Present Day

There was no way the woman could have known he was waiting in her apartment when she walked in that night. She couldn't hear him, because he made no sound. She couldn't detect his body heat, because he didn't emit any. He had all the advantages. He could see her just as well in the dark as he could have in full light. Maybe better. He could hear every sound she made, right down to the steady beat of her heart and the rush of blood through her veins. He could smell her. Strawberry shampoo, baby powder scented deodorant, aging nail polish, a hint of perfume, even the fabric softener scent that lingered on her clothes.

She stepped into the dark apartment, closed the door behind her and turned the locks, all without reaching for a light switch. She leaned back against the door and heeled off her shoes, shrugged the heavy looking handbag from her shoulder, along with her coat, and draped them both over a hook on the tree near the door. Still no light switch.

She sighed and padded across the carpet, sank onto the sofa, let her head fall backward. She worked as a nurse at an elementary school in rural Pennsylvania, spent her days wiping bloody noses and checking heads for nits. A far cry from her former career.

He waited until she'd closed her hand unerringly on the remote control and aimed it at the television before he spoke. "Don't turn that on."

The remote dropped to the floor, and she shot to her feet with a broken cry, her hands pressing to her chest as she searched the darkness with wide, frightened eyes.

"No need to be afraid," he said, stepping from the darker shadows near the door into the slightly lighter ones that surrounded her. She could see him now, just barely. A black silhouette in the darkness. To help her out, he shook a cigarette from his pack, put it to his lips, fired it up. He watched her fear deepen as the flame briefly lit his face. He took a long pull and released the smoke while she stood there with her heart pounding like a rabbit's. "I didn't come here to hurt you. I will, of course, if you make me. I'd probably enjoy it. But ultimately, it's up to you."

"Wh-who are you? What do you want?"

He rolled his eyes at the utter predictability of the questions. "Sit down. Relax. I only want to talk to you." He held out the pack. "You want a smoke?"

"N-no." She sat down, just barely perching on the very edge of the sofa, shaking from head to toe. "B-but... "

"But what? Go on, ask. The worst I can do is say no. What do you want?"

"Could you t-t-turn on a light?"

"No." He smiled, amused by his own little joke. "See? That wasn't so bad, was it?"

She let her head fall forward, catching her face in her palms. Crying now. God, he hated crying women. He reached out for a handful of the blond hair on the very top of her head, tugged her head upward. It didn't cause her any pain, but she whimpered anyway. "Come on, now. I'm going to need your full attention for this."

She sniffled, wiped her eyes, squinted through the darkness at him. If she could see him at all, he supposed she could probably see his hair. He didn't really care. He'd only refused to turn on the lights because she wanted them on. He needed her uncomfortable, afraid and off balance.

"So here's the thing," he said. "I've been hunting for this man for...oh, more than forty years now. And during the course of my search, I found that he had a connection to you. A recent one, in the scheme of things. So here I am."

"What man?" Her voice was only a whisper now.

"Frank Stiles." He saw the way she jerked in reaction, then tried to hide it.

"Why is it you're looking for this... Stiles?"

He didn't have to answer. But he answered anyway. "He's a vampire hunter. I'm a vampire, you see. Thought it might be fun. Turn the tables, hunter becomes the hunted and all that."

"Oh God, oh God... "

"I understand you worked for Stiles five years ago or thereabouts." He took another drag, blew a few smoke rings. "That true?"

"No. I... I never heard of him."

He moved his hand too fast for her to follow it, gripped her throat and squeezed. He kept the pressure light, just enough to cut off the air supply and reduce the blood flowing to her brain, enough to make her panic. Not enough to crush her larynx. She would be no good to him dead. He lifted her right off the sofa by her throat, while taking another drag from his smoke with the other hand. Then he let her go. She fell sideways onto the sofa, and her hands shot to her throat as she gasped for breath.

"You're going to tell me what I want to know before this night ends. It really doesn't matter to me how much pain you want to withstand before you talk. As I said, I'll probably enjoy it more if you make me hurt you. It's all the same to me." He sat down on the easy chair near the sofa, smoking and giving her time to catch her breath.

"Your name is Kelsey Quinlan," he said at length. "You are a Registered Nurse. You work at Remsen Elementary. Is all of this correct?"

Dragging herself upright again, still pressing a hand to her throat, she nodded.

"And five years ago, you worked for Frank W. Stiles as a research assistant. Is that correct?"

"Yes. I did. B-but-"

"Shhh. Just answer my questions. I'm not here to punish you for your crimes, whatever they may be."

She lifted her head, swallowed hard. It hurt when she did. He felt it. "He's the one you want to punish, isn't he? What are you going to do with him when you find him? Kill him?"

"Oh, I've already killed him. A couple of times, actually. Oddly, the man keeps recovering."

The hand that had been rubbing at her throat went still, and the woman's face paled in the darkness. "That's... not possible."

"That's what I thought. But I killed him really well the second time. Honestly. He was very, very dead. And then... well, then he just wasn't." He shrugged. "So what I need to know from you is just what kind of research he was doing when you worked for him?"

Her eyes shot wider. He smelled her fear.

"I'm not going to punish you, Kelsey. I already told you that." Again he shrugged. "Unless you're into that kind of thing, in which case-" As he said it, he reached for her.

"I didn't do anything to the girl! It wasn't me. It was all Stiles. I swear it."

He didn't touch her, lowering his hands slowly now that he had her talking. The taps were turned, the pump primed. The information would flow now. "What girl would that be?"

She blinked slowly. "The captive he held five years ago. The half-breed vampire."

He nodded slowly. This was in keeping with what the soldier-for-hire who'd worked on Stiles's security force had told him-after a lot of persuasion.

"Did this... half-breed have a name? Or did you just assign her a number?"

"She called herself Amber Lily Bryant. In the files she was Subject X-l."

Amber Lily. The Child of Promise. Then she did exist. He'd heard stories, of course. What vampire hadn't? But he'd pretty much dismissed them as legends. And the soldier he'd questioned had been ill-informed about what went on inside the old house in Connecticut where Stiles had conducted his "research." Still, he needed to test his witness, to make sure.

"This girl-she was a half-breed vampire, you say?"

The woman nodded.

"I think you're lying. There's no such thing. You're making up tales to distract me from my purpose here. Everyone knows vampires are infertile."

"Only the males. The females seem to ovulate for the first few months after being transformed. I thought-I thought you already knew. I thought all of you knew about all this."

Her eyes were adjusting to the darkness now, he thought. She was staring at him as if she could see his face. "Why don't you pretend I don't and fill me in?"

Nodding rapidly, she seemed to search her mind. "There was a mortal, one of the Chosen. You know about them-the only humans who can become vampires. They all have the same rare Belladonna antigen in their blood."

"And they all tend to die young if they aren't transformed. I know all that, go on."

She nodded. "Well this mortal, a male, was mated with a newly transformed vampiress, and X-l was the resulting offspring."

He pursed his lips. "This was a DPI experiment, I take it?"

She nodded. "Yes. It all took place before the Division of Paranormal Investigations was dismantled. Stiles worked for them then. I believe he was directly involved with the experiment. But a group of vampires attacked the research facility-"

"Research facility." He snorted. "Extermination camp, you mean."

"The parents escaped with the child." She lowered her head. "That's all the background I was given on her."

He nodded slowly. "So even though DPI was never restored as a functioning government agency, Frank Stiles continued the work on his own. And part of that work included hunting and capturing this half-breed child who'd escaped them years before?"

"Apparently so. But she was hardly a child by then."

"No?"

She shook her head. "Eighteen when he held her in Connecticut." Her eyes shifted, downward and then left.

"I did my best to protect her while he kept her. And she was still alive when the vampires came and broke her out." She met his gaze again and maybe saw the doubt in it. "They didn't kill me when they came for her, surely that should tell you something."

"As a rule, my kind tend to get squeamish about coldblooded murder-even when it's deserved. That they left you alive tells me nothing other than that they had weak stomachs." He shrugged. "I'm something of an exception to that rule, myself."

She sat very still, holding her breath.

"Stiles held the girl for how long?"

"I... don't remember exactly. A few days. No more."

"And he performed experiments on her?"

She lowered her head. "Yes."

"Details, Kelsey. I need details." He reached for her chin, tipped her head up so she faced him. "And I'll know if you're lying. I know you were lying about trying to protect her. You were as cruel to her as any of them. Fortunately for you, I don't give a damn about that. My interest is in Stiles. So tell me-and tell me everything."

The woman licked her lips, and he knew she believed him. She should.

"He wanted to know what kinds of powers she had. Whether she was immortal or not. What could kill her. That kind of thing. He kept her drugged, though, so she wasn't aware of most of the experiments. She probably didn't feel a thing."

"Really." His belly knotted just a little. "And what kinds of things didn't she feel, Kelsey?"

She drew a breath, had the decency to look ashamed. Her voice a bare whisper, she said, "Electric shock, enough to stop her heart, just to see if it would start again. Drowning, to see if that would kill her. Various toxins introduced into her bloodstream at fatal doses. Blood letting. Blows to the head."

"Jesus," Edge muttered.

"She revived every time, and she was long gone before he could try things like bullets to the brain or wooden stakes to the heart."

Edge rolled his eyes. Stakes indeed.

"She seems 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 rash 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.

"Father, for God's sake, say something!" Amber exploded at last. "Has someone died? Are Eric and Tamara all right? God, is it Rhiannon? Or Roland? What's happened?"

Jameson licked his lips and shook his head. "No one has passed, Amber. But it's... it's Willem."

Amber blinked in shock. Five years ago, Willem Stone had saved her from the hands of a ruthless scientist who'd been treating her like his own personal guinea pig.

Since then, he and the vampiress he'd fallen in love with, Sarafina, had become a part of her odd little family. But unlike the rest of them, Willem was a mere mortal. Not one of the Chosen, not one who could be transformed. Just a mortal man. The most exceptional, incredible mortal man Amber had ever known.

Almost afraid to ask the question, she forced the words out. "What's happened to Willem?"

Alicia's hand squeezed hers tighter when Jameson said the single word.

"Cancer."

It was as if he were speaking a foreign language. She felt her brows bend into question marks. "What?"

"He has a brain tumor, Amber. It's inoperable. And it's... terminal."

"No." She searched her father's eyes, then her mother's and Susan's. "There has to be something we can do. There has to be something-"

"He's a mortal," Angelica whispered. "Mortals... die."

As she said it, Alicia and her mother exchanged a knowing look, one of sad acceptance, but it wasn't lost on Amber Lily. She wasn't used to dealing with death. She refused to accept it as the inevitable end to those she loved. Even the mortals.

"It can't happen. Not now, not yet," she said, as if saying the words emphatically enough could make them true. "God, Sarafina only just found him. How can he be taken from her like this? They should have had years together. Decades!"

"It's not fair," Alicia whispered. Then she licked her lips, shook her head. "But, it won't kill him. Will's the strongest man I know. He'll beat it. He will."

Amber nodded. " 'Leesha's right. God, he withstood torture in the desert, he was given medals for protecting all those men who would have died if he'd talked. He's a hero. He faced down Stiles, he even faced down Aunt Rhiannon and Sarafina and lived to tell the tale!"

"This is different, Amber," Susan said softly. "I know it's not fair, but it's the way life works. Death is-it's a natural part of the cycle for some of us, honey. It's just the way of things-part of being human."

Amber lifted her head, staring for a long time at Susan, noticing her gray hairs, extra weight, the wrinkles around her eyes. She looked at Alicia, who'd changed in the past five years in far more subtle ways. She'd lost the look of a teenager, looked like a woman now. While Amber hadn't changed at all. Not since that house in Byram, Connecticut. Not since Frank Stiles and his experiments.

She lowered her head. "Sarafina must be devastated."

"Rhiannon is with them right now at their place in Salem Harbor," Jameson said. "Eric's doing research at the lab at Wind Ridge, but... " He shook his head. "There's not a lot of time."

Amber's brows drew together. "How long?"

"Six months, at the outside."

Her eyes fell closed even as the words were spoken, and tears flooded them. God, six months. It was less than a heartbeat. She sniffed and knuckled away her tears. "I need to go to him. I need to see him-both of them. How is he? Have you spoken to him?"

"It was Rhiannon who phoned with the news," Angelica said softly. "She specifically asked for you to come."

Amber nodded. "And what about the rest of you?"

"We'll be coming later. First we're heading down to Eric's. Roland is already there. They need all the help they can get with the research," Jameson said.

"Besides," Angelica added, "we don't want to overwhelm 'Fina and Will. All of us descending on them at once might be a little too much."

"They'll want time alone, too." Amber swallowed her tears, though they nearly choked her. "Coming with me, Alicia?"

"One of us needs to stay and keep the shop open, hon. Pandora's Box can't run itself. But if you need me, call me, and I'll be there like lightning."

"Alicia, I'd feel better if you went along," Angelica began.

Amber interrupted her. "Mom, I'm twenty-three and perfectly capable of getting to Salem Harbor on my own."

Angelica thinned her lips.

"We both learned from our mistakes, Angelica," Alicia said softly. "We're not teenagers anymore. We own a business now. The Box is already turning a profit. We're responsible adult women. Both of us."

"I know that." Angelica shot a look at Jameson, and he gave her a silent nod.

Amber drew a breath and sighed in gratitude. Alicia was giving her time and space to do this on her own. Amber and Will-they'd formed an odd bond when he'd saved her life five years back. He was like the big brother she'd never had. She loved him madly, and maybe part of that was because he was an outsider, too. Part of this extended family of the undead, even though he wasn't one of them. Just like Susan and Alicia. Just like she was herself. Well, not just like, she thought slowly. She wasn't mortal, either. She didn't know exactly what she was.

Nodding hard, her mind made up, Amber said, "I'll pack up tonight. Leave early in the morning."

"Should I call the airlines for you, Amber?" Susan asked.

"No, I... I think I'll drive. It'll give me time to... process all this."

"Sounds like a good idea." Alicia got to her feet. "Are you guys all right?"

"We're dealing with it as best we can,'' Angelica said. "It's not easy on any of us. But Eric's refusing to give up hope, and maybe there's some chance he's right."

"But you don't really think so, do you?" Amber asked.

Her mother lowered her eyes, but Amber heard the hopelessness in her heart.

Alicia said, "Amber, let's get back. I'll help you pack, maybe even make you a few snacks for the road, huh?''

Smiling her thanks, Amber nodded. She got to her feet, let her father hug her hard. "When you go out there, Amber, forget your own pain. Think of easing theirs."

"I will."

"I know you will."

Edge was staked out in the shadows outside the kitschy little New Age-slash-magic shop in one of Rochester, New York's suburbs, a town called Irondequoit. The sign in the window read Pandora's Box, and included a stylized drawing of a treasure chest with its lid open and purple sparkles spiraling from within. The apartment where Amber Lily Bryant lived with her mortal roommate Alicia Jennings was on the second floor, and his research showed the two were joint owners of the shop, which they'd purchased from its former owners two years ago.

Why the Child of Promise was sharing an apartment and a business with a mortal, rather than living under the constant protection of a dozen vampiric bodyguards, he couldn't begin to guess. None of the vampires he'd questioned in order to track her down had offered a reason. The information he'd been able to glean had been piecemeal at best, but he'd been persistent, nosy, less than ethical, and he'd picked up the occasional unguarded thought. Taken together, the pieces had led him here... where she lived in an ordinary apartment with an ordinary mortal girl. She must be the most sought after prize of every vampire hunter in existence-and he had heard of many, besides the rogue DPI agent Frank Stiles. And yet she lived like a mortal. Unprotected.

If she had guardians, he thought, they ought to be taken out and beaten.

There had been no one at home when he'd first arrived, but the two woman returned around 2:30 a.m. in a car that made his mouth water even more than the red Corvette in the garage had done. A black Ferrari. Not that he would trade his '69 Mustang for anything in the world, but hell, a man could look.

They pulled into the driveway, but not into the two-car garage that was attached to the rear portion of the shop.

He took great pains to mask his presence from the Child of Promise, to shield his mind, his thoughts, his very existence, from her. He had no idea what powers she might possess, whether she had the ability to detect his presence or not, so he was taking precautions.

Not that she would have noticed him anyway, he realized once he took in her state. She got out of the car, took two unsteady steps toward the two-story building where she lived, and then stopped, braced one arm on the brick wall and lowered her head. Her hair was long, perfectly straight, and so dark he'd thought it black at first. But it wasn't. It was the darkest shade of auburn imaginable, deep shades of burgundy that gleamed in the glow of the streetlights. If pressed, he would describe her hair as black satin, rinsed in blood. It hung forward, so he couldn't see her face. But he could feel her-sense her, the way he could sense any other living creature. She didn't feel like a mortal, but not quite like a vampire, either. There was an electric energy about her, a static charge that made his skin prickle, his groin tighten and the fine hairs on his arms stand erect.

She made a sound, a sob that caught in her throat, and he realized she was crying.

Edge took an instinctive step closer, jerking into motion like a kneecap tapped by a doctor's mallet, before stopping himself. He dismissed the gut reaction, covering it with his more characteristic sarcasm. Just what he needed, he told himself. More blubbering females. What the hell was wrong with this one?

The other one was beside her a second later, and then the two hugged each other fiercely, both of them sobbing. The other girl was clearly the mortal one. She had short hair, as blond as his own. It would be curly if allowed to grow long, but in its present state it shot out in all directions in a stylized mess that looked good on her. She was attractive. She smelled faintly of magic. He thought she'd been doing more than stocking the shelves and managing the register in that shop of hers. She'd been studying, experimenting a bit, and keeping it to herself, he thought.

"I can't wait until morning, Alicia," Amber said, when she could control her sobbing enough to speak. "I need to leave sooner. As soon as I can get ready." She sniffled, wiping her eyes and stepping out of the other woman's arms. "I didn't see any sense in giving Mom a reason to object."

"And she would have. She's trying, Amber, but she can't help but be overprotective. Throw a few things in a bag, hon. I'll go online and get the directions while you pack."

Amber nodded, and the two went up the exterior stairs to the second floor apartment, arm in arm, locking the door behind them.

Not that a locked door had ever been a problem for Edge.