Embrace the Darkness (Darkness Series) (20 page)

She nodded, glancing from Megan to Gerard and back again. “I—”

Words failed her. Gerard sensed her insecurity. He gave her hand a gentle squeeze.

“It’s a lot to take in,” Megan agreed.

“And that’s not the worst of it.” Vincent moved across the room and sat opposite his wife. “Detective Buckley is a dhampir.”

Megan’s eyes widened. “How’s that possible?”

“That’s what we came here to find out,” Gerard said. Amber didn’t respond.

Muscles as taut as a bowstring, she sat upright on the edge of the sofa, her eyes darting about the room as if searching for an avenue of escape. Gerard ached for her, knowing she’d rather be anywhere else.

He sighed. At least he wasn’t the only one who brought out her survival instincts. Was her fear and mistrust a normal human response to learning vampires were real? Or the ingrained instincts of a dhampir?

Vincent leaned forward, examining her with dark, hypnotic eyes. He stared, trying to get past her defenses. He swayed in the chair, a frown tugging the corners of his mouth downward.

“She’s a hard nut to crack, isn’t she?” Gerard smiled. Amber was tough, even when afraid.

“Don’t call me a nut.” She turned to glare at Vincent. “And stay out of my head.”

Megan admonished her husband’s behavior and then turned to Amber. “I apologize for my husband’s rudeness. He doesn’t mean to be intrusive.”

“The hell I don’t,” he snapped, his eyes turning predatory. “She’s a dhampir—a potential threat.”

“I’m not the one screwing around in other people’s heads.” Amber’s eyes glittered with a light Gerard had never seen before. At least not in the eyes of a mortal.

She’s coming into her power, and she doesn’t even know it.

“She’s no threat, Vincent,” he said, trying to remain calm. Vincent hadn’t trusted Amber when he thought she was nothing more than a detective. He damn sure wasn’t going to trust her now.

Vincent’s eyes turned red. His fangs descended. “She’s a dhampir. A vampire hunter. I know the legends.”

“She’s just looking for answers, Vin. And, she didn’t hunt you down.” At least not intentionally.

Vincent glared but retracted his fangs. He looked at Amber. “Is that true? Did you come here to solve your murders? Or have you decided to rid the world of vampires?”

Amber slowly came to her feet, her hand automatically reaching for her Glock. She glanced briefly at Megan’s frightened face and dropped her hand to her side. Gerard forced himself to relax. Forced himself to trust her. A dhampir.

“My murders?” she said between clenched teeth. “A vampire killed two of your employees. Doesn’t that bother you, Maxwell? Or do you already know who’s working with Dr. Weldon? Who are you protecting?”

“No one.” He sagged back against the chair cushion. “Even if a vampire is involved, I blame Dr. Weldon. He hasn’t given up on his efforts to create the perfect soldier for Colonel Timmons.”

Eyes fixed on Vincent, Amber said, “Colonel Timmons is dead. Sonia killed him.”

Gerard sucked air between his teeth. How long had she known? And why hadn’t she told him?

Disappointment set his pulse to pounding. He looked at Amber. She turned to face him but didn’t meet his gaze. Her eyes focused on the collar of his shirt.

She gave an awkward half shrug. “Weldon kept in contact with Timmons through letters, but Weldon used an intermediary to mail them. Before killing Timmons, Sonia peeked inside his head to see if she could locate Weldon, but he’d covered his tracks. Instead of contacting Timmons directly, he used a junkie to mail the letters. She has no idea where Weldon is, but you’re right. He is still experimenting.”

Mon Dieu.
It was true. He’d known it in his heart, but Sonia had proof—proof she’d kept to herself. Was she planning to go after Weldon alone? Or did she no longer care what Weldon did?

Vincent may not have read his thoughts, but he could read his expression. He lowered his chin, shaking his head. “Sonia was supposed to monitor Timmons’ mail and visitors. She should have let us know if Weldon contacted him. We didn’t know about Gerard’s clone or the colonel. Sonia never said a word.”

“Clone?” Amber’s voice hitched. Gerard jerked, his gaze snapping up to meet hers.

Rising slowly to his feet, he moved toward her. She tensed but didn’t retreat. He felt her confusion. “Amber—”

“Oh my God.” Her face paled.

His heart clenched. “What?”

“The thing that attacked me.” She sucked in a shuddering breath. “It was you.”

Chapter 13

Gerard’s eyes shone with fear. “It wasn’t me. It was my clone.”

The tortured words resonated with true emotion, but suspicion rode Amber’s back like a monkey she couldn’t shake. “You said Weldon hadn’t perfected cloning.”

“He hadn’t,” Gerard said with a sigh that tore at her defenses. “Not while I was his prisoner. But he had my DNA, and apparently, he’s had time to perfect the process.”

Megan stood, drawing Amber’s attention away from Gerard.

“It only takes one cell to replicate DNA,” Megan said, moving closer. “And vampire DNA reproduces quickly. So quickly, Weldon could have perfected the cloning process
and generated a fully grown vampire in a matter of months.”

Feeling like a cornered animal, Amber took a step back, keeping the open door in her line of sight. She was surrounded by vampires and the wife of a vampire. Could she trust them? Her heart said yes. Her mind said she was crazy to even consider it. Vampires survived on blood—human blood. And they had the power to manipulate minds. Any mortal associated with vampires shouldn’t be trusted.

She all but growled her frustration. “Then how can I be sure which Gerard is real and which is a clone?” She turned to face him. “How can I be sure you’re you and not a clone?”

“Trust your instincts,” he said, making no effort to manipulate her thoughts. “You know I’d never hurt you.”

“In my heart, I know,” she said, trusting without a doubt it was true. “But as soon as you mentioned clones, I remembered something about the vampire who attacked me. When he initially grabbed me, I thought he was you.”

Once the creature flashed his fangs, she’d forgotten her initial impression. Gerard would never hurt her. But had the creature looked like him? She studied Gerard’s face.

Short, light brown hair lightly salted with gray at the temples, swept back from a broad forehead. Expressive, deep-set blue eyes set a fraction too close over a wide nose and square jaw. The minor imperfection didn’t detract from his masculine good looks. She even liked his slightly dimpled chin.

Had the vampire who attacked looked anything like him?

Briefly closing her eyes, she tried to picture the other vampire. He was the same height and build as Gerard, but she’d been unable to see his face. Light had shone from behind, casting it in shadows. But when he grabbed her, she’d gotten a whiff of his skin seconds before he flashed his fangs.

Her eyes sprang open. “He smelled like you.”

It didn’t register at the time. She’d been too afraid to pay attention to her other senses. But she was paying attention now.

Confusion colored Gerard’s expression. “You initially thought it was me because we wear the same cologne?”

“He wasn’t wearing cologne. It was his skin. It smelled like yours.”

“But I wear cologne. How could you possibly recognize the odor of my skin? Unless you think I stink.” He raised his arms and sniffed his armpits in a dramatic display that made Amber smile despite the tension filling the room.

She leaned toward him, inhaling deeply. Oak, leather, patchouli, and something more elemental. Something earthy and sensual. Her muscles clenched. “You smell fine.”

How could she explain her ability to distinguish one man’s scent from another’s?

She’d always had an acute sense of smell. Andrew used to say she had the nose of a bloodhound. It had come in handy on more than one occasion in the field.

“It’s your skin,” she clarified when Gerard continued to stare as if she were a freak of nature. “Beneath the smell of your cologne, is your unique scent. That—thing—had the same smell.” A memory stirred. She frowned. “Only—different.”

“Amber,” Megan said, “most mortals don’t have that keen a sense of smell.”

She shifted uneasily. “That doesn’t prove anything.”

“It proves you have heightened senses. Like a dhampir,” Vincent said, his voice smug and yet somehow dangerous.

She ignored his challenging tone and spoke to Gerard. “Having a sensitive nose isn’t proof beyond a reasonable doubt.” Was anything reasonable where vampires were concerned? Certainly not her growing affection for Gerard.

“You
are
a dhampir, Amber. You have vampire-like abilities—like heightened senses.” He stepped closer. His eyes were soft. Compassionate. His words, cautious. “You’ve always had better instincts than most mortals. But you didn’t start coming into your power until you were exposed to vampires.”

“Why?” She didn’t want this. She wanted to be normal.

Since when is it normal to be attacked by vampires?

She closed her eyes, struggling to suppress memoires of her mother and Andrew—wanting to forget again and return to a time before Richard Baxter’s autopsy report triggered new nightmares and distorted images from the past.

“Blood calls to blood,” Gerard said.

“Your blood recognized that part of you which is vampire,” Megan added.

Amber opened her eyes again, fisting her hands at her sides. “How can I be half-vampire if vampires can’t reproduce? It doesn’t make sense.” And she needed it to. She needed proof—or evidence that suggested a semi-believable hypothesis. Something logical. Rational.

Gerard and Vincent turned to Megan, as seemingly anxious as Amber for an explanation.

Megan wrinkled her brow, a frown pulling the corners of her mouth downward. “I’ve run extensive tests on Vincent and a few on Gerard, and they both have azoospermia.”

Azoo what
? It sounded like a zoology term. Something caged monkeys got. “Not that I have a clue what that is, but what does it have to do with a vampire’s ability to reproduce?”

“Azoospermia is the absence of sperm in the ejaculate,” Megan said, as if the answer was obvious. “But as I was testing them, I realized—”

Amber held up both hands, palms outward. “I don’t need the details.” Or the visual—vampires peering at girlie magazines as they aimed into a small plastic cup.

“It would have been easier getting a specimen if I’d known you at the time,” Gerard said.

She rolled her eyes. “That is so not funny.”

But a shiver of awareness tickled her insides, reminding her of what it was like to have Gerard’s mouth on hers.

A blowtorch couldn’t have warmed her cheeks more than the visual inside her head.

Avoiding his knowing gaze, she turned to Megan. “So, how do you know it’s not just these two who’re sterile?”

“Because I
had
a child as a mortal,” Vincent said in an irritable tone as if losing patience with a two-year-old. “And I can’t have them now.”

“Well, you are pretty damned old. And there could be a million reasons you became sterile—including the fact that you died more than a century ago.” His sperm had probably shriveled into dust long before she was even born.

“Please.” Megan held her hands up between them as if playing referee between two bickering children.

Amber flushed, feeling properly chastised. Vincent’s face looked a little pink too.

“I can only guess at an explanation,” Megan continued. “Theoretically, it would be possible for a newly converted vampire to impregnate a woman if the circumstance were right.”

“What circumstance?” Amber asked. “And why must the vampire parent be male? Why not a female vampire and a mortal male?”

Not that she thought her mother had been a vampire either. If she had been, she wouldn’t have died—not permanently at least.

An aching knot rose in her throat. She swallowed, pushing the pain down into that deep dark place that tore at her soul.

“Females are born with all the eggs they’re ever going to have—mature eggs that die with the body,” Megan said. “But a man produces ten to thirty million new sperm a month—sperm that don’t mature all at once. So, even though sperm production ceases at death, the remaining sperm
could
continue to mature once a man turns vampire. And if that newly converted vampire had sex before the body reabsorbed the sperm, it might be possible for him to impregnate a woman. The odds are against it, but—”

“The odds are against vampires too,” Amber said with a snort. “They still exist. But my father isn’t one. So, how do you explain me?”

Megan flushed, averting her gaze. “Nicolas is a vampire. Could he have—um—raped your mother?”

A sharp denial spawned by fear sprang to her lips. “No.” Reason returned, calming her nerves. She lowered her voice. “My mother didn’t fit the profile of a rape victim.”

“There’s always glamour,” Vincent said, for once sounding sympathetic rather than challenging. “Your mother may not have known what happened. Or remembered.” He lowered his gaze, but not before Amber saw the shame in his eyes. “Blood lust often triggers sexual aggression in vampires.”

“But as far as we know, Amber’s mother was never bitten,” Gerard argued. “And rape isn’t about sex. It’s about power and control. That kind of aggression would have triggered violent blood lust. If he’d bitten her, he’d most likely have killed her.”

Gerard was right. Rape wasn’t about sex, and her mother hadn’t died that night. But Nicolas could have seduced her.

Tears clogged her throat. She swallowed against the pain. “He took advantage of her and then erased her memory.”

Had Nicolas lusted after her mother when he was mortal and then used glamour to entice her into his bed once he became vampire? It was the most logical explanation.

Logical? There wasn’t anything logical about the existence of vampires.