Impulse by Candace Camp Page A

way, all of them watching her silently. She cried out to them to help her, to save her, but no one moved or spoke. They all just watched her with avid faces, eyes alight and mouths twisted into grotesque smiles just like the satyr’s. There was a pounding, and she thought they were clapping. Or maybe it was the thing stomping after her, for it was right behind her now, reaching for her, and she could no longer move. She began to scream. The pounding drowned out her cries.
    Her eyes flew open. She was awake, out of the horror of the dream, yet still wrapped in darkness. The pounding continued, confusing her further.
    â€œAngela!” a man’s voice roared outside her room. “Damn it, open this door.”
    A shudder ran through her, and she glanced around, horror-stricken, thinking for an instant that she was still married, that it was Dunstan outside demanding entrance. But she recognized the furniture, and she knew it was her room at Bridbury. The pounding stopped, followed by a metallic crash against the doorknob.
    â€œWait! No!” That was Jeremy’s voice. “Angela, it is I, Jeremy. Are you all right?”
    The first voice spoke again, a deep male rumble of anger, followed by Jeremy’s agitated answer. Angela slid out of bed and hurried through the dark to the door, still trembling and dazed from the terror of her nightmare.
    She put her mouth close to the door. “Who is it?”
    â€œAngela? It’s me, Cam. Open up. What the devil is going on?”
    She opened the door a crack, trying to control her shivers. “It’s all—”
    Her words were cut off as Cam shoved the door back and stepped into the room, casting a swift, encompassing glance around the dark room, then sweeping her up into his arms as if she were a child. Under normal circumstances Angela would have shrunk from such an embrace. But now, still half-spellbound by the powerful nightmare and without her usual conscious defenses, she curled her arms around his neck and clung to him, burrowing her head into his chest. She wanted shelter, and he was large and warm, a safe haven.
    â€œThere, now,” he murmured, his voice rumbling in his chest, beneath her ear. He kissed the top of her head. “It’s all right now. I’m here.”
    He turned back to the door, where Jeremy and theothers were edging in. Cam scowled at them. “I will take care of it.”
    He reached out with his foot and shoved the door closed, then turned and strode across the room, still carrying Angela, to the large, comfortable chair by the window. He sat down in it and cuddled her on his lap. She snuggled closer to him, pushing her toes down between the cushion and the chair to keep them warm. Cam smiled a little at the gesture and curled his arms around her even more tightly. He laid his cheek against the top of her head.
    â€œWhat happened?” he asked after a moment. “A nightmare?”
    â€œYes. Sometimes I have them. Not much anymore.” At first, after she left Dunstan, she had had them almost every night. It had been so bad that Kate insisted on sleeping on a cot in Angela’s room, so that she could wake her mistress when she was in the throes of one of the dreams. But as the years passed, the nightmare had come less and less often, and after a time Kate had agreed to return to her own more comfortable bed in the servants’ quarters. It had been almost a year now since Angela had had the nightmare.
    â€œYou want to tell me about it?” he asked.
    â€œNo.” Angela shook her head decisively. She had never told anyone what happened in the dreams. She certainly wasn’t about to start now, with Cam. She could not bear for anyone to know how scared she was and how little it took to reduce her to such a state. It was not, in the telling, she knew, anything particularly scary. The terror of the nightmare was in the feeling, in the knowledge of how awful and evil was the thing that