Charon's Crossing

Her fingers went slack as they pressed against the hard wall of his chest.

"Please," she whispered against his mouth.

Please, what? What did she want? Not this. Not the heat of him, and the hardness. Not his kiss, tasting of desire and of hate...

She made a sound, a soft, keening sigh that she barely recognized as coming from her own throat, and he answered by sweeping one hand down her back to the base of her spine.

"Catherine," he whispered, the word lost against her lips. "Catherine, sweet Catherine."

He felt her lips tremble and open to his even as he felt the sudden hot dampness of her tears and tasted their salt upon his tongue. Her fingers were curling into his shirt. She was his now. He had only to draw her down to the bed...

Christ, what was he doing? This wasn't vengeance, it was seduction. And Cat was doing the seducing! She was working her wiles on him as she had done in the past.

Had he learned nothing in the infinite darkness of his eternal prison?

Matthew cursed and flung her from him. She stumbled and fell back onto the bed.

"Bitch," he said. "Whore!"

Kathryn stared up int

o his fierce, angry face. Then she screwed her eyes shut.

"This is a dream," she chanted in a frantic whisper, "a dream, a dream, a dream..."

Somewhere in the distance, a bell began to toll.

Chapter 4

Somewhere in the distance, a bell began to toll.

Kathryn sighed in her sleep and burrowed deeper into the blankets.

The bell pealed again, and she frowned.

"Mmm," she murmured...

She came awake all at once, heart pounding and eyes wide. In one swift motion, she rolled to the side of the bed, reached down and snatched her shoe from the floor, and brandished it wildly as she shot up against the pillows.

"Okay," she said, "okay, I've had it! You get out of here right now or... or..."

The room was empty. It looked exactly as it had when she'd gone to sleep last night. The drapes were shabby and old, the furniture was almost nonexistent, and the only things decorating the walls were patches of faded paint and splotches of dampness.

Kathryn let out her breath and slumped back against the pillows.

There were dreams. And then there were nightmares. And there wasn't a question in the world about what she'd just experienced.

It had been a nightmare with a capital N, the kind that would have sent half the population of Manhattan galloping off to see their shrinks.

She couldn't even blame it on moo goo gai pan.

"Not this time," she muttered.

She sighed, dumped the shoe on the floor, sat up and tossed back the blanket.

Which only proved, she thought, scrubbing her hands over her face and yawning, that a supper of Campbell's tomato soup and half a packet of Ritz Crackers could do their own artful job of putting you on the road to Nightmare City if you were spending the night in a place that looked like a reject from a bad movie.

At least she hadn't conjured up Freddy Krueger, she thought with a shaky laugh. As made-to-order dream characters went, Matthew McDowell was at least a little more appealing.