Amber frowned at the sky, irritated that the extended layovers the bus had made had taken up so much of the darker hours. "We're going to have to stop soon. It'll be daylight."
Rhiannon looked back at her. "You forget whose car you're riding in, dear. There will be no need to stop."
"But... the sun."
Rhiannon shrugged. "Climb up here, child."
Frowning, Amber climbed into the passenger side of the front.
Rhiannon set the cruise control. "Take the wheel."
Amber took hold of the steering wheel, holding the car on course while Rhiannon climbed into the back seat. Then Amber slid over into the driver's side. The car wobbled a bit, veering over the broken white lines briefly, before Amber straightened it out again.
"I think it would be better to stop," Angelica said. "Amber can get some rest, find herself something to eat while we sleep."
"It would cost us precious time," Rhiannon said. "God knows this bus with its roundabout route, endless stops and long-term layovers, has already cost us enough. Why people ride those things I will never know. Besides, we'll be perfectly safe back here. I've installed certain... precautions."
"It's not us I'm worried about," she replied, sending a worried look at Amber.
"I'll be fine, Mom. If I'd wanted to rest, I would have during one of the layovers. And I've been grabbing junk food at every one of them. I just don't want to risk losing Brooke."
"You need to start taking better care of yourself, Amber. It's not just you you're driving to the point of exhaustion. It's your baby."
Amber closed her eyes, the words effectively dragging the impossible situation to the forefront of her mind again. But then, who was she kidding? It had never been far from there.
She glanced into the back seat, ignoring her mother's warnings. "So where are these safety features of yours, Aunt Rhi?"
"Are you sure you're all right to drive?" Angelica asked before Rhiannon could reply. "The drug-"
"Has worn off. I feel better."
"Amber, I just don't like this. I don't want you confronting the woman on your own."
"She's only a mortal," Amber said.
"So was Stiles."
Amber frowned. "If it were Dad dying slowly of something horrible, and the cure was rolling along the highway just ahead of us, would you be willing to stop?''
Angelica tipped her head skyward, then finally shook it slowly. "I don't suppose I would be."
"Then think of Sarafina. Think of Will. He saved my life, Mother. And yours."
"And mine," Rhiannon added. "There's no point in arguing with her, Angelica. She's going to do as she pleases the moment we're asleep anyway." She shrugged. "Much as I hate to admit it, in this case, I believe she's right."
"The sun is rising. Will you get into the trunk or do whatever it is you're planning to do back there before you both go up in smoke?"
Rhiannon nodded, then hit a button on the armrest that Amber had taken as the window control. The tinted glass side windows remained still, but panels rose up inside them-shining black sheets of what looked like acrylic. Rhiannon hit another button, and a similar sheet slid smoothly upward, covering the rear window. Amber could see through them, though they were very, very dark.
"You can see out, but nothing can penetrate within. No light. It's also bullet-proof, fireproof and airtight," Rhiannon said, sounding proud.
"Leave it to you to have a custom-made coffin on wheels," Amber said. "And a Mercedes, at that."
"Then you approve," Rhiannon said.
"Assuming there's another partition that slides up between the front seat and back... "
"Of course."
"Then yes, I think it's ingenious."
Rhiannon pursed her lips. "Kissing up isn't going to make me forget your bad manners, Amber Lily."
Amber sighed. "I'm sorry, Rhiannon. Chalk it up to the drugs, the stress, the fear and the fact that you were threatening to disembowel the father of my... baby." She had to force that word out. Saying it aloud was like-like making it real, somehow.
"I would do the same should someone threaten Roland," Rhiannon said slowly. "But only because I love him beyond reason. Beyond comprehension. Beyond life, death, sanity or madness. Beyond anything. Is that the way you feel about this... Edge character?"
"Don't be ridiculous," Amber said, the words spilling out automatically, without her giving any thought at all to her answer. "I'd be an idiot to feel anything for a man like him."
Rhiannon shrugged, hit another button, and the partition between the seats began to rise. "Well then, I cannot accept your apology. You're going to have to do better."
Amber sighed, wondering just how much groveling and ass-kissing she was going to have to do to make things up to her honorary aunt. "Sleep well," she told them as the partition neared the top.
"Be careful, Amber," her mother said. Her voice already heavy with sleep.
"I will."
The partition closed. Silence engulfed her. She sensed the two most important women in her life slipping far from her reach, into the day sleep, and felt utterly alone. Thoughts she'd been holding at bay came rushing in on her. A baby. God, a baby-one she feared would never live to draw its first breath.
Amber's dreams had never, ever been wrong. Not once.
Tears rose up in her eyes, even as she told herself that maybe, so long as she never let herself think of this child as real, as alive, as her baby, but instead just as a mass of cells destined to live for nine short months and then die, she would be able to bear it. You couldn't lose what you had never had, could you?
But I do have it. I have it now, alive and growing inside me. A baby. My own living child.
She hit the radio button. Classical strains filled the car, but only until she found a station playing hard driving Godsmack. She cranked up the volume, and let the sexy, growling voice and heavy bass drown out the unwanted thoughts.
When the night whispered to his senses, rousing him from the impenetrable day sleep, Edge felt the weight of a dozen pieces of luggage pressing down on him. A corner of a suitcase was jabbing him in the rib cage; a large heavy object that bounced with every bump in the road kept knocking him on the head.
He groaned and shoved and wriggled until he'd managed to move the worst offenders and allow himself a modicum of breathing room.
"God," Jameson muttered, his voice muffled. "I feel as if I've been beaten all day with a club." Some more cases shifted, and his face appeared in the hole they'd left behind. "This is torture."
"Maybe for an old guy."
Jameson scowled. Edge grinned at him, and then almost gasped in surprise when the other man returned a half smile. "Very funny."
"I do what I can."
"So will this barge be stopping anytime soon?"
Edge glanced at his watch. "Another hour. But we don't need to wait."
"No?"
"We're close."
"To Amber?"
Edge nodded.
Jameson's eyes narrowed on him. "How is it you're so connected to my daughter, Edge?"
Edge averted his eyes. "I don't know that I am. After all, it's not her voice that refuses to stop shouting at me."
"Are you sure this... voice... is on our side? I mean, it could be a trick. Someone trying to lead us into a trap."
"I've thought of that." Edge shrugged. "Frankly, it could be just that. I've got no frame of reference for this type of thing. You?"
Jameson shot him a look. "You're asking my opinion?"
"I figure a man who fathered a woman like Alby can't be all bad." He sighed. "So what do you think? You ever have voices in your head like this?"
Jameson shook his head. "Not like the one you describe, no. But... what kind of feelings does this voice stir within you? Is there a gut reaction? Anger, trepidation, fear?"
Edge shook his head. "More like... a call to battle. Makes me want to go charging in like some kind of mythical hero." He sighed heavily.
"And that worries you?"
"Greatly. It's not me. It's not what I do."
"Not the heroic type, hmm?''
"Heroes tend to die young. I intend to live a long time."
Jameson nodded. "And yet you're here, following a voice you're not sure you can trust, into what might be a life-threatening venture."
"Yeah." Edge smiled self-deprecatingly, shaking his head. "Go figure, huh?"
"Why?" Jameson asked.
"Damned if I know." He shoved some more cases out of the way, making a path to the compartment door.
"Is it because you'd rather risk your own life than hers?"
Without looking back at him, Edge said, "More likely because the damned voice screaming in my ears will drive me insane if I don't do what it's telling me." He got to the front of the compartment, turned so he was sitting down, and braced his feet against the door. "What do you say we quit with the analysis and get on with this?"
"Ready when you are," Jameson said.
With a nod, Edge shoved with his feet, and the compartment door gave way. He saw the pavement speeding by beneath him. "This is going to hurt like hell." He glanced back at the other man. "Sure your old bones can take it?"
"Enough with the age jokes. I may have been older than you when I was remade, but you've likely been a vamp longer."
"Mmm. So I have both mortal youth and vampiric power on you."
"I won't hold it against you." Jameson made his way to the front of the compartment, put a hand on Edge's shoulder. "Ready?"
"Aim for the grass along the roadside," Edge said. "It'll be kinder than the blacktop."
Edge leaped from the bus, Jameson at his side. They hit the ground hard, rolling down the grassy hill that ran along the roadside. The ground pummeled them, until they came to stop. Jameson sat up slowly, brushing dirt and twigs from his clothes, wincing in pain. Edge did the same, even while inspecting himself for cuts or gashes.
"You bleeding anywhere?" Jameson asked.
Edge shook his head. "You?"
"Don't think so." He got to his feet, then extended a hand down to Edge.
Edge hesitated, then took it, let the other man pull him upright. "Thanks."
Jameson nodded, then turned, and seemed to focus inward. He was silent for a moment, then he sighed. "I can't feel her," he said at last.
"She's blocking. Has been right along."
Jameson shot him a look. "Trying to protect us, keep us from following her and getting into trouble."
Edge thought it more likely she was blocking to keep something of a far more personal nature from her father-hell, from the both of them-but he wasn't about to say it aloud.
"If her mother were here, she'd pick up on her," Jameson said.
Edge lifted his brows. "Even if she's blocking?"
"Sometimes. They have a connection that's... it's powerful. I haven't seen anything like it, even among our kind. It started before Amber was even born. Angelica could communicate with her in the womb, could tell how she was doing."
"Amazing."
"I've always been just a little envious of the bond they share." He sighed. "It sure as hell would come in handy right now."
Edge shrugged. "It would, but we don't need it." He looked off in the distance, lifted a hand and pointed. "She's that way."
By the time the sun set, Amber had parked Rhiannon's customized Benz on the tree-lined lane outside the towering gates of a miniature castle. The building was made of pale, rust-tinted stone blocks and included two towerlike structures that flanked the entryway. Matching stone blocks formed a solid, ten-foot boundary fence around the entire property and held an iron gate in place that sealed off the driveway.
The sign mounted on the gate read Athena, and there were sculptures of large owls atop the stones on either side.
Amber squinted at it, willing it to give up its secret meaning to her, but the only thing she heard was the soft hum of the motor lowering the dark glass partition.
Rhiannon stretched and yawned. Angelica smoothed her hair away from her face. "What I wouldn't give for a shower," she muttered.
"Amen to that, sister," Rhiannon said.
Amber shot her a look, then glanced at her mother.
"Sorry," Rhiannon said quickly. "That was not a jibe at your former calling, Angelica. Just a slip of the tongue."
"I know."
Amber opened the car door and stepped out, putting her hands on her lower back and arching. Angelica got out, too, and paused in the midst of inhaling the night air to stare at the building beyond the gate across the street. "What is this place?"
"Yes, what have we missed, Amber? Fill us in," Rhiannon said, as she exited the car.
Amber got out, taking the keys with her, dropping them into her pocket. "Well, we're in Canada. Crossed the border a while back. I don't know what this place is. But it's where Brooke went. She took a cab from the bus station-must have cost a fortune, too, because it was fifty miles, at least. I followed her, of course."
"Were you seen, Amber?" Rhiannon asked.
"Of course not. I didn't even stay within sight of her. And the car is blocked from sight by that little copse of trees and the stone wall."
Rhiannon nodded. "So they have no idea we're out here."
"None." Amber glanced at her mother, then frowned. She was staring into the place as if transfixed. "What is it, Mom?"
Blinking and giving her head a shake, she said, "I don't know. It feels... familiar."
"You've been here before?" Amber asked.
"No, never. But the feeling... " She looked in at the house again; then her brows went up. "It feels like a convent," she said suddenly.
Rhiannon blinked in shock. "Oh, joy. This Brooke person has taken refuge in a nunnery?"
"I don't think they're nuns," Angelica said. "But there's that same kind of energy here."
Amber slid a hand over her mother's shoulder. "What kind? Tell us."
She narrowed her eyes. "A sisterhood. That place is filled with women who share a powerful bond and single-minded devotion to... something."
"To what?" Rhiannon asked.
"That I can't tell you."
Amber swallowed hard. "Somehow, I'd feel safer sneaking into an army barracks."
"You should," Rhiannon told her. She pursed her lips, frowned. "So what's the plan?"
Amber looked at the two women. "Alicia called me on the cell, just after daybreak. She'd driven out to Salem to join me there, and when I told her where we were, she insisted on coming up here. Said she had a feeling we were going to need her. She's on her way. Once she gets here, we have to get inside."
"Amber, we have no way of knowing what sort of security they have," Rhiannon cautioned. "And we can't just show up at the door. If they're tied to Stiles or the former DPI, they would likely recognize your mother and me for what we are on sight."
Angelica nodded. "I've seen the inside of far too many of their prison cells," she said. "I'd hate to end up hurled into yet another."
"And this Brooke person has seen you, Amber," Rhiannon went on.
Amber bit her lip, eyeing the gate, the wall. "Alicia was right, then. We are going to need her."
"How far out is she?'' Angelica asked.
Amber glanced at her watch. "She's got her 'Vette, and was driving straight through, so she'll get here a lot faster than we did. A couple more hours, at most." Her throat went tight. Why should the thought of seeing Alicia choke her up so much? She'd only seen her a few days ago. But it felt more like a lifetime.
Her mother read her face. "We'll just wait for her, then."
"Do you think it's too risky, Mom? I don't want to send her walking into a nest of vipers."
Angelica looked just as worried. "I don't know. Rhiannon?"
Rhiannon waved a hand. "Oh, please, what threat is a houseful of mortal women to us? I'll fry up the fat ones for a snack and use the skinny ones to pick my teeth when I've finished."
Amber made a face.
Rhiannon smiled a little sheepishly. "Sorry to offend your vegetarian sensibilities, dear. Can I help it if my mind is on food? I'm famished."
"Me, too," Amber said. She'd been irrationally starved for days now, and her waistline was showing the results all too clearly. "We passed a diner a few miles back. I'll call Alicia, have her meet us there. There was a medical clinic not far from it. Maybe you two can find some sustenance there."
"A blood supply or a nice young doctor," Rhiannon said with a twinkle in her eye. "At this point, either would do."
