"It's not possible." She reluctantly lifted her lids to meet the glittering silver gaze. 'You're a vampire?"
He grimaced. "My heritage is the least of your concerns at the moment."
Heritage? She swallowed a hysterical urge to laugh.
"Did Selena know?"
"That I was a vampire? Oh yes, she knew." His tone was dry. "In fact, you could say that it was a prerequisite to my employment."
Abby frowned. "Then she was a vampire too?"
"No." Dante paused as if carefully considering his words. Ridiculous since he could have informed her that Selena was Beelzebub and she couldn't have twitched a muscle as long as he held her in his relentless grip. "She was… a Chalice."
"Chalice?" Her blood ran cold. The woman screaming in agony. The crimson flames. "The Phoenix," she breathed.
His brows drew together in shock. "How did you know that?"
'The dream. I was in a dungeon, and there was a woman lying on the floor. I think the other women were performing some ritual upon her."
"Selena," he muttered. "She must have passed a portion of her memories onto you. That's the only explanation."
"Passed on memories? But that's…" Her words trailed away as a mocking smile curved his lips.
"Impossible? Don't you think we're beyond that by now?"
They were, of course. She had tumbled into some bizarro world where anything was possible. Like Alice in the Looking Glass.
Only instead of disappearing cats and white rabbits, there were vampires and mysterious Chalices and who knew what else.
"What did they do to her?"
'They made her a Chalice. A human vessel for a powerful entity."
"So those women were witches?"
"For lack of a better term."
Great. Just great. "And they put a spell upon Selena?"
The silver eyes shimmered in the shadowed light. "It was rather more than a spell. They called forth the spirit of the Phoenix to live within her body."
Abby could almost feel the crimson flames that had seared into the woman's flesh. She shivered in horror. "No wonder she was screaming. What does this Phoenix do?"
'It is a… barrier."
She eyed him warily. "A barrier against what?"
"Against the darkness."
Well, that made everything as clear as mud. Impatiently Abby wriggled beneath the man pinning her to the bed.
A bad, very bad move.
As if a lightning bolt had suddenly struck her, she was vibrantly aware of his hard body branding her own. A body that had haunted her dreams more than a few nights.
Dante's jaw tightened at her unwittingly provocative movements, his h*ps instinctively shifting in response.
"Do you think you could possibly be a little more vague?" she managed to choke out.