Wolf Moon Rising (Dark Shadows, Band 3) - Softcover

Parker, Lara

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0765332590 ISBN 13: 9780765332592

Verlag: St. Martins Press-3PL, 2013

Inhaltsangabe

The first all-new Dark Shadows novel in years, written by Lara Parker, one of the stars of the cult classic TV show!

When a portrait is lost that has maintained Quentin Collins's youthful appearance for over a century—and has also kept his werewolf curse at bay—Quentin begins to dread the full moon.

Meanwhile, David, the sixteen-year-old heir to the Collins fortune, has fallen in love with Jacqueline, a young girl living at the Old House who is the reincarnation of Angelique. David and Jacqueline are swept back in time to the prohibition era of the Twenties, where David uncovers the dark secrets of the Collins family history.

Most threatening of all, Dr. Nathanial Blair, an expert in the paranormal, has come to Collinwood because he suspects they are harboring a vampire. Fortunately, Barnabas Collins has returned to his coffin after a disastrous flirtation with life as a human. Nevertheless, what Blair discovers places the entire Collins family in jeopardy.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

LARA PARKER, whose real name is Lamar Rickey Hawkins, played the role of Angelique on Dark Shadows. She grew up in Memphis, Tennessee, attended Vassar College, majored in Drama at the University of Iowa, and received her MFA in Creative Writing from Antioch University at Los Angeles. Her books include the Dark Shadows Trilogy: Angelique's Descent, The Salem Branch, Wolf Moon Rising, and others. She lives in Topanga Canyon, California, with her husband and daughter.

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Dark Shadows: Wolf Moon Rising

Wolf Moon Rising

By Lara Parker

Tom Doherty Associates

Copyright © 2013 Dan Curtis Productions, Inc.
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-0-7653-3259-2

CHAPTER 1

Anxious to fly the night, Barnabas listened for some sound before raising the lid of his casket. Fully awake now, he assessed his predicament: this place was dangerous, too easily discovered, and if he were to survive, he would need to return to his coffin in the Old House. Antoinette lived there now, all the more reason she should become his slave.

Antoinette! Her face floated across his mind — her mouth blossoming, her eyes hypnotic. Already, he could taste her, and — as he had done every evening since his transformation — he renewed his plan. He would draw her to him, bend her reluctant body to his, and he would force her to look into his eyes, all the while dazzling her with a power she had never imagined. Ignoring her struggles, he would find her heartbeat, and at that moment possess all that she was, all that she had been before. His pulse raced at the thought. The mystery of her past would be revealed to him — the moment he took her blood — and he would know at long last whether or not she was Angelique. Many things die, but desire is not one of them.

His memory of her indifference when he was still a human was painful — that night at the Blue Whale when Antoinette told him she would not marry him, that she did not love him. Humiliation in courtship was a common experience for mortals, but the sting of dismissal lay outside the vampire's range of emotions. Now that he had regained his powers, he vowed that she would come to regret her cruel rejection.

He reached across the width of his casket — so lovingly chosen for its breadth: providing room enough for two — and was relieved to find Julia gone. Julia, his savior and his guardian. Ever since his return — had it been a month? — he had been forced to lie with her, submitting to her embrace. This after a year of agony, her fiendish elixir, the painful injections, the curative that tamed the vampire's hungers. He could still hear the tinkle of the syringe, see her blood pumping into the tube, and feel the infernal heat when the concoction entered his veins. She made him human again, but infected herself in the process. That dark December night when she drained him and fed him and returned him to this monstrous form, he shuddered to think of it.

He pushed open the lid of his coffin and gazed at the rafters above his head. The basement room was suffused with the odor of lilies — white lilies Christian mortals bought to celebrate Easter. Although he could not see them, Barnabas knew the walls were hung with tapestries, scenes of Elizabethan hunters on horseback chasing a unicorn. In one tapestry, the snow white beast was cornered and fenced within brambles, and the hunters hoisting spears and bows stood around in plumed hats — their shapely legs encased in striped tights.

All these decorative efforts would be Julia's doing. Ridiculous how a woman must adorn her nest — even a vampire's nest — and Julia mistakenly believed lilies and candlelight would sway his crippled heart. But she was shrewd; he would have to admit that. He must never underestimate her cleverness. And oddly enough, even though they were reproductions, he rather liked the tapestries.

Still lying in his coffin, he adjusted his silken shirt, pulled the cuffs into the sleeves of his jacket, and carefully tied his cravat, all the time considering his troubling companion. What drove her to devote her life — my God, her own blood — to this last misadventure, to this trifling with the dead? Even after they had both gone over to the dark side, she had insisted that it was love. Barnabas uttered a dry chuckle. A living death, Julia, is not what you dreamed it would be.

He sighed, now reluctant to embark upon his night's vile quest. What drove her, he had come to realize, was that old worn-out engine: age. She was no longer young, and now, if life were to brim, it must brim with the juice of others. For a brief period, as a human of her making, he had succumbed to a limp sense of loyalty. But now, and this was the final irony, she had terminated the treatment, given him back his powers, and — without realizing it — created a monster incapable of gratitude. As he gazed up at the ceiling of his basement prison, and at the giant floor beams of the mansion where his family resided, he resolved to be rid of her. The thought of spending eternity with her was an abomination.

A voice floated out of the gloom. "Good evening, Barnabas, my love. I was waiting for you to wake." Ah, she was there. Rising up, he turned to look at her.

The room was small and the hard stone walls were burnished by the glow of candlelight. Julia was sitting among the lilies on a step that led up into the basement, and he was shocked again to see that she was not the aging woman he remembered but a vampire of shameless splendor. She wore a dress of wine dark velvet, and her arms were shapely, as were her surprisingly round breasts just glimpsed within her décolleté. He had immediate qualms when he thought of trying to overpower her, for he could see her body was as strong as a lioness's.

She had already ventured into the night. Her victim was reclining on her skirts, a young girl with bleached hair and a smudged face, still breathing, and the terror frozen in her eyes. Her threadbare coat was muddy — or were those bloodstains? And her bare legs were scratched. She wore no shoes and her feet were filthy, perhaps black with frostbite. Where had Julia found such a miserable wharf rat?

Behind her, the tapestries gleamed with life. One was a scene from an elfin forest where delicate flowers and small animals surrounded a medieval lady as she looked down demurely and rested her hand on the unicorn's long and slender horn. Barnabas imagined the three of them as a theatrical staging for his amusement — a triptych of womanhood: the goddess, the vampire, and the dying girl. Which would he choose?

Julia smiled, lifted the girl up into her arms, and the bright head fell against her breast. "You see what I have brought you?"

Even though he was hungry, Barnabas recoiled. "Like a house cat brings a dead mouse to her master?"

A shadow crossed Julia's face. She pursed her lips and spoke in a voice edged with sarcasm. "Can I do nothing to please you?"

Julia was a new vampire, still taken with the thrill of the hunt, not aware that there was far more to feeding. After more than a hundred years, one's victim was a delicate choice, and he had awakened this night with his selection already in mind. It was to be Antoinette, and only Antoinette. As he slid from his coffin and rose to his feet, he was conscious of his body's new tensile strength. Once again it surprised and even pleased him.

"I am perfectly capable of finding my own, in fact, I would prefer to —"

"But why, when it is my joy to serve you?"

He combed his thick, black hair with his fingers. "Julia, you must respect my wishes."

She rose — thoughtlessly allowing the girl to tumble among the flowers — and, floating as vampires do, drew close and placed a finger across his lips.

"Wait. Don't speak. I want to tell you the thoughts I had this evening as I wandered the streets." Her skin was flushed, and he could smell blood, a not unpleasant aroma, on her breath. "I am still amazed at this new existence that I now share with...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: St. Martins Press-3PL
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2013
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0765332590
• ISBN 13: 9780765332592
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Auflage: 1
• Anzahl der Seiten: 399
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Procter & Gamble Service GmbH, Braun; https://in.pg.com/contact-us/; ; Sulzbacher Str. 40-50; Schwalbach/Ts.; 65824; Deutschland