simply do as I said and head north by northeast, opening your senses until you feel others of our kind are near. You’ll be safe there. It’s well-stocked with supplies, and its existence will be concealed. That’s your first option.”
“And what’s the second?” someone shouted.
She blinked and looked into those white, ghostlike faces appearing like stars in the darkness. “Join me. Join the resistance. Fight back. Wipe them out before they can exterminate us.”
14
Lucy stood at the bow as the island came into view, and not for the first time, was struck by the contrast between where she was and where she was going. The yacht was modern and luxurious. The bridge contained every possible modern navigational marvel. The staterooms were the equal of anything a posh hotel could offer. The bathroom was as luxurious as the one in Will and Fina’s home, and each of the vampires had taken a turn using it to wash away the smell of the fire, before donning clothes chosen from the shipboard collection.
And ahead of them…? Ahead was the island, looming dark and foreboding, with a half-burned-out castle rising against the midnight stars like something straight out of a movie set. The sky was black velvet, and foamy froth sizzled with every wave that broke against the rocky shore. It couldn’t have been more evocative. More clichéd. And yet the sight of it made Lucy’s heart race. Part of her was dying to explore, to hear the history of the place, to poke around the crumbling ruins. But there was too much to be done for any of that. And already there were people on the island. A large campfire danced against the darkness, and around it, shadows moved.
As soon as they anchored the yacht in a deep harbor near the shoreline and deployed a gangplank onto the rocks, they all hurried to debark. Lucy knew that James was eager for news of his family. Hell, everyone onboard had friends, relatives and loved ones who were missing and unaccounted for. And the ban on using their minds to search must be driving them all to the brink of madness, she thought.
But even then, they paused as they gathered on the shore to look back to where Rhiannon stood alone. She’d stepped up onto a boulder that jutted out over the ocean waves, and stood there with the blue-black sea heaving before her. Slowly she lifted her slender arms over her head. The wind blew against the long black dress she wore, snapping the draping points of its long sleeves just as it snapped her raven hair. She closed her eyes. And Lucy watched, James at her side, as a thick fog began rolling from the very surface of the ocean, swirling and rising and thickening, boiling higher and higher, until it reached into the sky like a mountain, entirely blocking any view of the island from the mainland.
Rhiannon lowered her arms, opened her eyes, looked around and gave a brief, sharp nod. “That’s better.”
And then, even as Lucy was staring, awestruck, at the woman, there was a joyous shout. Everyone turned to see other vampires come running toward the shore. A woman with bloodred hair and the face of an angel slammed into James so hard she nearly knocked him over. He caught her up in his arms and spun her in a circle, then kissed her face over and over.
And just when Lucy was starting to feel the rising tides of a jealousy that was as fierce as it was irrational, he set the woman on her feet again and said, “Lucy, come and meet my mother, Amber Lily.”
Lucy spent the entire night surrounded by them, and it was nothing like she would have imagined. She met James’s family, all of them young, strong, beautiful couples who appeared to be in their thirties or even younger. He introduced them as his parents, Amber Lily and Edge Poe, and his grandparents, Angelica and Jameson Bryant, and as “the closest thing to great grandparents I could have,” Eric and Tamara Marquand. And yet it was as if she were meeting her peers—hell, Tamara could have been one of her students.
This entire new society, with its web of relation ships and its nonexistent aging process, was going to take some getting used to.
And then she realized that no, it wouldn’t. Not for her. She wasn’t going to be around them much longer, anyway. James had promised to return her to her life as soon as