Deep Midnight

As they spoke, a mummer in crimson tights and jacket came up on the terrace, ringing a bell, followed by a midget, clapping paddles together.



He spoke in Italian, at first, but translated for himself as well, to benefit all the guests at the ball. “Hear ye, hear ye, the masque begins! In days long, long gone, Odo, Conte of the Castello, had no son, but brought forth to the earth a daughter so glorious that the greatest of the nobility thought him rich. But Odo decried his lack of an heir, seizing his wife?”



He grabbed a middle-aged woman in a twelfth-century headdress, inquiring softly if she would play. She nodded, laughing, all for the game.



“Seizing his wife, he shook the poor wretched creature!” He pretended to shake her. “And gave her the kiss of death!”



It appeared that he whispered to the woman; she went limp, he set her down.



“So!” the crimson-clad mummer went on. “He married anew! But this wife, also, failed to give him a son!” From the growing crowd around him, he found another matron who eagerly nodded her assent to act out the part of the Conte’s wife. He whispered to her; she went limp. He carefully let her fall to the floor.



“And again, he took a wife!”



He seized another woman, who was giggling and nodding before he could ask. She went the way of the first two women.



“Alas, he went through more wives than Bluebeard!” The mummer waltzed about the room, taking woman after woman.



Then he paused, dramatically shaking his head.



“But still, no woman gave him a son! So! He offered up his glorious, glorious daughter!” The mummer came walking through the crowd. He, too, was tall and powerful, Jordan thought, muscles straining the form-hugging clothing.



He was walking toward her, she realized. She backed away. “American!” she said softly.



“No matter!” he told her. He reached out a hand to her. She started shaking her head, but he had her already. She was a guest; she didn’t want to be rude.



“So he offered his soul to the very devil to find the man who would be his daughter’s husband, and take on the family name! Ah! And where was the devil?”



As the mummer walked around the room, looking for the devil, guests laughed and moved about. And then Jordan saw the crimson spill coming from beneath the head of the first woman who had fallen to the floor.



Blood.



She gasped, drawing a hand to her mouth, and began to scream.



The mummer saw her reaction, and snatched her up. She shrieked, trying to fight him off. He was stronger than she had imagined. And then, to her horror, she saw that the room suddenly seemed to be full of ...



Beasts. Demons. She was seeing things. Surely. Men clad in furs, capes, coats . . . women suddenly let out shrieking cries, displaying ... fangs.



“Let go!”



She fought wildly, kicking, screaming. She found herself dragged to the far end of the terrace by the mummer.



His crimson coloring as dark as the blood that had spilled ...



Suddenly, the mummer was wrenched away from her, and she looked into the eyes of the wolf.



The mummer snarled, hurling out vindictive words in a language she didn’t know. The wolf responded.



The mummer struck at the wolf; the wolf ducked and fought back.



Jordan began to scream again and again as the force of the blow sent the mummer’s head dangling to the side of his body, his neck broken.



All hell seemed to be breaking loose within the elegant palazzo.



Jordan stepped back, dazed.



Beasts were spilling from the house. Beasts! Creatures in all manner of costume! Animals, with huge long teeth now, with blood dripping from those . . . fangs.



Then she started to scream again because the wolf reached for her. She ducked low, but he was incredibly powerful.



He bounded from the terrace ...



Into fog! Sheer fog. A mist that had formed in the night, so rich, so thick, they seemed to jump into a black hole, into eternity ...



His feet thumped down hard upon something. A launch. It rocked wildly with the impact of their weight.



Jordan screamed with delayed terror; she could have fallen upon stone, upon marble, she could have broken her neck ...



She could have just fallen forever and ever, into the mist, into hell.



He set her down in the small launch, then looked up at the startled oarsman.



“Row!” he thundered. “Row, row, now!”



The fellow sprang to life.



Then the wolf sprang from the launch to the pavement.



And turned.



And was swallowed into the mist.



CHAPTER 1



Morning.



Bright light.



No swirl of fog, no whisper of evil. Only the clear blue of an amazingly beautiful winter’s day and the clink of cutlery, the chatter of many tongues, and the universal sound of laughter.



“I think,” Jared said, his tone very soft, “that this is all because of Steven. I am so sorry to bring this up, and I have tried very hard not to, but Jordan, you are going on and on, after everything that has been explained. No matter how kind and patient people have been, you will not understand that it was all part of the party, a good taunting jest, and no more!”



Jordan stiffened at her cousin’s tone. She looked down at her hands, counting to ten. Steven had been dead for over a year. She had accepted the fact. She was not psychotic. At his death, she had been devastated, and she had grieved, and she had been angry, but she had never been paranoid.



She stared at Jared icily. “This has nothing to do with Steven. Nothing at all. It has to do with last night.



Historically, there have been monsters, human monsters,” Jordan said. “And many of them very rich and exceedingly well positioned.”



Jared let out a snort of aggravation. He leaned toward her.



“Jordan, get it straight. You were tricked, fooled. I understood at first; you were scared, worried sick, but you’ve been told that the whole thing was a masquerade, an entertainment. If you persist with this, you’re going to destroy my relationship with the contessa, and ruin my entire livelihood,” he said, his words beginning with a tone of impatience, and finishing with a ring bordering on anger. “Trust me?the contessa is an important, worldly and responsible woman. She gives huge sums of money to charities, and she enjoys entertainment, even scary entertainment. She is not any kind of a cultist.” The last word stung like a slap, as did the edge in his voice. Jordan chose to ignore his tone.



To herself, she admitted that this morning, seated in the rooftop restaurant of the Danieli, with their attentive waiters polite and cheerful and very normal in their uniforms, she should have been able to let it go. It had all been explained to her.



Yet, she had kept on trying to explain what she had seen the night before!



Even the police had been angry with her at the end of last night. Still, as a book reviewer lucky enough to have earned a large syndicated audience, she’d brought work with her on this vacation. In the pile of advanced reading copies and galleys to be reviewed? including volumes of fiction and nonfiction?she’d happened to have a new book written by a Hollywood producer. The writer had been responsible for some of the most popular horror fiction seen at the movies in the past decade. It was a good book, and it went way beyond the movies, tracing the facts beyond the legends and myths that had sprung up through time throughout the world.



Jordan had listened to the explanations, the patience, the laughter, the anger. She’d witnessed a show they told her. A show! A damned perverse show, and if that had been the contessa’s idea of entertainment, she hadn’t been in the least amused. Jared, so convinced that his relationship with the contessa was his key to the movers and shakers of Venice, wouldn’t even consider the possibility that something evil might have occurred at the palazzo, even without the contessa’s knowledge or cooperation. Nor would he support Jordan in her anger that the contessa should never have hired such sick entertainment.



“Jared, you’re wrong. Very wrong. I am not letting my imagination get the best of me, I do not believe in ghosts, goblins or spirits, but I do know that bad things happen. And beyond just the bad, there are people out there who believe that they themselves are something supernatural. Listen to this, pay attention, and remember, this is just one of dozens of documented cases involving real people. Antoine Leger, a French mass murderer, was a cannibal?and he drank blood,” she informed him evenly, her finger on the page as she stared at her cousin. “He went to the guillotine in 1824, a truly horrible man who deserved his fate. His crime? He hid out in the woods, waiting for his prey like a viper. Then he would strike out at young girls, rape them, kill them, drink their blood, and dine on their hearts.” Cindy, who had been sitting quietly with them at the table, looked at Jordan with dismay. With an infinite patience now lacking in her husband, she reached over and gently touched Jordan’s hand. “You’re reading a book. It’s just stories.”



“This is not fiction! ”Jordan protested. “I explained that this man was real?” Jared set his cup of coffee down with an impatience that threatened to break crockery. “It’s a book of stories, fiction, a work on vampires in film and legend,” Jared said with exasperation.



“It’s a book about vampires in films, books and history, ”Jordan corrected, trying not to raise her voice.



She and Jared were both only children. They had been raised together, and usually, they were as close as if they had been born brother and sister. She understood that he loved this city, and that it was important for him to befriend people such as the contessa, yet it was still very hard for her to accept what she had seen as entertainment.



“Jordan?”



“Jared, I just can’t believe you won’t even consider the possibility that something did happen last night!”



She knew that she was pushing it, but despite all the assurances that been given to her after the ball, and despite the beautiful, cool, sunlit Venetian morning, and her cousin’s current discomfort, she couldn’t let it go.



Near her, people drank their espresso and cafe con latte, laughed, chatted, and read their papers with utter normalcy. The world was light now, bright with sunshine, filled with talk, a multitude of languages, even the very down-to-earth cry of a baby. But no matter what explanations had been given to her, her hours of sleep had been punctuated by vivid, grotesque dreams of the ‘show’ she had witnessed the previous night.