“We still haven’t heard anything from him. Marcus—”
Disconnecting the call, Marcus dialed David, then Seth. Both of the powerful healers were out of range and unreachable.
His hand shook as he dialed Chris Reordon.
“Did you find her?” Chris asked without preamble.
“I need a healer and an immortal who can teleport.”
“Richart is the only teleporter in the States and the only one in the world aside from Seth who has ever been to North Carolina. The others won’t be able to locate you. I assume you found Ami?”
“Yes.”
“Bring her to the network.”
Marcus ended the call, his whole body shaking. He hurled the phone across the room. Ami wouldn’t live long enough to make it to the network.
“Marcus.” She rested her right hand on his arm. “I’ll be all right.”
He forced a smile, knowing it would do little to distract her from the tears that threatened to blur his vision. “Of course you will, sweetheart.” He brushed her sticky hair back from her face.
“Don’t t-take me to the network,” she panted.
He swallowed past the lump in his throat. “I won’t.” He knew the idea terrified her and wouldn’t frighten her needlessly in her last moments.
“Don’t look that way,” she said, squeezing his arm. “I’m g-going to be all right. I j-just need to sleep f-for awhile.”
He nodded, leaned down, and kissed her cold lips, her cheek.
“P-promise me you’ll be here when I wake up.”
His throat thickened. “I promise.”
Her green eyes clung to his. “I love you.”
“I love you, too, Ami.”
“D-don’t forget.”
“I won’t.”
Her lids fluttered closed. The pressure on his arm loosened as her hand fell away.
Marcus rested his head on her chest, counted every rapid heartbeat.
He couldn’t lose her. He couldn’t just sit there and watch her die.
Change her.
The unforgivable notion slithered through the desperate chaos of his thoughts.
Transform her.
He couldn’t. She wasn’t a gifted one.
Save her.
So that she could have a year or two of life before she descended into vampiric madness? He wouldn’t do that to her.
Maybe the network will find the cure in time to prevent that.
The voice tempted, but he knew better. They had been waiting and hoping for a cure for centuries.
Ami’s breathing grew labored.
Marcus slid a hand beneath her back and eased her up into a seated position. Toeing off his boots, he slid into bed and settled himself behind her, his legs bracketing hers, her bottom resting against his groin, and drew her back against his chest. After a moment, her breathing eased, still coming fast and shallow, though.
He slipped his arms beneath hers and, with both hands, continued to apply pressure to her abdomen. The coverlet slipped down to her waist. Her left arm fell to the side.
Marcus glanced at it, then frowned.
Releasing the towel, he took her left hand and, hoping it wouldn’t cause her too much pain, rotated her arm slightly.
His breath caught.
The bone no longer protruded from her skin. Instead it formed an awkward lump beneath a smooth, newly scarred surface.
“What the hell?”
Shoving the coverlet back further, he removed the towel. The bullet wounds had ceased bleeding. Were they smaller than they had been before?
He couldn’t tell. He had been too panicked earlier and had noticed little beyond the fact that she had been bleeding to death.
When she shivered, he drew the cover back up to her chin, but left the broken arm out where he could watch it. Beneath his astonished gaze, the bone shifted back into position in incremental movements, then knitted itself back together. Bruises flared to vivid life, passing through a week’s array of colors in only an hour, then disappeared. Her shivers ceased. He pushed the cover down to her hips, watched cuts seal themselves, scars fade to nothingness. The horrible wounds in her stomach vanish completely.
Ami’s breathing slowed, evened out as she slipped from shock into slumber. Her pale, blood-encrusted skin lost its damp chill.
Disentangling himself from the covers and Ami’s delicate weight, Marcus settled her against the pillows and stood beside the bed.
All emotion drained from him as he stared down at her, trying to make sense of it.
On the floor, his battered phone began to ring.
Marcus picked it up, turned it off, then strode from the room.
Ami awoke in an instant. There was no slow, gradual climb to consciousness. One moment she slept deeply; the next she opened her eyes to darkness barely broken by the muted daylight that framed the edges of the curtains drawn across her window.
Sensing Marcus’s presence, she turned her head to meet iridescent amber eyes.
Not good. The one pro to the involuntary glow of immortals’ eyes was that it warned their companions and enemies when they were in the grips of very powerful emotion.
Like fury. The room fairly vibrated with it.
Anxiety sped her pulse.
“Feeling better?” His voice swam out of the shadows, deep and dangerous.
Ami squinted at his outline. Ensconced in her cushy reading chair, he sat with knees and feet splayed, his arms resting along the chair arms.
“Yes.” She cleared her throat when the word emerged as a croak. Ami had dreaded this moment ever since she had realized she was losing her heart to him.
“I’m glad.” He didn’t say it snidely or sarcastically as some might have in his position. The cool, even tones verified what Ami had already guessed: He knew she had kept something of monumental importance from him and was pissed. But he was also relieved she had survived her injuries.
“As you can see, I kept my promise,” he went on.
It took her a moment to remember having asked him not to leave her.
“For the most part, anyway. I did leave long enough to shower, fetch clean linens, and tell Darnell to bugger off when he came looking for you.”
Darnell had come. Of course, he had come. He would have been worried sick.
Had he told Marcus about her?
“Are Roland and Sarah okay?” she asked, surprised she had succeeded in keeping from her voice the trembling that invaded her limbs.
“Yes.”
She sat up, scooted backward so she could lean against the headboard.
Marcus reached up and flicked on the lamp beside him.
Ami looked down, blinking against the brightness. Her torn, filthy hunting clothes had been replaced by one of Marcus’s clean T-shirts. Should she read anything into that? He could have put her in one of her nightgowns, but had instead chosen something of his.
While she had slept a deep, healing sleep, he had bathed her, washed the blood from her skin and hair. He had even changed her sheets and removed the coverlet, replacing it with the one from his own bed. The bed they had shared for one incredible day.
“Lisette, Étienne, and Richart?” she asked in a last-ditch attempt to put off the confrontation barreling down upon them.
“Lisette and Étienne didn’t awaken until about half an hour ago.”
Ami glanced at the bedside clock. 5:59. “Is it morning or evening?”
“Evening.”
“And they just woke up?”
He nodded.
She had known the sedative was powerful, but to make immortals sleep so long …
How had Montrose Keegan gotten his hands on it? “What about Richart? Is he awake, too?”
“Richart is missing.”
Ami thought back to everything that had transpired. “It wasn’t the vampires. He teleported away and never came back. Also, the vampire king left me with Keegan, who shot me when I tried to escape—and I managed to stab him.”
“I’ll be sure to pass that along,” he stated, but made no move to do so.
Ami swallowed, almost wishing he had kept the room enshrouded in blackness. Then she wouldn’t be able to see the stiffness in his shoulders, the tight grasp of his hands on the chair arms.
“Were you ever going to tell me?” he asked finally. Then he did know.
Words—all coherent thought, really—eluded her, so she nodded miserably.
“When?”
“I don’t know.” He deserved honesty. She hadn’t given it to him before. She would do so now. “I was … afraid of how you might react.”
He nodded, grinding his teeth. “An understandable fear, so it would seem.”
Her heart sank.
Rising, he paced across the room. “You don’t think you should have mentioned it earlier? Perhaps … before we made love?”
The even tones developed sharp edges.
“I wanted to.”
“But you didn’t,” he snapped. Shaking his head, he strode back across the room, avoiding her gaze as if he couldn’t stand to look at her. “I was an open book to you, Ami. I told you everything.” His voice rose with every breath. “I held nothing back. Laid my past out before you, my present as well. Revealed my every vulnerability. And, in exchange, you chose to keep this from me?”
“Marcus—”
“We were friends, Ami! You—” He shook his head. “It couldn’t have escaped your notice that my feelings for you were deepening. You had to have known. Didn’t you think you should warn me? Knowing everything you do about me, about my past, you didn’t think I deserved to know the truth?”
Ami scrambled up onto her knees. “I did, but—”
“I asked you about your past! I practically begged you to talk about it! To tell me something—anything—about yourself! Gave you the opening you needed! At no point did it occur to you to say even something as simple as Oh, by the way, you may not want to get too attached to me because at some point in the future you’re going to kill me?”
Shocked, Ami dropped back on her heels.
Marcus glanced over, then halted and pointed an index finger at her. “Oh, no you don’t. Don’t you dare look at me like that! I have never given you cause to fear me!”