Books by Maggie Shayne (162 page)

When we reached the top of the hill, I heard the vampire mutter under his breath. The bells had stopped now, but I no longer needed them. The tiny chapel sat alone amid the deep green pines. We’d come to it through the forest, but I saw the narrow, winding road that led to it from the town below. Its spire was nothing spectacular. Plain glass, rather than brilliantly stained panes filled its windows. A small red door stood at the front.

I sighed in relief, feeling as if I’d come home. And I climbed the steps. Jameson came along beside me, clinging to my hand, searching my face often. The door was unlocked as I’d known it would be.

The place was filled with yellow candlelight that danced and flickered on the hard wooden pews, and on the altar. A single worshiper sat there. A woman, who sat in the front pew, rocking the baby carriage she’d parked before her. And I recognized her. “Look,” I whispered to Jameson. “It’s her.” He nodded. “Yeah, the woman who had the car accident.”

“The one whose child you risked your life to save,” I said, and I squeezed his hand.

I moved on past. Jameson sat down in the front pew, and let me go forward on my own. And I did. I crossed myself and knelt before the wooden crucifix that stood alone on the altar, and in silence there, I prayed.

Jameson watched Angelica kneeling there. She seemed so serene, all of the sudden. And he knew this meant a lot to her, to make her peace with God. He sat beside the woman whose name he didn’t recall, and she looked up at him. Her eyes widened and then she smiled.

“You!” she whispered to him.

“Yes. Quite a coincidence, isn’t it? How is the little one?”

“Alicia is fine,” the woman whispered, but she was shaking her head.

Jameson frowned, sensing her turmoil. “Is something wrong?”

“No. No, not wrong. Just…so many odd happenings. Seeing you again is the least of them, I suppose.” She closed her eyes. “Two miracles, in such a short space of time. First you and that…that beautiful girl, saving my baby from the car. And then…”

He tilted his head. She rocked the baby carriage that sat in front of her gently. “And then?”

“And then…I don’t know, exactly. But I think I was visited by an angel.”

Lord, but why must religion make so many people so very crazy? he wondered.

“She was beautiful, too. A dark-skinned angel, with the kindest brown eyes I’d ever seen. All dressed in white, and sort of…sort of glowing.”

Jameson saw Angelica stiffen. But she didn’t turn around. Just knelt there, rigid, listening.

“And…what did this
angel
want?” he asked.

“It was incredible.” The woman shook her blond head. “She said I owed a debt. That my baby had been saved for me, and that now I must save someone else’s. She had a little girl in her arms. A newborn. And she just handed her to me, and said that I should keep her safe, until her mother came for her.”

A soft, wounded cry was wrung from Angelica. She stood up, turned slowly. And her eyes were so wide, and so hopeful that he thought he would probably wring this woman’s neck if she were making up stories.

“The angel said,” the woman went on, her words coming slowly now as she met and held Angelica’s eyes, “she said I’d know her when I saw her.” And then she smiled. “It’s you, isn’t it?”

But Angelica couldn’t seem to speak. Her lips parted, but no sound came out. Big fat tears filled her eyes and spilled over.

“Yes,” Jameson said. “If you’ve found a missing baby, she’s ours. Please…”

“Something told me to come here. Just come to church, and wait. And sure enough…” She shook her head again, getting up, bending over the carriage, and pulling the blankets away.

Jameson looked. Angelica didn’t. She stood rooted where she was, almost as if she were afraid to look. Afraid to see that her baby daughter wasn’t there.

The fat-cheeked, carrot-topped baby, Alicia, lay sound asleep in the carriage. And tucked close beside her, a tinier infant, with raven’s-wing curls, and wide ebony eyes that stared right up at him.

And his heart seemed to swell until he thought it would burst. He bent over that carriage, reaching his big hands down to gather up the fragile bundle. He gathered her close, very close, and he closed his eyes and held her to him.

“Amber Lily,” he breathed, because he couldn’t seem to speak any louder than that. His face was wet. And he opened his eyes again, and lifted his head, and saw Angelica standing there, blinking and dazed, her beautiful violet eyes fixed on the child. She drew a gulp of air, and blinked, and fell to the floor. Her legs seemed to melt into puddles beneath her.

Jameson moved closer to her, and knelt down. And then he very gently eased his daughter into her mother’s arms. Angelica’s entire body shook, and she was smiling and crying and trembling all at once. She bent to kiss the baby’s forehead, and a tiny hand clutched a handful of Angel’s hair, and tugged.

Angelica looked up at him from watery eyes. And he knew, right then, that he loved her. He loved her. And he loved the child they’d created together. And he always would. No matter what. And part of him, a very large part of him, wanted to bundle the two of them up in his arms, and run away to a secluded cabin somewhere, and just live there in ecstasy forever.

But there was another part of him that knew that was impossible. And not only because Angelica could never feel for him what he felt for her. But because there would be no peace, no happiness for her, or for her child, until DPI was annihilated.

No one else would do it, he thought, and as he looked at the woman he loved cradling his daughter in her arms, he knew why. No one else had as much reason.

He reached forward, stroked his hand slowly over Angelica’s tearstained cheek. “Wait here, Angel,” he told her. “I’ll go back into town and get the car, and then we’ll make our way out of here.”

“Yes.” She didn’t look at him as she spoke. Her eyes were only on her daughter, and so filled with love he thought he would die from the sheer beauty of it.

He bent to kiss his child, and then turned and hurried out of the chapel. He took only enough time to be sure no one was around, and that no one noticed him cutting through the woods that lay along the back of the town, angling down so he emerged on the hillside just beyond the vacant cabin where he’d left the car.

He hurried now. Got into the car, and backed down the long driveway, cutting around into the narrow road, shifting into drive. He didn’t speed through town. That would be asking for notice.

Although, now that he was back, he didn’t see the official-looking cars and vans lining the streets as he had before. And there were no men in dark suits or trench coats knocking on doors or questioning passersby, either.

What the hell was going on? They couldn’t have given up, could they? Not so soon…

A tiny shiver of apprehension raced up his spine as he turned the car easily onto the well-worn dirt road that would take him back to the chapel on the hillside.

And that was when heard Angelica screaming.

It wasn’t with his ears that he heard her cries. It was in his mind. And it wasn’t the telepathy coming into play. She wasn’t speaking to him directly or deliberately. But she was horribly afraid…or in pain. Or both.

And then her cries stopped and Jameson heard nothing at all. He pushed the accelerator to the floor, his wheels churning up clouds of dust as he sped over the narrow road. He took hairpin curves far too fast, nearly fishtailing out of control and jerking hard on the steering wheel to right himself again. But he never slowed down, and he never lost the horrible, gut-wrenching feeling that he shouldn’t have left them. Angel and Amber. He shouldn’t have left them even for a minute.

The sky glowed up ahead. Black smoke billowed up into the clouds like the breath of the devil. He careened around a corner and skidded to a stop in front of the church, but it wasn’t a church any longer. It was a nightmare. The tiny building was nearly burned to the ground already. Nothing identifiable remained. It was just a misshapen mass of fire and smoke, a heap of flaming rubble.

He wrenched his door open and got out, running forward, shielding his face with a bent arm when he felt his flesh start to blister.

“Come back,” a voice cried, barely audible over the roar of the flames. “You’re too close.”

His mind was numb, his body chilled to the core, despite the heat. He turned and saw the blond woman, cradling her child in her arms and sobbing, stretching one hand out toward him. And he went to her, shaking his head, demanding answers.

“Angelica! My daughter, where are they!”

But the woman only sobbed and shook her head.

He stopped when he stood right in front of her. “What the hell happened here, woman! Tell me, dammit!”

“I don’t know,” she said, her words broken and weak. “I’d just left, when the place…it was like a bomb went off inside! God, it was terrible. Terrible!”

No. No, his mind whispered. “Angelica and the baby were still inside?” Turning, he started toward the burning ruin once more, but her hand gripped his arm, stopping him.

“They never had a chance, God bless them. I’m so sorry.”

“No!” He stared at the fire, the pile of debris, and he knew that if they had been inside when the explosion had happened, they were dead now. Both of them. Dead. Burning-hot tears blinded him. He clenched his fists. “No,” he yelled again, and then he tipped back his head and howled in anguish and grief and helpless fury. And his preternatural voice rose into the night like a cry to the heavens, and its power reverberated through the skies and the forest, causing the towering pines to tremble.

They heard an odd cry that night in the town of Petersville. One so loud and anguished that it rolled like thunder, and echoed endlessly as it faded away. It was a blood-chilling kind of a sound. The kind of thing that could break a heart and give a man goose bumps all at the same time. Some said it was the cry of a wounded beast of some kind, though none speculated too loudly on what sort of beast could make a sound like that one. But most were of the opinion that they’d heard the voice of the devil himself.

My daughter was beautiful. And healthy.

And mortal.

I wasn’t so overwhelmed that I didn’t understand what it meant when the woman, Susan her name was, told me how good Amber Lily had been about sleeping the night through. And about her healthy appetite. She’d been feeding my daughter the same formula she fed to her own. And she claimed Amber Lily had gained two pounds already, and that her hair was getting curlier all the time.

She was mortal. She was growing and changing like a mortal child would do. I didn’t know what vampiric traits she might have inherited from me, if any. But I was so relieved to know she needn’t feed the way her parents must, and that she would not be trapped for eternity inside the body of a newborn. And those things alone gave me hope.

Things were going to be all right. Finally, at long last, everything was going to be fine. I couldn’t wait for Jameson to come back so that I could tell him.

Susan, the woman I knew I’d never be able to repay, said she had to get her own child back home now, and gave me her good wishes.

“Thank you,” I said to her. “It’s not enough, but—”

“There’s no need,” she said, and she looked deeply into my eyes. “We’re even now.”

I nodded, and I know my smile was bright as I held Amber Lily in my arms, and she squirmed and kicked.

I watched Susan and Alicia go. It was only as the door closed behind them that I felt the presence. And I whirled, to see several men coming into the tiny chapel, invading its sanctity, from a rear entrance.

“Don’t move,” one said, and he held a rifle. “Don’t even wiggle. My sights are on the baby, and if you so much as twitch I’ll blow her right in half. We’re through playing games with you, lady.”

I didn’t move. I couldn’t, because I knew he wasn’t lying. He’d kill my child without a second thought. The pig!

The others closed in around me, and then one jabbed me with a needle and I felt myself weakening. It was only when a third took my daughter from my arms that I panicked. But I needn’t. Jameson would come, he would come for us!

They half dragged, half carried me out the back door as the drug quickly did its work, turning my body into a disobedient mass of limp flesh. Hurry, Jameson, I thought. He would come, and he would know what had happened. He would know we’d been taken. He would know where to look for us.

They tossed me into the back seat of a car, and then one of them turned and glanced down at his watch. He stood there, waiting, and I frowned.

And then the chapel exploded in a white-hot blast that shook the ground beneath the car. I cried out, horrified, wondering if Susan and little Alicia had gotten far enough away to be safe before it had happened. And then the man smiled and got behind the wheel, and I knew. I knew what they intended. For Jameson to believe we were dead, killed in that chapel. So he’d never look any further for us. And as long as they kept me drugged, I thought, slipping closer and closer to that horrible black sleep this drug would induce, I’d be unable to tell him any differently. Two men were in the front of the car, and two others came around to get into the back, with me. One of them was holding my daughter.

Barely able to move, I nonetheless managed to push one of my shoes off my heel until it dangled on my toe. As the man bent to get into the car, I let the shoe fall to the ground. And then he shut the door, and the car pulled away. I kept my gaze on my baby’s wide ebony eyes, until I couldn’t do so any longer.

He sat there on the ground, and eventually the woman left. And other mortals showed up. A shiny red fire truck with local men manning hoses that soaked the blazing wreckage and turned it to a pile of smoldering blackened beams and charred ground and piles of ash. He sat there, never moving. And he wouldn’t, he wouldn’t move, not ever again. He’d sit there until the sun rose, and he’d greet it with gratitude.

He’d lost them. Lost them both. And dammit, he’d barely had a chance to know his child!

But he’d known Angelica. Known her laughter, the light in her violet eyes. He’d known her touch. He’d loved her. Dammit, he’d loved her with everything in him, and he’d never even told her.

How could she be gone so suddenly? Torn from him without warning. How?

And why for the love of Christ?

“Son, why don’t you let the medics have a look at you?”

“His wife and baby were in that church,” said another strange voice. “So someone said, anyway.”

“Merciful heavens, no wonder he looks like that!”

“Think he can hear us?”

“No. I’m afraid the man’s gone plumb out of his mind.”

“Son, come on. Get up, now.”

He didn’t speak, but he did rise. He didn’t want to be bothered by the well-meaning mortals. He wanted to go away and be alone and remember her while he awaited the dawn. His feet scuffed the ground as he wandered away from all of them, heading around the wreckage that used to be the chapel, circling it like a planet circling the sun. It was as if some force pulled at him, and kept him from leaving this orbit. His heart…his heart was in that mess of rubble. His soul. His child…

Or…
was she
?

DPI had called Amber their most valuable research subject ever. Would they really have destroyed her?

“No…”

He tripped over something, and he glanced down at it, irritated. “Oh, Jesus,” he whispered, because the pain that came then was almost more than he could bear. “Oh sweet Jesus, it’s Angelica’s shoe.” He dropped to his knees, and scooped it up as carefully as if he were handling a fragile treasure, and then he hugged it to his chest, and let the tears come. His back bowed with them, and he choked on powerful sobs that nearly split him in half. Because he knew that while DPI might balk at murdering Amber Lily, they wouldn’t have hesitated to kill her mother. Angelica. And he didn’t think he could go on without her—and yet he had to find a way. For their baby.

When he grew too weak to remain sitting up, he fell, facedown on the dusty road, and his bitter tears wet the tire tracks in the dust, and he couldn’t breathe, and he didn’t care.

It came to him slowly. Very slowly. But when it did, it was enough to stir him out of the well of mindless agony. Enough to make him reach, one last time, for cognizance, and perhaps… perhaps hope. He pushed himself into a sitting position again with one hand, and stared at the shoe in his other. It wasn’t burned. Wasn’t even singed. Or torn or damaged.

He turned his head, and saw that there was a hell of a lot of distance between the wet, smoke-belching remains of the church and this spot. And as he examined the ground here, he saw no other debris. Nothing else was thrown this far in the explosion. And the tire tracks…

This was the area in back of the chapel. And, yes, the small dirt driveway circled around behind the building, but all the townsfolk had stopped out front. None had driven back here.

Jameson got to his feet, and scanned the ground, walking slowly toward the church. And sure as all hell, he found footprints. Men’s shoes. Several men. And the uneven marks between them that suggested something being dragged. Or someone.

“She’s alive,” he whispered. He held the shoe tight in one hand, and fell to his knees right where he stood. He bowed his head, closed his eyes. “She’s alive…she has to be. Thank God,” he whispered.

Jameson stood alone just outside the fenced-in perimeter of DPI headquarters in White Plains. Angelica was inside. He knew it as well as he knew his own name. And things were ready. He’d met with the others just north of the city, and explained all that had happened. Tamara had contacted Susan Jennings, and offered her more money than she’d ever seen in her life to come back with them, and care for Amber by day. No one had explained why it was necessary. She hadn’t asked. Jameson trusted her.

He’d had his short, precious time with his sweet, wonderful daughter. And now it was over. He’d get no more time with her. But he’d save her from these bastards. And then he’d make sure she never had to worry about this damnable persecution from them again. He’d bring this place to ruin…tonight. He’d make the world safe for her. And he would very likely die in the process, but not until he’d accomplished what he’d come here to do. And it would be well worth the sacrifice. He’d see to it that Angel and Amber had the life they deserved. And to hell with the consequences. They were worth this, worth anything to him.

He leaped the fence, and started forward. He’d do this, because it needed doing. And he’d do it alone.

And then he stopped, because someone had hit the ground beside him. “Not alone!” a voice called, and Jameson turned in surprise. Eric stood at his side. He smiled and winked. “Not by a long shot, my friend.”

And even before he finished speaking, others came forward, stepping out of the shadows one by one, to stand beside him. Tamara was there, and Roland and Rhiannon. Even Rhiannon’s cat had joined them. And there were others. One in particular. A man who seemed as though he must be a king.

He was taller than anyone there, and darker, too, with huge, haunting eyes and a voice like thunder. “I am Damien,” he said extending a hand to Jameson. And Jameson blinked in shock as he took it. This was the oldest…the first, of all of them. “And I’m grateful to you for stirring us to action.”

“But I didn’t…” he began.

“No. No, your Angelica did. But on your behalf.”

Jameson turned toward the building that held her, dumbfounded.

“Seems she finally mastered those psychic skills,” Rhiannon said softly. “And though weakened and drugged, she managed to call out to us. She knew you would come, Jameson. And she begged us not to let you do this on your own. She said she’d rather die here than to know you’d given your life attempting to save her.”

“She told us what you intended to do tonight, shamed us, really, for not being here to back you up,” Damien added. “So here we are.” He nodded to the people who surrounded him, vampires, all of them. “My bride, Shannon. Former DPI agent Ramsey Bachman and his wife, Cuyler Jade. And every other vampire who was within range of Angelica’s rousing mental wake-up call.” He put a hand on Jameson’s shoulder. “We’re in this together,” he said. “Your Amber Lily is not just your child, Jameson. She is our child, our miracle, the first of a new generation, be she mortal or otherwise. And she is going to be the most cherished being we’ve ever had the privilege to love.”

“You’ll need help caring for her,” the pixielike woman named Cuyler Jade said softly. “It will be difficult, sleeping by day. But there is a place, far to the north, where darkness lasts so very much longer than light for part of the year. And I want you to take your child there, so that she, and not the sun, can decide when you should sleep.”

“Yes,” the man beside her said. “And we should establish another home in the southern reaches, for the other part of the year.”

“We’ll all help you,” the pixie said.

Eric nodded. “For now, we have a warm, safe haven waiting, and Susan, your mortal friend, is there, ready to care for Amber through the daylight hours.”

Jameson nodded, seeing now that this thing was possible. That everything would be taken care of for Angel and the baby. “You might end up taking them there yourself, Eric. I have no intention of leaving this place until all that remains is rubble.”

“That’s understood,” Eric told him, and he glanced sideways at Damien.

Damien nodded. “It needs doing. We all know it, and we’re here to see that it’s done.”

Jameson looked up and down the length of the mesh fence, blinking in wonder. There were hundreds, perhaps a thousand of them. And before his eyes, they began linking arms, all the way around the building. A chain of the living dead, moving slowly forward, intent on reclaiming their right to exist.

Jameson focused his mind on Angelica’s as he began to move along with them. And a hand closed around his left one, and another around his right. As one living wall of justice, they closed in on the heart of their persecutors.

I did not know whether my pleas had been heard by any others. But I knew Jameson was coming. I sensed it with everything in me. My efforts at contacting others, begging them to help him tonight, combined with the effects of the drug, left me weak, and barely conscious. I’d hoped to have enough strength left to contact Jameson…to tell him the enormity of what I now realized I felt for him, just in case it was the last chance I had. But I had no power left in me. I was conscious, barely conscious. But I was alert enough to know that night was nearly over. Dawn would come within the hour. Jameson might well be overwhelmed by the sun before the DPI forces could murder him. The odds against his success were staggering. And yet I prayed, with everything in me, that God would protect him, and protect my daughter. For I loved them both with every cell in my body.

They hadn’t had us here for very long at all. Amber and I had been sealed in a cell in one of the lower levels, while guards stood outside our impenetrable door, awaiting their leader’s arrival, and his orders. I wondered what those orders would be. How they attempt to kill me this time, and what would become of my precious little girl?

They’d left me unchained, apparently confident that I was too groggy to cause them any trouble. I sat on the floor in the corner and hugged her close, and I sang to her as I had done in those lonely months before her birth. And she smiled. She smiled at me as I sang.

It was not pretty, but Jameson had known it wouldn’t be. It was war, and needed to be treated as such. These people were intent on murdering his own. As soon as they were sighted, guards emerged, armed guards firing weapons filled with conventional bullets for the most part, though a few managed to get their hands on the dreaded tranquilizer guns as well. But they really didn’t stand a chance against so many.

They were immortal. They could move faster than the human eye could see, becoming blurs of shapeless color in motion. They could leap out of the paths of the bullets fired at them, and with a single swipe of a single preternatural hand, render the shooter unconscious. Or worse.

And Damien…

Jameson paused only once to witness in stunned awe the sheer power of the oldest of all immortals. The way he would focus those intent eyes on something until it burst into flames. The way he could whirl until he vanished in the night.