"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 ma.s.saged her there. "I can't do this tonight, Sarafina. G.o.d, 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. G.o.d, 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 o.r.g.a.s.mic 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.

"OhmyG.o.dohmyG.o.dohmyG.o.d, 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 G.o.d, 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 k.n.o.b 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 c.r.a.p. 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 h.e.l.l 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 h.e.l.l is our option? Go back to headquarters without them?"

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

"s.h.i.t, 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 s.h.i.tting. 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 a.s.sholes 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 G.o.d-"

"But not tonight. Not now. Please, Amber, can we just get the h.e.l.l 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, G.o.d 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. G.o.d, 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 coa.r.s.e 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 h.e.l.l 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 G.o.dd.a.m.n weak."

"That will pa.s.s. 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. "s.h.i.t. 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 h.e.l.l 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.