Immortal Sins Read online

  Ten minutes later, she was the owner, however temporary, of a genuine work of art.

  Mr. Underwood carried the Vilnius out to her car, but it was too big to fit in the backseat, and too wide to fit in the trunk. Assuring her that it was no trouble, he put the painting in the back of his pickup truck. Returning to the gallery, he hung the “closed” sign in the front window and locked the door, then followed her home where he obligingly carried the painting into the house.

  Kari thanked him profusely, then bid him good night.

  After turning on the lights and the heater, she propped the painting against the living room wall. Standing in the middle of the floor, she did a slow turn, wondering where best to hang the picture. Over the sofa? No, she would have to keep looking over her shoulder to see it. Over the mantel? Maybe. Between the front windows? Another maybe. In the bedroom? No!

  Over the fireplace seemed the most likely spot. She found a hammer and a couple of large nails, then dragged a chair over to the hearth. After doing some measuring and a little cussing, she figured out where to drive the nails; then, praying that she wouldn’t drop the darn thing, she wrestled the painting into place. After making sure it was straight, she hopped down off the chair, then stood in the doorway to observe her handiwork.

  She had to admit, the Vilnius looked great. The painting was just the right size, the colors perfectly complemented her décor, and it added the finishing touch to the room.

  Standing there with her arms crossed under her breasts, she searched for the man in the painting. Where was he?

  Moving closer, she looked in all the usual places but he wasn’t walking in the woods or looking out the window of the castle. He wasn’t riding the horse or sitting on the rock near the edge of the water or reclining on the grass. Had she imagined him? Maybe she was crazier than she thought.

  Standing on the chair again, she perused the painting through narrowed eyes. How could he not be there? Thirty minutes ago he had been petting the horse…but now the horse was gone, too.

  She really was losing it, of that there could be no doubt. Maybe she had imagined the whole thing. Maybe there had never been a man in the landscape at all. Heck, maybe the canvas was blank…but no, what was that? Leaning closer, she stared at a dark speck on the right side of the castle. Was that him?

  After jumping off the chair, Kari rummaged in her desk for her magnifying glass, then climbed back up on the chair, and looked again. A horse and rider were barely visible in the shadows alongside the castle.

  Her relief at finding him warred with the renewed fear that she was losing her mind.

  Paintings simply didn’t change from day to day. Painted figures of people and animals didn’t move.

  Feeling horribly confused and afraid, she put on her nightgown and went to bed, only to lie there imagining a history for the man in the painting. He was a nobleman who lived alone in the castle, with only a horse, a dog, and a kitten for company. She frowned, unable to decide why he was so sad. Maybe he was nursing a broken heart, or perhaps he was grieving for a lost loved one. Or maybe he just liked living alone.

  With a faint smile, she closed her eyes. Maybe the answer would come to her in her dreams.

  It seemed she had been asleep for only a few moments when she woke with a start. She stared at the ceiling blankly, and then frowned. Her ceiling was sky blue, not gray. She turned her head to the left, but instead of a window, she saw a blank wall.

  A shiver ran down Kari’s spine. All the walls were blank. And they were made of uneven dark gray stone.

  She sat up, the sound of her heartbeat pounding in her ears. Where was she? And how had she gotten here?

  Slipping out of bed, she left the room and tiptoed down a narrow circular stairway. The stone floor was icy cold beneath her bare feet. She paused at the bottom of the stairs, her gaze darting nervously from side to side. There wasn’t much to see save for a large, rough-hewn chair in front of an enormous fireplace. A painting of a sword hung above the mantel. She paused a moment to study the weapon. She didn’t know anything about such things, but this one was beautiful, from the long, slender blade to the intricately wrought hilt. It reminded her of Inigo Montoya’s sword in one of her favorite old movies, The Princess Bride.

  Moving on, she passed several other rooms. All were empty. All had high ceilings, gray stone walls, enormous fireplaces, and tall, narrow windows.

  She was in some kind of a castle, she thought, her trepidation growing with each moment that passed.

  In the scullery, she glanced out a small, square window, felt her eyes grow wide as she found herself looking out at her living room at home.

  It hit her then. She was inside the castle in the painting!

  Panic rose hot and quick within her. Was this how the man had gotten into the painting? Had he bought it and then become its prisoner? Had she now taken his place?

  She whirled around, her gaze flitting around the room. Where was he? And how was she going to get out?

  She searched the downstairs, went back up to the second floor and then up to the third. There was no sign of him. Returning to the main floor, she opened the heavy wooden door and went outside, but he wasn’t there, either. Maybe she really had imagined him!

  She hadn’t imagined the horse, though. Even now it was trotting toward her, its dainty, foxlike ears flicking back and forth, its nostrils flaring.

  “Hello, you pretty thing,” she murmured.

  Hesitantly, she held out her hand. The horse sniffed her palm, then whinnied softly, its breath warm against her skin. Captivated, she stroked the horse’s neck, then ran her fingers through its long, silky mane. It didn’t feel like a painting of a horse; it felt like a living, breathing creature, but how was that possible?

  Kari shook her head. She was dreaming, she thought. In a dream, even the impossible was possible.

  “So, where’s the man?” she wondered aloud.

  If the horse knew, it wasn’t saying.

  After giving the animal a last pat, Kari returned to the castle. With a sigh, she went into the scullery and sat at the table. For a kitchen, it was surprisingly unkitchenlike. There were no cupboards, no oven or stove, no sink, no food that she could see. So what was the table for?

  She had to be dreaming, she thought again. That was the only plausible explanation. She would just sit here until she woke up and…was that a door?

  Rising, she hurried across the room. It was, indeed, a door, a very small door. Maybe it was a way out, she thought, a way back to reality! Feeling suddenly like Alice lost in Wonderland, she reached for the brass knob. It was hard and cold beneath her hand. The portal opened with a creak and she peered down a flight of uneven stone steps. Certain she was doing the wrong thing, she nevertheless found herself carefully descending the narrow stairway.

  She shivered when she reached the bottom. It was colder down here, though she saw no reason why it should be any colder than the rest of the castle. She was about to hurry back up the stairs when she felt the hair rise along her nape. Slowly, so slowly, she turned around.

  At first, she didn’t see anything, and then she saw a tall shape rise up out of a dark corner. A pair of unblinking red eyes stared at her, growing larger, coming closer. Spooked as never before, Kari opened her mouth and screamed bloody murder.

  She woke with the sound of her own cries ringing in her ears. A dream. Of course, she thought, relieved; that’s all it had been, just a dream.

  Sliding out of bed, she pulled on her robe and went downstairs. She told herself she was going into the kitchen for a glass of grapefruit juice, but some invisible power drew her toward the living room, and the painting.

  After switching on a light, she walked toward the hearth.

  The man was in the castle, looking out of a tower window. He seemed to be staring at her, his deep blue eyes filled with a silent plea for help.

  Kari wrapped her arms around her waist as she looked at the painting, unable to draw her gaze away from the figure in the window.

  Help me.

  She heard the voice inside her head, deep and decidedly male. His voice.

  Startled, she backed away from the hearth, a cry escaping her lips when she hit a corner of the coffee table and almost fell.

  Great! Now she wasn’t just seeing things, she was hearing things as well.

  Tomorrow she would call Tricia and ask her to come over, take a look at the painting, and tell her what she saw.

  Tricia McPhee was Kari’s best friend. Tricia was cool, calm, and level-headed. She had the imagination of a tomato yet she attracted the strangest people; people like Mel Staffanson, who kept a hearse, complete with a full-sized coffin, in his garage. Mel drove the hearse around town on Halloween and rented it out for parties. Then there was Sheri Hunt, who only wore green and had dyed her hair to match. Sheri raised silkworms. Angie Delgado was another of Tricia’s eccentric friends. Angie had been married and divorced six times and now lived with four Pomeranians and five Siamese cats, declaring they were easier to get along with than men.

  It always amazed Kari that she and Tricia were friends, because they were so different. Tricia was an only child. She had been spoiled and pampered from day one. She had gone to the best schools, graduated at the top of her class, married a surgeon, had two adorable children and lived in a big house. Kari had been poor her whole life. She had been an average student with a vivid imagination and had managed to get into college only because she won a scholarship.

  Yes, Tricia was the answer.

  Tricia arrived the following evening. She spent several minutes studying the painting and then she looked at Kari.

  “All right,” Tricia said, her hands fisted on her slim hips. “I give up. What am I supposed to see?”

  “The man in
the painting.”

  “I see him. He’s right there, in the woods,” Tricia said, pointing with a long, well-manicured finger. “So, what’s the big deal?”

  Kari let out a sigh of resignation as Tricia confirmed her worst fears. She was losing her mind. This morning and this afternoon, there had been no sign of the man. She had searched the painting a dozen times during the day and he had been nowhere to be found. The horse had been grazing in the field, the dog had been asleep in the shade, the kitten had been playing in the flowers, but the man had been gone, as if he had never existed.

  She had checked the painting just before Tricia arrived and the man had been in the castle, staring out the tower window. In the time it had taken Kari to open the front door and return to the living room with Tricia in tow, he had moved back to the woods, where he belonged.

  Tricia tapped on a corner of the frame. “Did it come this way?”

  “What way?” Kari asked, frowning.

  “Framed like this. Oil paintings aren’t usually framed under glass.”

  Kari shrugged, surprised she hadn’t wondered about that before. But then, she wasn’t an expert in such matters. Besides, she’d had other things on her mind, like a one-dimensional painted figure that refused to stay in one place.

  Tricia stepped up on the raised hearth, her eyes narrowing as she studied the painting. “This is a Vilnius!” she exclaimed, gesturing at the signature scrawled in the lower right-hand corner. “Good grief, Kari, this looks like an original. Did you rob a bank, or come into an inheritance or something?”

  “Of course not. What makes you think that?”

  “Karinna, this painting is at least three hundred years old, and it’s worth a small fortune. Maybe even a big one.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Hello? I majored in art, remember? Anyway, I remember seeing a picture of it in a book about little-known artists of the Old World. As far as anyone knows, Josef Vilnius painted only a handful of canvases. Three of them were supposed to have been lost or destroyed in a fire or a flood or something. One of them, The Wizard’s Daughter, is located somewhere in Romania. Bucharest, if I recall correctly. This is the only one that’s unaccounted for. Most experts assume it was destroyed, too.”

  “You must be mistaken,” Kari said. “If it was valuable, it would have sold for a lot more than I paid for it.”

  Tricia shrugged. “Maybe the art dealer wasn’t aware of its value. After all, Vilnius never made it really big, what with only five or six paintings to his credit. Or maybe the dealer thought it was a fake, since its whereabouts have been unknown for so long.”

  Kari looked up at the painting, imagining the nice profit she could make if the canvas was a genuine Vilnius and as rare as Tricia seemed to think.

  “It was rumored that Vilnius was a witch or a warlock or something.” Tricia waved her hand in a dismissive gesture. “Of course, that was a lot of nonsense. Whoever started the rumor probably thought it would jack up the price, you know?” She shook her head. “Girlfriend, you are so lucky.”

  Kari forced a smile. She didn’t feel lucky. She felt like she was slowly going insane, but then, maybe she wasn’t. After all, crazy people never thought they were crazy. But maybe that was only after they lost their minds.

  “Listen, I’d love to stay and chat,” Tricia said, “but I’ve got to go pick Brent up from work. His Hummer’s in the shop.” She gave Kari a hug. “Let’s do lunch one day next week. My treat.”

  Later, after Tricia had gone home, Kari busied herself with housework. She washed the lunch dishes, mopped the floors in the bathroom and the kitchen, vacuumed the rugs and dusted the furniture in every room but the living room. Time and again she was tempted to go in and look at the painting to see if the man was still in the woods, but for her peace of mind, she refused to do so.

  She told herself that the pretty white horse was grazing in the field, the shaggy black and white dog was asleep in the shade, the cute little gray kitten was curled up in the flower bed, and the man was in the woods, where he belonged. She had seen him there earlier and that’s where he was now, because painted figures didn’t move and certainly didn’t speak. She wouldn’t look at the Vilnius again. Monday morning she would take the accursed thing back to the Underwood Gallery and put it, and the man, out of her mind once and for all.

  When she finished cleaning the house, Kari changed her clothes, grabbed her handbag and her keys, and left by the back door.

  Getting into her car, she drove to the grocery store to pick up a quart of milk, a dozen eggs, a loaf of bread, and some fresh fruit and vegetables. On the way home, she stopped at Mama Wong’s for some Chinese takeout, then stopped at Polly’s and picked up a lemon meringue pie because, well, just because.

  At home again, she put the groceries away, poured herself a glass of milk, then sat down at the kitchen table and ate dinner, even though she usually ate in the living room in front of the TV.

  With dinner over, she rinsed her dishes and put them in the dishwasher, then looked out the kitchen window, her fingers drumming on the countertop. What was she going to do now? It was too early to go to bed.

  Keeping her head turned away from the painting, she went through the living room and up the stairs, grabbed the book on her bedside table, then went into the bathroom to take a bath. She added a generous amount of lavender bubble bath to the running water, lit a candle, and stepped into the tub. She sat there a moment, thinking there was nothing more relaxing than sitting in a nice warm bubble bath. She read until the water was cool and her skin was pruney, and then, reluctantly, she got out of the tub.

  Drying off, she blew out the candle, then slipped on her nightgown and robe. Now what, she thought? She was tired of reading. It was still too early for bed. Her computer and the big-screen TV were both in the living room….

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake, Kari, you can’t stay out of the living room for the rest of the weekend!” she muttered, even though it seemed like a good idea.

  Squaring her shoulders, she walked briskly down the stairs and into the living room. Sitting on the sofa, she picked up the remote. Keeping her gaze fixed squarely on the screen, she turned on the TV.

  It took all her concentration to keep from glancing up at the Vilnius. Was it her imagination, or could she feel the man gazing down at her, willing her to look up?

  “Not real,” she murmured. “He’s not real.” Perspiration beaded on her brow. She looked at the fireplace, her gaze slowly moving up, up, until she was staring at the painting from hell.

  And he was there, looking at her through the glass, his gaze intent upon her face. His eyes…what was there about his eyes that made her want to go to him, to take him in her arms and soothe the ache she saw in his gaze?

  She leaned forward, felt her heart plummet to her toes when, with a smile, his lips formed her name.

  Karinna.

  It was too much. With a cry, she leaped from the sofa and ran out of the room.

  Chapter 4

  Rourke swore softly as the woman fled the room. Of course, he couldn’t blame her for being startled. After all, how often did a figure in a painting move, much less speak? He supposed he should be grateful she hadn’t fainted dead away. But, dammit, how was he going to establish contact with her without scaring her half to death? One way or another, he had to communicate with her. She owned him now. His fate, his future, the end to his relentless hunger all rested in her hands.

  When she was in the room, he could hear the steady beat of her heart, smell the warm red river of life flowing through her veins.

  Three hundred years since last he had fed, and with every passing year, the ache had grown stronger, until what had at first been mere discomfort turned to pain; the pain into never-ending agony. These days, the need clawed at him relentlessly, the pain unceasing. Excruciating. Sometimes, when it became more than he could bear, he fed off the horse. The animal’s blood took the edge off his thirst but did nothing to satisfy either his hunger or his endless craving.

  He slammed his fist against the glass. Relief was so near. So near. He closed his eyes, remembering the last time he had fed, the rich salty taste, the warmth that had flooded his being as the elixir of life flowed down his throat. It had been but a momentary pleasure, though, as, unexpectedly, the sweetness of her life’s blood had turned sour and scorched his tongue. Only then had he realized the seductive young woman in his arms wasn’t an ordinary mortal.