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“And yet … not. You know?”
“No. No, I don’t.”
“Ask her what she felt when he was touching her,” the scarred man barked.
She didn’t like his voice, and she didn’t like him speaking as if she wasn’t even in the room. And she wanted to go home. To her cozy one-story house with the flower boxes in the windows and the neat sidewalk that was all bordered in flawless flower beds, just like the house itself. Her house was sunny and yellow and orderly and neat, and above everything else, it was safe.
Safe. Like the big maple tree at her grandpa’s house, when she used to go there as a child and play tag with her neighbors. The giant tree was always safe. She’d convinced herself that her home was the same way. Off-limits. No one could get to her there. No pain, no violence. Home was her haven.
“When the stranger put his hands on you, what did you feel?” asked the woman with the Stevie Nicks voice and Cruella de Vil hair—Lillian, Lucy remembered.
“I was terrified. I’d just been shot. At least … I thought I had. I was covered in blood, and it hurt, it really did. But I guess I must have … hallucinated it, or maybe I hurt myself when I fell down.”
“What did you feel physically?” the woman went on. “When the stranger put his hands on you?”
“Oh, that. Well … his hands felt … warm. And then hot. And it seemed like there was a light sort of … coming from them. And it filled every part of me. And for just a second, I thought I might be dying, and that he was an angel.”
“An angel,” the man said, nearly spitting the words.
“That’s an interesting thing to say.”
Lucy sighed. “I really want to go home now. I’m all right, aren’t I? I mean, I wasn’t shot after all, right?”
“Well, there are certainly no bullet holes in you now,” the woman said, sounding cheerful. And then she got up and joined the man, then spoke in a very, very soft whisper, “The pentothal is wearing off. Is there anything else you want, before …?”
“Ask her about her blood type. We tested her, came back positive for the antigen. I want to know if she knew.”
Why, Lucy wondered, did they think she couldn’t hear them?
But Lillian was returning to her bedside now. Lucy heard the woman’s footsteps on the floor tiles. Smelled the soap she used, too.
“Lucy, do you know if there’s anything … unusual about your blood type?”
“Yes, there is. It’s … very rare. Only a few people have it. It makes me bleed easily. And it’s hard to find a donor to match me, which is why I donate regularly and have my own supply in storage. But that’s at Binghamton General—and I keep some at Lourdes, too. That’s another reason why I was so afraid when I saw all that blood all over me.” She paused, opening her eyes now. “If it wasn’t my blood, whose was it?”
“We don’t know. Can you tell me any more about your blood ty—”
“But how can you not know? If someone else was shot on that sidewalk, how could you not—”
“Lucy, I’d like you to take a breath and calm yourself.” The woman put a soothing hand on Lucy’s forehead. “A lot of people were shot at that studio last night. Inside and outside. It was chaos. And I wasn’t there. I’m sure someone knows the answers to your questions, but it’s not me.”
Lucy sighed. “I want to go home.” She sat up in the bed and looked around the white room while waves of dizziness washed over her brain. “Where are my things?”
“Lucy, about your blood type,” Lillian said. “Is there anything else you can tell me about the Belladonna Antigen?”
Lucy blinked and met the woman’s eyes. Her head was beginning to feel clearer. “How do you know? I never told you what it’s called.”
“We want to know what you know about it.”
“What kind of a medical question is that?” Lucy narrowed her eyes, suddenly suspicious of this woman, who she’d assumed was a doctor or a shrink—or maybe a grief counselor, sent in to help her process what had happened.
“You want to know if I’m aware that I’m going to die young? I am. There’s no treatment, and there’s no cure. People with this antigen usually die in their thirties. And I’m in mine now, but so far I feel fine. No symptoms.”
“And what would those symptoms be?”
“You tell me, you’re the doctor.” Lucy watched the woman’s face and knew, just knew. “Or if you’re not, then I’d like to know who you are.”
“I am a doctor. And I work for the government,” Lillian said. “And I think we’re all through with your questioning now. You can relax. I’ll be back in a moment.”
“I don’t want to relax,” Lucy said. “I haven’t done anything wrong. I’ve told you everything I know.” She was suddenly terrified, and while she thought she might benefit by demanding her rights or a lawyer, she decided to wait until those things were truly necessary. She didn’t like conflict or confrontation, but she liked the unknown even less. And she had no idea who these people were or where she was being held. And it was feeling more and more as if she was … being held. She’d assumed she was in a hospital, but she wasn’t so sure anymore.
The woman crossed the room to where the scar-faced man waited near the door, and then they stepped through it, leaving her all alone.
Lucy got up and went to the door—the windowless door—as well. And as she did, a feeling of fear rippled up her spine, because she had a pretty good idea of what she was going to find when she got there.
She closed her hand around the doorknob and twisted, her heart in her throat—and then it sank to her feet when the knob didn’t budge an inch.
Locked.
She was being held by people who had drugged her and questioned her. And might even have shot her.
But then her hands rose to her chest, and she pulled the fabric away from her skin and looked down her neckline. The necklace she’d found inside the crazy author’s book was still hanging there, Kwan Yin looking serene and gentle. But there was no sign of any wound in her chest. Not a mark.
And yet she remembered it all so vividly. She’d felt that bullet tear through her.
God, she wondered, how could that be?
But she knew how. It was that man. That angel.
He’d healed her.
She closed her eyes and whispered a prayer to him right then and there. “If you really are my guardian angel, please, come find me again. Save me again. I need to get out of this place. I want to go home.”
4
“Well? Where is she?” Rhiannon demanded.
James tipped his head to one side and met the eyes of the most powerful vampire he had ever known. Also the most beautiful. And the most dangerous. Rhiannon stood beneath a crystal chandelier in the foyer of the Long Island mansion that was her summer home, or one of them. She wore her usual choice of attire, a floor-length gown, with a slit up to her hip on one side and a neckline that plunged to her navel. Black satin that was almost as shiny as her endless raven hair, or the black panther, her beloved pet, that rubbed against her legs as she spoke.
“Good to see you, too, Rhiannon,” he said. “It’s been a while.” He glanced at the cat. “Hello, Pandora.”
Rhiannon made a dismissive sound like a set of air brakes releasing a brief spurt of excess pressure. “You walked away from us, J.W. Not the other way around. Don’t expect a warm welcome when you finally deign to honor us with your presence.”
“Rhiannon, he’s—” Brigit began.
“Where is the professor?” the arrogant one asked again, and this time her tone brooked no argument. No discussion.
“She got away,” Brigit said softly.
“She got away?”
“She was taken, actually.” Brigit lowered neither her head nor her eyes. She held the regal Rhiannon’s gaze firmly and strongly, and for just a moment James was amazed and impressed by his sister’s moxie. She’d grown up just as tough as everyone had known she would. And even though she’d been Rhiannon’s favorite, he hadn’t expected her to be able to stand up to, much less hold her own against, the most feared vampiress of them all. He could do so, always had. But that was because he didn’t particularly care whether or not he gained her elusive approval.
“Taken by whom?” Rhiannon asked, taking a step nearer, so the two women stood nearly nose-to-nose on the imported Italian marble floor. Black with swirls of silver. Pandora tensed, her sharp cat’s eyes watching every move, as her tail twitched.
“DPI,” Brigit said, not backing down a single inch. “Or that’s my best guess. There’s more going on here, Aunt Rhiannon. A lot more.”
“Such as?”
Leaning still closer, looking as if she was either going to kiss Rhiannon on the mouth or bite her nose off, Brigit said, her tone dangerously soft, “Why don’t you back up out of my face and I’ll tell you?”
Rhiannon’s eyes narrowed. “You’re treading on dangerous ground, Brigit.”
“Just like you taught me to do.”
Rhiannon’s scowl lasted a few more seemingly endless ticks of the clock. Pandora flattened her ears and a deep, soft growl emanated from her chest. And then, finally, Rhiannon rolled her eyes and paced away, almost gliding, despite the four-inch stiletto heels she wore. “Fine. Talk. Take your time about it, too. It’s not as if our entire race is at stake, after all.”
“Drama queen,” Brigit muttered.
Rhiannon whirled. “Excuse me?”
They stared at each other across the room for a long moment, and James tensed, wondering if the great Rhiannon, formerly known as Rianikki, the daughter of an Egyptian Pharaoh who never let anyone forget her rank, was going to try to annihilate his twin sister. He was about to step between the two women when Rhiannon smiled. It was a slow, gradual smile, but a smile nonetheless.
“You are extremely fortunate that I love you as I do, firecracker.”
“And I know it,” Brigit replied. But her own face and voice softened, as well. “All right, come sit. Here’s the deal.” Moving to the nearby sofa, the two sat down, and Brigit began recapping everything that had happened. Relaxing, the large cat curled up at Rhiannon’s feet and closed her eyes lazily.
James ignored them, for the most part. He hadn’t been home in a very long time, and while this was not his parents’ place, he had spent a large portion of his childhood here. “Aunt” Rhiannon had insisted on having a hand in raising him and Brigit. And he’d always been secretly glad of that, too, because while he, already adored by all, hadn’t needed the extra attention, his sister had thrived on it.
After all, to everyone else, she was the bad twin. Oh, no one ever said it that way. Not out loud. But she’d been born with the power of destruction, and she’d spent her entire life having to listen to her parents and every other role model in her life telling her that her power was bad. That it was dangerous and must be controlled, contained, kept on a tight leash. While he had been born with the power to heal, with everyone always oohing and ahhing over it, telling him how special he was, how someday he would do great things with his powers. How he was meant for something very special.
No one had ever blatantly compared the twins, called him the good one and her the bad one. But it was still the impression they’d both received from the adults in their lives. And it was an impression that ran deep. It had filled him with a perhaps unwarranted sense of pride and of goodness that had eventually led him to leave his people in search of meaning. While it had, he sensed, left his sister with a feeling of unworthiness. Or would have, if it hadn’t been for Rhiannon.
She alone praised Brigit’s ability as something special, something worthy, something good. She was constantly telling Brigit how there could be no creation without destruction. How goddesses of death were also goddesses of rebirth. How sacred her power was, how holy. And how James’s talent meant nothing without Brigit’s to balance it.
He’d never really believed any of that. He’d figured Aunt Rhi was probably just trying to make Brigit feel better, feel worthy. And he loved her for it. He’d never liked thinking that his sister’s feelings were hurt just because he was born with the gift of healing, even restoring life, and all she got was the ability to blow things up.
“Did the healing take?”
It was a beat before James realized the two-thousand-year-old vampiress was addressing him. “Yeah. I think so.”
“You think so?” she asked.
“I can’t be sure. They took her away before I had the chance to—”
Rhiannon was glaring at him, her full lips as thin as they could get, arms slowly crossing over her chest, forcing her breasts together.
He looked away, sighed. “Yes. It took.”
“Are you sure?”
He thought back, relived it all in his mind, and then got stuck in remembering those eyes. Those doe-brown eyes, and the fear and confusion in them when they’d opened up and stared so deeply into his.
I know you.
What the hell was up with that?
“J.W….” Rhiannon prompted.
“Yes.” He knew the light and the heat flowing from his hands had peaked, then just begun to ebb when he’d been forced away from her. “I’m sure. The professor was fine.”
“Was being the operative word,” Brigit said. “We can’t be sure of anything now that those bastards have her.”
“You’re sure it wasn’t an ordinary team of paramedics?” Rhiannon asked.
“Men in black were giving the orders. We both saw it.” Brigit glanced at James, who nodded in confirmation. “We’re going to have to plan and execute a rescue,” she said.
“What could the DPI want with her?” James asked, trying to force his focus to stay on the matter at hand.
Rhiannon leaned forward to stroke her panther. “They must know about the prophecy, and that it applies to us. Our race. The descendants of Utanapishtim. The tablet says our race will be no more. And believe me, nothing would make the DPI happier than that. They see us as a threat. They’ve been hoping to get the green light to wipe us out for as long as they’ve known of our existence.”
“Why haven’t they gotten it?” James asked.
Rhiannon leaned back on the sofa, which was as ostentatious as everything else in her homes. Red velvet, with gold braid and fringe. “There are a few leaders wise enough to know that war with our kind might not be easily won. By keeping our existence secret, they’ve managed to maintain a tense but fragile, and entirely unspoken, truce. Now, though …” She lowered her head with a sigh.
James had never seen Rhiannon this worried before, and it got his attention. He moved to the sofa and sat down beside her. “Now?” he prompted.
She lifted her head, looked him right in the eyes. “Now, thanks to Lester Folsom and his book, the entire world knows we exist.”
“The book was pulled.” Frowning, James shot a look at Brigit. “Isn’t that what Will Waters was saying in the intro? That the government had banned it, called a halt to the release, confiscated every copy before it ever hit the bookstores?”
“Yeah, J.W., but you’ve gotta know when the author of a banned book is taken out on national TV, the public will start turning over every rock to find out what the book had to say,” Brigit said.
“And I have no doubt there are copies somewhere. And there are certainly people who know what was in those pages. His publisher, for one,” Rhiannon added.
“No doubt the DPI has already absconded with every computer that ever came within reach of the manuscript,” she went on. “But that won’t stop word from spreading. No, this cat is thoroughly out of the proverbial bag.”
“We need to know what’s in that book,” James said softly.
Rhiannon nodded. “I agree. But we also need to keep our focus here. Our main goal has to be to prevent the foretold annihilation of our race. And to do that, we need to understand the parts of that clay tablet that were incomplete, the missing pieces. And the other clay tablet in our possession, the one we’ve kept for centuries, never quite sure why.”
“I’d forgotten about that. Legend has it that clay tablet will one day save our race,” James said, recalling the tales told to him over and over throughout his childhood. The legends of his race, how they began, and the story of the tablet that must be protected. “Where is it?”
“Damien has it,” Rhiannon said. “I’ll get it from him. The prophecy suggests that all of this so-called Armageddon is heavily dependent upon the involvement of two things.”
“Yeah,” Brigit muttered. “Us.”
“And him,” Rhiannon said.
