"We're vampires, mortal. These men are ruthless killers. If I drained him dry it would be no more than he deserves." She glanced down at the man. "I didn't, however. Life with Roland has its downsides, I'm afraid. One of which is that his bothersome morality tends to rub off on me. I won't kill unless I have no other choice." She nodded at the men on the ground. "Will they be missed?"

"Not for a while. I heard them tell the other two they were going to walk the perimeter. They didn't plan to leave when the shifts changed."

Sarafina moved to the other man, knelt beside him and bent to his throat.

"You failed to rescue Amber Lily?" Rhiannon demanded. "I didn't try. I didn't see the need of getting the others killed in the process and risking your lives, as well. We'll get her now."

"That wasn't the plan," Rhiannon all but growled.

"I made a new plan. Listen, lady, this is what I do. I'm good at it. Trust me on this. Now, come with me. And we have to be fast, before they realize something's up. Hurry now."

He led them through the woods to the road, found a safe spot to cross, and then skirted the outermost edge of the fence that surrounded the property until they reached the back, where the fence ended at a steep set of cliffs.

Crouching there, Will pointed. "There are two guards under Amber's window. The day shift.

You were right, she managed to hang a blouse or something. See it? There'll be a dozen more guards back here soon, but those two will leave their posts when the truck arrives with the night team aboard. That's when we move in."

Sarafina frowned. "But they change shifts before sundown, not after!"

He sent her a wink. "They were delayed. Seems several trees fell across the road today. It won't take long to clear them, but it will be long enough."

They crouched there, waiting for a long time until they finally heard the truck. The guards in the rear yard shouldered their weapons and headed around the house, eager to be relieved of duty.

It was nearly ten.

They'd already put in more than an hour's overtime. Sarafina cursed the short nights of summer.

"Let's go."

Will started for the steep drop of the cliffs, and Sarafina knew he intended to swing out around it, to get past the fence. She stopped him by putting her arms around his waist from behind, and Rhiannon rolled her eyes and muttered "mortals." She told her cat to "stay" and "wait." Then the two women bent their knees and pushed off from the ground.

Sarafina leaped the fence easily, carrying Will with her. They hit the ground on the other side hard, but she managed to absorb the worst of the impact. He did wince, and she worried about his bad foot, but there was no time. They raced forward and leaped again, this time landing on the balcony outside Amber's window. Sarafina and Rhiannon each gripped a bar and tugged hard, pulling them apart. The three got inside just as the new guards were getting into place behind the house.

Amber Lily sat up in the bed, startled; then she flew at them, wrapping her arms around Rhiannon and sobbing.

Rhiannon hugged her briefly, then set her away. "Shh. Quiet now."

Footsteps came from the hallway outside. Sarafina turned to pull the curtains tight, hiding the bent bars, and praying the men below wouldn't look up and notice them.

Then Will was pulling her across the room, into the corner by the doorway. "How many are inside?" he whispered to Amber. "Four men and a woman, besides Stiles."

Sarafina felt her pulse leap at the name. "Stiles?"

"You know him?" Will asked.

Her eyes narrowed, and she looked more menacing than he'd ever seen her. She only nodded once, then put her finger to her lips.

Amber scurried back to her spot on the bed and sat quietly. In silence, she was focusing, and Sarafina was amazed at her mental abilities to convey her thoughts. She could see clearly what the girl was seeing through the barred door. The woman was coming with a tray of breakfast food on a cart, and one of the men walked beside her, armed with a gun.

Tranquilizer darts, Amber thought at them.

The woman paused outside the bars to insert a key, and then she handed the key to the man.

Amber got to her feet as the woman pushed the tray through the door. "Mmm, this looks good,"

she said, moving closer. "I'm starved."

She reached across the tray as if for one of the m.u.f.fins on the plate, but instead, she gripped the woman's wrist and jerked her farther inside, kicking the tray out of the way.

The man lifted the gun, but Amber held the woman in front of her, her arm firmly around her upper body, keeping her arms pinned. She kept one hand over the woman's eyes, so she couldn't see the others.

The man outside the door grimaced at her. "Let her go, brat, or I'll dart you right here and now."

"You want her? Come and get her."

Snarling, the man stepped into the room. Rhiannon slid up behind him and gave his neck a powerful twist, even as Sarafina took the gun from his hand. She pointed it at the woman, who was struggling with Amber now.

Will put his hands over hers. "Too noisy," he whispered. He easily removed the dart from the gun, walked over and jabbed the woman in the arm with it.

She stiffened, then went completely limp.

He lifted his eyebrows. "Powerful stuff."

Rhiannon bent to take the keys from the man's lifeless hand.

Amber stood staring at Willem, tears welling in her eyes. "My mother told me... I'm so sorry for what I did to you. I-I thought you were one of them."

"I know. It's okay."

She looked at Sarafina. "I was afraid you'd killed him."

"It wasn't your fault," Sarafina told her.

"Never mind all that," Rhiannon said. "What about you, Amber Lily? What have they done to you, child?"

"They took enough blood to feed an army," she said. "And asked endless questions. And...I don't know what else."

"What do you mean, you don't know?"

She averted her eyes. "I was drugged a lot of the time." She licked her lips, changed the subject. "They've got Mom and Dad. And Roland."

"I know. It's all right. The mortal has a plan." Rhiannon handed him the keys. "Put these in your pocket. One of them is bound to open the room below, where they have the others. Though now that we're in here, I have no idea how you expect to get us out again. There must be twenty armed guards outside this place now."

"Twenty-four." he said. "I counted at the last shift change."

Sarafina closed her eyes. "Stiles has been busy, to have put together an operation of this size.

The last time I encountered him, he had only a handful of men working for him."

"The guards look like mercenary types," Will said. "Hired guns. They may not even know what the h.e.l.l is really going on in here."

"What they know doesn't matter, Willem. We can't take on twenty-four armed men, even if they are mere mortals."

"Let's deal with one issue at a time, shall we?" Will said. "There may be twenty-four out there, but there are only four left to deal with in here."

"One apiece," Amber said, looking dangerous as she clenched her hands into fists. "I can hardly wait."

21.

"She should take the girl and go," Sarafina said, gripping Will's wrist, trying to tell him with her eyes how strongly she felt about it.

Rhiannon and Amber huddled in a corner, speaking softly, rapidly and at the same time.

Amber wore her own clothes. A backpack with a patch that read 'Stroke 9' on it sat in the corner and had to be hers. With a dead sound on the final stroke of nine... The line from T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land ran through Fina's mind, and she wondered if Amber had found a literate rock band to admire. It would fit with what she sensed about the girl. Typical teen on the surface-but one with depths beyond knowing. At her age, those depths must be predominantly unexplored. But Sarafina had a feeling this girl had more to her than anyone-even those closest to her-realized.

Sarafina noticed how close the two stood to one another, the way Rhiannon couldn't seem to stop touching the girl, smoothing her hair, touching her forearms, her face. The woman loved the girl fiercely. It was obvious, and it was touching. It shouldn't be quite so powerfully touching, though. Not to Sarafina. She'd made it her mission in life never to be that moved by anyone or anything. Her throat shouldn't tighten at the sight of Rhiannon with her precious Amber, and her eyes shouldn't burn, her chest feel hollow and empty.

Will looked at her again, and she got the feeling he could read her thoughts as clearly as any vampire. "You're not as cold as you pretend to be, Sarafina. You might as well stop pretending."

"My coldness or lack thereof has nothing to do with it. The child is important. And it's my fault she's here. She and Rhiannon should leave here. Now."

His eyes moved over her face, and she shivered, certain now that those eyes of his were seeing things deep inside her, things she didn't let people see. She had to avert her own.

"It's a nice thought," he said. "But she couldn't get out of here if she wanted to, not with all the men outside."

"We could do something to divert their attention."

His arctic blue eyes narrowed. "Run out there like targets, get them to come after us? That kind of thing?"

She shrugged. "It might work."

"It might. But I have something else in mind." He glanced toward the other side of the room, at Rhiannon and young Amber Lily. "Rhiannon's husband is one of the prisoners. She'll never leave without him."

"She might. If it meant saving Amber."

Amber lifted her head then, looking Sarafina dead in the eyes from across the room. He's right. Rhiannon might go, but I wouldn't. My parents are captive here, too, don't forget.

Sarafina held the girl's gaze for a moment, finally nodded once, then glanced back at Will again. "Forget it. She won't even consider leaving." "Rhiannon?"

"Amber."

"Oh."

She bit her lip. "What's the plan?"

"We keep our presence to ourselves. And we wait. There will be a diversion, but not for a while yet. So we stay here in the house, undetected. We take our time, slow and quiet, and we take them out one by one." He looked out through the bars, up and down the hallway. "No one in sight." Then he took Sarafina's hand in his, as if he were big and strong and she was small and weak. It was like a promise that he would protect her, the way he closed his hand around hers.

Wordless, but full of meaning.

And utterly ridiculous.

They crossed the room to where the other two stood, and Will began giving instructions as if he were still in the military and they were his troops. "Amber, I want you to act just as if nothing has changed. Stay here in the cage and pretend you're still at their mercy."

"What about them?" She glanced at the two bodies on the floor. One dead, one unconscious.

"We'll get them out of sight."

"And if I need to get out of here in a hurry?"

Will pulled the key ring from his pocket and removed from it the key to her barred door. He gave it to her. "Hide it somewhere in the room."

"There's a loose floorboard, near the door," she said. "You could probably reach in and get hold of it from the outside, if necessary."

"Does anyone else have a key to this room?"

"Stiles, I think. Maybe others. They all manage to come and go easily enough. I have no way of knowing if they're pa.s.sing around a key or two, or if they each have one of their own."

He didn't look as if he liked that idea much, but he kept his thoughts to himself and turned to Sarafina and Rhiannon. "The three of us are going to be like ghosts in this place. We slip through this house like shadows. We stay out of sight. Patience is the key here. Don't rush it. When we manage to corner one of them alone, we take them out, quickly and silently. Hide the body, so no one's alerted to our presence. If we do this right, we'll have the house to ourselves before these amateurs even know anything's up. Got it?"

Rhiannon's brows rose, and she gave a nod. She was impressed in spite of herself, and Sarafina's chin rose in pride she had no business feeling.

"Let's get these bodies out of sight."

"Closet?" Sarafina suggested.

He shook his head. "If someone does find them, we don't want them blaming Amber."

Rhiannon gripped the two by the backs of their shirts, pulling their upper bodies off the floor on either side of her as if she were carrying a pair of suitcases. "Where do you want them?"

"Are you going to be all right?" Sarafina asked Amber.

"I'll be fine. Just make sure my parents are okay."

Fina nodded, and then she and Will tiptoed into the corridor. Will went along the hall, listening at doors and opening them, until he found a room that seemed unoccupied. Sarafina peered over his shoulder when he opened the door. It must be a storage room. Dusty boxes, boards, old furniture and books were stacked all over it.

She glanced back at Rhiannon, still waiting in the entrance to Amber's room, and gave her a nod. Rhiannon dragged the two into the hall, and Amber closed the cage door behind her. The vampiress hauled the two limp mortals easily down the hall and then into the storage room, letting them both drop from her hands once inside. She tossed a piece of canvas over the dead man, glanced down at the tranquilized woman. "How long do you think she'll be out?"

Sarafina shrugged. "If that tranquilizer was the same one they used on us in the past, maybe she'll be out for good."

"So much the better."