Books by Maggie Shayne (229 page)

"Wait for him," Sarafina said softly. "We won't have to do much more than that. He'll come to us."

Will shook his head. "He'll come to Amber. By day, more than likely, knowing she'll have less protection."

Edge frowned. "I hadn't… thought of that."

"It's how he did it last time," Will said. "Came for her by day, with half a dozen thugs, all of them armed." He shook his head. "I just don't know how to prepare you, Amber, to withstand an attack like that. But I think you should stick close to me by day. At least you won't be alone."

She lowered her head, looked away. "The two of us could kick the stuffing out of Stiles, Will." Then she added, "Besides, we aren't even sure he's still alive. There's no point in panicking."

"I've put tracers on his social security number," Morgan said. "If he's foolish enough to use it, I'll pick up any credit cards he might try to obtain or existing ones he might use, jobs he might take, vehicles he buys or tries to license, and just about anything else he does." She pursed her lips, shook her head. "Though if he is alive, he's managed to remain all but invisible for the past five years. Still, if he't
hink
s he's close to getting his hands on Amber again, he might get eager enough to slip up."

"I have more faith in the undead than I do in the computer," Dante said softly.

"What do you mean?" Edge asked.

Dante held his gaze steadily. "I've sent the message out to every vampire I could reach,'' he said. And Amber knew he was talking about a mental message, not a mass e-mail. "They know it's more important now than ever before to watch for Stiles, to contact us if he's spotted."

"Anything yet?" Amber asked.

He shook his head.

"I can keep an eye on the local hotels, inns, that sort of thing," Edge offered.

"There are dozens of them," Sarafina told him. She'd been uncharacteristically quiet, Amber thought, though she understood why. Her heart was breaking.

Edge only shrugged. "I'm a vampire. I can cover them in an evening."

"It's a good idea," Will said. "Stiles will need to stay somewhere, and he'll likely rush here without much prep time when he hears Amber is in town."

"Meanwhile, there's another problem we need to contend with."

"Another problem?" Amber searched Dante's face. "I can't imagine anything else dire enough to compete with Will's death sentence and Stiles's impending visit."

"Show her, Dante," Morgan said.

Dante's lips thinned, but he got to his feet and walked quickly down the steps and across the sloping lawn toward the shore. Amber followed him, Edge walking along beside her, his hands shoved into his jeans pockets. Waves rolled slowly, hypnotically over the rock and pebble strewn beach. Willem's small motorboat sat there, pulled up onto the beach. It had a rope extending from a metal ring on its nose to a large, darkly colored wooden post that had been driven deep into the ground. A tan-colored canvas covered it.

"Someone's been hunting in Salem," Dante said.

She bunked. "Hunting?" She wrinkled her nose, smelling something unpleasant and familiar.

Death.

The word whispered through her mind, and her heart turned over. The fear she always felt in the dream shivered through her soul.

Dante reached down, tugged the canvas back. Amber sucked in a breath when she saw the body lying there, turning her head away automatically.

"Hell," Edge muttered. "You might have warned her." His hands closed on Amber's shoulders as if to comfort her from the disturbing sight. But she sent him a look telling him she was all right and turned to take another look.

The woman lay in the bottom of the boat. She was in her fifties, gaunt and, of course, pale as porcelain. She wore a long black dress of sheer fabric over a satin underskirt. The sleeves had draping points at their ends. Her throat, Amber noted, bore two small punctures, right over the jugular.

She turned around again, staring at Edge, and realized Dante was doing the same.

•He lifted his brows and his hands. "Why are you looking at
me
?"

Amber frowned, wishing she knew what he was thinking just then, but his thoughts were guarded.

"Sure," Edge went on. "Blame the new guy. This is Salem, for Chrissakes. It's probably crawling with vampires."

Blinking slowly, Amber turned to Dante again. "What was she dressed up for?"

"I don't know. I found her when I was in town earlier tonight, just getting the lay of the land. Smelled her and homed in. She was underneath a pier, lying on the rocks. No identification, no other marks."

"How long ago was she killed?"

"Last night sometime. No one's been reported missing—not yet, anyway."

Amber pressed her lips tight. Edge said, "Why did you drag her back here, anyway?"

Dante's face darkened, and Amber spoke before he could. "We can't have bloodless bodies with fang marks in their throats showing up in Salem, Edge. Do you know what the media would do with a story like that? It would be an open invitation to every vampire hunter in the country."

"In the world," Dante said. "You're a loner, aren't you? One of those solitary vamps who shuns his own kind?"

Edge shrugged, reaching down to tug the canvas back over the body. "I don't shun them. Don't seek them out, either."

"Until now," Dante said.

Edge met his eyes. "If you want to accuse me of something, stop dancing around it and step up."

Dante held his temper, in spite of the clear challenge Edge had laid down. "We don't kill humans."

"
We
? What, you're speaking for me now?
You
don't kill humans, Dante.
I
do what I damn well please."

Dante's eyes narrowed, and his fists clenched. Edge leaned in a little closer, and Amber stepped between the two, pressing a hand to each powerful chest. "That's enough. Dante, if Edge says he didn't kill that woman, then he didn't. Let it go."

She was all too aware, though, that Edge hadn't said any such thing.

"You could do with some manners," Dante muttered. He turned away, heading back toward the house. "Who the hell sired you, anyway? Satan?''

"He didn't stick around long enough to give me his name," Edge shot back. "But according to local legend, it was O'Roark."

Dante stopped walking, stood stock-still in the sand. "Donovan O'Roark?"

"We can take my car," Amber said, jarring Edge a bit from his contemplation of the ever-shrinking motor-boat. He dragged his gaze from the sea, fixed it instead on the woman who stood beside him on the pebble-strewn shore.

"To check the hotels in town, I mean," she added. "To see whether Stiles has checked into any of them."

"Right." He glanced at the sea again. "I'm surprised he's willing to dump the body like that."

"Why?"

He shrugged. "Figured this crew of yours to be more the notify-the-next-of-kin-and-hold-them-while-they-cry types." He shook a cigarette from the pack in his pocket, fired it up.

She lowered her head, so her dark, dark hair fell over her eyes. "They're kind, Edge, but they're not stupid. Leaving victims around only draws attention to our existence. It would be a dangerous thing to do, for all of us." She glanced behind them at the ocean. "I pity her family, though. Never to know what became of her… "

"She has no family."

Amber looked at him sharply.

He shoved his hands into his pockets, lowered his head. "Lost them in a house fire six months back. Husband, teenage twins."

Her eyes narrowed. "How do you know this?"

He didn't answer the question. "Then last month she was diagnosed with cancer. Inoperable. So she went to that bridge, tied a cinder block to her leg, and stood there trying to work up the nerve to jump."

"You killed her, didn't you?"

"I did her a favor."

Amber sighed deeply, lowering her head. "You shouldn't have done it."

"Do you believe in an afterlife, Alby? Some paradise where souls go when their bodies wear out?"

She started walking back along the beach toward the house, and he fell into step beside her, smoking, waiting for her answer.

"I suppose I do," she said.

"Then she's there now, with her husband and her girls. Better than where she was, facing a slow, lingering death with nothing but her grief for company."

They'd skirted the house and come to where Amber's car was parked in the driveway. She went to the driver's door, opened it, but didn't get in. Instead she looked over the top of the car at Edge. "Do you?''

"What? Believe in heaven?"

She nodded.

He took a last drag from his cigarette, then flicked it away. "Haven't thought about it, Alby. Why should I? I'm never going to die."

They visited every hotel and inn they could locate, stopping first at a visitors' center for a comprehensive list. They didn't go inside. Copping a look at guest registries or computers wasn't necessary. Amber knew Stiles—far better than she would have liked. She searched for him by opening her mind, her senses, listening, smelling,
feeling
for his presence. She was certain she would know if he were near.

Certainly her psychic powers were nowhere near as strong as those of a vampire. But they were good, sharp. Especially where her one-time captor was concerned.

Oddly, she could have sworn Edge was doing the same thing. And yet, he didn't know Stiles. Did he?

By the time they had finished, it was 4:00 a.m. She drove back to the beach house, which was quiet now. Apparently everyone had gone inside. When they got out of the car, Edge said, "No sign of Stiles, then. You must be relieved."

She met his eyes, sighed. "Not as much as you would think. We need him."

He nodded. "We'll find him."

She was certain they would. They had to. She licked her lips. "That woman, the one you—"

"What about her?"

She lowered her head, looked away.

"You want to know what kind of cancer she had. Whether it was like your friend Willem's." He came around the car and, to her surprise, closed his hand around one of hers, tugging her with him as he walked toward the shore.

"Was it?" '

"No. Pancreatic. And it had spread to the liver, stomach. She was a mess."

Amber nodded. They were on the shore now, walking slowly back toward Edge's place. She looked at him, searched his face, wondering if he was a monster, wondering what the poor woman's final moments had been like.

He held her gaze as they walked, then stopped and turned her to face him. "I walked up on her, there on the bridge. Her grief was so loud I didn't even have to try to read her thoughts. They were pouring out of her. She looked at me, just looked at me, for the longest time. And she knew what I was. I don't know how, but she did."

Amber felt caught in his eyes, mesmerized by them. "Was she afraid?"

He shook his head slowly, left, then right. "She pushed her hair back, tipped her head to one side. She said, 'Please.' Just that one word, nothing more. But it came with a rush of pain that was… unbearable."

She saw the echo of that pain in his eyes, just for a moment.

"So I took her into my arms," he said, taking Amber into his arms as he did so. She relaxed against him, and he bent his head, nuzzled her neck. "I held her, and I drank from her." His lips moved against her throat as he spoke. "Her pain, her grief, her suffering, her despair—I took it all away, and I felt every bit of it as I did. But she felt… only ecstasy. A rush of relief and release." He let his lips part and close on the skin of her neck, gentle suction that made her knees weak. "She thanked me with her final breath."

"It was a better death than she might have had otherwise," Amber whispered. "Then you truly only did what you did—to help her?''

He backed away from her neck, blinked down at her. "I did what I did because it was a free meal."

The spell was broken. Amber took a shocked step away from him.

"Don't try to think of me as one of your do-gooders, Alby. I make decisions based on what's best for me, and me alone. I'm nobody's hero. And I'm nothing like your friends back there at Chez Stone."

She stood there for a moment, willing his mind to open to hers, but it was impenetrable. "I don't think I believe you," she told him.

"You don't want to believe me. You can't let yourself be taken by a man like me. You think you're too good for that. But you do want me to take you. So you're trying to believe I'm someone else."

"That's not what I'm trying to do."

"No?"

She shook her head slowly. "No. I'm just trying to—know you."

"And why do you want to know me, Alby?"

She held his gaze, decided to shock him by being straightforward with him. "Because I want you, and I can't let myself… be intimate with a man I don't even know. And because I'm not convinced our first meeting was an accident at all. I think you're up to something, and I can't let myself be intimate with a man I don't trust."

He smiled slowly. "You never know until you try."

"What would be the point?"

"The same thing that's always the point where sex is concerned, Alby. Pleasure. Screaming, trembling, mind-blowing pleasure." He ran a fingertip from her temple down her cheek to her chin. "What else is there?"

She held his gaze, shivering down deep, and she knew he was doing something to her with his eyes, with his mind, or trying to. He was making her want him. He had to be, because God, she'd never wanted this way before. Never!

"You're afraid of me, aren't you?"

She shook her head in denial.

"It's all right. That'll only make it better. Come on." He slid his arms around her waist, pulled her hard against him, so his hips were pressed to hers. He put his hands on her backside, squeezing it and holding her to him. He lowered his head, nuzzled her neck some more. She shivered, and he slid his lips around, tracing her jaw and finally finding her mouth. He kissed her, and she, opened for him, let him lick and taste and probe her.

He held her so hard that when he let his knees bend and fell backward onto the sand, he took her with him. He was powerful. So strong. And yet, so was she. And she was on top of him now, and angry with herself for being so afraid of something as simple as sex with this man, when she wanted it so badly she burned.

She shifted her legs so that she straddled him, her knees in the sand bracketing his hips, and she threaded her fingers in his hair and kissed him back, just as deeply as he'd kissed her. His hips moved against her, and she rubbed him in return. He made a little growling sound, rolling her quickly onto her back, pinning her there with his body. Rising a little, he reached down to her blouse, hooked a finger at the neck and gave a tug, tearing it from neck to hemline, smiling while he did it.

She gasped at the feel of the chill sea air on her naked breasts, but it was his eyes on them as much as the cold that made them harden and ache. He put his hands on her then, flicking his thumbs over her nipples and making her suck in a breath with every touch. Then he bent, sliding lower over her body so his mouth could catch a nipple, while his fingers held the other.

At the touch of his lips, she cried out. At the tugging, pulling suction, she stopped breathing. At the pinch of his teeth, every cell in her body screamed in pleasure.

He slid one hand between them, down the front of her jeans, and he didn't take his time, didn't hesitate, didn't wait for permission to tug them open. He pushed her legs apart with his own and slid his fingers into the wetness there, rubbing, stroking, driving into her until she was writhing.

Then suddenly the hand was gone, and the mouth left her breast, wet now in the cold air, and he was kneeling between her parted legs, tugging the jeans off her so furiously she didn't have time to object. He tore the panties off and threw them to the wind, then pushed her knees up to her chest and bent his head to her center.

She heard herself screaming, begging, panting and moaning, and didn't even recognize the sound of her own voice. His mouth attacked, his tongue possessed, as he devoured her. When she twisted he held her still, when she pushed at his head he shoved her hands away and burrowed deeper. He bit and licked and sucked at her until her mind exploded and she shrieked his name aloud.

And even as the spasms racked her body, he was sliding up over her, shoving his own jeans down as he did. She felt the hardness of him at her pulsing center, and then he plunged into her, spearing her deeply. She felt resistance, no real pain. Her body was too busy screaming in ecstasy to allow her to feel pain. And even before the waves of the first orgasm faded, he was pushing her toward another, driving into her, possessing her, holding her to receive him.

When she exploded again, he did, too. She felt the rash of him filling her, the pleasure of his release as, finally, for the first time since she'd known him, the barriers around his mind dissolved and she could feel everything inside him. His pleasure. His confusion. His wondering what the hell it was about her that made the experience more powerful than any he'd ever had before. His wondering how soon he would be able to convince her to do this again. His regret that he had to use her…

Use me for what
? she wondered, and the moment she did, the shields slammed back into place around his mind. Dammit, it hadn't occurred to her that she'd been as open to him as he had to her during those moments of intense union.

He rolled onto his back, pulling her with him, until she lay nestled in the curve of his arm, her head on his chest. She lay there, shivering with the aftermath of pleasure.

He said, "Still afraid of me?"

"Petrified," she admitted.

"Afraid I'm going to hurt you?"

"Try it and I'll kick your ass. I suppose I might be a little afraid of doing you permanent damage if I have to do that."

"Right."

She lifted her head, smiled at him.

"That's not what I meant, and you know it."

She looked away. "You think you could hurt me any other way? Emotionally? I don't intend to give you the power to do that, either. Don't flatter yourself."

He held her gaze. "You're a smart girl, Alby. Smart girl." Then he pulled her to him again, arching his hips to hers, hard and ready for more.

She kissed his chin and whispered, "The sun will be up soon, Edge."

He closed his eyes in frustration, fell back onto the sand, swore softly.

"Not too bad, hmm? If I could make a vampire forget the sunrise?"

He lifted his hips off the sand and tugged his jeans up. "Not too bad at all, Alby."

She pursed her lips. "You're a real romantic." She rolled to her back, sat up, and looked around the sand at her scattered clothes. Her jeans were within reach, so she pulled them on. Her panties and blouse were ruined. "How the hell am I supposed to walk back to the house like this?"

He rolled into a sitting up position, peeling his T-shirt over his head as he did, then handed it to her. "Put mine on. It's not like I need it."

She stared at him and tried not to let herself get distracted by the washboard abs, instead sending him a disapproving look. "You didn't even get undressed."

"I'd strip off every stitch if we had more time. I will next time," he told her. "Promise." He sent her a wink.

She scowled at him, held out a hand, and when he took it, she pulled him to his feet. "You're damn right you will."

His smile grew. "Wow."

"What?"

"I half expected you to tell me there wasn't going to be a next time."

"That would be pretty stupid, considering we both know there will be."

He waggled his eyebrows. "That good, was I?"

"That's not what I heard whispering through your mind a few minutes ago."

His eyes narrowed. "Thought I felt you listening in."

"It's the first time you've let your guard down since I've met you. I couldn't resist."

"Mmm. The euphoria of sex will do that to a man."

She shrugged. "So I was the best you've ever had, huh?"

"Everyone's the best one at that particular moment, Alby. Don't go reading too much into it."

"Don't worry, I won't."

He studied her face for a long while. She didn't hold his gaze, though, as they walked along the shore. Instead she let hers fall and found herself studying his chest again. He had a great chest. Not huge, not bulky, but every muscle clear and hard beneath the taut, pale skin. He could have been a sculpture. She thought vaguely that it ought to be illegal to cover it up, ever.