He sighed and held his hands over the stinking body, not touching it, but very close. Far closer than he wanted to be. The light began to emanate from his hands, to beam into the body on the table, and within a few minutes the corpse’s peeling flesh began to smooth itself out again. The sunken eyes seemed to plump themselves, and the flesh to lose its gray-blue cast. He felt it when the heart began beating, felt it echoing in his own chest. The rib cage expanded as the cracked lips healed, then parted, and when the being on the table exhaled, the stench made James sway backward, pulling his hands away.
But the eyes did not open.
“Very good. Very good!” Rhiannon clapped her hands several times. Applause, for making a half-rotten corpse breathe. Go figure. “On to the next one, then,” she said.
“But we don’t know how this one is going to turn out yet.” He frowned, then faced her, trying hard to read her thoughts. “What’s going on, Rhiannon? Why are you in such a rush all of a sudden?”
She lowered her head, and he found her mind completely blocked.
He probed, but she was stronger. “Where is Roland? And Pandora? Where’s Pandora?”
“I couldn’t have the cat in here. She would have made snacks of our experiments. And then how would I have borne her breath?”
“Rhiannon. Something’s going on, isn’t it?”
She wasn’t letting him read her thoughts at all. But she did lower her eyes, guilt showing in them. “Things out there have…taken a bad turn.”
“Out where? What things?”
Rhiannon lifted her head and moved her long dark hair behind one ear. She met his eyes, her regal bearing wavering very slightly. “The vigilante movement has exploded all over the nation, and it’s spreading overseas. We’ve lost even more of our own, J.W.”
He felt the knowledge hit him squarely in the chest. “Who?”
“Hundreds. During the day, while we rested, they set fire to countless homes. Anyplace they suspected might house a vampire. They were wrong as often as not, idiots that they are. Uneducated, ignorant bigots who don’t know the first thing about our kind. They killed as many of their own as they did of ours, and—”
“My parents? Where is my mother?”
“We don’t know. We can’t contact anyone mentally—”
“The hell we can’t!” James closed his eyes, began beaming his thoughts out to his family.
“James, no!” Rhiannon’s shout stopped him dead. It was the first time she had ever called him James, and it got his attention. “You know as well as I do that there are humans with the power of telepathy. ESP, they call it. They’re able to tap into our thoughts if we do not block them carefully. Your mother knows that, too, so she would be blocking. We cannot risk communicating by telepathy right now. It might only lead them straight to us—or to your parents.”
“I have to find her. All of them. And—”
“Roland has gone to check on them. He intends to gather up everyone still alive and take them to a safe haven.”
“No. I have to go. I have to be with them and—”
She clapped a hand on his shoulder. “You, James, are the only one who can end this madness. This is exactly what the prophecy foretold. We should have expected it—did expect it—but it’s unfolding far more rapidly than any of us could have imagined.” Rhiannon spoke softly, but there was power in her voice. “This is what you were chosen to do. This is why you have the power you have. The prophecy foretold this war. We need Utanapishtim to end it. If your family is still alive, they will only survive if you stay here and do the job you were born to do. That’s how you will save them. It’s the only way you can.”
He stared into her eyes for a long moment, and then he sensed his sister behind him in the doorway and whirled, wondering how much she had heard.
She met his eyes. There was absolute fury in hers. “I, on the other hand, was born with a power that hasn’t been much use at all,” she said. “Until now.”
“Brigit, we need you here,” Rhiannon said.
Brigit shook her head, backing away slowly. “I love you, Aunt Rhi, but I have to do this. And you know damn well I can protect our family better than anyone else.”
Rhiannon couldn’t seem to drum up an argument for that. She nodded and said, “Go and