As soon as the sun was fully up, Amber found a place to pull off and took a much needed nap. She supposed her exhaustion was more emotional than physical. The shock of learning about Will's condition, the grief. And then to literally run into the man she'd been dreaming about for a year... She was overwhelmed. She told herself she only needed a nap; an hour would be plenty.
The dream came again.
She lay in a bed, and Edge came slowly toward her. He held a box in his hands, and his eyes were locked with hers. Her stomach was roiling in the dream, her heart bursting with a mingling of emotions too powerful to bear. Passionate feelings that all revolved around the man-and whatever was in the box he held. She couldn't look away from his face, or from the tear that welled in his eye and spilled over to roll slowly down his beautiful cheek. He knelt, lowering the box so that she could look inside.
Don't look! her mind screamed. It's death he brings you! It's death!
Amber woke suddenly, sitting up so fast she banged her elbow on the car door. Slowly she shook herself free of the paralyzing fear the dream had left in its wake. God, what did it mean? Was she making a huge mistake by having anything to do with him?
Sighing, wondering if she would have the willpower to send him packing even if she decided it was the best thing to do, she looked at her watch, then blinked and looked again. It was after 11:00 a.m. She'd slept for more than five hours.
Hell.
She started the car and pulled it into motion again. After two hours, she stopped for a veggie sub and a bathroom break, freshening up in the rest room and wishing for a shower. Then she drove straight through. Still, the sun was sinking behind her when she finally pulled onto the winding country road that led from Salem to Salem Harbor and followed its meandering path to the house on Harbor Rock. Sarafina and Will had bought the place five years ago, and Amber had been there several times but still hadn't managed to memorize the driving directions. She supposed that meant a photographic memory was not among her special abilities. Cross one more off the list of things to wonder about, she thought.
The house was modern, a giant log structure at the tip of a peninsula surrounded by boulders and sea foam. Its windows were large and looked out on the sea. No one would ever suspect a vampire lived there with her mortal lover. Her all too mortal lover.
Amber pulled the car to a stop, shut off the engine and sat there for a long moment, staring at the rich wood tones of the house, trying to get a handle on her emotions. Her mother was right; she shouldn't show up grieving. Will was alive. Surrounding him in tears wasn't going to help him, and it would do nothing for Sarafina, either. She closed her eyes, called up the toughest part of herself, focused on control.
A loud thump from the back of the car jolted her right out of her meditation. "It's night again, and yet I find myself still locked in a suffocating trunk."
She lowered her head, shook it slowly.
"Alby, are you out there?'' Thump, thump.
Pursing her lips, she reached out and hit the trunk release. It flew open, and she felt the car move as Edge climbed out. Amber opened her door and got out, turned and found herself face-to-face with him, nose to chin.
"That wasn't very nice, you know."
She smiled. "I was trying to make a point."
"I got the point," he said.
"Did you?"
He nodded. "Yeah. You're one of those girls who's into making men beg."
Her jaw dropped. "You're deluded."
"I'm deluded? Come on, Alby, you're as into me as I am into you. Admit it."
She pursed her lips and searched for patience. "You're attractive enough, I suppose. That's not what I would call being 'into' you, though. I don't even know you."
He leaned closer, his eyes fixed on her lips. "You're saying this magnetism between us is purely physical, then?"
She blinked. "You're putting words into my mouth."
He looked at her mouth. "I'd like to-"
"Don't even."
He smiled at her, that dimple digging into his cheek and making her go soft and tingly all over. "All right, I'm coming on like a rutting buck, I suppose. I'm not used to dealing with sheltered virgins, is the thing."
"I never said I was-"
He held up a hand to stop her speaking, then glanced at the house. "So this is where your friends live?"
She nodded.
"I should take off." He turned to walk away.
"I'm sure they wouldn't mind... my bringing a guest."
He west still, his back to her. Don't worry, Alby. I'm not walking away for good. I'll come around again, once I get settled in."
"You're so full of yourself, you know that?"
"Yeah. You play your cards right, you might get to be full of me, too." She aimed a foot at his backside, but he felt it coming and dodged it, then turned to face her. "Violent little thing, aren't you?"
"You seem to bring it out in me."
He let his heated gaze move down her body. "You knocked me into that trunk like a vampire. Just how strong are you?"
"Stronger than you think."
"Stronger than me?"
She shrugged. "I don't know. Why?"
"Just wondering if you're going to kick my ass for kissing you."
"But you didn't-"
She gasped as he snapped an arm around her waist, tugged her hard against him and, cradling the back of her head with his other hand, captured her mouth with his. He kissed her with his mouth open, moving it over her lips and drawing on them. And just when she let her body relax against his, let her jaw relax so her mouth fell open, just as she wished he would use his tongue and keep on kissing her for a long, long time, he released her and lifted his head away. He sent her a wink, then turned and walked back along the driveway toward the road.
He didn't look back. She stood there watching him out of sight, the sea wind blowing cool and damp over her heated skin.
"What," Rhiannon asked, "was that?"
Sighing, turning to face her unofficial aunt, Amber said. •'That was Edge." She slid a look at Rhiannon.
She stood there, her long, jet-black hair dancing in the sea wind, arms crossed over her chest, stern faced. "What kind of a name is 'Edge'?"
"A fitting one, I think. Where's Pandora? I don't see her."
Her attempt at changing the subject was a lame one, and she knew it. Her aunt's pet panther was nowhere in sight, and would have been had she been with Rhiannon.
"She's getting old. Long trips do her very little good these days. She stayed behind at Wind Ridge, with Eric, Tarn and Roland. And she thanks you for naming your little shop in her honor. Now, if we could get back to the subject at hand?"
"Will?"
"Edge," she said flatly. "Just what is going on between you and this character, Amber Lily?"
"It's too soon to tell, Rhiannon. But he'd better not turn up dead before I have a chance to decide."
Rhiannon smiled then, picking up on Amber's teasing tone. "Then you'd better decide soon. Having kissed my niece right under my nose, he might not have much time." She opened her arms, and Amber went to her, hugged her gently. "How are you, darling? I've missed you. It's been months."
"I thought I was fine, until I heard the news about Will."
Rhiannon thinned her lips. "He's out right now. Yet another appointment with yet another doctor."
"And Tina?"
"Said she needed a few moments alone, so I drew her a steaming, scented bath and told her I was going for a walk along the beach. I knew you were close, and I wanted a chance to speak to you alone before you saw her."
"How's she doing with all this?"
"Amazingly well," Rhiannon said. "Too well. It worries me."
Amber licked her lips, lowered her eyes.
Rhiannon drew a breath, clasped Amber's arm. "There's no need to shield your thoughts from me, Amber, I've been consumed with the same notion."
"I don't know what you mean."
"You know exactly what I mean."
Amber pursed her lips, lowered her head.
"Did you bring the notebooks?"
Frowning, Amber brought her head up fast. "What notebooks?"
"Oh, please, child, we have no time for this. Stiles's notebooks. The ones your parents think are locked up in their safe. You took them, of course."
"How do you know that?"
"It's what I would have done," Rhiannon said.
Amber sighed. Dammit, her aunt knew her far too well. "Yes, I took them, but that doesn't mean we'll find any answers in their pages. God knows I've looked, but so far-"
A blood chilling shriek cut the night, and stopped Amber in midsentence. Even as the two women tore free of the shock and raced toward the house, there was a crash and a howl. "Gods. 'Fina," Rhiannon whispered, pouring on more speed, until she simply vanished in a blur of black.
Amber ran at a closer to mortal pace. She hadn't been there in some time, and she didn't want to collide with anything on the way.
When she arrived in the house, she hurried up the stairs and into a bathroom, the door of which stood wide. Sarafina stood in the room's center, dripping wet, naked except for the white towel she held to her chest. The glass topped vanity was shattered; makeup and hair products lay everywhere.
"Tina, honey? What happened?"
Rhiannon, who'd already sized up the situation and vanished from the room, appeared beside Amber, a thick terry bathrobe in her arms. "Let's get her out of here before she cuts herself to ribbons," she said, and she moved to Sarafina, her feet crushing glass on the way. "Stay still, Tina. Don't move."
Sarafina was shaking, staring but not seeing either of them. As Rhiannon tried to slip the plush robe onto one arm, Tina jerked away with a strangled cry, then sank to her knees amid the broken glass, tipping her head back and moaning like a wounded animal.
"By the Gods," Rhiannon whispered.
Tears sprang to Amber's eyes, and her throat closed tight, but she swallowed the urge to break down and cry, and instead joined Rhiannon. They crouched on either side of Sarafina, each of them pulling one of the woman's arms around her shoulder, sliding their free arms beneath her thighs. The towel fell away as they lifted her straight up, doing their best to avoid the glass, and carried her out of the bathroom while she dissolved in uncontrollable tears and racking sobs. They lowered her onto a large canopy bed swathed in sheer black curtains. Amber glimpsed blood but wasn't sure of its source.
"See to her. I'll take care of the mess," Rhiannon said. She retrieved the robe, which had fallen to the floor halfway between the bathroom and the bed, and tossed it to Amber. Then she returned to the bathroom.
Amber slid onto the bed beside the woman, sliding the soft robe easily onto her. Sarafina didn't fight. She wept, her entire body jerking as the flood of emotion battered her like a storm.
"It's all right, Tina. It's going to be all right." She pulled the robe together in front, letting the bottom half drape over Sarafina's long legs, loosely tying the sash, then leaning close to brash black curls from tear-wet cheeks. "It's okay to cry," she whispered. "You're not made of stone." She blinked back her own tears, but fighting them was nearly impossible.
Tina's face pulled into a painfully twisted mask. "H-h-he can't... I can't do this. I can't-"
"I know. I know." Amber embraced her quaking shoulders, pulled her gently close and found it surreal to be comforting one of the two toughest, strongest women she had ever known. The other one was in the bathroom, and if Amber's senses were on target, she was weeping, as well.
"It's too cruel," Sarafina whispered. "It's too cruel. How can he be taken from me? How?''
"I don't know."
Sarafina shivered, pulling free of Amber's arms to lie down, curled on one side in the fetal position, her back to Amber. "I knew I should never have let myself love him."
"You know you don't mean that." Amber closed her eyes and told herself this was exactly why she would never lose herself to a man this way. Never.
"Everyone I love leaves me. My mother died giving me birth. My sister hated me for that, all my life. My first love, Andre, plotted against me and turned the entire clan against me. Bartrone, my sire, walked into the sunlight one dawn." Her shoulders stilled from their trembling. "For the first time, I understand what drove him to that."
"Don't talk that way, 'Fina. You have to be strong."
"I'm tired of being strong. I'm so... so very tired." She sniffed. "If Willem must die-"
"Willem isn't dead yet, woman." It was Rhiannon's voice, stern and harsh. She'd apparently finished with her work and now stood in the bedroom. "If it is his fate to go, then you'll have time enough for hysterics when it's over. In the meantime, don't be so quick to give up on him."
Sarafina rolled onto her back, glaring at Rhiannon. "The doctors say there's no hope."
"Mortal doctors. Humans. Fools. What do they know about us? About our kind? We can do things they've never dreamed, Sarafina. We're gods compared to them."
"Will's not a god. He's not one of us. He's just a man."
"He's far from that, and you know it." Rhiannon came closer, pulling something from the deep pocket of her silk skirt, a glass vial with a cork in the top. "Drink this."
"What is it?"
Rhiannon pulled the cork free. "A modified version of that delightful tranquilizer DPI invented to use on us. Eric's been toying with it. It has many uses for our kind. Helps with pain. It'll make you sleep."
"I don't want to sleep. I want to be with Willem when he gets back."
"He'll be hours yet. You'll be awake by then, I promise."
Rhiannon pushed the vial to Sarafina's lips, and she swallowed the contents and made a face. She licked her lips and met Amber's eyes. "It's good to see you."
"It's good to be here."
"I'm sorry about-all of that."
"Don't be. I'd have torn the house apart in your place by now."
She blinked slowly. "It's not as if I didn't know the risks. Risk-that's not even right. When an immortal falls in love with a mortal, the outcome is certain." She looked at Rhiannon. "It's not as if I wasn't warned."
"It's not over yet, Sarafina," Rhiannon said. "Sleep now. Give me time to do what I do best."
'Fina lifted her brows. "What's that? Terrorize people?"
"Play goddess, of course." She slid a look at Amber, and Amber knew exactly what she was thinking.
The two of them stayed there until Sarafina slid into a deep, still slumber. Then Rhiannon touched Amber's shoulder, tipped her head toward the door and led the way back down the stairs.
Edge sat outside the house, in the darkness, keeping his presence to himself. He'd heard the scream right after he'd left Alby's side, heard the crashing, breaking glass, and he'd immediately thrown his senses wide-open, even as he raced back to the house on the seashore.
He didn't go inside. He didn't need to. He could see what was going on just as easily from outside, just by probing and prying. It was bad form among his kind to eavesdrop this way, but he didn't really give a damn about the protocol and etiquette of being undead. Never had. Normally this kind of snooping wouldn't go undetected, but the women inside were far too distracted to pay him any mind.
The woman they called 'Fina was grieving over a dying mortal. Willem. She was his lover, Edge deduced.
He felt her pain and had to shut it out because it was too intense to bear. Nearly paralyzing.
He wasn't sure whether the Child of Promise and her "aunt'' Rhiannon were aware of it or not, but it was clear to him the Gypsy Sarafina would not go on once Willem was dead. It was coming through his senses as clearly as the images of her dancing around a fire amid a village of painted wagons and reading palms in exchange for silver in some long-ago time.
It was, of course, nothing to him. He had a feeling she'd known once what he knew now. How foolish it was to care for anyone other than herself. How utterly stupid and self-destructive it was to put anything or anyone above your own well-being.
Stupid. She'd known it once. She'd put it aside. And now she was paying the price. She would die. There was no question. Within a few days-maybe hours-of her mortal lover's death, she would be gone.
He felt a little twist in his gut when he thought how much that was going to hurt Alby. Then he reminded himself that it was nothing to him. She was nothing to him.
He focused again. The one called Rhiannon-with her he got a feeling of age and extreme power, and he saw flashes of desert sands and pyramids, Egyptian temples and pharoahs-had drawn Alby into a lower level room, and the two were sitting now. He opened his senses, witnessed it all in his mind.
Rhiannon, seated in a thronelike chair, looked at Alby and said, "We are not going to let this happen."
"I'm not sure there's anything we can do to stop it."
"Nonsense. There's one thing. And you know it as well as I do."
"Rhiannon, I don't know-"
Rhiannon flung up a hand, and Amber fell silent. "You saw it. I saw it. Five years ago, Willem flung Frank Stiles from a cliff to the rocks below. The man should have been dead. But he wasn't. He took a boat and he rowed away."
"We can't be sure that was him," Amber said softly, even though she knew that it was. Edge felt the knowledge in her mind, and knew Rhiannon did, as well. "The man in the boat was too far away to see clearly, even for us. Stiles's body could have been swept out to sea."
"But it wasn't. It revived, he survived, and he lives still."
"Maybe... "
"An ordinary mortal, Amber. Not even one of the chosen. The rumors, the whispers, they're true. He made a serum from your blood, and he made himself indestructible. If it could be done once, it can be done again."
The pretty one lowered her head. "We don't know how he did it. There's no formula in his notes. He told no one, not even his most trusted assistants, what he was doing. No one knows how he accomplished it-if he accomplished it-other than the man himself."
Rhiannon seemed to consider that for a long moment. Then she said, "If you had the formula, would you let yourself be used in such a way?"
"I'd give anything to save Willem. How is this any different from offering a kidney or a bone marrow transplant? Of course I'd do it."
Edge was stunned. Why would anyone be so willing to do so much for someone else? It made no sense to him. A small voice inside whispered that he would have done the same once, a long, long time ago. For his fledglings. For little Bridget. But God, he'd learned how foolish it was to care that deeply. All the caring in the world couldn't prevent death when it came.
Rhiannon slid a hand over one of Amber's. "Eric wants me to send all of Stiles's journals down to him, along with a pint of your blood. He's working tirelessly to unlock the formula."
Amber nodded. "But he has copies of everything."
"I know. I think he believes there may be something he's missed, something a copy machine might not have picked up. A special ink, or perhaps some notes in the linings of the books. I don't know."
"Then we'll send them. The blood, as well. But... what if he can't do it in time?"
Rhiannon nodded. "I'm working on that. I'm going to find Stiles. And believe me-when I do, he will tell me his secrets."
A little shiver rippled through Amber-Edge felt its echo in him. He also felt a rush of excitement. If Stiles's immortality was the result of a serum made from the young woman's blood, then the key to his weakness lay within her, as well. Everything the nurse had told him was true. He had to learn the girl's secrets, even the ones she didn't yet know herself. He had to learn what could kill her.
And he had to be around when they located Stiles.
So he could kill the man.
He didn't think the imposing Rhiannon would be willing to take him along on her hunt for the man. But that didn't matter. Rhiannon wasn't going to find Stiles, he decided in that moment. Because Stiles was going to come here. Right here.
He had never had the chance to finish his experiments on the Child of Promise. It must have driven him to madness when she'd escaped. Like Amber Lily herself,
Stiles might not yet know the full range of his powers. He might not even know his vulnerabilities. And that was something he would be burning to know.
Imagine, being unaware of what-if anything-could kill you.
No, Stiles was going to come here, because Edge had the perfect bait to bring him here. Amber Lily Bryant.
Alby.
He would win her trust. He would learn her secrets. He would put out the word that she was here, and then he would use her to lure the man he hated more than any other.
And then he would kill Frank Stiles. It would be easy.
"Rhiannon," Amber said softly, as the older woman got to her feet. "You'll have to be very careful with him. If you kill him, we'll never learn his secrets."
"Oh, I won't kill him. I might make him beg me to kill him, but I won't."
Amber nodded.
"You're needed here, Amber. Dante and Morgan are on their way, but Sarafina needs you here. So does Willem. There's no one for him during the daylight hours. It's not good, when he's ill."
Amber nodded.
"I'll take the blood and the journals to Eric myself."
"My parents are on their way to him, as well, in hopes they can be of some help."
"Good. We'll need all the help we can get." Rhiannon lowered her head, smiling slightly. "If someone had told me I would one day be so desperate to save the life of a mortal, I'd have laughed in their face," she said. "And yet, I cannot bear to see that bitch of a vampiress in this much pain."
"It's because she reminds you of yourself," Amber said.
"Please, she doesn't come close to me. I'm the daughter of a pharaoh. A princess of Egypt."
"She's tough as nails, arrogant and slightly ruthless."
Rhiannon lowered her head, "And yet she's reduced to... " She cast a glance upward, toward the second floor bedroom. "I can hardly bear to see her this way."
"I know." Amber lowered her head. She sighed. "So when do you want to leave?"
"As soon as Willem returns." She sighed. "I suppose it's a good thing that stubborn mortal insisted on going to tonight's appointment on his own. He must have known Sarafina needed to vent some of this."
"And that she would never do it in front of him," Amber added with a nod. "Do you know how to draw blood, Rhiannon?" Amber rolled up a shirtsleeve as she asked the question.
Rhiannon laughed softly, and Amber, realizing the irony of asking what she just had of a vampire, laughed, as well. Then her aunt nodded. "Eric gave me rather detailed instructions. I have everything we need in my room. Paid a late-night visit to a medical clinic in Salem."
"Let's get it done, then," Amber said, getting to her feet.
Edge, drawn against his will, had to see this for himself. He crept up to the house, opening his senses to determine their location within. Then he crept inside, up to the bedroom, and watched while Rhiannon tied a rubber tourniquet around Amber's upper arm. She inserted a needle in the crook of Amber's elbow, then released the band.
Scarlet nectar flowed from her pink, healthy flesh, filling the tube and spilling into the plastic bag at its end. It ran in time with her pulse, increasing in pressure each time her heart beat. Edge's hunger gnawed at him, and his eyes would not move away from the rush of blood into that bag. He licked his lips. His passion stirred. How he would love to taste her. Just once.
"That should do," Rhiannon said when the bag was full. She removed the needle, pressed a cotton gauze pad to the tiny pinprick and bent the girl's arm over it. Then she gathered the other items. "Lie here for a while. I'll put this away and bring you some juice."
Edge ducked around a corner as Rhiannon left the bedroom. She paused in the hallway, looking this way and that, a frown etching her brow. He tried to draw himself inward and erect shields. He must have slipped, turned on by the blood.
When she continued on her way, Edge moved into the bedroom.
Amber saw him, and her eyes widened. "What are you doing here?"
"I told you I'd be back." His stomach knotted. "I felt as if you needed help, felt your blood being drained. But I see I misread the situation." He moved closer to the bed where she lay.
"Everything's fine, but it's nice to know you would have come charging to the rescue if it hadn't been."
He took her wrist in his hand, unbent her arm and gently peeled the gauze away from the tiny pinprick. "I'm just heroic that way, I guess," he whispered. Then he bent his head and pressed his lips to the wound. He tasted the barest hint of her blood, and his mind caught fire.
He heard the breath whisper out of her, and he couldn't resist letting his tongue dart out, licking a hot path over the crook of her elbow, tasting a tiny ruby droplet that lingered there. A shiver worked through his very bones at the taste of her.
She didn't taste like a mortal woman. She didn't taste like a vampire, either. She tasted different, exotic, and the jolt that hit him when her blood touched his tongue was far more powerful than anything he'd ever felt before.
Her fingers curled in his hair. She almost pressed him closer. Almost. Her hand was shaking with the effort she had to make not to. He felt it-everything she felt whispered through him.
Forcibly, he lifted his head away, wondering silently just what the hell kind of power this woman had. He'd never felt anything like her-and he hadn't heard anything about this part of her in the legends. No one had ever whispered that touching her could cause shock, that tasting her could be addictive, or that looking into those deep, dark eyes could prove fatal.
He had to avert his eyes and pull his insides back together, so he turned to take a little bandage from the bedside stand. He peeled off the wrapping, tried not to let his hands shake too badly as he applied it to her wound.
"Th-thanks," she whispered.
He met her eyes quickly, knowing that his tasting her had shaken her as much as it had him. He thought about kissing her then. Not to further his plan, though it would certainly do that. But just because he wanted to. And Edge had never been one to deny himself anything he wanted. So he leaned a little closer.
"Well now, what have we here?" Rhiannon asked from the doorway.