Chapter Five
9:42 am 24th December
She was as beautiful to his eyes, though her eyes had bags under them from lack of sleep and her hair was a mess of blonde strands, as she had been when they first met, or when they married, or the moment he had carried her over the threshold of their Penthouse suite in the Treasure Island Hotel and kissed her sweetly. She might not think so, but every moment of the day he would see her and he would know her to be more beautiful than she had been the instant before.
"Are you OK?" His eyes were so distant that she thought he was in another world.
"I'm fine." He turned away from her, and walked towards the window, staring out across Las Vegas. It seemed less fascinating in the daylight, more like a gaudy toy for the rich than a glittering world of pleasure. He would hate it there except she was with him. He could never hate anywhere if his Blue Eyes was there.
She rose from the bed, pulling one of the cream silk sheets around her tightly, savouring the feeling of the material against her bare ivory skin, and came to stand by him. Touching his chest gently, trying to comfort him desperately, she leaned into him. "Are you worried about your mother?"
"No." His smile was soft, and he kissed the top of her head. "She won't be too mad." His smile faltered for the briefest instant. "I hope."
His Blue Eyes made him feel safe, and so let him take risks because he could not feel the danger while she was near. His mother was something he would think about later, when the love he felt for his new bride was not all consuming within him, though he could not know then that their passion would never diminish. Every day they spent together would only strengthen what was between them, and at last he would finally understand the poets' odes to love and the beauty of their lady loves.
"Baby," she spoke quietly, and his strong arms went around her as he heard the pain in her voice, crushing the silk between them. Her head rested on his bare chest and tickled him pleasantly. "I'm frightened."
He hugged her tighter, feeling her body shudder and remain tense. "Why?"
She buried her head in the warmth of his chest, and felt the tears rise in her eyes. "I'm frightened I'll wake up and this will all be a dream, and I won't have found this love of ours, and everything that has happened will be a lie."
"If you weren't frightened of losing this," he said, "it wouldn't be worth half of what it is. If you fear not having our love, you will treasure it all the more. Anyway," he kissed her gently, "you don't think that I will ever let you go, do you?"
He felt a tiny wet patch on the warm tan skin of his chest as she voiced her darkest fear. "No, but you might die."
Lifting her face gently with two fingers under her chin, he stared into her crystal blue eyes, and kissed away her tears. "God wouldn't be so cruel as to let me die when I've just found you, Blue Eyes. If St Peter himself called me up to Heaven, I wouldn't be able to go. You own me now, body and soul, so you'd better be prepared to have me forever."
She smiled then, and his heart was raised beyond the skies as he knew that smile was just for him, a secret between them two alone. He kissed her then, with a chastity he had not kissed her with since before they were married and an innocence of passion that rocked her to her very soul. When he kissed her like that, every worry vanished and the cares of their new life together slipped over her slender shoulders. Nothing could be wrong in the world while he could love her that way, and eternity seemed to short for all the love between them.
He broke the kiss, missing the warmth of her against him instantly, and smiled gently down at her, brown eyes dancing with joy. "We have a plane to catch, Mrs Brady."
She stiffened, becoming a Greek statue in his arms, going cold as she thought of flying back to their old lives. A sudden mortal fear gripped her, and Shawn's warm body felt stone cold. Lines from Romeo and Juliet echoed through her head, but they were gone before she could grasp their meaning. Vegas was no longer before her, the church they had been married in surrounded her, but instead of Christmas decorations, there was lilies and white roses all around her. There was a smell in the air not of the sweet old ladies who had sat in their pew and wept for joy, but of holy incense, choking her with its rich and heavy aroma. It was overpowering, and it reminded her of a funeral she had attended as a child when the coffin had been full of the body of someone she loved, and her heart had been full of pain. The memory was burning in her mind, the details as clear as they had been on the day, and she felt the same coldness reach from the grave as she had sensed then. Terrified, she turned to run, but found herself trapped in the centre aisle as the pews closed in around her. The stench of death filtered through her nostrils, and clung to her throat, stopping her from breathing and carrying her ever closer to her tomb.
Then, falling to the ground with a thud, she was in the vault of St Mark's where most of the older members of the Brady and Horton families were buried, alone, in the dark, with the bodies of the town's finest around her. Torches on the walls flared to life, giving an eerie glow to the already frightening room. Standing up, she reached out for one, but stopped when she felt the floor beneath her shift under her weight. Looking down, all she saw was fragments of something white…
A noise came to her ears, a noise like that of stone grating on stone, and turning slowly, she saw the lid of one of the coffins slide slowly off. The thing - it could no longer be described as a body - came towards her, a skeleton held together by a few pieces of rag, its arms outstretched as if to take her in its embrace. She turned to run, her limbs shaking, her mind wild with fear, and saw that all of the tombs were opening, and the bodies were rising, coming out to get her. Twisting, she fought to move across the shifting floor, but when she looked down to see what held her still, a blood curdling scream rose in her throat as she realised she wasn't on sand as she thought, but the bones of tiny animals, ground half to dust, and the other half - the rats especially - were coming towards her, readying themselves to crawl up her legs and…
She realised the skeletons weren't the only bodies in the vault. Her Rhett, her husband, her Shawn Douglas Brady, brown eyes flat, empty of emotion and body gaunt with the slow desecration of death, with a bullet hole in his chest, was coming towards her, and for the first time in her life, she was afraid of him.
The scream that had risen in her throat got no further as she fainted, backwards, realising even as consciousness left her that in a moment she would be on the floor with all those things, and she couldn't get away…
Shawn's arms caught her before she hit the floor, but she didn't know it.
Scared for her life, Shawn started yelling for help, as he carefully lowered her to the floor and pushed her hair off her forehead. Her blue eyes had rolled back up into her head, and her face was as white as a sheet. Her limbs were heavy, her breathing laboured, and her heart raced when he felt her pulse.
"Come on, Blue Eyes," Shawn whispered again and again, rocking her gently in his arms, his heart breaking as he realised he had no idea what to do to help her. "You can't do this to me, baby. It's our honeymoon. Come on, Blue Eyes, let's see that gorgeous smile of yours. Come on…"
The hotel door was thrown open and the doctor came racing in, attended by half of the staff as well.
He took one look at the distraught young man and the beautiful woman he held in his arms. His heart damn near broke looking at them, obviously so in love and at the same time in so much trouble. "What happened?"
"I don't know," Shawn couldn't lift his eyes from his Blue Eyes' face. If he stopped looking at her for the briefest instant, he might lose her. "We were just talking, then she seemed to go into some kind of fit and fainted."
The doctor moved around him, checking her pulse, flashing a light into her eyes, trying to get a response, then firing rapid questions at the bridegroom. "Does she have a history of epilepsy?"
Shawn still didn't look up, but gained a little hope. "No. Could it be that?"
The doctor was young, and none too experienced. The hotel was his first job after medical school and he was still slightly nervous of making a misdiagnosis. "I don't know. It's hard to tell. I'll see if I can wake her up, but she should really go to a hospital."
"Please, doctor, just tell me if she's going to be alright." Shawn was pleading, desperate, terrified.
"I honestly can't say," the doctor sighed. "The longer she's out the worse it may be."
He patted Shawn on the shoulder, and went to talk to the ambulance people.
"Come on, Blue Eyes," Shawn whispered softly. "I only just found you. I can't lose you now. I love you…"
He stopped as she opened her crystal eyes and looked up at him, a puzzled expression on her beautiful face. "What happened?"
"You fainted, darling," he kissed her hand, relief flooding his features as he realised she was not on the brink of death, but alive and in his arms, safe. "How do you feel?"
"Tired," she confided with a soft smile that spoke of untold secrets. "I think last night wore me out."
Shawn smiled back, but his heart was uneasy. There was something else, something she wasn't telling him. "The doctor's here, Blue Eyes. Will you let him examine you?"
She nodded slowly, her head hurting her badly. After all, she might as well put her Shawn's fears at rest.
The doctor came bounding back into the room, and looked her over carefully. She was still lying on the floor, but she looked to them all like some angel just fallen from heaven, ethereal and utterly lovely. "Well, I can't find anything wrong with you, but I think you should still go to the hospital."
She started, not realising it had even been considered. "Please, no."
"She's scared of hospitals," Shawn explained in a quiet low voice. "She spent a lot of time in them before, and she really doesn't like them anymore."
The doctor didn't seem pleased, but Blue Eyes smiled at him so sweetly and said with such perfect innocence, "Please, just let me go home today, and I'll see my doctor there. She's very good. Dr Bader."
The doctor seemed suddenly relieved. "Oh, Dr Bader, I know her. If you promise to rest and see her as soon as you get back, I think we can skip the hospital visit."
"Thank you doctor," Shawn said with the grin that melted his Blue Eyes' bones along with all the female hotel staff as well.
"Home?" Blue Eyes asked when everyone had left and Shawn was packing up their things.
"Home." He agreed. "We have a plane to catch."
She smiled, but a faint memory of her vision tinged that smile with sadness. "I'm ready when you are." She had been sitting in one of the chairs, and now stood up slowly.
He glanced over at her, then smirked. "Well, Blue Eyes, as much as I like you that way, I kind of object to letting my new bride walk around without any clothes on in front of other men."
She looked down, then blushed bright red. She wasn't naked, but she was still wrapped only in the cream silk sheet she had pulled off the bed what seemed like hours before. "I'll get dressed," she mumbled, as she strode past him.
He caught her arm gently, forcing her to look into his stormy brown eyes. "Blue Eyes," he said so softly she only just heard him, "I love the way you look."
She kissed him for that, knowing moments before she had scared the life out of him, but even his warmth and love could not banish her feeling of impending doom. "I know, but Rhett, if you don't let me get dressed now, how in Georgia are you going to introduce me to your mother at Midnight Mass tonight?"
Shawn muttered a swearword beneath his breath and threw her clothes at her. "Blue Eyes, if you aren't the death of me, I'll live forever."
He said it in jest, meaning to make her laugh, but the word death sent cold shivers through her slender body and she began to shake uncontrollably. Racing to her side, Shawn took her gently in his arms, pressing her face against his shirt, but he could not calm her.
The blue eyes that had enchanted him for so long were blank with fear, and her voice was a low growl as she finally spat out "Flight 12:03 will be the death of you."
"What?" Shawn wanted to shake her, to do anything that would take that look out of her eyes. "Blue Eyes, what did you say?"
She lifted a fragile hand to her forehead in a pathetic gesture of weakness. "I didn't say anything, Rhett."
"Yes you did." Shawn's eyes were dark with worry and pain at seeing her in such a state. His angel was looking less angelic and more like a fairy with a bad case of the shakes. "Something about death."
This time she didn't react, and only stared blankly up at him, but with the blankness of incomprehension rather than fear. "I didn't say anything, Rhett."
Before he could ask her again, the bellboy came for their bags, and bustled them out of the room and down to the lobby.
"Oh, Mr Brady," the receptionist was young, pretty, and smiling flirtatiously up at him, but Shawn paid no attention, his heart and mind preoccupied by his new wife. "The airport called. Your flight time has been moved to 12:03. They said they were sorry but it couldn't be helped. I hope that's OK, sir."
"Fine," Shawn still wasn't concentrating on what she was saying, he was too worried about his Blue Eyes and the slightly scared look on her face. "Thanks."
They checked out. The receptionist couldn't resist one more try, if only to say that to the other hotel girls that she had spoken to the man with the eyes like two infinite pools of grace and a wife as beautiful as a sunrise. "Have a nice flight, sir," she simpered.
"Thanks," Shawn replied, hugging his new bride's slender body close to him. He was afraid, though he could not have said what he feared in the warm daylight, for it was a fear of the dark places and the time before the dawn when even shadows fear to walk into the night. Yet when his Blue Eyes was in his arms, it no longer mattered, for they could defy the world together, and Fate was merely their plaything when love burned so heatedly in their veins.
So it was twenty-four hours from Salem that fear was dispelled by love and one heart bound itself to two mortal bodies. Those bodies, however, were mortal, and though the love that held them was more than could be denied or abused, it was seen and envied by more than mortal eyes.