Books by Maggie Shayne (234 page)

Donovan nodded. "I owe you an apology."

"You owe me considerably more than that. Fortunately for you, I don't care enough to collect." He turned around, ready now to make his exit.

"There are things you don't know about that night, Edgar."

He froze in place. "It's Edge now. And I don't
want
to know."

"But you
do
want to find the Child of Promise, don't you?"

Slowly Edge turned and faced his sire once more, "I don't need your help to do that. I've managed to get by without it for more than fifty years, after all."

Donovan sighed. Dante said, "Don't think of yourself and what you want or need, Edge. Think of Amber Lily. The more of us there are searching for her, the better our chances of finding her. And sooner than one alone might manage to do."

"Yes, and the less time she's forced to spend as a captive of Frank Stiles, the better," Donovan put in.

When Edge looked at him questioningly, he added, "Your thoughts are less than well guarded tonight. And they've been mostly centered on Amber and her situation, with a few spare ones directed toward hatred for me."

Edge said nothing.

"Edge may not want to hear your explanation, Donovan," Dante said. "But I do."

Nodding, Donovan turned to Dante. "I found Edge lying near death. He'd been part of one of Dublin's street gangs, and there had been a war of sorts with a rival group. I'd seen part of the battle, been impressed by his courage. He fought like a true warrior. Utterly fearless. I thought he deserved to live."

"So you changed me over and left me there in the street," Edge said softly.

"I changed you over and was attacked. Both the gangs set on me at once, no doubt in shock over what they saw me doing to you," Donovan explained. "I was beaten to within an inch of my life. And then your fellows dragged you off somewhere, no doubt thinking they were reclaiming their valiant dead."

"God, you're fortunate they didn't bury you," Dante said.

"I feared that same thing," Donovan replied. "I searched and searched for you, Edge. Even when I was being hunted, and it would have been better to leave Ireland altogether, I stayed and hunted for you. But I never found you." He smiled just slightly. "Until now. By God, it's good to know you survived."

Dante lowered his head, shaking it slowly. "It's little wonder you mistrust your own kind," he said. "Tell us what happened to you that night, Edge."

He shrugged as if it were of little consequence. "They took me to a side street, dropped me in a ditch when they heard someone coming. Intended to come back for me, I imagine. But I woke when the sun started roasting my flesh. Ran from it, my clothes in flames before I found a bog and submerged myself. It was an effort to cool the flames. I didn't know enough to hide from the sun, but fortunately, I lost consciousness at that point."

"And woke again at sundown," Donovan surmised. "Wondering why you hadn't drowned."

Edge shrugged. "Whatever. It's over, doesn't matter."

"It matters to me," Donovan said.

The door banged open, and Morgan, the small, almost mortal-looking vampiress, came across the deck and down to the lawn where the three of them stood.

"You reached Amber's parents?" Dante asked.

"Yes. They haven't heard a thing from her tonight, and they're heading this way just in case. Eric and Tarn are staying behind in case she shows up there. We can reach Jameson and the others by cellphone if we need them and they're too far out to reach telepathically." She handed him a card with a number scrawled on the back.

Edge closed his eyes in anguish, then jerked in surprise when Donovan's hand lowered to his shoulder.

"She hasn't had time to reach them yet. We mustn't think the worst."

"You must be Donovan," Morgan said. "You don't know how long I've wanted to meet you."

"I forget my manners," Dante said quickly. "Donovan, this is Morgan, my bride."

"I assumed as much." O'Roark reached for Morgan's hand, rifted it to his lips. "I'm so glad to know Dante has found you, dear Morgan. I only wish we could have met under more pleasant circum—"

"Oh, for Christ's sake, can we omit the formalities?" Edge interrupted. "A woman's life is at stake here." Shaking his head, he turned away, not to be stopped this time.

"Edge, you don't even know where to begin," Dante called after him.

, "I'll begin where I last saw her," he barked. "Come along or stay and continue your happy little reunion. I don't care either way."

Amber slept. She didn't know for sure how long, but she knew when she awoke that night had fallen. She felt marginally stronger, and when she finally got around to checking her wristwatch, she cursed herself for letting so many hours pass beyond her awareness. Since when did she sleep so long at a stretch? What essential bits of information might she have missed?

She got up and went to the closed door, pressed her ear against it and listened with her entire being, mentally as well as aurally. She could make out a television in some distant part of the house, a crunching sound. Brookie, eating popcorn and watching the tube. Her thoughts were focused on the program.

Closer, she made out only occasional footsteps, the tap of glass against glass, and the pouring sounds of liquids. Stiles in his lab, no doubt. And his thoughts were carefully guarded, right up until the moment he said, "I can't believe it!" and a burst of surprise shot from his mind like a flash of light.

A door slammed, and his steps came her way. Amber flung herself away from the door and dropped back onto the bed, closing her eyes and willing her body to relax. Locks turned, and the door opened.

"Wake up. I need a word."

She blinked her eyes open, mentally counting the hours since he'd tranquilized her and deciding it had been long enough for him to believe it had worn off at this point. "I'm awake."

"Mmm. I guessed you would be. By now I assume you've put two and two together and realize your situation?"

Sure she did, she thought. But did he realize his? Aloud, she said, "Apparently I'm once again your house-guest. You took blood from me already," she added, glancing at the bandage on her arm. "But I'm guessing you need more?"

"Considerably more."

"I'm surprised you didn't drain me dry and have it over with."

"Well now, that would be killing the only source, Amber. The only one at the moment, anyway. If I'm going to live forever, I need to keep the font healthy."

"So you're just going to kidnap me once every few years or so and help yourself to a new supply?"

"That hardly seems practical, does it? You might get smart enough to avoid me after a while, and that would be the end of me."

"Going to keep me your captive forever? Even you can't possibly think you could get away with that."

"Oh, heavens no. Your gang of undead loved ones would hunt me to the ends of the earth."

"Glad you've finally figured that out."

"No, what I was planning was much more efficient. Harvest a couple of hundred egg cells from your ovaries, fertilize them with your own DNA, and raise myself a crop of baby blood donors."

She felt her blood run cold, and the earlier nausea returned full force. "I'm going to be sick."

"I'm not surprised." He took her arm and tugged her out of the room, into a hallway. Then he opened the door to a bathroom and stood aside.

Amber stumbled to the toilet, and fell to her knees as she rid herself of everything she'd eaten the day before.

She let her head hang low, reached up with a trembling hand to flush.

Stiles gripped her arm, helped her to her feet and turned her toward the sink. She rinsed her mouth, washed her hands. "So you're talking about… cloning me."

"Mmm."

She shook her head. "You can't. You can't possibly have the expertise to do something like that."

"No, but I can draft someone who'd be willing. Geneticists tend to be more interested in immortality than your average humans are. I'm sure one would accept it as payment in full for helping me out."

"But you haven't found one yet."

He shrugged. "I've narrowed it down. There are a handful of qualified scientists on my short list. But it's not the selection of a scientist that's holding things up at the moment, Amber."

"No?"

"No, no, not at all. It's your blood. There's something there that wasn't before, and it certainly puts a delay on any egg harvesting I might have had in mind. Of course, it could work to my benefit But I won't know for sure it's a perfect match for… oh, somewhere around nine months, I would guess."

Turning away from the sink very slowly, she stared at him. "What the hell are you talking about, Stiles?"

One eyebrow arched. The other eye had no brow, only pink scar tissue that puckered with the expression. "You really don't know?"

She rolled her eyes. "Stop playing games, will you? Either tell me or don't, I'm too dizzy and sick to stand here and play along."

"Oh, I'll tell you. What harm is there, after all? You'll find out on your own in due time. I ran all the usual tests on the blood I took from you, just be sure it hadn't altered or mutated—after all, it's been a while."

"And?"

"And something… quite surprising showed up."

"Food poisoning? Stomach cancer? What?"

He watched her eyes very closely as he replied, "A child. You're pregnant, Amber."

Amber closed her eyes very slowly as the shock washed over her but quickly got a grip on herself as she realized Frank Stiles was lying through his teeth. "Very funny," she said. "But I happen to know that's impossible."

"Now what makes you say that? You stole my journals when you left five years ago. You read the notes."

She shrugged.

"So you know you're perfectly fertile. That was one of the things I recorded there. Which means it's far from impossible. Unless you're trying to tell me you've never been with a man."

She spun away from him, heading into the hall. She thought maybe she should make a break for it then and there but chose restraint. She still didn't have what she'd come for, she thought And she was supposed to be suffering the chemical hangover of the tranquilizer, a side effect she remembered all too well. "I'm not discussing this. It's absurd."

He shot after her, gripping her arm before she got far and hustling her straight into the bedroom. "Is this some kind of immaculate conception, then?"

"Leave me alone." She paced away from him, sat on the bed.

"I can easily put you on the table in my lab and examine you. Or you can give me a straight answer. Are you a virgin or not?"

She lowered her head. More than anything she would like to avoid undergoing any more of this man's "examinations."

"No."

"Then you
have
slept with a man. Or men?"

She didn't reply.

"Did you use protection?" This time, when she failed to respond, he sighed. "Fine, I'll go and get the stun gun, if that's how you want to do this. I just hope it doesn't have some dramatic impact on the baby."

"There
is no
baby."

He rolled his eyes. "Five minutes. I'll be back in five minutes. Don't try anything." Then he slammed out of the room, locking the door behind him.

Amber sank onto the bed, holding her head in her hands as it spun with disbelief. Male vampires were infertile. Everyone knew that.

She looked up at the ceiling tiles, wondering if she should try now to get the hell out of here. But no. He would be back in five minutes, he said. She had to wait this out, give it some time, get the formula he used to make his Ambrosia-Six.

Stiles was playing head games with her. That was all.

His five minutes turned out to be closer to fifteen, and she was pacing, eager to get past his return and get on with things. She was starved to death—again. At least the nausea had gone, and the dizziness. She still felt tired, weak.

Stiles unlocked the door, opened it and entered. He held a yellow plastic bag with a drugstore chain's logo on it, then handed it to her.

Frowning, she took it and glanced inside.

A home pregnancy test kit. She pressed her lips tight, swallowed a lump of fear. He was really taking this ruse to the bitter end, wasn't he? What she couldn't figure out was what he had to gain by trying to make her believe she was pregnant.

"It was a vampire, wasn't it?" he asked.

She blinked up at him.

"You've only been with one person, and that person was a vampire. That's why you keep saying it's impossible. Tell me, was it my old friend Edgar?''

Clutching the bag in her fist, she muttered, "That's none of your business."

"I thought I glimpsed his mark on your throat before we stepped out into the sunlight this morning." He touched her chin, turning her head to look at her neck. "No sign of it now, of course."

She pressed her lips tight, and he took her arm again, tugged her into the hall, shoved her into the bathroom. "Take the test," he said. "Convince yourself, so we can get past that and move on."

She shook her head. "What makes you think I'd trust this kit? How do I know you haven't rigged it to make me believe this insane notion?''

He shrugged. "I just went to the drugstore on the corner and bought it. Receipt's still in the bag. Check it out for yourself." He pulled the door closed but didn't walk away. She knew he was standing out there, waiting.

She glanced at the tiny single bathroom window and thought she could probably squeeze through it. But not yet She didn't have what she'd come after yet. If she had to play along, take this stupid test, she would. But she wasn't leaving here without Willem's cure.

She took the boxed kit from the drugstore bag. It was shrink wrapped, and she checked it carefully for tears. There were none. When she took off the cellophane, she checked the box's seal. It was glued tight. She tore it open and found everything inside just as intact. Nothing seemed to have been tampered with. She even checked the store receipt, which included a date and time stamp.

Okay, okay. So it was
probably
the real thing.

Sighing, she read the instructions, made a face and followed them. Then she paced the bathroom, watching the second hand on her watch impatiently.

There was a tap on the door.

She opened it and faced Stiles. "Well?"

She looked at her wrist. "Thirty more seconds."

He pursed his lips and waited. The time ticked away slowly, dragging its feet.

Finally time was up. She picked up the indicator stick and looked at the symbol in its tiny green tinted window.

A plus sign.

Blinking in shock, she looked again. But it was clear, clear as day. A plus sign. She even double-checked the instruction sheet to be sure that meant what she already knew it meant. "It's not possible," she whispered.

Stiles took her arm, guiding her back to the bedroom. She moved in a daze, not believing, even now.

"It was Edgar, wasn't it?"

She said nothing.

"Amazing. Every vampire DPI ever tested was sterile—males from the time of the transformation, females within six months or so. Are you sure you haven't been with anyone else?"

She frowned up at him, hearing, but not processing his words.

"Of course you are," he said. "Otherwise you wouldn't be so stunned by this." He shook his head slowly as he silently mulled over the ramifications.

Amber lay down on the bed, letting her forearm rest over her eyes.

Sighing, Stiles left the room, but he returned a moment later with a hypodermic. As he touched the needle to her arm, she jerked away.

He sent her his trademark smile, half natural, half a twisted grimace of scarred skin. "Don't worry, it's a half dose. And I've got no reason to believe it will be harmful to the fetus."

"You have no reason to believe it won't be, either." Then she caught herself. "Not that there is any fetus to be worried about." She looked past him at the floor, saw the small black bag, realized that was where he'd taken the needle from. Or at least she hoped it was.

Its slender sharp tip pierced her skin. She braced herself, waiting for the rush of dizziness and inevitable sleep, but it didn't come. Not for real. She thanked whatever sorts of angels watched out for her kind, whatever the hell her kind was, and let her arm go limp and her eyes fall closed.

Hours and hours passed before Amber finally felt the soft, heavy energy of sleep pervading the house. She was still tired, and her mind was spinning with the possibility that she might be carrying a baby. She really couldn't give it any credence, not now. Stiles was clever, clever enough to have a ready-made test kit on hand, or to fake a drugstore receipt. He had some reason for wanting her to believe something she knew to be impossible. She couldn't imagine what it was, but he had a reason. Maybe he thought she would be less likely to engage him in violence, or perhaps he thought he could hold the safety of her unborn child over her like the Sword of Damocles, using it to force her to cooperate with him.

She wasn't buying it. She
couldn't
.

Even so, she found her hands pressing to her abdomen. She closed her eyes and opened her senses. Her throat tightened until she couldn't swallow, because she felt something. Something so faint, so fleeting, that she couldn't be sure it was real. Was she picking up the essence of a new life or the effects of the power of suggestion?

She grimaced, got to her feet and arranged the covers over the pillows, thinking it probably wouldn't fool Stiles for a minute. With any luck, it wouldn't have to. She needed to keep her focus on the mission. She'd come here to get the formula Stiles called Ambrosia-Six and take it back to Willem to save his life. Stiles and his attempts at distracting her must not be allowed to work.

She could not allow herself to believe this insanity. Not even for a minute. Because if it were true…

No!

No.

She stepped up onto the bed and, from it, onto the top of the slightly higher nightstand. From there she could reach the ceiling easily, and she pushed one of its panels upward. It wasn't easy—there was insulation backing the thing, and she had to tear it apart with her fingers before it would allow the panel to move freely. She moved the panel to one side, then peered up into the rectangle of darkness, in search of a stud. There was one on either side of the opening, just as she'd guessed there would be—the panel's framework had to be attached to something, after all. She thrust her hands up through the hole, jumped just a little, and caught hold of the two-by-fours that flanked the opening; then, carefully, she pulled herself up into the ceiling. She made sure to lower her feet, one and then the other, onto the beams, not the panels. She would break right through those panels, and then she would give away her presence. So she straddled them, getting to her hands and knees, crawling along the two-by-fours, which stood up on their edges, left hand and knee on one, right on another, sixteen inches away. The narrow surfaces made balance difficult, and crawling on them was less than pleasant. Painful, in fact, by the time she'd moved a distance she judged would put her outside the locked bedroom door. She could have broken the lock, she thought. But so long as Stiles believed she was weak, kept tame by his tranquilizer, his guard would remain down.

She paused, pawing aside insulation and lifting a ceiling panel so she could peer below her. She was over the hallway now. She thought about dropping down into the hall but knew his lab would likely have a locked door, just as her bedroom did. If he were true to form, it would have an alarm on it that would sound when it was opened. So she would just keep moving.

She crept farther, certain there would be two inch dents in her knees by the time she finished. She slid her hands along until a sliver drove itself into one palm, making her suck in a breath.

"Dammit," she whispered.

The sliver was embedded in the fleshy pad beneath her forefinger. She tried to bite it and pull it out, but it was in too deep. She would just have to suffer.

She got moving again.

The next room she peered down into was a bedroom. She saw Stiles, lying sound asleep in his oversized bed, a sheet covering his torso. A naked arm and leg were flung over the woman who lay beside him. Brookie. She lay still, not quite stiff, but not relaxed, either. She was asleep, but not deeply.

There was something about her…

Amber lowered the panel into place again and moved on. She located a living room, an empty bedroom and a kitchen, before she finally moved a panel aside and saw a pristine laboratory.

She felt like shouting. But instead, she only lowered herself as far as her arms would reach and then let go, dropping to the floor.

She brushed her hands against each other, took stock of the room.

Utterly white. The walls, the floor, the cupboards, the countertops. Aside from the silver knobs on the drawers and faucets on the sink, the place wasn't broken by any other color. A refrigerator stood on one side. A desk and computer on another. She went to the PC, turned it on, then searched for the most recently accessed files.

The one he'd viewed most recently was called "Hilary Garner Journals."

Frowning, Amber clicked on the icon. The document opened in a word processing program, and as she skimmed the first few lines, she knew it hadn't been written by Stiles.

I should have believed Tamara, years ago, when she told me what DPI was really all about. I should have believed her, but I didn't. And now that I've seen the truth for myself, it's too late. If I try to leave
—
when I try, for I must
—
they'll hunt me down and they will kill me. I know that. And yet it's not fear that keeps me from making the move. It's their latest experiment. The female captive is pregnant. They inseminated her with the sperm of one of the Chosen
—
a male mortal with the rare Belladonna Antigen. Not just any male. But the little boy Tamara worked with so long ago, when we were best friends and she was still among the living. Jameson Bryant. Precocious little Jamey
.

Amber blinked. My God, this was about her parents!

It was about
her
!

Tapping the down arrow impatiently, she read on.

Hilary Garner had sent a letter, in secret, to Tamara and Eric Marquand, telling them about the prisoner and her pregnancy, knowing they would get word to Jameson and he would do something. But in the meantime, she wrote about how quickly Angelica seemed to become aware of her pregnancy, even before any symptoms should have been apparent. She would sit in her cell, her hands embracing her lower abdomen, caressing, stroking the child there as if she could reach it…

…
and she would sing. God, the sound of her voice was like a choir of angels, I swear. I never heard anything so heart-wrenching, so sad or so full of love. I think part of the power of her voice is preternatural
—
she can sing like no human being ever could. But it's more than that. It's almost… magic. The other prisoners can hear her songs, all up and down the sublevels. And even the most violent, the most agitated, seem to relax at the sound of them. They stop pacing, lie back, close their eyes. It's the most amazing thing… and the guard dogs react, too. I've observed a few of them when her voice came floating on the air. The way their ears perk up and their tails wag. Some of them even begin to whimper, as if trying to sing along. I think they'd cut loose and do it, if they were less well trained
.