I close my eyes, and when I reopen them, I'm ready.

CHAPTER 62.

THE ROOM IS EXACTLY AS I REMEMBERED IT. Heavy, dark furniture that looks like it belonged in a castle and probably did at one time. Bookcases lining two walls; a huge stone fireplace facing the bed. Arched windows send slanting rays of sunshine and shadow skittering along the walls.

But something is different. It takes me a moment to identify what it is. The light. The light in the room is different. It's December now, not July. The shift in the angle of a sun moving in a low winter arc paints the walls in pewter instead of gold. Even the fire blazing out from the ma.s.sive hearth can't remove the chill.

Tamara makes a sound in her throat. It brings me back, and when I turn, I see Sandra for the first time.

She's lying propped up by pillows in Avery's bed. Avery's bed. At first my senses are overcome by his smell: male, vampire, musk. Then I recognize with sickening clarity that I'm there, too. A hint of perfume, of sweat. Those silken sheets are permeated with the essence of our mingled pa.s.sion. Pheromones, testosterone, l.u.s.t. How many times did we have s.e.x in that bed? How can Sandra stand to lie there?

I realize that she's watching me. I center my thoughts and study her. She is pale, without makeup, her hair combed back from her face. She's wearing a nightgown, blue chiffon, translucent against the swell of her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. The blankets are gathered around her waist. Her hands are clasped on top. She exudes none of the strength, none of the s.e.xuality, that captivated me before. The woman before me is a child, frightened, lost. It sickens me to realize that the same way he controlled me in life, Avery was able to control me through Sandra. I don't know how long I have before Avery resurfaces. I don't know that I could confront him in this room.

"Why did you wait so long to come here?" I ask her.

"Avery needed time to gather strength," she whispers. Her voice is strained, husky. Then, as if the act of speaking is painful, she raises a hand to her throat. "He tries to keep me from communicating. Even now."

Tamara steps to the bed and strokes Sandra's hair. Sandra turns grateful eyes to her, and Tamara takes up the story.

"Avery and Sandra met many years ago. She was a girl newly turned, and he a powerful vampire who was curious about the werewolf. In all his years, she was the first that didn't exhibit hostility to the vampire. In turn, he took her under his protection and allowed her to choose those of our kind willing to bind with her in a pack."

She looks away from Sandra and to me. "Do you know much about the werewolf pack?"

I shake my head. "Only what I learned recently from an old text. An alpha male dominates the pack. There are more male than female weres and that the female is always subjugated to the male. I remember in Culebra's bar, the proportion of male to female in your pack was reversed. Your pack is different."

Tamara smiles. "The text you read called it subjugation? I suppose that's as good a word as any. In reality, it's rape and often murder. The old laws are seldom followed. The alpha male takes what he wants. If a female survives, as I did, life becomes a nightmare. She is forced to live with the pack, forced to mate in human or animal form at the whim of any male, forced to work to provide money to sustain the pack. I was one of the lucky ones who escaped. I ran to Mexico. Where I met Sandra."

Sandra reaches up to clasp her hand. Tamara takes it, brushes a bit of hair from Sandra's forehead with a gentle touch, and continues.

"Sandra was a survivor, like me. She was with Avery at that time, and when he heard my story, he purchased a compound for us in the jungles of Mexico. Gradually other females found us. Our pack thrives because we are content to live in harmony with the nature of our beast. We live naturally, we do not propagate, we do no harm. The males that are with us are there for exactly the same reason. Freedom."

"The marriage-Sandra and Avery-when did that happen?"

For the first time, she looks uneasy. "There is no marriage. Avery forced that story on us as a way to regain his estate through Sandra. He thinks he can keep her here. He has become the thing he saved her from all those years ago. He has made her his prisoner."

"How did it happen? How did Avery take possession of Sandra?"

"I don't know. It was at the time of change. We were in the jungle, and suddenly Sandra fell ill. She was as the wolf, then her human body took over. It can't happen that quickly. The change must be gradual and when it's not, the pain is unbearable. She screamed and thrashed about, and when the wolf came back, Avery was there as well."

She draws a breath. "In the beginning, Avery was content to allow Sandra to live as we always have. He never prevented her from making the change. Instead, he seemed to revel in the transformation, the freedom of the animal hunt, the freedom from vampire bloodl.u.s.t. None of us understood what was happening. Not really. He would talk to us sometimes, the way he did with you, but there was no hint of what was to come."

Sandra makes a mewling noise. When we look at her, she is frowning, her hand again at her throat.

"He is struggling to come back," Tamara says. "When he does, he'll punish her. We have to hurry."

"But how is it possible he could have hidden the talisman without Sandra knowing?"

Tamara is watching Sandra, looking for signs that Avery is back in control. "There are hours when Sandra awakens as if from a dream and remembers nothing of what has happened. It was during one of those periods that she discovered her talisman had gone missing. She thinks he did it because she was fighting him. Coming here, for instance, she refused as long as she was able. He has become too strong."

"If we get the talisman back, do you know what will happen to Avery?"

"If Sandra regains possession of the talisman, she can fight Avery as a wolf. He cannot sustain himself indefinitely in the animal body. He cannot escape. She will remain wolf until she feels him die. Only then will she turn back."

"How long will it take?"

Once more, Tamara strokes Sandra's hair, lovingly, like a mother with a sick child. "It could take days. A week. During that time, Sandra will not eat or drink. In ridding herself of Avery, she risks her own death." She raises her eyes to mine. "I believe you understand that though, don't you, Anna?"

Do I understand being willing to die to rid oneself of a monster? Yes. The same monster Sandra battles now.

"If it's here, in the house, I know the place Avery may have hidden the talisman."

I step to the fireplace. It has one of those ma.s.sive stone fireboxes that is big enough to walk into with storage areas for wood on each side. The mantel is a solid slab of heavy, dark wood. There are two sconces anch.o.r.ed above it to the wall.

The fire scorches my skin as I get closer. I reach up, grab the sconce to the right and pull. There is a grinding sound and the left side of the fireplace moves in on itself. The storage area becomes a door and it opens into a long, dark staircase.

I hear Tamara's breath catch. Then she's beside me, peering into the void. "What's down there?"

"Treasure," I reply. "And pain."

CHAPTER 63.

THE STAIRCASE IS WOODEN, AND THE Pa.s.sAGE plunges straight down. It is clammy inside, dark, steep, and, at first glance, without end. It is so narrow, Tamara must walk behind me. She crowds close. I don't like having her behind me. My senses are on high alert, the vampire ready to spring forth if it detects anything but the strange emanation of fear she's giving off.

Fear of what? The dark?

But we're nearing the bottom, and the smell of dirt and decay chases the question out of my head. I'm plunged into the nightmare of finding David at the bottom of these stairs, bound and near death.

At last our feet touch soil. Ahead of us is a doorway and it yields to my touch. I find the light switch to the right of the door and stand aside for Tamara to experience what I did that first time six months ago.

The room is large, a storage area with wooden crates stacked along one wall, rugs rolled and stored on another, rows of shelving occupying the center. The overhead light catches and reflects off the hundreds of items displayed helter-skelter on the shelves like the chattel of a deranged collector: piles of gold and silver jewelry, vases of bronze and silver, bejeweled ceremonial daggers, gold- leaf dinnerware that might have served a king. Chinese porcelain, Egyptian antiquities, Mayan pottery. The source of Avery's wealth.

Tamara picks up a small golden chariot and hefts it in her hand. "I know how Howard Carter must have felt when he found King Tut's tomb," she says in a hushed voice.

I point to what she holds. "For all we know, that could be from the tomb. Avery may have been there, too."

She returns the chariot to the shelf and looks around. "Do you know what's in the crates?"

I shake my head.

"You aren't curious?"

"No. This place holds bad memories for me. Avery holds bad memories for me. When this is over, Sandra can have it all."

I let my eyes sweep the contents of the shelves. "What does the talisman look like?" I ask. "The book said it was a belt of fur.

Does that mean literally a belt of fur? Or is it something symbolic?"

Tamara joins me in the search, taking one side of a shelf while I, the other. "It's both," she says. "It's a locket that contains a bit of fur. At one time, it actually was a belt fashioned from the fur of a totem animal. Wearing a belt of fur marked us, made us easy prey for human hunters. Now we wear something a bit more discreet. Like this."

She pulls a small gold locket from inside the collar of her jersey top and lets the chain drop between her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. "We always keep it with us. It's our lifeline. Our most prized possession."

I've finished my side of the shelf, finding nothing that resembles what Tamara described. I wonder if I've made a mistake thinking it would be here. Yet, this is the repository for Avery's treasure. Where else would he hide it?

Tamara finishes, too, and comes around to join me. She's looking toward the far wall, the place where I found David. "What's over there?" she asks.

From our vantage point, what we see are rugs, rolled up and piled against the wall.

"Should we check it out?" she asks.

I have no intention of reliving the horror. "Go ahead. I'll keep looking here. Maybe we missed something."

She moves off and I make another pa.s.s at the shelves. I'm aware that she's now standing on the rug that once held David's body. I think I can still smell his blood, and it sends a tremor of horror through me.

In a moment, she's back beside me. "Nothing. You don't think it's in one of those crates, do you? Jesus. There are a hundred of them. We don't have time to open them all to check."

She starts toward the jumble of wooden crates stacked nearly ceiling high. I follow her, letting my eyes scan the pile. "The dust on these crates is undisturbed. I don't think anyone has been down here-" I start to add since the last time I was. I don't want to have to explain the circ.u.mstances of that visit, though, so I drop it.

Tamara frowns. "So what do we do now? Finding that locket is the only way to free Sandra and rid ourselves of Avery once and for all." There's a flash of movement from the doorway. It catches my eye like the glint of sun on a mirror. Sandra appears at the bottom of the stairs as if conjured up by Tamara's words.

Gone is the vague emptiness that blighted her face, the helpless look of a lost child. She looks at me with the calm detachment of a predator. The neckline of her nightgown has been pulled lower, the outline of her body glows as if light were shining through.

I can't look away. Instantly, my senses spin out of control. She dares me to resist and I know I can't. I'm shivering. She is not close enough to touch me, not physically, and yet I feel her fingers trace a path over my skin, slide down my belly, skim between my thighs. Her fingertips brush against my s.e.x, and I'm shuddering with excitement. She's there, tormenting me with a b.u.t.terfly's touch. I want more. I want her to finish it. A moan escapes my lips, a plea for release.

A laugh, cold, bitter, breaks the spell.

"Ah, Anna." Her voice. His voice. "You haven't changed at all, have you?"

CHAPTER 64.

FOR AN INSTANT, THE ROOM TILTS.

Tamara's voice: "It took you long enough."

I'm yanked back to the present as if from a dream, disoriented and confused. Then my head clears, and I remember.

Sandra's eyes shine with a light that isn't her own and she smiles at me with an expression that holds no warmth, no pleasure.

"What's wrong, Anna? What did I do?" she asks. Her lips move, but it is Avery speaking. "Nothing but respond to your desire. It was the same before. I never forced you to do anything you didn't want to do. You can't dispute it. Your body betrays you."

At once, warmth surges through me. A familiar spark of pa.s.sion.

"Don't." I turn anger against the rising heat until arousal dissipates into ash. "I won't let you manipulate me again."

"You think you can stop me?"

"Sandra will stop you. We'll find the talisman."

"You mean that talisman? The one around Tamara's neck?"

I'm given no time to respond. A blur of something comes at me with tremendous speed. I pivot toward it, hands instinctively outstretched to bat it away. It's lupine, huge. My blow catches it at the shoulder and it falls back.

But how? Tamara's clothes are in a heap on the floor. She must have made the change while Avery was toying with me.

The wolf leaps to its feet and comes at me again, but this time I'm ready.

We circle each other, the vampire and the wolf. She is as big as a mastiff, gold in color, black lips curled back in a snarl. Her eyes are yellow with slit pupils that reflect more than animal intelligence. She is aware. Acting not instinctively as a beast, but deliberately. Is she under Avery's control? Until this moment, I wouldn't have thought it. Tamara sought me out to help Sandra.

Didn't she?

In the distance, Sandra begins to croon in a soft, low voice. The wolf pauses, listening.

"Sweet Tamara. I should have chosen you, but you and I will be one soon. We will be rid of this irksome body. Of Sandra." She steps closer. "You need only to kill Anna. It's the one thing I ask of you. The one thing Sandra denied me. She could not do it. You are stronger. You have the power. You know what you must do."

The crooning stops, and the wolf gathers herself to attack. I remember the words of the book.

Silver.

Silver is lethal to wolves.

I remember Frey's warning.

I must a.s.sume a werewolf bite is fatal. My back is against one of the shelves, and my hands grope behind me for something- anything-to use as a weapon. I can't take my eyes off her long enough to search. I can only feel and there is nothing that pa.s.ses under my fingertips to offer protection.

For the first time, I realize that vampire strength and cunning is not going to be enough. I can't fight her because I can't let her get close enough to bite me.

I'm afraid. It twists around my heart and knots my stomach.

It's unfamiliar and disturbing.

Worse, Tamara senses it. She's in no hurry to attack. She creeps toward me, slowly, fangs bared. Does she know she need only to bite me once? Death may not be instantaneous, but it will be certain.