to age like a human. At least, she had the appearance of a normally aging eighteen-year-old, but she revivifies like an immortal.”
“And what else?”
She shrugged. “He took the usual samples. Blood, lots and lots of blood. Tissue, hair, bone marrow.”
“What did he do with them?”
She looked at him hard. “I don’t know. I thought he was trying to map her DNA, but he kept a lot of his work secret. Used to lock himself in a private lab for hours on end. One of the others who worked for him thought he had two sets of notes, one we could see and the other for his eyes only.” She shrugged. “I caught him once, injecting himself with something. But I never knew what it was.”
He pursed his lips. He suspected that Stiles had been trying to imbue himself with whatever it was that made the girl immortal—trying to steal her immortality, and whatever other powers she possessed, for himself. And it looked as if his suspicions were true. The bastard wanted to find a way to live forever without becoming a vampire, without being one of the Chosen, possessing the antigen. And maybe, Edge thought, he’d succeeded.
“In all the experiments, did Stiles ever find the girl’s weakness? Did he ever find out what would kill her?”
She closed her eyes. “Not to my knowledge, no. If he had, she wouldn’t have been alive to escape.”
It didn’t matter, Edge thought. He would. He would find Amber Lily Bryant, and when he did, he would find her vulnerability. Her poison. Her kryptonite. Because whatever it was, it would be the weapon he needed to kill Frank Stiles.
And for more than four decades, his one goal in life had been to kill Frank Stiles.
No half-breed vampiress was going to stand in his way. Not even the so-called Child of Promise.
He dropped the burned out butt of his cigarette onto the carpet, ground it under his heel as he got to his feet. “You’ve been very helpful, Kelsey.”
She closed her eyes, sitting very still. “And now you’re going to kill me, aren’t you?”
“Thanks, but I’ve already eaten.” He smiled at his own joke, but she didn’t seem to pick up on the humor. “You’re no threat to me, Kelsey Quinlan. You’ve told me what I need to know, and I doubt you’re stupid enough to try to warn Stiles, even if you knew where to find him, which you do not. I’ve been reading your thoughts all evening. So given all that, why do you think I would kill you now?”
“For my crimes against … your kind.”
He shook his head as he strode toward the door. “I don’t give a damn about my kind.”
Amber pulled her low-slung black Ferarri into the driveway of her parents’ palatial home—no matter where they lived, it was always palatial—at midnight. This one was a Georgian red-brick mansion in an isolated little inlet of Lake Ontario’s Irondoquoit Bay. It had come complete with secret passages and hidden escape routes and was one of their more recent acquisitions. The house on Lake Michigan had had to be sold five years ago. Secretly, Amber loved it here far more. Maybe because, for the first time, she’d begun declaring her independence.
“So what do you suppose this ‘family meeting’ is about?” Amber asked, glancing across the seat at Alicia. “Another reasoned attempt to get us to move back in with them?”
Alicia released her seat belt and opened her door. “So far they’ve kept their promise not to pressure us on that.”
“Yeah, in exchange for us staying within a twenty-mile radius.”
“After our little adventure in New York, Amber, we’re lucky they didn’t have us imprisoned in a convent somewhere.”
“God, it’s been five years already.” Amber opened her door, and they both got out. She closed the door and hit the lock button on her key ring. “What do you suppose the statute of limitations is on something like that, anyway?”
“For normal families, or ours?” Alicia asked. She shrugged, running a hand along the smooth shiny black fender of the Ferarri. “Still, I don’t suppose normal families buy such nice presents for their wayward daughters.” She wiggled her brows. “Though I still think you should have gone with the little red ‘vette. Then we could match.”
“That would just be too cute, ‘Leesh.” Amber rolled her eyes, flung back her hair and walked side by side with her sister—and she didn’t much care how official or unofficial it was, Alicia was her sister. It was an odd family, an odd, overprotective, obscenely wealthy family. The girls had two mothers, always had. One vampire, one mortal. And Amber’s father watched over and protected all of them—even though he looked young enough to be their brother.
Which was why she hadn’t told him about the dream that had been plaguing her for more than a year now. A dream that intrigued her—and terrified her, though she wasn’t sure why. Her dreams tended to be precognizant, and everyone knew it. So there was no reason to trouble the entire tribe until she’d figured out what this one meant.
Just who the hell was the blond-haired vampire with the fiery eyes that made every part of her being turn molten when they locked with hers? And what was in the ornately carved box he handed to her that made her heart turn to ice with dread? She could never remember. Never. But there was a cold certainty in her mind that what the box contained … was death. She didn’t understand what that meant. But she believed it. The tear in the vampire’s eye as he handed her the box was too real to be denied. Death. Whoever he was, he would bring her death.
Amber closed her eyes and focused her mind on her mother, ordering herself to lock the dream away and keep it entirely to herself. We’re here, Mom.
By the time the two were on the steps, Amber could hear the locks turning. The door was flung open, and Angelica, beautiful and forever young, was wrapping her arms around both of them. “Oh, I’m so glad you’re here. You just don’t know.”
Amber hugged her mother hard, then stepped away. “Mom, we’re here every weekend. How could you possibly miss us already?” And that was when she picked it up—the tense, sad vibe her mother couldn’t have hoped to hide from her. Worry. Grief, even. She felt her blood rush to her feet and searched her mother’s face. “God, what is it? Has something happened to Dad?”
“I’m fine, Amber,” Jameson said. He stepped into the foyer with Susan at his side and held out his arms. Amber went to hug him, while Alicia hugged her mother, then they switched places and repeated the heartfelt, if obligatory, embraces.
Wringing her hands, Angelica hurried into the living room, with the others following. Amber kept looking at her father, asking him silently what was going on. He told her without a word to be patient and to brace herself for tragedy.
Amber was on the verge of tears even before she made it to the living room and settled into an overstuffed chair. Alicia, though unable to read minds with the accuracy of a vampire, was adept at reading faces and at feeling emotions. She, too, had picked up on the grief in the air. She sat in a rocking chair, reached out to clasp Amber’s hand. Susan sat on the sofa, and Angelica sat beside her. Over the years, as Susan had aged like any normal woman, she’d taken on an almost motherly role with Angelica. She protected her, loved her, and kept one hand on her shoulder now.
Jameson remained standing, seeming to gather his words in his mind.
