Books by Maggie Shayne (157 page)

“Angelica, not now—”

But I was off, bending low and springing skyward and sailing high into the night. I didn’t clear the limb, but caught hold of it with my hands, and dangled there. They couldn’t keep my daughter from me, I mused as I swung back and forth. No one could. I was stronger. More powerful. And for the first time I was allowing myself to feel that strength surging inside me.

I glanced down at the vampire, who stared up at me as if very puzzled. And then I let go, and pirouetted as I plunged downward. I fell when I landed, in an ungraceful tangle at his feet. He only stared down at me, shaking his head.

“Are you all right, Angelica? You haven’t gone a little nuts on me, have you?”

I got to my feet, brushing twigs and dried-out leaves from my dress. “We’re going to find her. I can feel it.”

He nodded at me. “I believe you.”

I looked skyward. “And I spoke to Tamara. Miles away still, and I spoke to her with my mind, Jameson. Do you know how incredible that is?”

One corner of his mouth quirked upward. “Yeah. I know.”

“What else is there?” I stood before him, looking up into his eyes. “What other things have I failed to notice about this new nature of mine?”

His brows drew together, and he studied my face for a long moment. “Listen,” he said softly. I parted my lips to speak, but he held up a finger for silence. So I was quiet, and I listened. At first I heard only the normal forest sounds. A breeze teasing the pine needles, and the song of a night bird here and there. But then, slowly, more sounds joined in the chorus. The creaking of a bough, and then of several of them. The sound of a squirrel’s feet as he scampered through the fallen leaves. A distant woodpecker’s drilling. The gurgling laughter of that stream. Each sound was distinct, and clear. Not a jumbled mix as I might have heard before. They were amplified, yes, but so individual. I heard a deer leaping. The beat of a bird’s wings. A pinecone fall to the forest floor from a tree that was miles away.

“It’s amazing,” I whispered.

“Yes.”

I sighed and looked up at him. “You know what’s even more amazing than this?” I asked him. “It’s that I’m a mother.” Lowering my head, shaking it sadly, I went on. “It wasn’t in my plan, you know. It was the farthest thing from my mind, but I was all wrong. And I’m beginning to think maybe… maybe that bastard did me a favor that night.” I trembled when I said it, a chill-evoking memory slipping through my brain. But I shook it off at once. “I’m a mother, now, and I can’t imagine not being one.”

He took my shoulders in his hands, searching my face. “You‘ re… different, Angelica.’”

I nodded. “Yes. Very different. And it’s about time I quit whining and dealt with it, don’t you think?”

I didn’t pull free of him, just stared up into his eyes.

“You never told me,” he said, turning me and beginning our trek through the woods, slipping my arm through his as if it were the natural thing to do.

“About what?”

“About you.” He turned to look down at me. “I gave up all of my secrets, Angel. But I still know nothing about you. So tell me.”

And I nodded. It was time. Perhaps what this man and I needed was to start over again. Perhaps if I treated him as just a man, and not a monster, we could come to some sort of understanding. Maybe even a truce.

“I was nine when my mother left me at St. Christopher’s,” I told him.

“And why did she do that?”

I shrugged. “I’m told she was very poor, unmarried and possibly addicted to heroin, but of course, I don’t remember. I should, I suppose. Maybe I’ve blocked it out. I recall her face. Reed-thin, and pale, with dark circles around her eyes, and hair like mine, only cut short. I remember her voice. Harsh. Never gentle. Never tender. I remember crying and crying and crying for her, for weeks after she left me there. But it did little good.”

He pushed a pine bough out of my path, and I walked past it, leaning a little closer to him than I needed to. But relishing his warmth.

“So the sisters took care of you?”

“Yes. They raised me. I got the notion that I’d done something bad to make my mother give me up. And decided then and there that if I could only be good enough, she’d come back for me one day.”

“But she didn’t,” he said, and when I met his eyes, they seemed sad. For me. Was he feeling my pain, then? Or just feeling for the knowledge that I felt it?

“No. She didn’t. And I must admit, I wasn’t very good at being good.”

“No,” he said, feigning disbelief.

“I was somewhat adventurous. Used to sneak out after dark and roam the streets. Explore the belfry. Swing from the ropes there.”

“You must have given the poor nuns heart failure.”

“They said so often enough.”

“And yet you wanted to join them?”

“Yes.” I thought back, thought back hard, really searching my soul. “I think perhaps I never quite got rid of the notion that my mother had found me not good enough. That I had to be good. I couldn’t think of a better way to prove I was good than to join the order.”

“I suppose that makes some kind of sense.”

“But I was never truly content there. All I ever wanted to do was get out. And our excursions from abbey walls were extremely limited. So when it was my turn to work with Sister Rebecca in the homeless shelter, I was always very eager to go.” I looked up at him, and his eyes darkened as if he knew my fear as I remembered. “That last night in particular. It was snowing, you see. And I’ve always loved the snow.”

He stopped walking, stared intently at me. “And what happened, Angel?”

I lowered my head. “Rebecca was ill. I broke the rules and went anyway, alone. And I missed the bus, and decided to walk.”

“Alone?” he asked, eyes widening. “At night?”

I only nodded.

“And that’s when it happened?” he said, urging me to continue.

“He was waiting for me.” I shivered a little, and hugged myself. “He dragged me down among the garbage. I thought…well, I thought everything but the truth. There was nothing I could do to fight him. He was a vampire, with strength like I have now. I was just a mortal woman. Oh, I tried, of course. I beat him bloody, but it didn’t even faze him.”

“He…he forced the dark gift on you?”

I nodded, unable to look Jameson in the eye.

“And then left you alone, not teaching you anything about yourself?”

“No. No, he wanted to teach me. You told me once that there is some special bond each vampire has with a chosen human. I think, perhaps, I was his. He said he’d been watching me all my life. But he was sick…twisted, somehow. My first lesson was to be the murder of a young homeless boy. He demonstrated the technique first, of course, by taking a frightened old man. And then he chose my victim for me.” I lifted my head then, and faced him. “I took a burning length of wood from a barrel fire, and I hit him as hard as I could. The blow put him on his knees, but it was the fire that killed him.”

“You killed him,” he muttered, staring down at me in disbelief. Then he shook his head. “Good. Saves me the trouble.”

“I thought,” I said, starting forward once more, “that God had cursed me. I thought the only way I could survive was by killing, and I vowed not to do that. So I hid myself away, and waited for death. I had no idea the bloodlust would become so overwhelming.”

“You had no idea about much of anything at all,” he said.

I nodded my agreement. “But I’ve decided to learn.”

“I can see that.”

“It’s because I know she’s safe,” I told him. “I know she’s all right, and for the first time since that horrible night, I…I feel good.”

That was a lie. It wasn’t the first time. I had felt good once before. He’d made me feel…utter ecstasy.

I averted my face, because I could feel him trying to read my thoughts. And then I walked faster, back toward the abandoned house where we’d left Jameson’s car. He caught up to me in short order, and when he reached my side, he walked just fast enough so he pulled ahead of me. So I quickened my pace to pull ahead of him, and then he did likewise.

I slid him a sidelong glance, saw the twinkle in his eyes and sprinted as fast as I could go. He took up my unspoken challenge, and we raced all the way back to that tumbledown house.

And there I collapsed on my back in the grass, staring up at the stars, and thinking that I had never truly appreciated the night’s ethereal beauty before. Never once.

He stood there looking down at her. Yes, she was damned near giddy because of this feeling that had come over her in her sleep. The sixth sense that assured her their daughter was fine and safe, and very nearby. But Jameson sensed that there was more to it than that. That perhaps she was beginning to come to grips with her new nature. To see her new reality and to deal with it.

And as her fears and insecurities were slowly, methodically, stripped away, the woman she’d been before was beginning to emerge. He sensed it, knew it, the way he knew so many things about her. Even with the sisters, she’d been a hellion. Always tempting fate, and playing jokes and causing mischief. A child at heart, always. He’d seen it all so clearly when she’d told him her story.

The frightened, desperate woman he’d known wasn’t even a shadow of the real Angelica. Lord, he’d been thinking that was all she was. The truth was a revelation.

She lay in the grass now, with her lustrous dark hair spread all around her, and the stars twinkling their reflection in her eyes. And he almost groaned with the force of his desire for her. Almost lay right down upon her, right there, and…

“Ahem,” Roland said pointedly.

Jameson turned to see his friend standing behind him, and then he wondered just how much of his errant thoughts Roland had been able to read. “You’re here. Good.”

Rhiannon walked up next to Angelica, lifted her arms out at her sides and let herself fall backward to the ground. Angelica laughed.

It was, Jameson realized with a small start, the first time he had heard her laughter.

“You’re looking better, fledgling,” Rhiannon said, sprawled on the ground beside her.

Angelica sat up, smiling. “She’s near us. I can feel it. We’ll find her soon.”

“And?” Rhiannon prompted.

“And…and knowing she’s all right, safe and happy at this very moment, has given me…I don’t know. A respite, I guess, from all the worrying about her. And I did what you said, Rhiannon. I let myself…enjoy…what I’ve become.”

“As well you should, young one.”

Jameson tore his eyes from her beautiful face, and turned to Roland. “Where are Eric and Tamara?”

“Staking the place out, and waiting for us to arrive. We thought it best to get someone into position as soon as possible, in case the child is moved again.”

Jameson nodded. “Where is this place?”

“Only a few miles from here,” Roland told him.

Angelica came between them. “Let’s hurry, Vampire,” she said, her eyes pleading, making Jameson’s heart trip over itself in his chest. Dammit, why couldn’t he accept the friendship she seemed to be offering him, and leave it at that? Why did he have to hunger for so much more? “I want her in my arms,” she rushed on. “I want to hold her close to me. Please.”

He nodded, averting his eyes because he didn’t like seeing the love gleaming from hers. Love for her child. It lit up her entire face. He started toward the car with Angelica at his side, then stopped when he realized Roland wasn’t following.

“What are you waiting for?”

Roland nodded toward Jameson’s car. “You know how I feel about those things,” he said. “The trip up here was unnerving enough. Rhiannon and I will come along under our own steam. We can cut through the forest, and probably get there before you, too.”

Angelica tilted her head, eyeing Roland. “You’re faster than a car?” Roland nodded. “You must be very old, then,” she said.

Jameson’s dearest friend smiled broadly. “Milady, I am ancient. And yet my darling mate is several centuries older.”

“When I said I was a daughter of Pharaoh, child, I was not joking,” Rhiannon said, moving forward to take Roland by the arm. “I was alive when the pyramids were built.”

Jameson watched Angelica’s angel-eyes widen in awed wonder.

“I’ll tell you about it sometime,” Rhiannon said with a wink.

“I’ll hold you to that,” Angelica replied, and then she turned and hurried to the car. Roland had given Jameson the directions, so he bid his friends farewell and jumped behind the wheel.

“Hurry,” she whispered, turning those excited violet eyes on him one more time. She meant what she said. She felt something. Felt it strongly. It showed.

“I will.”

We parked some distance away, and then crept through the night-shaded woods to the cabin. It rested on a hilltop amid stands of virgin pines that filled the air with their scent and whispered secrets to one another when the breeze moved through their needles.

Jameson kept one hand cupped around my elbow as we moved silently through the forest, creeping up on the cabin. I saw the glow of oil lamps in the windows, and the soft gray spiral of smoke floating from the chimney. I smelled burning wood.

But something felt…wrong.

Jameson turned to me, brows furrowed. “Tamara and Eric aren’t here,” he said.

I blinked, closing my eyes and trying hard to home in on that sense of my daughter. The calmness, the safety of her environment and her comfort still reached me. As did her nearness.

But not as near as she should be.

My heart plummeted to my feet. All that exuberance rushed out of me like air rushing from a punctured balloon, leaving me weak and devastated. “She isn’t in that cabin,” I whispered. “Jameson, we’re too late. We’ve missed them.”

He looked into my eyes, shaking his head hard and fast. “No. Look, maybe Hilary just went out for supplies or something. Eric and Tam probably followed her.”

Hope seemed to run from his eyes to mine, filling my heart. “You think so?”

“My best guess, Angel. Let’s go in for a closer look, okay?”

I nodded, drying my tears, and we crept closer, out of the cover of the trees and into the open. The house seemed devoid of life, utterly deserted.

Until a blinding spotlight glared into our eyes, and a loud voice boomed, “Take another step, and we’ll kill the child!”