“No.” Though I hadn’t seen him move his lips, the word was, sharp, definite.
“I told you—”
“You told me people will die,” he said in a bored voice. “The only one who is going to die is you.”
His cool words should have chilled me, but I’d already figured out I was a lost cause. “Look,” I said patiently, “you can do anything you want. Stab me, strangle me, shoot me—I don’t care. Just do it miles away from the city.”
I suppose I should have looked him over more carefully to see if I could find a weak spot, but I was too wound up thinking about Amanda. No more, I thought. For God’s sake, no more babies.
“We are in Australia,” he said.
I stopped trying to get up, finally looking at him. “How long have I been unconscious?”
“Not long.”
Okay, now I knew he was a certifiable fruitcake. Not that I should have had any doubt—a sane person doesn’t swoop down on you like a bat and abduct you. I tried once more to get off the bed, and this time I made it, as if whatever had held me back finally let go.
“Go to the window if you do not believe me.”
I went. I didn’t see koalas or kangaroos bouncing by the window—it looked like any dingy waterfront. Even so, it would take more than a couple of hours to reach the ocean from the last place I remembered being. So clearly I’d been out for longer than he’d said, but that didn’t matter. All that mattered was that Amanda and all the other newborns would now be safe.
“Okay,” I said, turning back to face him. I was tired of running, tired of the fear and panic that had threatened to strangle me. “Go ahead. Make my day.”
And I spread my arms wide, waiting for him to kill me.
CHAPTER TWO
THE MAN GAZED AT ME, HIS FACE expressionless. “You have seen too many movies.”
I sighed. “Look, I don’t know who or what you are and I don’t care. I’m tired of running, tired of questions with no answers. If you want to shoot me, then go ahead and do it; otherwise, give me some answers or leave me alone.”
“I don’t possess a gun.” I was still deciding whether or not I was relieved when he continued, “You know as well as I do that I do not need a gun to kill you.”
I sat back down on the lumpy bed. “I don’t know shit,” I said flatly. “I don’t even know who I am, much less who you are. I’m sure you could overpower me if you wanted to, but I’m also going to presume that if you were planning to kill me you would have already done it.”
“You should not presume anything. I can come up with half a dozen reasons why I have yet to kill you. Perhaps I need a better place to dispose of your body.”
“Like Australia?”
His face was impassive. “Perhaps I want to draw it out, let you suffer. Or maybe I have decided to give you a chance to talk me out of it. Or even give you a head start.”
Okay, none of that sounded even the slightest bit reassuring. I took a good look at him. By some standards he might even be considered attractive. Hell, freaking gorgeous—if it weren’t for the incredible coldness in his blue eyes. He had long, straight, very black hair, pale skin, a narrow face with finely chiseled high cheekbones, a thin mouth, and a strong nose. He looked as cold as Antarctica, and his faintly formal diction made him seem even more impenetrable.
“You know, for some reason none of those possibilities seems very likely. You don’t strike me as someone filled with the milk of human kindness.”
“I am not human.”
This barely struck me as odd. Impossible as it was, I had begun to guess as much, considering that we had apparently managed to travel thousands of miles in a matter of hours. “Then what the fuck are you?”
“You know.”
I was facing death with what I considered a fair amount of noble equanimity, but he was getting beyond frustrating, ruining the whole Joan of Arc bit. “I don’t know. I told you, I don’t even know who I am, and even though you came swooping down on me like a bat out of hell, I’m having a hard time processing the idea that you’re anything but a crazy stalker who’s probably going to dismember my body and gnaw on my bones.”
“We do not eat flesh. That would be the Nephilim.”
That word, that name, struck an odd chord inside me, a surge of nausea that it took all my willpower to control. Yet the word meant nothing. “Who are the Nephilim?”
He didn’t answer. He rose, and I watched him, looking for any sign of weakness. Presumably he wasn’t lying about the gun—he was wearing a black T-shirt and jeans and I could see no sign of one on him. For a moment I was afraid he was going to approach me, and I steeled myself to fight, but instead he walked over to the window, pushing open the curtain to let in the early morning light. The soft singing on the radio finished, and the announcer came on—most definitely Australian. I felt a shiver wash over me, and tried to control it. At least Amanda was safe.
And then he switched off the radio, turning to look at me. “It is time to go.”
“Go where? Are you going to explain anything at all or leave me to die of curiosity?”
He didn’t make the obvious answer. He just stood there waiting, and slowly, painfully I rose to my feet again. I felt as if someone had used me as a punching bag—presumably this man. I wondered if I looked as bruised as I felt. As I started after him I glanced at my reflection in the mirror. And screamed.
Even before the sound erupted he was on me, one hand clamped over my mouth, the other around my waist, imprisoning me as I struggled against the rising hysteria. I didn’t know that woman in the mirror—a stranger looking back at me out of warm brown eyes. In fact, in that first horrifying glimpse, it was only the eyes that seemed familiar.
I might have been fighting a machine. His body was impervious to my struggles, my frantic kicks. And as quickly as the panic had come on, it drained away, leaving me staring at myself in the mirror, with him behind me, holding me.
My hair was red. With all the bottles of dye I’d used over the years, the one color I’d never used was red. I’d been blond, brunette, and everything in between, but the very thought of red hair had made me ill. My skin was pale, almost transparent, and the hair was thick and curling, hanging below my shoulders when I’d favored something short and manageable. His hand covered half my face, but I’d seen my mouth—wide and curving, different from the small mouth I’d occasionally augmented with lipstick. My own eyes stared out from the face of a stranger, and I wanted to throw up.
He must have felt the fight leave my body, because he slowly released me. I had no doubt those iron hands could clamp over my arms again at any moment, and I did my best to make my body soft and pliant.
“You do not fool me,” he said in my ear. “I am not going to turn my back on you for a minute.”
“Probably a good idea,” I said out of the stranger’s mouth in the mirror. “I’d run.”
“You would be more likely to disembowel me.”
Startled, I looked up at him. Again, he was totally without affect—I’d picked up that word during one of my lifetimes, but I couldn’t remember where. His eyes were cold, his face blank. He’d said he wasn’t human. Impossible as that was to comprehend, looking into his soulless eyes made it marginally more believable.
“Not likely, unless you’re going to hand me a knife.” I was pleased with the caustic tone I achieved, until his next words hit.
“You wouldn’t need a knife.”
“I think I’ll just stop talking,” I said, feeling ill at the picture his words conjured. That was twice he’d sent me to the edge of nausea. Probably a combination of jet lag and hunger. My brain was still trying to make sense of it all. So he said I hadn’t been out long, yet somehow we’d gotten to Australia. Clearly he was lying, and I must have been unconscious for days. It was no wonder my stomach was in an uproar—I was starving. “Just feed me,” I added, “and I promise I won’t bother you.”