Embrace the Twilight (13 page)

Sarafina gathered her things, ready to find a rear exit and slip away. But she realized that he wasn't looking for her. No, his attention was riveted on the girls who'd entered just before him. And in a moment he bumped into them as they tried to leave, making every effort to make the collision appear accidental.

What was he up to?

I know you're here, vampire. I need your help!

The words rang clearly in Sarafina's mind, the message sent by one accustomed to communicating mentally. She knew, instinctively, it came from the girl with the hair that looked as if it had been rinsed in blood to achieve its deep burgundy highlights.

Smiling slowly, Sarafina relaxed in her seat. Well, now, this night might prove amusing after all.
Why should I help you, little girl?

She watched the child's face as she opened her mind to receive her answer—assuming, of course, the child was talented enough to have received her reply.

This man is following me. I think he might be DPI.

Sarafina frowned. How would this child know about the DPI? True, the organization itself was no more. But there were survivors, rogue agents who sought to carry on its work. She knew that only too well. But Willem? Never.

What would they want with you?

She felt the girl struggle with her decision, wondering how much to tell, how much to trust this stranger. Sarafina still didn't know what to make of the creature, what she was. She probed and sought, but the child had guards around her thoughts. And then, quite suddenly, the blocks fell away. As if the girl had let her guard down deliberately to allow Sarafina to read her.

Fina caught her breath. My God, this child was the one she'd come to believe was only a legend. Half vampire, half human. A result of the DPI's experiments long ago, and the only one of her kind in existence.

Go outside, child. If he follows you, I'll follow him. And I promise you'll have no more need to worry about his intentions.

She felt the girl's confirmation, saw her grab her mortal friend's hand and the two went out the door.

Sarafina watched Willem, her heart wrenching painfully. Could he be working with the vampire hunters? If so, did that mean he had been working with them all along? He didn't follow the girls. Instead he limped to the bar, ordered a drink and waited for it to arrive. Sarafina relaxed. God, but she did not want to believe this man could be evil or mean to do harm to her kind. More than that, she didn't want to believe everything he had been to her had been a lie—some kind of mental trick implanted in her mind by those bastards.

Will received the drink, tipped it to his lips and swallowed it whole. Then he got to his feet and went out the door.

Sarafina's disappointment weighed heavy on her heart. But she knew what had to be done.

She crossed the room easily and exited the bar behind him.

 

Will followed the two girls from a distance. He wasn't overly worried about losing them at this point. He'd dropped the pen into Amber's little handbag when he'd bumped into them so he could track them now if he needed to. Still, he preferred to keep them in sight. If they got too far ahead, something might happen faster than Will could catch up to prevent it.

A fact that ticked him off, because for just a second, back in that club, he'd been sure he was going to turn around and see Sarafina. He hadn't seen her. Hadn't heard her voice, exactly. It was more like a feeling. He sensed her. And now he wondered if it had been wishful thinking on his part, or if, had he searched that club, he would have found her sitting in a corner somewhere, writing in that velvet-covered book of hers.

It didn't matter. He didn't have time to find out, not now. The girls were in sight, just a few yards ahead of him, walking rapidly toward the hotel, visible now two blocks ahead and across the street.

Amber glanced back over her shoulder, but very quickly. Almost as if she knew he was following and didn't want him to know she knew it.

What the hell was up with that?

A touch, featherlight, whispered across his nape, and a voice said, “What's your hurry, Willem?”

He jumped, because for the life of him he hadn't heard her approach. And he was too well trained not to. But then he reminded himself what Sarafina was and decided all his training was probably worthless. God, it was good to hear that voice. It sent warm, fluid pleasure seeping into his limbs.

He stopped walking, turned but only halfway, keeping the girls in his line of vision. “I
thought
I felt you in that club.”

Her brows rose, and she smiled. “Did you?” she asked. “Then why did you leave?”

His gaze shifted in the direction of the girls, who were a block ahead now. “I assumed you didn't want me bothering you,” he told her. “I went back to that other bar…several times. But you never showed. My guess was you just didn't want me to find you.”

“You've found me now.”

“Unfortunately now is…not a real good time.” The girls were crossing the street. Soon they would be safely inside the hotel, inside their room. And he would be inside his. Alone.

“I've been thinking about you,” she told him, stepping a little closer, sliding a hand up his chest. “I wanted to see you again.”

He couldn't take her to his room, he told himself. She would see the damn equipment, or hear it, or—

Oh, God, look at those eyes, he thought, when his got trapped in them. Dark and so full of need. Hunger. He couldn't look away. And then he didn't want to. He dropped his cane to the sidewalk, slid his arms around her waist and pulled her against him. And then he kissed her. And it was as if a dam broke. He hadn't been with a woman since before his capture. He'd doubted himself, felt less than a man because of the injuries. But when her mouth parted and her body pressed against his, he forgot all his doubts.

By the time he could stop himself from feeding at her mouth and lift his head for a breath, his heart was hammering, and he was so hard it was painful. But he couldn't—dammit, not tonight. The girls…

“My knees are shaking,” she whispered. “Just hold me. Hold me, Willem.”

He pulled her close, and she nestled her head on his shoulder, in the crook of his neck. He threaded his fingers in her hair and massaged her there. “I can't do this tonight, Sarafina. God, you don't know how bad I want to, but, I—”

“Shhhhhh.”
She pressed a finger to his lips. “Don't worry. Let Sarafina take care of everything.” When she spoke, her moist lips moved against the skin of his neck, and it made him so hot he thought he was going to go into meltdown.

And then he felt her teeth. There was no warning. She just opened her mouth and bit down, hard, stabbing deep into his throat. He jerked and tried to pull away, and he was strong, despite his leg, but she held on. Biting down harder, and sucking, and the pain jolted through him, and then it sizzled and changed into pleasure. Her mouth. Her tongue. Her teeth embedded deep in his flesh. God, it was good. She was drinking him, and he was loving it, whispering to her to take him, take all of him, to drink her fill.

And then he was fading, falling. He didn't feel the sidewalk when he landed. He didn't feel any pain, or heat or cold, or much of anything at all except this haze of pleasure.

A car pulled up beside the curb. A man got out, and dragged him into the back seat. Sarafina got in beside him, and the other man climbed behind the wheel, and then the car was moving.

Sarafina stroked his face, his hair. “I couldn't drain you. No, not you—even though…” She sighed, started over. “I need to know everything you've been up to, Willem. And you'll tell me, won't you, precious?” She drew her hand to her lips, pierced her palm with an incisor, and then pressed it flat against his mouth.

Blood, her blood, welled and touched his lips, his tongue. A jolt of heat and an orgasmic shudder ripped through his entire body, and he grabbed for that hand, held it to him, lapped at the tiny amount of fluid, shivering in pleasure with every taste.

Then she drew her hand away. “Yes,” she whispered. “You'll tell me all about it. This connection between us. How you found me. And why you were following those two girls. Won't you, my precious one?”

He thought, at that moment, he would probably do anything she wanted. And he wondered why she had twin rivers of tears flowing down her cheeks. Then he closed his eyes and knew nothing for a while.

“O
hmygodohmygodohmygod, did you see that?”

Amber tried to tug Alicia away from the tall windows in the hotel lobby, but the second she let go, Alicia was back again, peering across the street. Amber grabbed her again, jerked her away and held on this time.

“I think she killed him. My God, I think she killed him,” Alicia said. There were tears standing in her eyes.

Amber's throat went dry. She moved nearer the window, peered outside. “No, she didn't kill him. She took him with her. If she'd killed him, she'd have just left him there, right?”

“I don't know.”

“She would. She would have just left him.” She didn't really believe it herself. She'd never seen a vampire kill someone before. It shook her. “Sarafina,” she said softly.

“What?”

“The woman's name was Sarafina. She never said, but I picked it up clearly. We should probably remember it. She might be…trouble.”

“She saved us,” Alicia said. “But, Amber, why would she take him alive? What could she want with him?”

“I don't know.” Amber tried to shrug off the heavy sense of guilt that was weighing on her. “I don't care. Why should I? He was following us, Alicia. He couldn't possibly have been up to anything good.”

“How can you be so sure?”

Amber pursed her lips. “Fine, you want to be sure, we'll make sure.” Again she took Alicia's hand, tugging her firmly toward the elevators. “Come on.”

Alicia came. She kept craning her neck to look back, but the limo was long gone, Amber knew. She wouldn't see a thing. They took the elevator up to their floor, got out and went not to their own room, but to the one next door. Amber didn't even hesitate, just twisted the knob and pushed with her shoulder until the lock gave.

“Jesus, you're going to get us thrown out,” Alicia whispered.

Amber dragged her inside, closing the door behind them. Then she let go and began going through the man's things. There wasn't much. A handful of clothes in the dresser. A little calculator. Some shaving stuff and a hairbrush. Some pills in a brown plastic prescription bottle.

She noticed the two boxes on the bedside stand—one of which had headphones attached. “See?” she asked, pointing.

Alicia looked at it, shook her head.

“It's some kind of spy crap. He probably has our room bugged.” Amber yanked up the headphones and snapped them over her ears, then turned on a switch.

Then she froze as a tinny male voice came through the device.

“So where the hell are the girls? Shouldn't they have been up here by now?”

“Amber, I don't know—” Alicia began, but Amber held up a hand to silence her. Alicia's eyes widened, and she came closer. “What? What is it?” she whispered.

Amber held one of the earpieces away from her head, and Alicia leaned in and listened.

“The boss said he saw them come through the lobby. They'll be here any second. Will you just be patient?”

“I'm gettin' sick and tired of waiting.”

“What the hell is our option? Go back to headquarters without them?”

“I was thinking more of popping 'em in the head on sight, tossin' their carcasses into the trunk and taking 'em somewhere to wait and see which one wakes up.”

“Shit, we don't know for sure that either one of them would.”

“Not even the half-breed?”

“No way to tell. That's why Stiles wants her. We let her get past us again, he'll have our heads.”

“You're not shitting. I was with Stiles the first time he got his hands on the 'breed. I was a rookie. It was only a couple of weeks old.”

“Yeah? What did it look like then? I mean, you know, was it…gross?”

Amber and Alicia locked eyes.

“Nah. Looked like a regular baby. You'd never know it wasn't human.”

“Half-human, I thought.”

“Not the way Stiles sees it.”

Amber tugged the earphones off her head, set them quietly on the bedside stand. “That guy Sarafina took—he must be one of them,” she said to Alicia.

“We have to get out of here, Amber.”

Amber set her jaw. “Do you know what those assholes did to my mother?” she whispered. Some of the things on the man's bedside stand started vibrating, and the pictures on the walls shook slightly. “I'm gonna kill 'em, Leesh. I'm gonna kill those two, and then I'm gonna go find the other one and finish him off, if that vampiress hasn't already done it.”

Alicia grabbed her arm and said just one word. But she said it with so much fear in her voice that it got Amber's attention, made her stop up the rage that was building inside her.

“Please?”

Amber paused, closed her eyes, got herself under control. The room stopped shaking.

“Amber, they're not talking about just you. They're talking about both of us. And I can't fight them, you know that. If they get the best of you, I'm history. Please, don't do this. Let's just get out of here and find somewhere safe to hide out and call your parents to come and get us. Okay? Please?”

Amber closed her eyes, lowered her head. For the first time in her life, she felt capable of murder. She remembered the things her father had told her—how she'd been born in captivity, how those men had left her mother locked in a concrete box to die once they had the baby they wanted.

“Oh, they were so tough then, weren't they?” she muttered. “Let them come and get me if they think they can. I'm not a helpless little baby anymore, Leesh.”

“I know. I know you're not.”

“Stiles. That was the name one of them used. Remember it. I'm gonna get them. I swear to God—”

“But not tonight. Not now. Please, Amber, can we just get the hell out of here?”

Amber looked at her friend. She was crying, twin streams streaking her cheeks. “Okay. Okay, come on. Let's go.”

She took her hand, pulled her toward the door.

“They have someone watching outside. Someone who told them when we came in.”

Amber bit her lip. “Yeah. Tell you what, we'll find a back way out of here, okay?”

“Okay.”

As they went, Amber pulled out her cell phone. Then she shoved it back into her backpack. The men had been in her hotel room; they'd bugged it. They might easily have bugged her phone, as well. She would have to find a neutral one from which to call home. She walked as quickly, as quietly, as she could, keeping her mind open, hoping she would pick up on any danger signs before it was too late.

Silently the two crept past their own hotel room door, where men waited in ambush, past the elevator, to the stair door. Once through it, they ran.

 

Sarafina had Willem Stone taken to the finest room in her house. Then she sat beside him and waited for him to wake.

She should have simply killed him. She knew that, but, God help her, she couldn't bring herself to do it. She had very little contact with her own kind, especially since her beloved Dante had abandoned her. But even
she
knew of the legend of Amber Lily Bryant. And she, more than most perhaps, knew that the DPI hadn't been completely destroyed all those years ago, when the vampires had revolted and burned its headquarters to the ground.

Stiles had survived. He'd been steadily building his network of vampire hunters ever since. It had been more than a decade, thirteen years, perhaps—a mere blip in the life of a vampire as old as she—since he and his skeleton crew of thugs had tried to murder Dante. She'd gotten the best of them then, and they'd been hunting her ever since.

And now they were onto Amber Lily, the only child of her kind.

Sarafina was not soft. But she wasn't about to allow Stiles or his thugs to get their hands on the girl. And yet, somehow, some idiotic fool deep inside her had trouble believing that Willem, who lay swathed in satin bedding, was working for them. With them.

He might be, though. It would explain so much. They had obviously devised some method for getting inside her head. They had tricked her into coming to New York by planting those conversations, that feeling of closeness to Willem, in her mind, knowing she would come here hoping to find him. She had likely been the main target all along. That Amber Lily and her pale, trembling mortal friend had shown up here must have been an added bonus. And no doubt they hoped to capture both their trophies in one fell swoop.

She smiled slowly, watching him as he stirred awake. “You don't have a clue who you're dealing with, mortal. You stand no chance against me.”

He opened his eyes, blinked at her.

And she weakened again. God, when he looked at her…

She should have killed him. But she couldn't. Instead she had made him her devoted, mindless servant. When he woke now, his only desire would be to please her. She hated that she had been forced to do it to him. But it was too late to take it back now. He'd had enough of her blood that he stood no chance.

And it was a better alternative than death.

He parted his lips to speak her name in a voice coarse and weak. “Sarafina…?”

“Yes, my pet?” She leaned closer, studying him, waiting for his plea. He would beg to serve her any time now.

“What…what the hell did you do to me?”

She narrowed her eyes on him. “I drank from you,” she told him softly, trailing her fingernails over his cheek. “And then I gave you the honor of tasting my power. And you loved it. Now you crave only more.”

He pressed one hand to his forehead, closed his eyes tight. “I'm so goddamn weak.”

“That will pass. Though not entirely. Not until I'm certain of your loyalty, at least.”

He lowered his hand slowly, and looked at the room around him, then at her. “Shit. I have to go.” He sat up in the bed.

Sarafina frowned, placing a hand on his chest, pushing him back down onto the pillows. “You'll go only when I say so. And I haven't finished with you yet.”

“Well you'd better
get
finished, Fina, because I've got a job to do.” He moved her hand off him, not gently. Not with the loving, devoted touch of a drone, but with a hint of anger and impatience. Then he sat up again, swinging his legs to the floor.

“Yes, you must be in a great hurry,” she said, getting to her feet. She stood in front of him as he lowered his head to his hands, as if getting upright too quickly had left him dizzy. “You wouldn't want those two girls to get away from you, now would you?”

His head came up slowly. “I…don't know what you're talking about.”

“You know exactly what I'm talking about, Willem Stone. The girls, the ones you've been following. I know what you're up to. You cannot hope to outwit me, Willem, nor to outfight me. So I suggest you relax back on the bed so that I'm not forced to kill you and be done with it.”

He surged to his feet. “Listen, Sarafina, I don't know what the hell you think this is, but—”

She hit him—just once—with the back of her fist, and his head snapped back and his body left the floor. He landed hard, faceup on the bed.

“Misty! Edward! To me!”

The door was flung open almost immediately, and her two faithful servants appeared at her side, flanking her, their eyes flashing protectively.

“Bind him. Quickly.”

They sprang into action at her command, falling on Will, gripping his arms. He shook them off, sending them tumbling to the floor in either direction. Then he sprinted unevenly for the door.

Sarafina got to it first, moving in a blur of speed, locking it tight, then standing in front of it.

Will grabbed her shoulders and tried to move her aside. “Jesus, Fina, what the hell are you
doing?
Have you lost your freaking mind?”

“You will
not
defy me!” She hit him again, with her full force this time. His body flew across the room, slamming into the wall, cracking the wood. Then he slumped to the floor, unconscious.

She glanced at her two servants, who were getting to their feet. “Go. Bring chains. I want him restrained before he comes around again.”

They scurried away to obey, and Sarafina went to stand over the powerful mortal. “You're named aptly,” she said. “Will of Stone. It will hurt me to do it, but I have no choice now that I know the truth—that it's all been a lie. I will break you.”

His eyes opened, mere slits in his face, shooting fire. His lips moved to form the single word. No sound emerged, but she heard it all the same.

“Never.”

 

Amber held Alicia's hand as they ran down the endless flights of stairs. Forty-six of them. And then still more. She didn't dare emerge anywhere near the lobby, where there might still be someone watching. So they kept going, down another flight, to the underground garage.