Bride of the Night

PRAISE FOR THE NOVELS OF HEATHER GRAHAM

“An incredible storyteller.”

—Los Angeles Daily News

“Graham does a great job of blending just a bit of paranormal with real, human evil.”

—Miami Herald

“Heather Graham has a wonderful talent for taking bits of history and blending them in with urban fantasy. With Night of the Vampires, set during the Civil War … vampires [take] advantage of the great death tolls to feed and replenish their numbers. Her ability to take interesting little historic tidbits … could pique even the non-history buff’s interest.” —Fresh Fiction

“Graham’s unique tale cleverly blends Civil War history, vampire myths and lore and of course, heart-pounding romance. It’s perfect for those who love intricate historical details, lush scenery and old-fashioned romance.”

—RT Book Reviews on Night of the Vampires

“Graham’s expertise is in weaving a tale where the unbelievable seems believable.”

—Suspense Magazine

“Mystery, sex, paranormal events. What’s not to love?”

—Kirkus Reviews on The Death Dealer

“Heather Graham knows what readers want.”

—Publishers Weekly

Heather

Graham

Bride of the Night

www.millsandboon.co.uk

PROLOGUE

Gettysburg, Pennsylvania

November 19, 1863

“FOUR SCORE AND SEVEN YEARS ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.”

The breeze picked up, just as President Lincoln began to speak.

Finn Dunne heard a soft crackle from the dead and dying leaves that clung to or fell from the trees in the surrounding forests and hills. It was almost as if the earth itself mourned the tragic loss of life here.

Still mounted atop his large thoroughbred, Finn surveyed the crowd. He had ridden near the president during the procession from the Wills House to Baltimore Street, along the Taneytown Road, and into the Soldiers’ National Cemetery. Looking at the president, Finn reassured himself that others equally tasked with the duty of guarding him were likewise vigilant. Vigilant even through the last speaker, Edward Everett—ex-senator, professor and highly acclaimed orator … and certainly a long-winded fellow—had gone on for two hours before giving way to the president.

There were children in the crowd growing very restless, prompting their mothers to take them toward the graves where their antics would be less audible. Other mothers who had lost sons stood near the speakers, dabbing at their tearstained eyes. And since life went on despite the dead, soldiers and civilians stood a little closer to the prettier women, trying to use the occasion, with all of its solemnity, to flirt.

Soldiers, and other Pinkerton men, stood around, the soldiers obvious—some in dress uniforms and some in their well-worn fighting attire—and the Pinkerton men in various combinations of clothing, from dress shirts to frock coats to railway jackets. It was November, and the day had a nip to it: “a cold like the dead,” someone had whispered earlier.

The victory at Gettysburg and recent successes along the Mississippi and on the western front had been encouraging. But Abraham Lincoln’s reelection remained in doubt. Even now, there were those sick of the war, those who believed they should just let the Confederacy go their own way, and good riddance, too.

But that had not happened, and so Finn was on the lookout for Southern sympathizers, fanatics who might just want the tall, grave man who carried the world on his shoulders out.

The president had arrived by train yesterday, and a young local man, Sergeant H. Paxton Bigham, had been assigned to guard the chief executive. Finn had met Bigham, and liked him, and his brother, Rush, as well. Neither had slept during the night. Their loyalty couldn’t be questioned. Finn wanted to believe that he could rest easily; Gettysburg was firmly entrenched in the hands of the North. But he never rested, for there was always the possibility that a Confederate spy or sympathizer might just take a shot at Lincoln.

Never before had Finn met a man that he was so completely willing to die for. For Lincoln, he would give his all.

Not that he’d ever die easily.

“Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure.”

Finn scanned the natural surroundings—acres, hills, trees and beautiful little streams where rivulets sent sparkling water dancing over the rocks by day. There were also rocky tor areas, trails that twisted and turned through narrow paths. Places like Devil’s Den …

Where bodies had lain upon bodies … So many men had become trapped in the rugged rock formations, and mown down. More than fifty thousand casualties here alone—Northern and Southern, dead, dying, wounded and captured. Rains brought the masses of hastily buried bodies back to the surface, the decaying corpses a mortal reminder that filled every breath, and which attracted swarms of flies and herds of wild pigs intent upon consuming everything. As the summer heat following the July battle added to the wretchedness of the place, Governor Andrew Curtin of Pennsylvania had to do something, and thus the cemetery had been planned. And the president’s consecration of that land today.

Gettysburg would never be the same again. For some, it would be a shrine. For others, it would be remembered as the site of a massacre. Finn was fairly certain that no matter how it was seen by his contemporaries, history would prove that it was the pivotal ground upon which the rest of the war would hang. Here, the South had been forced to retreat. General Lee was said to have all but wept at the loss of life, and that his chance to take the war into the North had surely been lost. And with that, likely the war, as well.

A surge of anguish so strong it was almost physical swept through Finn. He knew General Robert E. Lee. He had been Lincoln’s first choice as a commander for his own forces. Lee, so it was said, spent a tortured night pacing the hallway of his Arlington home, trying to decide by light of his conscience and his great belief in God what was the right path to take. The grandson of Lighthorse Harry Lee, a hero of the Revolution, Lee had finally decided that he was a Virginian first, no matter his individual thoughts and feelings on secession.

There.

In the rear, near a gravestone but moving closer to the podium. There was a woman, her shoulders covered by a long cape, her arms and hands concealed by it. Carrying something …

Lincoln—never truly aware of his own personal danger—gave his complete attention and heart to his words. “We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.”

Finn drew his coat more tightly about him as he whispered, “Stay, boy,” to Piebald and dismounted. As he slipped through the crowd, most people barely noted him; they were silent, listening. Some, however, smiled as he passed, glad for a break from standing and staring. Many had now wandered off, Everett’s speech having left them fatigued.

Finn looked over toward the podium.

He knew that the Bigham brothers and their company were on assignment, and, by the president’s request, Finn’s own guard kept a perimeter. There shouldn’t really have been any trouble. Lincoln’s appearance here had actually been a last-minute consideration—after all, tens of thousands of men had died in many locations, and he couldn’t be present for every burial. But the battle at Gettysburg had demanded a price of American blood, Northern and Southern, like no other. Finn imagined that Lincoln’s host, Attorney Wills, might have believed the president would turn down the invitation to speak. But Finn also imagined that Lincoln had actually been looking for just such an opportunity. A victory like Gettysburg was hard-won, and this was the place to convince the people that the war could be won, and must be won. And that it would end not in retribution against the rebels, but in a true peace for all Americans.

President Lincoln was always hard to guard. He considered himself a man of the people. And he couldn’t be a man of the people if he didn’t see the people, and if they didn’t see him. This, of course, made gave his bodyguards more of a chore.

Finn had almost reached the woman. The president was still speaking, and it seemed that he had thoroughly gripped the attention of the people now. No one noticed as Finn politely slid closer and closer to the woman—who herself moved closer and closer to the president.

“But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate, we can not consecrate, we can not hallow, this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember, what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here.” Lincoln’s voice rang with sincerity, a tremulous quality to it.

And the woman was almost upon him.

“It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced,” Lincoln intoned somberly. “It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

The president of the United States stepped back from the podium. Some of the crowd applauded enthusiastically. Some stared ahead with such glazed eyes that Finn wondered if they’d really even heard the man.

But Finn’s quarry, she was a young beauty, and she seemed to be watching the president with rapt, splendorous eyes. Huge, hazel eyes fringed with impossibly dark lashes. Her long wavy hair fell down her back in shades of reddish gold—

A murderous agent didn’t have to be ugly on the outside to carry out a heinous deed! Finn reminded himself.

Just as he made it to her side, she reached beneath the encompassing warm cloak.

He’d expected a gun.

Or a knife.

His arms encircled her just as he saw what she carried….

A beautifully knitted scarf in the colors of the American flag.

Her eyes, gold and gleaming, turned on his. They seemed to burn with a strange fire, and yet, one he knew too well.

“Idiot!” she whispered at him.

She turned away, somehow escaping Finn’s grasp and backing out of the crowd.

The scarf fell to the earth.

Blood-soaked earth …

For a moment, Finn lost her, but whether or not she had been carrying nothing more lethal than wool, his instincts told him not to trust her. He moved quickly and saw her again, hurrying away, toward the woods.

The crowd was clearing, enough so that he could whistle for Piebald. His horse came to him, carefully moving through the dispersing crowd. He leaped atop the animal and urged it into a trot to clear the crowd, and then a lope to hurry in pursuit.

The beauty had already disappeared….

Finn rode into the woods and reined in, looking, listening. He heard the rustle of a tree, and quickly turned.

Yes, something moved, just ahead….

He urged his steed on and tore ahead. There … darting from one tree to the next!

When he was almost upon her, he jumped from his horse’s back and tackled her back down to the earth. She lay beneath him, staring up at him with hatred and fury.

“What? What?” she demanded. “What do you want from me?” “What ill intent did you intend President Lincoln? Who are your coconspirators? What is the plan?” he demanded.

“Coconspirators?” she said blankly.

But there was the hint of a soft Southern drawl in her speech….

She took him completely by surprise; that was his downfall. He knew his own power and strength, but he’d been so damned confident in it that he’d not bothered to ascertain hers.

“Ass!” she hissed.

And then she shoved him up off her and backward, much to his surprise.

She was on her feet in seconds. “For your information, I would do anything for that man! Anything at all!”

He leaped up, staring at her. “Then stand here and tell me who and what you are!”

She shook her head, and turned.

He lunged for her, and caught a lock of her hair. She cried out in fury and escaped his hold. And then …

She seemed to disappear into thin air.

He held nothing…. Nothing, save a lock of her hair.

He held on to the red-and-gold lock of that hair, intending to find her, come hell or high water.

He would hold on to it, until he found her again.

And find her he would.

But well over a year of war, bloodshed and death would follow before he did.

CHAPTER ONE

Winter, 1865

“LINCOLN, LINCOLN, LINCOLN,” Richard Anderson said, shaking his head sadly. “Frankly, I don’t understand your obsession with the man.”

Richard pointed out beyond the sand dunes and the scattered pines to the sea—and over the causeway to Fort Zachary Taylor where the North was in control, and had been in control since the beginning of the war, despite Florida being the third state to secede from the Union. He sat down in the pine-laden sand next to Tara, confusion lacing his gray eyes.

“You’re at the southernmost tip of the southernmost state. A Confederate state. I don’t see you gnawing your lip and chewing down your nails to the nub over Jefferson Davis, who has certainly had his share of trouble, too. Seriously,” he said, scooting closer to her, “Tara Fox, if you’re not careful, you’re going to get yourself killed.”

“Getting myself killed is highly unlikely,” she murmured. She smiled at Richard, her friend since childhood. They were seated on the small dunes on the edge of the island, away from the homes on the main streets of the town, and far to the east of the fort and any of its troops that might be about. Tara loved to come here. The pines made a soft seat of the sand, and the breeze always seemed to come in gently from the ocean, unless a storm was nearing, and even then she loved it equally. There was something about the sea when the sky turned gray and the wind began to pick up with a soft evil moan that promised of the tempest to come.

“Hardly likely? More than possible!” Richard said hoarsely. “My dearest friend, your passions make you a whirlwind!”

“Honestly, please. This is a war between human beings. The Northern soldiers don’t run around killing women—from what I understand, they’re only locking up spies when they’re women, and not doing a great job keeping any of them in prison at that.”

“There’s nothing human about war at all.”

“But, Richard, I’m not a spy, and I’m not trying to do anything evil. I just keep dreaming about Abraham Lincoln.”

“My dear girl, he’s not the usual man to fulfill a lass’s dreams of fantasy and romance,” Richard said, grinning widely.

She cast him a glare in which her effort to control her patience was entirely obvious. “Richard, that’s not what I mean at all and you know it.”

“It was worth a try,” he said wearily. “You are like a dog with a bone when you start on something, and it terrifies me.”

Tara ignored that. “I’ve already gone north once, Richard.” She said the words flatly, as if they proved that she could well manage herself. Yet, even as she spoke with such assurance to him, she was startled to feel a chill of fear.

Yes, she had gone north, and, yes, she had been accosted. By an idiot citizen who seemed to think that she was about to offer harm to President Lincoln. Idiot, yes, but …

Canny and observant, he had watched her—stalked her practically!—and stopped her from getting near Lincoln. If she hadn’t been wary …

No, she could take care of herself. If forced into a fighting position, she could take care of herself. And, while highly unlikely, she could be killed, especially if someone really knew or understood just who she was.

What she was.

That was then, long ago now. The man could be dead now, such was the war.

Somehow, she doubted it. She could too easily remember him. Though far shorter than the president, he was well over six feet tall, built of brick, so it appeared, with sharp dark eyes that seemed to rip right through flesh and blood. She remembered his touch all too well. He was a dangerous enemy.

“I’ve been north before,” she repeated to Richard. “I’m not a soldier and I’m not a spy. I’m a traveler. I’m just trying to find a place to live, to find work … I’ve been there, I’ve done it before.”

“Yes, I know, and I didn’t think that it was a good idea then, and I think it’s a worse idea now.”

She touched his hand gently. She couldn’t be afraid, and she couldn’t let others be afraid for her. If she could only make her friends understand that it was almost as if she was being called to help. “Richard, it’s as if he knows me, as if he’s communicating with me through his mind. I don’t know how to explain, but I dream that we’re walking through the White House—and he’s talking to me.”

Richard stood, paced the soft ground and paused again to look at her. “If you want to go, you know that I’ll help you. I just want you to realize what a grave mistake you’re making—absolutely no pun intended.” He hesitated. “This is home. This is Key West. This is where your mother came, and where you are accepted, and where you have friends. It’s where I’m based.”

Tara lifted her chin. “It’s where you’re based. Half of the time, you’re off—trying to slip through the blockade. Speak of dangerous.”

“It’s what I’m supposed to do,” he said quietly.

“You never wanted the war,” she reminded him. “You said from the beginning that there had to be a way to compromise, that we just needed to realize that slavery was archaic and the great plantation owners could begin a system of payments and schooling and—”

“I was an idiot,” he said flatly. “In one thing, the world will never change. Men will be blind when a system—even an evil one—creates their way of life, their riches and their survival. John Brown might have been a murdering fanatic, but in this, he could have been right.” He gazed off into the distance, a bemused look on his face. “The state of Vermont abolished slavery long before your Mr. Lincoln thought of his emancipation proclamation. But do you think that rich farmers anywhere were thinking that they’d have to pick their own cotton if such a law existed? Yes, it can happen, it will happen, but …”

“You’re saying the war is over, that we’ve lost—but you keep going out, running the blockade.”

He lifted his hands. “It’s what I have to do…. But! You don’t have to. You are in a dangerous situation when you leave this place.”

“Richard! I don’t walk around with a sign on my back with large printed letters that spell out b-a-s-t-a-r-d!” she said indignantly.

“Nor do you have a sign that says Be Wary! Half Vampire!” Richard warned.

Tara was silence a minute. “And you’re my friend,” she murmured dryly.

He knelt back down by her in the bracken by the pines near the tiny spit of beach that stretched out along the causeway to the fort. “I am your friend. That’s why I’m telling you this. You know I’ll take you aboard the Peace when you wish … you know that. What I’m trying to tell you is that every journey we make grows more dangerous. The South started the war with no navy, had to scrounge around and build like crazy—beg, borrow and steal other ships—and then count on blockade runners to carry supplies. My ship is good, but the noose is tightening on us, Tara.”

He was quiet for a minute, looking downward, and then he looked up at her again. “Tara, I’m saying this to you now, here alone. If I were heard, it might well be construed as that I was speaking as a traitor, and God help me, I’d fight for my state, no matter what. Yet, every word we’ve spoken here is the truth of it. The war is ending. And we are on our knees, dying. The Confederacy can’t hold out much longer, and who knows, maybe God Himself is speaking. General Sherman ripped Atlanta apart, and thankfully Savannah surrendered before being burned to the ground, as well. Since Gettysburg, our victories have been small and sadly sparse.”

Tara drew her knees to her chest and hugged them. “Yes,” she said softly. “I can read very well,” she assured him.

“The death toll is ungodly.” He might well have been sadly informing himself.

“I know …” She waved a hand in the air. “I know the tragedy of the whole situation, and all the logic. Grant is grabbing immigrants right off the ships and throwing them into the Union forces. The North has the manufacturing—and what they didn’t have, they seized. They’re in control of the railroads, and when the South rips them up, they have the money and supplies to repair them, and we don’t. Lee’s army is threadbare, shoeless, down on ammunition and, half the time, scrounging desperately for food. I know all that, Richard. Like you, I’d hoped that there wouldn’t be a war, and that most people with any sense would realize that it wouldn’t simply be a massive cost in life for all of us.”

She looked at Richard, pain and passion in her eyes. “I think about you, and my friends fighting for the South. And I think about Hank Manner, the kind young Yankee at the fort who helped old Mrs. Bartley when her carriage fell over. Richard, the concept of any of you shot and torn and bleeding is horrible. North and South, we’re all human beings.” She winced. “Well, you know what I mean. Hank is a good man, a really good man.”

She was quiet for a moment, and then added softly, “I think I’m just grateful. It really is all over. I just don’t know why we keep fighting.”

“Human beings. Yes, as you said—it’s the human beast,” Richard said, shaking his head as he looked out to the sea. “Men can’t accept defeat. It hits us at some primal level, and we just about have to destroy everything, including ourselves …”

“So, it may go on. Please, Richard …?”

“The war will go on,” he said harshly. “And it will be chaos while it’s still being settled, and, God knows, far worse after!”

“You can’t understand this urgency I feel,” she told him.

He gripped her hands. “Tara, it makes no sense! Why in hell are you worried about Abraham Lincoln? He’s been elected, again. He’ll be inaugurated soon, again. He’ll be the conquering hero of the United States. What, are you crazy? There are professional military guards who worry about his safety, friends who watch over him. And Pinkerton guards …”

“He surely can’t imagine the amount of enemies he must have.”

“But, Tara—” Richard began, and then he just shook his head and went silent with frustration.

She smiled, touching his face tenderly. They’d known each other so long. She almost smiled, thinking about how most of the people they knew couldn’t understand why they hadn’t married. But, of course, they could never marry. They were closer than a sister and a brother. They had grown up as outcasts who’d had to prove themselves, even to survive in the bawdy, salvaging, raw world of Key West, where nationalities mingled with the nationless pirates, and, yes, where the War of Northern Aggression went on, though most often as idle threats and fists raised to the sky. At Fort Zachary Taylor, the Union troops died far more frequently from disease than from battle, though Union ships ever tightened their grip on the blockade. Beer, wine, rum, Scottish whiskey and all manner of alcohol ran rich at the taverns. Fishermen mingled with the architects of the fine new houses, and only at night, behind the wooden walls of their houses—poor or splendid—did the system of class mean much in Key West.