Will grabbed her shoulders and tried to move her aside. "Jesus, Fina, what the h.e.l.l 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.

There they stopped. Alicia leaned back against the block wall, panting. She was hot and breathless from the long race down the stairs. Amber could have kicked herself for forgetting.

She wasn't even winded. She let Alicia rest for a moment, while she peered through the square of gla.s.s in the door. The garage was dimly lit, lined with shiny cars. She didn't see anyone walking around. Closing her eyes, she opened her senses, tried to feel anyone out there, waiting for them.

But she got nothing.

"Okay?" Alicia asked.

"I think so. You ready?"

She nodded, and the two opened the door and moved quickly across the open s.p.a.ce into the darkest shadows in sight.

The ramp angled upward, to the street. The exit was a pale gray square right now, but it would be lighter soon. "The sooner the better," she muttered.

Alicia nodded, and they ran for it.

The garage entrance was around the corner from the hotel's lobby entrance, and that was good. Holding hands, they ran down the sidewalk. The streets were nearly deserted this early in the morning. Even traffic was light. Amber didn't figure that was to their benefit. They would have been much harder to spot in a crowd.

They hurried, and only after they'd put seven blocks between themselves and the hotel did Alicia turn to her and say, "Amber, where the h.e.l.l are we going?"

"As far from that hotel as we can get." "What about Aunt Rhiannon's place in the city?"

"If we go to her, she'll call my dad."

"Amber, we have no choice. This is serious. We have to get out of here."

Amber knew her friend was right. d.a.m.n, how she was going to hate to have to admit to her father that he had been right. And who knew when he would ever let her leave home without an armed guard again, after this fiasco? She would never live it down.

But she supposed staying alive and eluding capture was more important than her own pride or independence. It just killed her to think she was about to hand the keys to her cell back over to her parents, though.

"Aunt Rhi's place is on Long Island. Um, s.h.i.t, I can't think. Wait, yes, yes, it's in my address book. Now if we can just find a cab."

"What about this?" Alicia pointed at a set of stairs descending into the earth and a sign that said Subway.

"I don't even know what train to take."

"Let's just take the first one that stops. Then we'll be far enough from here to be safe, and we can ask someone. Or find a map. Or catch a taxi from there. Come on, Amber, there are no cabs in sight, and I'll feel better down there, off the street."

"Okay, okay, let's go."

They found a machine to buy subway tokens, and then they got on the first train that stopped. They took it to the end of its run, got off, and emerged from the underground into brilliant morning sunshine.

Somehow things didn't look anywhere near as frightening as they had before. Amber sighed in relief. She flagged down a taxi, rather proud of herself for having caught on to the method for doing so as quickly as she had, and then they got in.

"We need to go to this address on Long Island."

She showed him her now-open address book. "Can you take us?"

The cabby looked over his shoulder, eyebrows raised. "You're in Brooklyn."

"So?"

"So that's quite a haul. Can you afford it?"

"I think so. You take plastic?"

"Cash. And a tip is always nice."

Sarcastic little b.a.s.t.a.r.d, she thought. "How much you think it will be?"

"Thirty-five, give or take a few bucks."

She dug into her minibackpack, thumbed through the wallet. "I have enough." "Then we're outta here." He put the car into gear.

Amber leaned back in her seat. "I don't even know for sure if Rhiannon and Roland will be there." She looked out at the sky. "Even if they are, they won't be up."

"Then how are we going to get in?''

She pulled a yellow envelope out of her bag, opened it. "Remember mom's emergency kit? I laughed at her for insisting I bring it. Aunt Rhi's address, a key to her place, a can of mace-"

"There a stun gun in there?"

The cabby glanced at them in the mirror. "That stuff's illegal around here."

"So arrest me," Amber said, continuing to paw through the contents of the envelope. There were extra cash, credit cards and pa.s.sports bearing their faces, with false names. "Good grief, you'd think we were on the run from the Feds or something."

"Too bad she didn't put an extra cell phone in there."

"There will be a phone at Rhiannon's place," Amber promised. But she was already wishing she could come up with some better plan than using it to call her father.

12.

Will had a craving. A vague need gnawing at his gut so powerfully that it woke him from a sound sleep more surely than the pain in his bad foot.

He opened his eyes slowly, let his vision focus. He was not in his bed-his bed didn't have red satin sheets. He was not even in his own apartment, but in a large, lush bedroom with cream- colored walls and dark rich woodwork. He closed his eyes, trying to get his bearings, trying to think beyond the unidentifiable hunger inside him. Sarafina. Yes, he remembered. She was...a vampire. Unbelievable, but true. And he loved her, and she... she had bitten him. Drunk from him...

He lifted a hand to touch the wounds on his neck, as if to prove to himself that they were really there, that all this wasn't just part of some slow-growing insanity. But his hand stopped short of his neck, and there was a metallic clanking sound when he tugged.

He looked up sharply. A shiny steel bracelet encircled his wrist. A chain ran from it, through a ring attached to the post of the bed's headboard, and its twin held his other hand to the opposite post. From those rings, he couldn't see where the chains led. They disappeared behind or underneath the bed.

He studied his wrists for just a moment, a vague sense of disbelief slowly giving way to other feelings. He would have laughed at the absurdity of it if he hadn't been so angry.

The bedroom door opened slowly, and he lifted his head, watching, ready to rip into her with his words, even while he felt an odd stirring of antic.i.p.ation in his gut and arousal in his loins.

He wanted her. He wanted her as much as he ever had-maybe more.

But it wasn't Sarafina who entered the room. It was a gaunt, pale-skinned woman who might be thirty but looked fifty. She carried a tray of food in her hands and closed the door behind her with one foot.

"Where is she?" he asked.

The woman's head turned sharply, her eyes wide with something like surprise, or maybe fear. They were blue, her eyes, and ringed in dark circles. Her blond hair was knotted in a neat bun, and she wore a kaftan in such bright colors that it only emphasized her own washed-out hues.

"The Mistress is asleep. She won't rise again until sundown."

"Then I guess it's up to you to take these cuffs off me. Immediately."

She brought the tray closer, studying him as she did. "I can't do that. But I did bring you food. The Mistress left strict instructions as to your care. You're to have anything you ask for- aside, of course, from your freedom."

She set the food on a stand beside the bed, where nothing else rested, other than a vase full of red roses, their stems lined in thorns. Will studied the woman. Her blank expression, the slightly dead tone of her voice. Was she drugged?

"And how am I supposed to eat, chained up like this? Or use the bathroom, for that matter?"

"I can let out the chains." She got to her hands and knees, fiddling with something underneath the bed. There was a humming, motorlike sound, and the chains holding his wrists to the bed went slack.

He pulled at them, and they gave. Stupid move on her part, he thought, as he sat up in the bed, his hands in front of him now.

She set the tray on his lap. "The chains are very long," she told him. "You can move around the room freely. The bathroom is through that door." She pointed. "You can even shower, if you like. The Mistress has left you fresh clothing and toiletries in her favorite scents."

"Oh, she has. That's...thoughtful of her, isn't it?"

She smiled, a wan, weak-looking smile. "She is always thoughtful. And kind and generous. I love her." Her eyes flicked over Will's face, and her smile died. "You will, too, in time."

Something twisted in his chest, but he ignored it.

"Now that's interesting. Why would I love someone who would lock me up and try to keep me here against my will? Hmm? Why do you?"

She blinked as if confused.

"Do you think she loves you, too? Is that it?"

"Of course she does."

He nodded, setting the tray aside, flipping back his covers, surprised to find himself stark naked underneath them. What the h.e.l.l, he was anything but shy. He got to his feet. "If she loves you, then why did she tell you it was all right to loosen the chains when she knew perfectly well that, once you did, I could kill you with my bare hands?"

The woman didn't back away or seem afraid in the least. She only stood there, facing him.

"She knows I would die for her. Gladly. But if you kill me, I promise you, she will be very angry when she wakes."

He was surprised by her reaction. Her lack of fear. He'd expected her to run for the door, and he'd been prepared to lunge and grab her before she could get away. His foot was throbbing. He ignored the pain. He stepped closer, sliding his hands to either side of the woman's pale neck. "I won't kill you. Not if you do as I say. Get the key and unlock these cuffs."

She stared into his eyes. "I don't have the key." She said it in a calm monotone.

"Who does?"

"The Mistress."

He set his jaw, tried to school himself to patience. "Then you can get it from her while she sleeps." "No. I cannot."

"I could break your neck with my bare hands, lady. You're going to get that key."

"No. Break my neck, if you will. It makes no difference to me. I can't disobey the Mistress."

He narrowed his eyes on her, searching her face. "Why? What the h.e.l.l power does she have over you?"

"I don't know what you mean. I love the Mistress. Serving her is my life. It will be yours, too. You'll see."

She turned away, walked to the door and left the room. He heard the locks turn from the outside.

Fury raged to the surface. Will spun around, grabbing the vase of th.o.r.n.y roses and hurling it across the room. It hit the wall, smashed to bits, water, roses and gla.s.s exploding everywhere, littering the floor.

"d.a.m.n you, Sarafina!" he shouted. "What kind of sick game are you playing?" But he knew she couldn't hear. He jerked at his chains, promised to throttle the beautiful Gypsy the first chance he got, swore and raged and threw things, including the food. h.e.l.l, he wasn't going to eat anything she had sent to him. It was probably laced with whatever drug she'd been feeding her zombielike servant to keep her in line.

An hour later he sat in the center of the bed, the room in shambles around him. He'd spent enough of his fury to leave him rational again. Calmer now, he got to his feet and examined the chains that held him. The only thing he found under the bed was a hook and a place where the chains met in the center and ran through the floor. The hook could be set through the links, to keep his chains at any length desired. At present the hook wasn't through them at all. There was a motorized winch somewhere on the floor below. How she'd turned it on from here, he didn't know. She might have had some kind of remote control he guessed. Or there was someone on the other side.

The chains were fixed fast, the pa.s.sage through the floor secure. He couldn't break it open, couldn't pull more chain through. And he couldn't get the manacles off his wrists.

He focused next on exploring the limits of his reach. He couldn't reach the windows, couldn't reach the door. The bathroom door was nearer, just past the head of the bed, and he could get into it. It was a small room with a seat, a basin and an upright shower stall.

He explored the room fully, looking for flaws, for mistakes on which he could capitalize to make his escape. He looked for anything that could be used as a weapon, or even a tool to use to free himself.

Nothing. There was nothing. He was trapped like a rat in a cage.

But he'd been held captive before, by men who were experts at it. He hadn't escaped them only to let a mentally ill women who'd managed to enchant his soul get the best of him. He would escape.