Books by Maggie Shayne (154 page)

Rhiannon shook her head. “This is beginning to resemble a scene from
Steel Magnolias
,” she said in a sarcastic tone. “Accept our offer of friendship, Angelica, before she starts weeping.”

But beyond the flippant words, I could see that she, too, wished to help me. Why, I did not know. I had done nothing but judge and condemn them both. Truly they were showing more godlike qualities than I had.

“I accept,” I said. “And I’m sorry for what I said before. That you were damned. You’re right, I’m not God. It’s wrong of me to sit in judgment.”

Tamara smiled and started forward, opening her arms to Rhiannon and to me.

Rhiannon held up a hand. “I do not do group hugs,” she said softly. “And I believe we’ve wasted enough time. There is a child out there in need of our help. And if any of those bastards has done a thing to harm her, then I doubt even God Himself can protect him from Jameson’s wrath.” She lowered her head. “And if He does, He should probably worry about mine, next.”

“I think Amber Lily is safe…for now, at least.”

Both women turned to me, brows lifting in question.

“Your friend,” I said to Tamara. “The woman, Hilary Garner. We think she’s taken the baby and gone into hiding, somewhere.”

Tamara sighed hard. “If she has, then you’re right. The child couldn’t be safer. Hilary is a good person.” Rhiannon narrowed her eyes. “She is,” Tamara insisted.

“We’ll get her back, fledgling. Make no mistake about that,” Rhiannon said. “Now perhaps you ought to put on some shoes.” This with a sheepish glance at my bare feet.

It was Tamara who dived into the closet and emerged with a pair of dainty black flats. “These will look great with that dress.” She handed them to me. “And the dress is fabulous on you. Jamey’s eyes will pop out.”

“Jamey,” I whispered, half-smiling at the cute nickname his friends had given him. How he must hate it. “He could not possibly care less what I look like.”

“You’re mistaken about that, young one,” Rhiannon told me. But of course, she was wrong.

There was a tap on the door, and then it opened. Jameson stood there, and when his gaze met mine I sensed something that could almost have been concern in his eyes.

“Is everything all right in here?” he asked, pulling his gaze from mine and looking from Tamara to Rhiannon.

“Being born in this century, Jameson,” Rhiannon said, walking past him and pausing at his side, “you obviously know very little about honor and chivalry. I’d strongly suggest you learn it.” She stared hard into his eyes. “Soon.”

“And I’d strongly suggest, Rhiannon, goddess among women, that you learn a little something about minding your own business.”

She lifted a hand, and I held my breath, half-expecting her to strike him. Instead, she gently patted his cheek. “You’re lucky I adore you,” she told him.

“Enough wasting time,” the cloaked man said, coming forward to slip a possessive arm around Rhiannon. When he did, she rubbed herself against his side almost like a cat. “Jameson has reason to believe Hilary Garner has run off somewhere with the child. We have to track her down immediately. She won’t be able to hide from DPI for very long.”

“Yes, Angelica told us.” Tamara paced into the other room. “Hilary had relatives up north. She used to talk about visiting there. Some cabin in the mountains.”

“That’s too vague,” I said. “How will we find it? And even if we do, what if that isn’t where she’s gone?”

“If you know about this cabin, Tamara,” the other man, Eric, said, “then chances are, DPI knows as well.”

“If they do, it will be in Hilary’s file. Eric, if we could get to a computer…”

“We could tap into the DPI information banks, get everything they have on Hilary and go from there,” Eric said, nodding hard.

As they discussed their plan, speaking rapidly, I felt my heart sinking in my chest, so rapidly that it left me dizzy. Pressing my palm to my breast I sank against the wall, all my breath rushing out of my lungs.

“What is it, Angel?” Jameson—the only one of them who seemed to detest me—stood close to my side. “What is it?” he demanded, searching my face.

“I don’t know. I just feel…we have to go to her. Now. We can’t wait.”

He stared hard into my eyes. Not looking away, he said, “She feels…there’s a connection to the baby. She senses things. We should start north, right now.” Finally, he broke eye contact, turning to Tamara. “Can you give me anything else to go on, anything at all?”

Closing her eyes, Tamara seemed to search her memory. “Hilary used to take the train north to someplace called Petersville. I think she’d rent a car and drive from there.”

“Then that’s where we’ll go,” Jameson said. He took my arm and pulled me upright again, none too gently.

“Perhaps Tamara and I should start north with Angelica,” Rhiannon said, and to my surprise, I detected a note of concern for me in her voice. “You men can work on getting more information and then join us there.”

“Not on your life,” Jameson snapped.

Tamara and Rhiannon exchanged amused glances.

“Forget what you’re thinking. I don’t suppose my dark angel told you her plans, did she?” He scowled at me. “No, I didn’t think so. She wants to run from me, monster that I am, at the first opportunity. Use this psychic link to find Amber Lily and then take her away where I’ll never have the chance to put my godforsaken, cursed hands on her. Isn’t that right, Angelica?”

“If you still believe that, then you truly are a monster,” I whispered at the hate I saw in his eyes. “I’m only just now beginning to realize that it has nothing to do with the fact that you’re a vampire. You must have been just as monstrous as a mortal man.” I tugged my arm free of his hateful grip and stalked back into the bedroom for the shoes I’d left lying on the bed.

“She doesn’t set foot out of my sight,” I heard him saying, his tone commanding and harsh. “Not for a minute. I don’t trust her as far as I can throw her.”

“Jameson, for heaven’s sakes,” Roland said.

“Lad, you have a great deal to learn,” Eric put in with a sigh. “I thought we’d taught you better. Will you listen to yourself?”

“Oh, let him be,” Rhiannon interrupted him. “Can’t you see, Eric, darling? He thinks he’s fooling someone—besides himself. I mean.”

“Damn it, Rhiannon—”

“Oh, do shut up,” Rhiannon replied. “Take your fledgling and go north, Jameson. We’ll find out what we can here, and then we’ll join you.” And then she lowered her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. Why she bothered, I did not know. She must have known I could still hear her very clearly. Perhaps it was only for effect. “And take good care of her, Jameson. Take very good care of her. If harm comes to her, you’ll have to answer to me for it.”

“What’s this?” he said, astonished. “You her best friend all of a sudden?”

“I…like her,” Rhiannon replied. And she said nothing more. I heard her soft steps coming closer. She came into the bedroom, where I was sitting on the bed’s edge contemplating the pretty shoes Tamara had found in the closet. “Don’t take any nonsense from him, Angelica. Never forget, you’re of the superior gender.”

“It’s difficult to feel superior, when I’ve somehow become his prisoner.” I knew Jameson could hear me if he cared to listen. But I didn’t care.

“Prisoner, posh!” Rhiannon said. “Have you tried to escape him yet?”

I shook my head. “No, of course not.”

“I doubt he could keep you here against your will, Angelica. In our kind strength comes largely with age. And he’s no older than you. Younger, in fact, if only by a few days.”

I tilted my head, my eyes widening in wonder. “You mean…I’m as strong as he is?”

“Quite possibly so, darling. Keep that in mind when he gets bossy. And remember, if you’re not trying to escape, you’re here of your own free will. No matter what he tells you.”

My chin rose a bit. “Thank you, Rhiannon.”

She smiled slightly, then turned and strode from the room. As she passed Jameson, she whispered, “Prisoner, indeed. Did we teach you nothing at all?” But she never slowed her pace. She marched right out the door, and the other three followed seconds later, leaving me alone, once again, with the man I wished I could detest.

He stared at me for a long moment, in silence.

“They…are not at all what I expected,” I said, unsure what it was he was waiting for.

“No,” he said. “Because you were expecting a band of monsters like something out of an old horror film.”

I shook my head. “Maybe. I’m not really sure what I was expecting.”

He nodded. “They are the finest beings I’ve ever known, human or otherwise,” he said, turning to stare at the door they’d just exited. “They’ve saved my life more than once, risked their own safety for me often, been like family to me.”

“And made you one of them when I had left you for dead,” I whispered.

“Yes.”

“And yet they don’t hate me for that.”

He shrugged, and reached out as if to take my arm. But still stinging from his earlier biting remarks, I shrugged away from his touch.

“I forgot,” he said, his eyes boring holes into mine. “My touch repulses you…even when you’re the one to ask for it. I’ll try to remember that from now on, Angelica.”

“That isn’t fair,” I said. “You don’t understand—”

“I understand, my dear, that I won’t sample your charms again even if you beg me to. Or…should I say, when you beg?”

“I would never—”

“Save it,” he said. “Only time will tell, Angel. I’m just letting you know in advance that I won’t stain your snow-white flesh by putting my cursed hands on you again. So don’t hold your breath waiting.”

My anger flared as it seldom had before. I hadn’t been repulsed by him, as he seemed to think. But I was now. “Has it even occurred to you, Vampire, that I saved your worthless life by doing what I did?”

“And you have my undying gratitude,” he said, his eyes flashing with sarcasm. “Next time I find you dying for lack of blood, honey, I’ll return the favor. Give you a little of mine and screw you senseless while I’m at it. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”

I lashed out with my hand, hitting him hard across the face. So hard his head snapped around sideways, and an angry red welt appeared on his cheek.

He snagged my hand in a cruel grip, and pulled me tight to his body. His hard chest pressed to my breasts, and his warm, angry breaths fanned my face as his eyes blazed down at me. And though I hated him at that moment with everything in me, I wanted him, too. And he knew it. Damn him to hell, he knew it.

“Yeah,” he whispered. “You’d like that.” And then he released me abruptly, turned away and left me there alone. He headed out through the exit that led to the car in its hiding place of brush and briars. And I watched his powerful strides, his magnificent grace, his tightly leashed control.

The bastard knew it, he knew that I wanted him. And I would have been humiliated by his obvious knowledge of my wanton desire for him.

Would have been…but I wasn’t. Because I wasn’t alone in my misery of need. He might see my hidden desires, but I could see his just as clearly. I had seen what flashed in his eyes, in spite of himself, before he turned away from me.

He wanted me, too.

Jameson had been driving in silence for several hours, with no real idea of his ultimate destination, aside from Tamara’s vague reference to Petersville. Once there, he had no idea what to do next. But he’d worry about that when he got there. For now, he had other things on his mind.

Angelica.

She sat beside him, pensively silent, and he knew she was worrying about Amber Lily. She’d spoken little since getting into the passenger seat. But her skills at guarding her thoughts were still not quite what they should be—what they
would
be, with a little more practice—and he could read them. He suspected that even when she became adept at building the wall to guard her mind,
he’d
be able to see inside. Because there was something between them. Something powerful and potent, and he was beginning to suspect that all his explanations for it were no more than nonsense. Because he was beginning to think that this was something that had been between them from the very first. It was what had allowed his mortal ears to hear her preternatural sobs. What had drawn him to that building in the first place. It was what had made her lose control when she’d taken from him that first time.

He didn’t know
what
it was. But there had been something there. And he was a fool. A thousand times a fool. Because he thought she was the most beautiful, passionate, fiery, strong woman he’d ever known. And he wanted her more every time he looked at her.

And she was disgusted by him.

And knowing it didn’t stop his stupid mind from wandering into forbidden territory. All it did was wound his pride, and his pride, when wounded, was more deadly than an injured grizzly.

He knew she wouldn’t want him sharing her thoughts, invading her mind, as she called it. But he couldn’t stop himself. He even tried. But it wasn’t working. It was as if each feeling that flitted through her mind was flitting through his as well.

The sex had deepened the link between them. He’d known it would. Just hadn’t been certain how it
could
. Now he knew.

He didn’t hear her thoughts word for word, as he’d been able to do at first. But the feelings came through. Fear. Gut-wrenching, soul-wringing fear. She was sick with it. Utterly ill with it. It was killing her, slowly, and by cruel degrees, that she didn’t know where their baby daughter was.

And he’d been unmercifully tough on her. He was regretting it, now, though he really shouldn’t be, because she’d deserved it, and then some. Looking down at him as if he were some lower life form. Thinking of him as a demon, a monster. Believing him unfit to be a father to his own child. She deserved his anger for that. What did she expect, that he’d be thrilled with her condemnation of his kind?

Her kind?

He glanced across the car at her. And he knew above all that it was his pride she’d hurt. He wanted her to be as completely engrossed in him as he…

Scratch that.

She sat stiffly, concentrating very hard on trying to get a sense of the child. But he didn’t think she was having much success at it. They’d been driving for hours, and she’d been doing this the whole time. Searching, striving, reaching with her mind. He could see the lines of tension at the corners of her lush lips, and in her forehead. And he was overcome with the ridiculous urge to ease them.

“We have no reason to believe she’s not safe and sound with the Garner woman,” he said. He couldn’t believe he was trying to comfort her. Couldn’t imagine what would make him even give a damn how much she was suffering right now. Dammit, if he couldn’t
feel
her pain, he might be able to ignore it.

“I know,” she said, her voice gruff.

“Tamara says Hilary is a good person. We have to believe that.”

She nodded. “Yes.”

And then she went right back to worrying again. Her head was throbbing with a pain that reached all the way down the back of her neck. He could feel that. And the pain was weakening her, as pain tended to do to their kind.

“You’re making yourself sick, Angelica.”

She blinked, and turned to look at him. So much pain in those eyes of hers. So much…ah, God help him…
need
.

“I can’t help it.”

“You have to help it. Try not to think the worst. You’ll be so worn down by the time we find them that you’ll be no help at all.”

She tilted her head. “Worrying can weaken me?”

“No, but the headache it’s causing could damn well do it.”

Her brows drew together in a frown. “You’re poking around in my mind again? Reading my thoughts?”

“Not voluntarily, I’m not.”

Her curious gaze scanned his face. “What do you mean?”

Jameson drew a deep breath. He had not wanted to bring up the subject with her. Not when just thinking about it reduced him to a mass of unfulfilled yearning. But he supposed he owed her an explanation. “We shared blood, Angelica, and that was enough to forge this bond. We had a child together, and I think we both know that strengthened it. And then we…we had sex.” He saw the flare of memory in her eyes. It seared him before she quickly turned away. “That forged an even more powerful link between us. Kind of like the link between you and Amber Lily.” He shook his head, sighing hard, knowing she’d likely be even more repulsed when she realized how much a part of her he had become. How much a part of him she had grown to be. “Whether I like it or not,” he said, “I know when you’re hurting. I can feel your pain, and I imagine you could probably feel mine as well.”

“Yes.”

Not disgust in her voice. Not that at all. Just affirmation. He looked at her quickly, but she wasn’t grimacing.

“I felt it even before we made love,” she whispered.

Made love?

“I felt it when you were shot. Knew you’d been hit even before I saw the wound. I thought at first the bullet had torn through
my
side, but then I looked, and there was no wound in me. It was in you, instead.”

“And you felt it?” he asked her, amazed.

“Yes, I did.”

He blinked, thinking this through. “Then the tie between us—whatever the hell it is—was already very strong. The sex…well, that would only serve to make it even more powerful. Very strange.”

“It’s disturbing,” she said. He looked at her. Not disgusting, but disturbing.

“How so?” he asked her. “What do you feel from me now, Angelica? There’s no pain, nothing to upset you.”

“All I feel from you now, Vampire, is rage. It’s frightening in its intensity. Huge and black and potent.” She lifted her head, staring straight ahead of them, as if she could see his anger. “And I would hazard a guess that the rage inside you can be as debilitating to you as this worry might be to me.”

Jameson felt his lips thin. “You’d probably be right.”

“Why do you hate them so?”

“They have our daughter, Angelica. How can you ask me why I hate them?”

She shook her head slowly. “No. That isn’t all of it. You hated them before then. That night…that night when I stupidly went away with that agent, believing all his promises, you hated them then. It was in your mind when you tried to warn me.”

“But you went anyway.”

“Yes. And you can’t forgive me for that, can you? You can’t forget that it’s my fault they have our child. My fault, for believing their lies.” She fell sideways until her head rested against the window glass. “I don’t blame you,” she whispered. “You’re right to hate me for letting them take her. But you can’t possibly hate me for it any more than I hate myself.”

Jameson looked at her, saw the twin tracks of tears slowly moving down her face. She was wrong. He might have blamed her for this once, but not anymore. Not since he’d realized the hell she’d been suffering in that ruined building where she’d gone to hide. Gone to starve.

“So tell me,” she said. “Why did you hate them so?”

He lifted his chin, swallowed hard. “Years ago, they held Rhiannon prisoner. Had her strapped to a table while they took samples from her flesh. This was before they’d developed their nasty little tranquilizer. Their only method for keeping us too weak to fight them was starvation. There was nothing to ease the pain of their experiments. Those bastards tortured her nearly out of her mind. But she escaped. Killed one of their top scientists in the process. Broke his neck, she did.”

“I can believe that.”

Jameson looked at her as he drove, saw her shudder in response to his words. “When Tamara was a small child, her parents died of a rare virus. And a doctor who’d sort of taken her under his wing offered to be her guardian. There was no one else, and his petition was approved.”

Angelica’s lips were parted, eyes wide with interest.

“Turned out the doc was really with DPI, and the parents’ exposure to that virus was all part of a well-laid plan. They knew Tam had the belladonna antigen—that rare blood type that enables a human to become a vampire. And they also knew that people with that blood type often have a special bond to one particular vampire, who tends to watch over them.”

She gasped softly. “Is that true? I had no idea.”

“Yes, it’s true,” he told her. “A vampire feels a special affinity for a given mortal, feels drawn to them, senses when they’re in danger. And often steps in to protect them, though most of the time, the mortal never knows any of it. Eric had been Tamara’s protector. Saved her life once when she was just a little girl. And DPI knew it, knew he’d come back someday. So they wanted to hold Tamara as bait. And they stopped at nothing to do it.”

Angelica was shaking her head, her eyes filled with sympathy for the child Tamara had been. “They killed her parents…my God. It’s horrible.” And then she turned those big round eyes on him, and he almost forgot to be angry with her. “And what about you, Jameson? When did you get involved with them?”

“I met Tamara when she worked for DPI.”

“She—?”

He nodded. “Yes. Well, remember, she was raised by one of them. He brought her into the organization largely so that he could keep tabs on her. But she wasn’t in on any of the really sensitive stuff that went on there. They gave her milk-toast cases. Like working to discover the alleged psychic powers of a twelve-year-old boy.”

“You?” she asked.

“Yeah. Only the psychic stuff was a ruse. They wanted me under surveillance because I had the antigen. The whole damned cycle was gearing up to start all over again. But Tam figured it out. The bastards kidnapped me to get to her and Eric. Roland saved my ass, for the first of many times. When it was over, my mother and I had to get the hell out of the area. Roland took us to France with him, gave my mother a job, sent me to private school.”

“And you knew… you knew they were… vampires?”

“Sure I knew. I was young, but not blind.”

“And it didn’t frighten you?”

“It was those DPI bastards who frightened me.”

She nodded, and it seemed to Jameson that she was truly interested in what he was saying as they drove the many miles that separated them from their child. “Where’s your mother now?”

“Died a couple of years later. Roland took care of me, though, until later when those DPI bastards tracked us down again. After that he got to thinking I might be better off with my birth father. Hired a PI to track him down, and I ended up in San Diego living with Dad until he passed on two years ago. And my old pals at DPI didn’t catch up with me again until last year. They bundled me into one of those inconspicuous gray vans and took me to their ‘research center,’ for ‘testing.’ In fact, the others had only busted me out of that hellhole a few nights before I found you in the condemned building.”

She nodded slowly. “So DPI has been a thorn in your side for most of your life.”

“They’ve been one step behind me all the way. Same as the others. No one should have to live looking over their shoulder.”

“And you’re going to be the one to end it.”

“Someone has to.” He felt his jaw clench, and tried to relax it. “Jesus, Angelica, when I came for you, there were others. Those freaking cells were all full. Some dead, some dying, some just being kept alive long enough for those animals to finish their experiments on them. It can’t go on. It just can’t go on.”

“But can one man stop them?”

“This one can.” He slanted a sideways glance at her. “I have motivation, Angelica.” She lifted her brows, waiting. “Our daughter,” he explained. “I’m not going to let her grow up with the constant threat of those bastards looming over her. I can’t.”

She blinked twice, and nodded. As if she…maybe…understood.

“So now you know what makes me such a monster,” he said. “I hate them. I want them all to pay. And I fully intend to extract their penance with my own two hands. Just as soon as my daughter is safe.”

She lowered her head, shook it. “You’re letting your anger control you,” she said. “You could die in this feeble attempt.”

“Then I’d die for a cause,” he said. “Better than dying in a stone sarcophagus, helpless and sheeplike.”

She lowered her head quickly, stung by his words. And dammit, he should have thought before he’d spoken. “You’ll never be able to forgive me for turning myself over to them,” she said.

He shrugged, tried to find words to tell her that he did now. Wondered why he couldn’t just blurt it, and knew the culprit was his pride. “You thought I was a monster. You thought that DPI agent was safer than me.”

“I did think that. I did, it’s the truth. The one who…who changed me…” Shaking her head, she let her voice trail into silence.

“What about him?” He could feel her reaction to even thinking of that one. Terror. “You never told me, Angelica. What happened to you to bring you to this?”

She looked at him, really looked at him. And then she sighed. “I can’t believe it will make any difference to you.”

He sighed. He wasn’t going to beg her to tell him. Hell, he’d told her his entire life history, and she couldn’t tell him one little bit about her own past? Fine. Let her close herself off from him if that were what she wanted. She was so resistant to him. So…almost afraid of him it seemed. It made him angry all over again.

He was quiet after that, for several miles, and I was, too. He’d given me a great deal to think about. I could even understand his irrational hatred of DPI. But I still disapproved of his intention to destroy everyone involved in the organization. There were good among every group.