Shea approached a rippling stream. Stepping stones, vibrant splashes of color, flat and welcoming, paved her way across the crystal-clear water. The stream was icy cold when she bent to idly trail her fingers in it. The feel was soothing.

Something compelled her forward. First one foot, then the other. It was madness to go so far from her cabin. She was too many hours without sleep. She even considered she was sleepwalking, she felt so strange. Shea paused near a small clearing and stared up at the starlit sky. She didn’t even realize she was moving again until she had crossed the clearing and was in a thick grove of trees. A branch snagged in her hair, forcing her to stop again. Her head felt heavy, her mind clouded. She needed to be somewhere desperately, but she didn’t know where. Listening didn’t help. With her acute hearing, she would have heard if any person or creature was hurt or in trouble. Shea sniffed the night air. She would probably get lost and be caught out in the open and the sun would fry her. She would deserve it for this stupidity.

Although she laughed at herself, the feeling was so powerful that Shea walked on, allowing her body to ramble where it wanted to go. An almost nonexistent path, heavily grown over, weaved in and out of brambles and trees. She followed it faithfully, intrigued now, wondering what could draw her away from her research. Woods gave way to a higher meadow. She crossed the open field, and her pace began to pick up as if she had a purpose. At the far end of the meadow, a few scattered trees looked down on the remains of an old building. It had been no small cabin but a good-sized home, now blackened and crumbling, the forest creeping back to take what had once belonged to it.

She walked along the structure’s perimeters, certain something had brought her to this place but unable to identify the reason. It was a place of power, she could feel that, but for what or how to use it, she had no idea. She paced, her body restless, a relentless pressure in her mind, as if she were on the verge of a great discovery. Squatting low, she let her hands run idly through the soil. Once. Twice. Her fingers found timber beneath the dirt. Shea’s breath caught in her throat, and her pulse jumped with excitement. She had discovered something important. She was certain of it. Carefully brushing away the topsoil, she uncovered a large door, six feet by four with a solid metal pull. It took all her strength to lift it, and she had to sit still for a few moments to catch her breath and summon the nerve to look into the hole. Rickety steps, rotted and cracked with age, led downward into a large room. A moment of hesitation and Shea went, her body and mind pulling her when her brain wanted to be more cautious.

The walls of the cellar were constructed of earth and crumbling stone. No one, nothing, had disturbed the place in years. Shea’s head went up alertly, eyes scanning the area quickly, senses flaring out, looking for danger. There was nothing. That was the trouble. It was totally silent. Eerily so. No night creatures, no insects. No animal tracks in the dirt. She could not detect so much as a rat scurrying or the shine of a spider’s web.

Her hand of its own accord began to skim along a wall. Nothing. Shea wanted out of there. Some sense of self-preservation urged her to leave. She shook her head, unable to depart even though the place distressed her. For one horrible moment, her imagination overtook her, and she felt something watching her, lying in wait, dark and deadly. It was so real that she nearly ran, but just as she turned, determined to flee while she had the chance, her fingers found more wood beneath the earthen wall.

Curious, Shea examined the surface. Something had been deliberately covered up here. Age had not mounded the earth this way. Unable to stop herself, she dug away handfuls of soil and loose rock until she uncovered a long strip of rotting wood. Another door? It was at least six feet high, maybe more. She dug in earnest now, carelessly throwing clumps of dirt behind her. Then her fingers brushed something ghastly.

She recoiled, leaping back as dried little carcasses fell to the ground. Dead rats. Hundreds of withered bodies. Horrified, she stared at the rotting box she had uncovered. The remaining dirt holding it in place shifted, and the box fell forward, part of its lid giving way. Shea backed all the way to the stairs, alarmed at her find. The pressure in her head increased until she cried out with the pain, falling to one knee before she could climb the steep, rickety stairs leading out into the fog-filled night.

Surely it wasn’t a coffin. Who would bury a body upright in a wall that way? Something—morbid curiosity, some compulsion she couldn’t overcome—forced her feet back to the box. She actually tried to stop herself from moving forward, but she couldn’t. Her hand trembled as she reached out gingerly to shove off the rotting lid.

Chapter Two

Shea stood frozen, for a moment unable to breathe or even think. Was the answer in front of her in all its stark ugliness? Was this thing, tortured and mutilated, her future, the future of those like her? She closed her eyes briefly, trying to shut out the reality. The brutality of mankind to do this. Tears welled up for the pain and suffering this creature had endured before his death. She felt responsible. She had been given such special gifts, yet she had been unable to unlock the secrets to the disease that condemned those who suffered as she did.

She took a breath, made herself look. He had been alive when his attackers sealed up the coffin. He had scratched at the wood, eventually working a hole in the side of it. Shea stifled a sob, feeling a kinship for this poor murdered man. His body was covered with a thousand cuts. A wooden stake, as big around as a man’s fist, had been driven through his body near the vicinity of his heart. Whoever had done it needed a lesson in anatomy. She sucked in her breath, appalled. What he must have suffered!

His hands and ankles were manacled; rotting, dirty rags lay in strips across his chest like those of a mummy. The doctor in her took over to allow a closer clinical study. It was impossible to tell how long he had been dead. By the condition of the cellar and the coffin, she would have guessed a number of years, but the body had not yet started to decompose. Lines of agony still creased the man’s face. His skin was gray and stretched tightly over the bones. The signs of suffering were stamped on that face, harsh and merciless.

And she knew him. He was the man in her dreams.

Although it seemed impossible, there was no mistake; she had seen him enough times. And he was the man in the photo graph Don Wallace had shown her. Though it all seemed out of the realm of possibility, she felt linked to him, felt she should have saved him. Grief was welling up, real grief. Shea felt as if a part of her lay dead in the coffin.

Shea touched his dirty, raven-black hair with gentle fingers. He must have had the same rare blood disorder as she had. How many others had been hunted, persecuted, tortured, and murdered for something they were born with? “I’m sorry,” she whispered softly, meaning it. “I failed all of us.”

A slow hiss of air was her only warning. Eyelids snapped open, and she was staring into eyes blazing with venomous hatred. A burst of strength shattered one rusty manacle, and a hand fastened around her throat with a grip like a vise. He was so strong, he cut off her airway, so it was impossible even to scream. Everything seemed to swirl, black and white rushing to overtake her. She had just enough time to feel regret that she would be unable to help him, to feel searing pain as teeth tore into her exposed throat.

Let it happen fast.Shea didn’t struggle; she knew it was useless. In any case someone owed this tormented creature something, and she had long ago accepted death. She was terrified, of course, but strangely calm. If she could somehow give him a measure of peace, she wanted to do so. Guilt for not finding a cure was uppermost in her mind. And something else, something elemental, as old as time itself. The need to save him. The knowledge that he must live and that she was willing to offer up her life for his.