England’s Romantic Era.

  Two hundred years.

  Excited and a little triumphant – she had been right after all! – she ordered the used hardcover. By the time the shipment arrived, Holt would be gone from her life. But at least she’d be able to satisfy some of her restless curiosity about him.

  She knew that she should return to her online classes, but instead, she went to her shelves where she found an overview of English Literature. Opening it, she read a passage from the introduction.

  The Romantic Movement in English Literature celebrated the emotions and urged a freedom from convention.

  The individual soul was often portrayed immersed in elemental Nature. Such a conception served as an antidote to the increasingly crowded and polluted conditions that had arrived with the Industrial Revolution.

  Poets of the Romantic Era were drawn to themes of life and death, love and loss, the gift of inspiration, or its absence. Verses might express the soaring heights of ecstatic joy or the despairing depths of gloom.

  Closing the volume thoughtfully, she wondered what kind of verses Holt had written two hundred years ago.

  Thinking about him so much was clearly a mistake, for her thoughts and feelings were becoming ever more involved. She had never expected that attempting a mission for Operation M would create such an upheaval in her life. After completing her duty with an injector, she had expected her part to be over. She had planned to cease all contact with the subject, and to allow the trained operatives to monitor him with a tracking bead.

  The tracking bead. She’d forgotten to plant it again.

  Should she do it tonight? After some thought, she decided not to try. Holt was far too observant.

  It would be much safer to settle for making a few first-hand observations that she could pass on to the others at headquarters.

  Not for the first time, she wondered if she might be under surveillance herself. She knew that Peter had his suspicions about the Operation’s new managers, and it wasn’t hard for her to imagine them keeping an eye on her dealings with the subject, given their interest in him.

  She rose from her desk and made a careful tour of her small apartment, checking behind the books and running her hands down the folds of her curtains. As she searched, she winced at the thought of someone from the Operation eavesdropping on the particulars of Holt’s visit to her apartment last night. But to her relief, no hidden surveillance devices showed up.

  Although she had little stomach for it, she’d be facing one of the managers that very afternoon when she made her follow-up report at headquarters. Glancing at the vintage clock on the wall, she realized that soon she would have to leave for the meeting.

  In the little time she had left, she retrieved the tracking bead from the pocket of the midnight-blue dress. Should she bring the bead with her to the meeting? No, that might stir up too many questions about Holt and the scope of her unapproved activities with him. She’d leave the tracking bead at home.

  Once Holt had left for London and all talk of her unsatisfactory performance had died down at headquarters, she’d return the “forgotten” device.

  Sliding open the bottom drawer of her dresser, she placed the tracking bead under a stack of folded clothing. As she did so, her fingers touched the book she kept hidden beneath her clothes. It was the training manual she had received from Operation M.

  She had read through its entire contents a few weeks ago. She had had no questions at the time, but now that she had met Holt, she often found herself thinking about his nocturnal habits. As hard as she had tried not to dwell upon the subject, her wandering thoughts had not been able to leave it alone.

  She felt certain that Holt would never kill a human. Not many vampires brought their victims to the point of death, anyway. But even so, the thought of Holt hunting and mesmerizing humans for their blood, week after week, year after year – for two hundred years – was painfully difficult to accept.

  She still had ten minutes before she had to leave for her meeting at headquarters, ten minutes in which she could skim the information in the manual again – this time in the light of her own, first-hand experience.

  She pulled the Handbook for Fieldwork with Vampires out of her drawer.

  Six

  Opening the guide, she began to read some of the key passages, studying them more closely this time.

  Vampire Physiology:

  Vampires differ biologically from humans in three respects: physical capabilities, lifespan, and metabolism. The division between vampires and humans is so great that vampires cannot be considered members of the human species, Homo sapiens. Operation M has adopted a provisional nomenclature by appending the Latin term for blood: Homo sanguineus.

  While vampires have undergone fundamental physiological changes, they still continue to possess the attributes of personhood, such as intelligence, conscious choice, emotions and memory.

  Male and female vampires are considered to be men and women, even though they belong to a non-human species.

  Some key considerations:

  1~Vampires experience no physical process of aging.

  2~Vampires are immortal in theory, but many individuals die each year at the hands of vampire rivals or well-prepared humans who come to know of their existence.

  3~Vampires cannot be killed by bullets, knife wounds, drowning, or suffocation.

  4~The three known causes of death are fire, decapitation, and the stabbing of a wooden stake through the heart.

  5~Blood is the only source of sustenance that can be metabolized by a vampire.

  6~The strength, agility and speed of a vampire are all far beyond normal human capabilities. Caught unaware, any individual displaying such heightened powers should be suspected of being a vampire.

  7~Vampires retain their original human features, although their skin exhibits a mild pallor. Body temperature is cool.

  8~Vampires avoid exposure to sunlight and all indirect light that passes through cloud cover. Such exposure drains them of strength, although it does not cause death. Artificial lights have no such draining effect on them.

  9~Vampiric teeth appear human, retaining their former size and shape, but microscopic imaging has revealed that they are composed of altered enamel. Incisors, though of normal appearance, are capable of making small, precise holes in a victim’s skin. The wounds inflicted on humans during predation heal with an unusual rapidity that is not well understood.

  10~Within the vampiric eye, changes in composition often leave random traces of crystallization within the gel-like vitreous humor. These traces can give an onlooker the impression of small lights or sparks drifting within the vampire’s eyes.

  11~Vampires cannot reproduce. No offspring can come from a union with another vampire or human. Heightened levels of aggression prevent successful partnerships or marriages among their own kind. Vampires have occasionally attempted to take human “brides” or “grooms”, but these humans have quickly perished as victims of rival vampires.

  12~Vampires have the power to mesmerize other minds, and routinely make use of this talent to prey upon human victims without their knowledge.

  The Turning Process: How a Human Becomes a Vampire

  The key to the turning process is an initial exchange of blood. The basis of this strange fact has finally been revealed by recent experiments.

&
nbsp; In short, whenever a human’s blood is ingested by a vampire, the immune system of the predator rapidly produces a large number of macrophages which are uniquely keyed to the victim’s human cells. This phenomenon occurs regardless of any further exchange of blood.

  But experiments have made it clear that vampire blood cells are more dominant than human cells. If they are deliberately introduced into a human circulatory system, they will rapidly multiply. This is made possible by the specialized macrophages which accompany the influx of vampire blood cells. These unique macrophages are responsible for the speedy elimination of the victim’s old human cells.

  Physiological consequences are far-reaching, including fundamental changes to the nerves, muscles, body temperature and metabolism.

  Fortunately, the deliberate exchange of blood between predator and victim seems to be a rare occurrence.

  Vampire Attacks: Practical Considerations

  Vampires live solitary lives. Although they rarely form bonds with each other, they share a common goal of secrecy, for they are united by a strong desire to veil their existence from the general public.

  In most cases, a vampire attack occurs as follows: a human victim is hypnotically subdued, a quantity of blood is extracted from the neck, and the perpetrator departs. Rapid healing of the wound takes place as the human victim returns to consciousness, weakened but with no memory of the attack.