Edge sensed something, just beyond the fringed edges of his consciousness, whispering to him. His face tightened, and his nose twitched. He smelled her-that soft, exotic scent that was neither human nor vampire, and every cell in his body came to screaming awareness, all of them craving her. That need circled through his brain as the clouds cleared slowly from his mind. His skin prickled and tingled. He felt her. She was close.
Gradually, other sensations returned. He felt the hard packed earth of the floor beneath his back and the softness of the blanket in between. He smelled the musty scent of the cellar, the dirt. He felt the cold, damp air and tasted the sea in it. Consciousness returned, and he opened his eyes, stretched his arms and sat up.
Amber lay on the floor a few yards from him, underneath the useless, skeletal staircase. Edge came fully awake then, rolling easily to his feet, hurrying forward. She wasn't moving. He smelled blood. And he saw the broken stair above that hadn't been broken before. She must have gone straight through. Dammit.
Edge knelt beside her. She lay on her side, hair covering her face. He moved the hair away and saw the ruby strand, stretching from her hairline across her forehead to her cheek. It was already drying. She'd been lying there a while.
"Alby?" he whispered. She was alive. He sensed the life in her, felt her heart beating and the blood flowing through her veins. He heard her breaths whispering in and out. "Alby, come on. Talk to me now."
No response. Closing his eyes, Edge moved his hands over her. Out along her arms, over her neck, down her spine, not quite touching, just opening his senses, feeling for injuries. He examined her legs, then ran his hands up her sides to get a feel for the ribs. He didn't think she had any serious injuries. Gently, then, he rolled her over, scooped her up in his arms. He snatched his blanket from the floor, then stood by the foot of the broken stairway, bent his knees and pushed off.
When he landed at the top, she moaned.
Edge's throat went dry, and he swallowed hard, realizing that he really didn't want anything to happen to her. He told himself that was because he needed her. He needed her to lead him to Frank Stiles, and he needed her to reveal her weaknesses to him, so that he would know how to kill Stiles when he found him. And he needed, rather desperately, to get inside her, because if he didn't, he thought his head was going to explode.
None of that explained the sick feeling in his stomach on seeing her lying there, injured. It pissed him off a bit. He made a face at his own weakness, reminded himself she was no more than a means to an end, and carried her through to the main part of the church. He laid her on a pew, then tugged the blanket he'd slung over his shoulder and arranged it across her. Then he pushed the hair away to get a better look at the cut on her head.
His fingers found it; a rather wide gash and a lump the size of a jaw breaker.
"Owww."
He looked at her face, saw her eyes fluttering open.
She met his, sighed softly and let them fall closed again. "Oh, it's this again," she muttered.
"What again?'' he asked, leaning closer to catch every word.
"The dream. Same old dream. Where's the box, anyway?"
He frowned deeply, tipped his head to one side. "Alby, listen up. It's me. It's Edge. You hit your head and now you're-somewhat delirious, I guess."
"It's not the dream again?"
"No, Alby, it's no dream."
Her brows bent closer, and her eyes opened to squinting little slits. "Edge?"
"Mmm-hmm."
One hand rose to her head, but as soon as she touched it, she winced and pulled her hand away. Her eyes opened a little farther.
"Awake now?"
"Yeah. What happened?"
"That's what I'd like to know.''
"What do you mean?" She'd been looking around the church, but now she looked at him.
"I mean, what the hell were you doing creeping around my place by day, Amber Lily?"
She blinked, seemed to search her mind, then her eyes went serious again. "I came to see you-but I got here a little early and decided to come in and wait. I didn't think you'd mind."
He crooked one brow at her, just looked at her, because he knew damn well she was lying. She knew better. She'd been raised by his kind.
"Well, I mean, sure, any vampire would mind having someone invading their space while they were defenseless. But it's me. I mean, I thought you and I had a... connection."
This time he arched both brows. "You thought so, did you?"
She shrugged. "Didn't you?" She sat up then, saving him the necessity of having to answer, pressing the heel of one hand to her forehead. "Damn, my head hurts."
"You came creeping into the cellar. A stair broke, and you took a tumble. Funny thing for a girl to do, when she only intended to come inside and wait."
She blinked up at him, peering from beneath her wrist. "What, do you think I was on my way down there to pull a Van Helsing on you? Did you see a wooden stake in my back pocket?"
He shrugged one shoulder. "What were you doing, then?"
She looked away, her hair black in the darkness, falling over her cheek and hiding her expression from him. "I told you, I arrived early and decided to wait." Edge honed his mind to hers, trying to be subtle, not too obvious about it.
She seemed to force herself to face him again, to look him in the eye and appear sincere. He wasn't fooled. "Can I help it if my curiosity got the best of me?"
He stared at her, and he felt something tugging at him, pulling him. A little shiver danced along his nape. Something inside her seemed to pulse with the gravitational pull of a black hole. There was a heavy emptiness there, and, consciously or not, she was aching for him to fill it.
He felt an answering demand from his own nether-regions, forced himself not to act on it, though he couldn't exactly ignore it.
"You were curious," he repeated, breaking eye contact to keep from being sucked in. "About what? What? I looked like at rest?" He let his lips pull into a sarcastic half smile. "What I wear to bed?"
"You wish."
He shrugged. "What, then?"
She shook her head as if angry with him, then winced at the pain the action brought and got to her feet anyway. "Look, if you don't trust me, I'll leave right now. You're the one who asked me to come back here." She took a step, swayed a little.
He gripped her shoulders. "Not so fast, now. You're still shaky."
"No kidding." She sagged closer to him, the movement imperceptible, and yet his body reacted, moving millimeters closer to hers at the same time. His hands tightened on her shoulders and let the gravity take over. She rested against him. He closed his eyes and told himself he was imagining the power that seemed to meld them together. It was silly, and completely counter to his purposes.
"Don't take offense, Alby. I don't trust anyone. It's nothing personal."
"You sound like my father."
He winced. Her father was the last person he wanted to remind her of. "Why? He a suspicious sort, too?"
"I used to think my parents were the most paranoid, overprotective vampires in existence."
"Used to?" He forced himself to relax his hold on her, let his hands slide down her back to rest at her waist and peeled his body from her, putting healthy space between them.
She shrugged. "Until Frank Stiles kidnapped me five years ago, pretty much proving my parents right."
The reminder that Stiles had held her pricked his soul. He didn't like thinking about that. "Used you as a guinea pig, did he?" he asked, even as he tried to tell himself he could really care less, turning and pacing away from her.
"You know who he is, then?"
He looked back quickly. "I've heard of him, yes. Former DPI, self-appointed vamp-hunter-slash-researcher. Have I got it right?"
"Pretty much."
He nodded. "He must have considered you his all-time prize catch."
She smiled at him, flashed it so unexpectedly it temporarily dazzled him. "Wouldn't any man?"
He shook the glitter from his head, rolled his eyes and grinned at her joke.
"So what's with the equipment?" she asked, looking around at the items he'd acquired the night before. "Vampiric strength not good enough for you? You aspire to something... bulkier?"
He smirked. "I've got all the strength I'll ever need, Alby. Don't doubt that. I got this stuff together for you, not myself."
"For me?'' She faced him, her pretty dark brows arching over those odd colored eyes. Blue-black as oil slicks, they were. "What am, I supposed to do with it?"
"Test yourself."
She frowned, but when she turned to look at the equipment again, it was with a curious, interested expression.
"You talked to me in the car, remember? You told me you didn't know the full extent of your powers."
"And you said you would help me find out."
He nodded. "So I thought to begin with physical strength." He smiled at her. "And I thought I might teach you a few moves, while we're at it. You may as well learn to defend yourself, right?"
"You think I can't defend myself?"
He shrugged. "You said Stiles got you. He'd never get me."
"He had an army, weapons, tranquillizers. There was nothing I could have done. Believe me, I tried.''
He looked doubtfully at her. "Tried what? Slapping him?"
She frowned, getting a little angry. "Why don't we play with these toys of yours, Edge? Then you can see for yourself what I can do."
He shook his head. "Not tonight, after that bump on the head."
She strode toward him, no longer the least bit unsteady on her feet, closed her hand around his wrist and brought his hand to her head. He frowned, but obliged her, probing the spot where the lump and cut had been. But the lump was nearly gone, and the cut itself was noticeably smaller. He shot her a look.
"Quick healing. It used to take a couple of days. I healed faster than a human but slower than a vamp. But since Stiles got through with me, it's been changing. A lot of things have."
"So you heal faster than we do now?"
She shrugged. "I don't have to wait for the day sleep. So it starts right away."
Edge nodded. "Why do you suppose your time in captivity coincides with these... changes?"
She pursed her lips, lowered her head. "I don't know." He knew it was a lie. She did know. Or thought she did. And he could guess her theory. Stiles had killed her, only to see her revive each time. Death and rebirth, even in myth, brought drastic change. Metamorphosis.
"What other changes have you noticed?"
She only shook her head.
He tipped his to one side. "Don't trust me yet, do you, Alby?"
She used his own words against him. "Like you, Edge, I don't trust anyone."
"I had that coming." He shrugged. "So you want to play?" He moved to the punching bag, braced his shoulder against it and framed it with his forearms. "Come on, let's see what you've got, love."
Sighing, she moved to the punching bag, gave it a couple of practice jabs.
"Come on, Alby. Like you mean it."
"I don't want to hurt you."
The laughter burst from him even louder than it would have if he hadn't been trying so hard to keep it in. He saw her face change, saw her draw back her slender arm, raising the opposite one in a defensive pose. He braced for the punch. She delivered it. The bag recoiled so rapidly that it picked him off his feet before he lost his grip and sailed backward, hit the wall and slid to the floor.
She walked across the church, and he looked up at her, standing there with her hands on her hips. "You okay?"
"Depends. Can you see the little birdies flitting around my head?"
She extended a hand. He took it and let her tug him to his feet. "Sorry about that."
"Hey, I asked for it." He brushed himself off, gathered up his pride. "So you're strong. We've established that much."
She nodded. "I'm strong. I can pick up my car, one end at a time, not the entire thing."
He could probably do the same, he thought. Yeah, he could do that.
"How about speed?''
"Dad had a treadmill custom-made for me, so I could clock myself in the privacy of our home, where I wouldn't be seen. I've hit sixty."
Then she couldn't move with vampiric speed, so fast she would blur human vision, appearing to vanish and reappear in a new place. He could. At least in this, he was superior.
"And then, of course, there's this."
He started to ask what, but before he spoke, she was looking across the room, and he followed her gaze. She jerked her head a little, and the pew she seemed to be focused on rose up off the floor and shot toward them. Edge ducked, flinging up an arm to protect his head, but the thing stopped in midair and landed heavily, tipping over.
He straightened, lowering his arm, blinking at her. "Unbelievable."
She shrugged. "That's me." Then she sighed. "Don't look so shaken, Edge. I can't control minds or hypnotize mortals or play with their memories. I can send and receive, if the other party isn't blocking. I'm not very good at eavesdropping on thoughts." She shrugged. "Psychically, that's about it. Except for the-"
She broke off there, but Edge heard the final word anyway. Her mind spoke it, though her lips didn't. "The dreams?" he asked. He searched her face, recalled her saying something about dreams earlier, in her delirium. She'd thought she was dreaming then. "What dreams, Alby?"
She shrugged, averting her eyes. "Sometimes I dream... things."
"Things that later come to pass?''
She nodded. "It's usually nothing significant."
"But... ?" he prompted, sensing there was more to the thought, though she was shielding more effectively now.
She faced him squarely. "Why are you so interested in me, Edge? Tell me the truth. What do you want with me?"
He smiled just a little, deliberately opened his mind to her, filling his head with images of the two of them engaged in various acts. He made the pictures as vivid and shocking as he could, and he saw her eyes widen, her face redden.
She turned away and whispered, "Besides all that, I mean."
He brought his shields up again. "Nothing, Alby. Why can't you believe me?"
"I know better, that's why. I'm not stupid, Edge. You want to use me... "
"In every imaginable way." He moved up behind her, and when he spoke those words, his cold breath caressed her neck. "I haven't tried to hide that fact from you, Alby."
She shivered.
He stroked his hands down her shoulders, outer arms, alt the way to her wrists, then closed his hands on hers. "It's all right. I can be patient."
"There's more. There's more you want from me. I know it."
"I swear there isn't."
"I dreamed about you, Edge."
He went very still, as stunned as if she'd hit him right between the eyes.
"I've been dreaming about you for nearly a year now."
"Really?" He didn't know how to react, what to say.
But he had to know; he had to ask. "What happens in these dreams?" he asked.
"Well, most recently... " she whispered. Then, suddenly, he could see inside her mind as she opened it to him, revealing the same erotic images he'd painted for her only moments earlier. He felt as if his blood turned to lava in his veins. His mind raced, and his hunger for her burned. "Jesus," he muttered.
"Oh, there's more.'' She leaned back against his chest, let her head fall to one side. He nuzzled her throat, let his lips slide over it, licked softly and felt the pounding beat in the jugular. God, he wanted to taste her.
"God, yes," he muttered against her skin. "What else?'' he whispered, parting his lips against her neck to speak the words.
"A couple of things. I'm overwhelmed with feelings of passion, fear and grief. You give me something."
"Yes?" He sucked the skin of her throat just a little, scraped his teeth over it without allowing himself to bite down, and he felt the heat and the passion in her, rising to equal his own.
"Oh, yes. You give me death."
Edge froze. Slowly he lifted his head from her neck, and, hands to her shoulders, he turned her to face him. "I... kill you?"
She nodded. "I don't know. I only know you bring me a gift, and the gift is death. Now maybe you see why I'm a little bit wary about trusting you, Edge."