Free Blood Red by Sharon Page Page B

gave a curt nod. “He could do that. Or he could open the entrance with a wave of his hand and seal it up afterward with mere thought.”
    “How is that possible?”
    “How is it possible that the dead walk, love? Just because we can’t understand, doesn’t mean we can’t accept the existence of such power. And that we can’t recognize how dangerous it is.”
    Father pointed at her case. “Lay that on the next coffin, please, love, and open it.”
    She had only seen inside it once, just the briefest glance. She’d caught a glimpse of gold fashioned into a thick, flat necklace of some sort. As she flipped up the lid, she saw two such necklaces sat within, surrounded by a sand that was made of small pebbles of silver and gold.
    Two necklaces.
    Shocked, she turned. Father was laying out strings of dried herbs along the white lid in a crisscross pattern, like a diamond-paned window. He was chanting and she knew she couldn’t interrupt him now.
    “ Avia aura. Avia solari. Avia noctus. ”
    The words made no sense. Not Latin or English or any other language Althea recognized.
    As he spoke, he touched each side of the coffin, walking slowly around it. “ Aura se selen.
    Aura se nordum. ”
    Father lifted a hemlock branch, whittled to a sharp point, and traced the shape of a cross from the foot of the coffin to the head and side to side.
    “ Bey ara nonum. ”
    He traced a circle over the pattern of herbs.

    Blood Red by Sharon Page ©2006 Advance Reader Copy www.SharonPage.com 41
    “ Ecta enta aura. Ecta enta decum. ”
    Father lifted his head. “Open the coffin.”

    Blood Red by Sharon Page ©2006 Advance Reader Copy www.SharonPage.com 42

Chapter Five
Liberated

    “His eyes are open.” A woman leaned over his coffin. A woman who smelled of lavender and spring flowers, of fresh-baked bread and country air. Rich and throaty and soft, her voice was pure femininity and his body, even though inert, responded. His instant erection was insistent, demanding, but he was damnably incapable of movement.
    “Yes, but he can’t see,” an elderly male voice answered.
    Not true. He could. Not well—his eyesight was still weak—but enough to detect soft, pretty red lips. Red hair, too. A dark and beautiful color like rich, intoxicating wine. Tendrils dangled over her alabaster skin. Golden light glinted over her eyes, shielding them. She wore something over them. She pursed her tempting lips to blow one curl away.
    Althea. He knew her name from his dreams. A lovely name for a lovely wanton.
    Bastien de Wynter tried to follow Althea, his savior, with his gaze as she moved but he couldn’t. Warmth began to prickle through his long unused limbs. A surge of triumph rushed through him. Damn, he’d wiggled a toe.
    He smelled daylight. As a nocturnal creature he knew the difference between night and day in the way the air tasted on his tongue, in the way it filled his nostrils, his lungs.
    Damnation, was he going to be toasted by daylight after a decade of hell?
    He listened intently for an answering heartbeat. A slow, almost silent one to match his own.
    Nothing.
    So where was Yannick? Still buried somewhere in England?
    How in hell, then, had Althea awoken him?
    She returned and leaned over him. Once more his long-denied senses gorged on the sweet aromas of fresh bread, rushing blood, feminine sweat, lavender, and wildflowers. Before he’d been entombed, he’d never let a night go by without burying his face—and his teeth—into a woman’s perfumed skin.
    Yes, sweeting, lean a little closer.
    In his dreams, she bewitched him. Wrapped her sweet innocence around his heart and drove him mad with need and lust. For ten years he’d been unable to move but his mind had been alert and aware every night. Goddamned agony…
    He ached to touch her now, but he could not move more than his toes, his fingertips, the muscles of his face. His lips twitched. He blinked.
    Had she seen?
    No, she had her attention fixed on her hands and the