breathing after this battle.
Eric could not lose.
It was that simple.
If he did, they would both die here, in this chamber of horrors.
And what would become of Jamey?
Unnoticed by either man, she slid backward across the floor toward the
door Curtis had left wide.
When she reached it she gripped the knob and hauled herself to her
feet.
Dizziness swamped her and she staggered, but with a desperate lunge she
made it to the file cabinet, praying it was still unlocked.
She heard something crash to the floor in the laboratory.
She heard shattering glass and clanging metal.
She yanked on the top drawer and it slid open.
She reached inside, groping blindly as she looked over her shoulder,
certain Curt would emerge at any second.
Her hand closed on the smooth walnut grips and she slowly withdrew the
handgun.
Stumbling, she made her way back to the doorway.
Curt’s back was toward her.
He stood between her and Eric, who was backed to the far wall, facing
her.
She thumbed the hammer back.
“That’s enough, Curtis. Put the syringe down or— Curtis!”
He lunged at Eric, making a sweeping attack with the syringe.
Tamara’s finger clenched on the trigger, and before she was aware of
it, she’d shot twice.
Curt jerked like a marionette whose strings are tugged suddenly, then
slumped slowly to the floor and lay still.
Eric slammed flat against the wall as if he’d been punched.
Tamara saw the blood spreading across his chest, and then he, too,
slumped to the floor.
“Eric!”
she shrieked, and dropped the weapon.
“My God, Eric!”
Outside an abandoned, crumbling building Roland paused.
The boy’s signal had been stronger than ever only a second ago.
Now it had faded completely.
Had the child died?
In desperation Roland went inside, his night vision showing him the
small form lying weakly against a wall.
He knelt beside the boy, a flick of his fingers snapping the ropes that
bound his wrists and ankles.
He took the blindfold away, and gently peeled the tape from pale
lips.
He gathered the child up in his arms and strode from the building,
even as his senses sharpened to ascertain the problem.
The child was slipping into what modern medical people call shock, his
blood pressure dangerously low, his skin cold and clammy.
He was bleeding internally from a lung, punctured by a broken rib.
He had a bruise on his brain-a concussion, that is—but Roland didn’t
believe that injury to be serious.
Cradling the child in one arm, he removed his cloak with the other, and
quickly wrapped the boy in it.
Warmth was vital.
As was speed.
He raced with the child to the nearest hospital.
As they sped through the night the boy opened his eyes.
“Who are you?
” was all he said, and that softly.
“I’m Roland, child. Don’t worry. You’ll be fine.”
“Eric’s friend?”
Roland frowned.
“You’re Tamara’s Jamey, aren’t you?”
He nodded and settled a bit, then his eyes flew wide.
“Is she okay?”
“Eric is with her,” Roland replied.
They sped into the emergency room, and were immediately surrounded by
nurses, with forms to be filled out and endless questions.
One took the boy from him and placed him on a table.
“Call my mom,” Jamey said softly.
Roland nodded, searching his memory for the child’s last name.
Bryant, he recalled Tamara saying.
He went to the desk and asked for a telephone.
As he waited, he realized that Tamara must be the missing link.
It was she the boy had been unconsciously summoning.
She hadn’t heard.
She wasn’t even one of them.
Perhaps, though, she was meant to be.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN 1 amara fell to her knees beside Eric and pulled his
head up.
She thought he’d be dead.
Her weakness and dizziness, as well as her sore arm, were ignored,
beaten into submission by her grief.
She was amazed when he spoke through clenched teeth.
“It isn’t the bullets, Tamara. It’s … the bleeding.”
“Bleeding.”
She frowned.
“The bleeding!”
Of course.
She remembered now that he’d told her how easily he might bleed to
death.
She shoved him flat and tore his shirt open with her right hand, then
struggled to her feet.
Weaving and dizzy, she made her way to the row of cupboards, ripping
open three doors before she found rolls of bandages, gauze and adhesive
tape.
With her arms full, the left one still throbbing, she staggered back to
him.
Clumsily, one-handed, she wadded bunches of gauze to pack into the two
small wounds.
He grunted as she worked.
He felt pain more keenly than a human would, so she knew this must be
excruciating.
Still, she made herself continue until it seemed the bleeding had
stopped.
She wrapped long strips around him to hold the gauze in place.
She pulled them tight and taped them there.
Dizziness hit her anew, but Eric sat up and gripped her shoulders when
she would have fallen.
He made her sit beside him, and carefully he bandaged the small wound
on her forearm, padding it thickly and then removing the strap he’d
tied around her arm.
They helped each other to stand and slowly made their way out of the
lab, around Curtis’s still body and up the stairs.
When they emerged outside into the paling light of the early predawn
sky, Roland appeared in the driveway, and came toward them.
“I had a feeling you might need me. I can see I was mistaken.”
He eyed them both.
“Rogers?”
“Dead,” Eric said bleakly.
“I shot him.”
Tamara made herself say the words.
“And my only regret is that he won’t be able to tell me what he did
with… with Jamey.”
Her voice broke, and she felt tears stinging her eyes.
The boy is being attended now.
I took him to the emergency room.
” Tamara’s head went up fast, and Eric’s arm tightened around her.
“Go to him, love.
You need your arm stitched, anyway.
” “I’m not leaving you until I know you’re all right.”
She glanced up at the sky and frowned.
“We’d better hurry or both of you will be in trouble.”
Roland put a hand on her shoulder.
“I give you my promise, child, that Eric will be as good as new by
nightfall.
We can make it to the house in less time than you could drive in your
car.
Go, see to the boy.
” She looked up at Eric, and his arms closed around her.
His lips, though pale and cool, captured hers and left them with a
promise.
“Go,
love. Until tonight.”
She nodded, and hurried to her car.
She found a jacket in the back seat and zipped it on to cover her torn
blouse before she left.
There was nothing that could persuade her to go back inside that
house.
She noticed that Eric and Roland remained, watching until she drove out
of sight, before they went their own way.
Hours later, her arm stitched and bandaged, the police’s questions
temporarily answered, her head mercifully clear, Tamara knelt before
the fire in Eric’s living-room hearth and added logs to the glowing
embers.
She felt safe here, knowing he was nearby.
She hadn’t felt this safe, she realized, since she’d been a child of
six, in a hospital bed, clinging to the hand of a tall, handsome
stranger, who wasn’t a stranger at all.
When she’d absorbed enough heat to remove the chill from her body, she
wandered to the stereo and slipped a CD into the player.
Mozart’s music filled the entire house, and Tamara moved from room to
room, lighting every lamp.
The day was beginning to wane.
Night approached and she was too filled with anticipation to sit still
and await it.
She took her time in the downstairs bathroom, luxuriating in a hot
scented tub.
When she finished, she didn’t resist the impulse that sent her to the
bedroom upstairs for the dress he had given her.
She put it on carefully, located a brush and stroked her hair to
gleaming onyx.
When she returned to her seat by the fire the sun rested on the
horizon, about to dip below it.
In the hidden room beyond the cellar Eric looked down at his torn,
bloodied shirt and grimaced.
“Not much time to clean up before retiring, was there, Eric?”
Roland’s grin irritated him still further.
“I suppose you find this amusing?”
“Not at all.
In fact, I took it upon myself to make a few preparations after I
dropped you into your coffin this mo ming.
” Roland waved a hand to indicate the fresh suit of clothes that hung
nearby, and the basin of water on the stand near the fire.
Eric’s temper dissolved.
“Only a true friend would think of such trivial necessities.”
“No doubt I will ask that you return the favor one day.”
Eric washed quickly, knowing she waited upstairs.
He donned the clothes in haste, and hurried up the stairs to join
her.
Roland tactfully took his time in following.
She waited by the fire.
She was wearing the gown, and Eric felt a lump in his throat.
She stood quickly when she heard him, and eyed him with obvious
concern.
“Eric. Are you” — “Fully recovered, love. I told you the sleep is
regenerative, didn’t I? You haven’t been worrying about me, I hope.”
“I’ve been worrying about a lot of things,” she admitted, but relaxed
into his arms, resting her head on his shoulder.
He held her hard for a long moment, eyes closed, relishing her
nearness, her scent and the feel of her body so close to his.
Then he straightened, took her hand in his and examined her wounded
arm.
“It’s been stitched?”
She nodded, and Eric tilted her chin in his hand and searched face.
“And the other injuries? Are you still in pain?”
Her smile was his answer.
“I’m fine.”
“Looks a good deal better than fine to these eyes,” 1 land boomed as he
joined them in the parlor.
“A sight take a man’s breath away, if ever there was one.
” Tamara smiled at Roland and lowered her lashes.
“A all you eighteenth-century men so gifted at idle flattery?
“I am a good deal older than that, my dear, so my f tery can be nothing
but genuine.”
Just when Eric felt slightest twinge of jealousy, Roland went on.
“I can you two have important matters to discuss, and I have
appointment of my own to keep, so I’ll be on my way.”
“I know about your appointment,” Tamara said.
Eric glanced down at her as she stepped out of his embrace, walked over
to Roland and linked her arm through his.
“What’s this?”
Eric kept his tone jovial.
“You two have been sharing secrets?”
“None that I know of, Eric.”
Roland looked at Tamara as she led him to the set tee and pushed him
to sit down.
“Have you begun reading my mind, as well, little one?”
“No, but I spoke to Jamey’s mother today.”
Roland nodded as if he understood.
Eric, however, was still completely in the dark.
Tamara returned to him, pulled him to the set tee, as well, and joined
him upon it.
“Roland saved Jamey’s life last night. Curtis had kidnapped him
because he’s like me, one of what you call the Chosen. That’s why
we’ve always been so connected, Jamey and I. I’ve been going nuts
wondering what I could do to be sure Jamey would be safe… that some
lunatic like Daniel wouldn’t decide to further science by murdering his
mother and adopting him. That’s what Daniel did, you know. My
parents’ deaths were not accidental.”
Eric nodded.
For some time he’d had a lingering suspicion that had been the case.
She eyed Roland.
“Kathy says you’ve asked her to travel to one of your estates in
France.
That you need a live-in, full-time manager there and that you would
like her to do it.
” Tamara shook her head.
“She would have done it for nothing after you brought Jamey back safe
and sound.”
“He was hardly that when I last saw him,” Roland commented.
“How is the boy?”
“He’s going to be fine.”
Eric frowned hard.
“I’m not following all of this. If the boy is one of the Chosen, then
where was his protector when he was in all of this trouble?”
Roland sent Eric a meaningful glance.
“I wondered the same, until I realized the truth. The boy is fortunate
to have a guardian such as Tamara, Eric.”
“What are you saying?”
Tamara seemed unaware of the currents running between the two.
She reached for Roland’s hand and gripped it.
“Thank you, Roland. Jamey means so much to me. You’ll make sure they
leave right away, won’t you? Before anyone sees a connection between
Jamey and Curtis, and starts poking around.”
“You have my word, young one. And now, I’d best take my leave before
my best friend becomes my executioner.”
He sent Eric a wink.
“Do not think to oppose the fates, Eric. These cards were drawn long
ago, I think.”
He left them without another word.
Tamara stood abruptly, and paced restlessly toward the fire.
“We’ll have to leave right away, as well, Eric. When Curt’s body is
found I’ll be a suspect because I lived there and didn’t report it.
You’ll be one, too,
because of the breakin. We should go away from
here.”
She stopped in front of the glowing hearth, and turned to face him.
The fire made a halo of light around her, so she seemed ethereal, truly
a vision.
“But first there is something else, and I think you know it as well as
I do.”
Eric rose, went to her and gazed down into her face.
She was more beautiful, more precious to him than the most flawless
diamond could be.
God, but he loved her beyond reason.
More than anything, he wanted to keep her with him, always.
He swallowed.
“It is an endless, lonely existence.
Tamara.
An existence of endless night.
A world without the sun.
” “How could it be lonely if we were together?”
She gripped his lapels in her fists.
“If it’s a choice between you and the sun, Eric, I choose you without a
moment’s hesitation.
Don’t you feel the same about me?
” His throat tried to close off.
He forced words.
“You know I do. But, Tamara, immortality is not a gift. It is a
curse.
You will live to see all those you love return to the dust” —
“Everyone I’ve ever loved is gone, except for two. You and Jamey. And
as much as I adore him, he’s not a part of my life. He has his mother,
his own life to live.”
She blinked as her eyes began to moisten.
“Please, if you deny me, I’ll truly be alone.
What must be done, Eric?
” Her tears caused his own eyes to burn.
“You need time to consider.
” “What have I had for the past twenty years if not time?”
A waver crept into her voice.
“I’ve been wandering aimlessly in a world where I never belonged. I
was never meant to be there, Eric, I was meant to be with you. To be
like you.
Roland knows it. You heard what he said, the decision isn’t ours to
make.
My fate” — she lifted a trembling hand to the side of his face, tears
streaming now down her own “—is right here in front of me.”
The glow of the firelight made the satin gown seem like a soft green
blaze.
Her hair glistened, and even her skin seemed aglow.
Her scent caressed him as truly as her hand did.
She cleared her throat, and he knew she was forcing herself to go on.
“I know… you have to drink from me,” she whispered.
“But that’s only part of it, is that right?
That you have to drink from me, Eric?
” He could not prevent his eyes from fixing themselves on her exposed