Dark Enchantment Read Online Free Page A

the car while shifting with her left hand. Not realizing that manual transmissions were standard on rental cars here, she had neglected to request an automatic when making her reservation.
    She checked her watch, added the requisite five hours. It was ten forty-eight P.M. Irish time. Great planning, she thought, arriving here at this hour of the night. Exhausted—she was absolutely fried —and still had to find her way to the old family home in Ennistymon.
    A flicker of lightning caught her attention and she glanced up. No moon, no stars, suggested a heavy cloud cover, she concluded as moisture began to mist the windshield.
    Arianna successfully circumnavigated her first Irish roundabout, exiting onto the N85 west toward Ennistymon. The route took her through a long, dark tunnel of interlocking leafy branches into the small village of Corofin. As she left the town center behind, a bold flash of lightning took a snapshot of lush green hills and wooded farmland. The pristine acres divided by crumbling stone walls and overgrown hedgerows made a perfect picture postcard.
    With a deafening crash of thunder that had Arianna’s heart leaping from her chest, the gently weeping sky flew suddenly into a foot-stomping tantrum. Visibility was reduced almost to zero, so she slowed to a crawl. Even with the wipers on high, she was straining to read the half-Gaelic, half-English street signs posted at the intersections.
    Just as she was thinking she had missed her turn-off, Arianna was thrown forward with a bone-jarring thunk and the grinding sound of steel eating pavement. And as her right front end slammed violently into a moon crater-sized rut concealed by the racing floodwaters, her engine sputtered and died.
    Fingers crossed, Arianna turned the key in the ignition. Nada. Zilch. Terrific, She powered on her cell phone. Roaming…roaming… No Service. “Aaagh!”
    “What the hell do I do now?”she muttered, trying to decide whether to stay put and wait out the next Great Flood, or abandon the ark in search of civilization and the use of a telephone.
    Split seconds later, cannonball-size chunks of hail began to plummet from the sky, making her decision for her.
    “Welcome home to Ireland,” she groused, her voice drowned out by the deadly barrage of frozen artillery bombarding the car.
    Staring straight ahead, wrists draped over the steering wheel, she felt a shiver of unease slide between her shoulder blades. With a quick check to be sure the doors were locked, she did a mental inventory. What specific event could have triggered this disconcerting sense of déjà vu ?
    Finally her lips tightened in disgust. “Michaela and her damned vampire romance.”
    In the chapter Arianna had finished just prior to landing, the heroine’s car had broken down on a deserted country road, while a ferocious electrical storm raged around her.
    “Well, duh...”
    Of course, in Love’s Midnight Passion, a tragic vampire hero had come rushing to the fair lady’s rescue. Arianna sniffed. The way her luck was going lately, she figured any encounter with the undead she experienced would have to be with Count-freaking-Dracula himself.
    Then again, this was Ireland, she reminded herself, not Transylvania. Which meant that any close encounters of the supernatural kind would more than likely be of the faerie folk variety. Hordes of tiny winged creatures, flitting from bush to bush—
    But no, her luck, she would run into a member of the Dark Fey, the evil fairies she had learned about in her Ancient Legends and Folklore class in college. There were tales of the changelings, known as child stealers. And then there were the messengers of death, the wailing banshee.
    Then, of course, Irish literature was rife with stories of the coshta-bower. Though invisible to the naked eye, the coffin-laden death coach could be heard on many a cold and moonless night, the clip-clop of phantom horses’ hooves and the clatter of buggy wheels echoing eerily over the