Lily’s heart lurched. Maybe she’d finally get the information she needed.
The sound of water running, or rather flowing in sheets, drew her attention. As she turned around, her brows rose: She was looking at a waterfall not thirty feet away. She wended a path through some elegant modern black leather furniture, past a long rectangular dining table, to an elegant creation of rock, water, and lighting.
She wondered where the pump was, then looking up realized she was seeing the real deal, a waterfall inside the cave system.
Vampires and caves. Why not waterfalls? It all made sense, and everywhere she went in this strange new world, she saw that the caves, the sculpted walls and floors, the tunnels through hard rock, had all been around for a long time. Behind the flow of water, she could see that granite had been carved and polished so that it appeared as though light glittered through the flow of water.
When she heard Eve call out offering her guests wine, which Adrien accepted, she returned to him. A servant appeared, a much shorter woman in a crisp white, tunic-like apron over a maroon gown, and took Adrien’s request for two Cabernet Sauvignons.
After taking the first sip, Adrien suggested they sit down in the chairs opposite the couch. Lily sank into the soft leather and gave herself to savoring the wine and trying to let go of some of her tension about where she was, that she kept having some really outrageous sex with a vampire, and that a sex-club dom was now changing in the other room.
She eased back and closed her eyes, a mental list popping into her head: Category, The Erotic Passage, item one, get information from Eve about the weapon; item two, get Josh back.
As always happened when she thought about her son, her stomach tightened, but she forced back the tension and sipped her wine. She had to relax through this process, through these soul-shattering experiences that kept turning her world upside down. The more relaxed she was, the better her decisions would be—but much easier said than done.
“You okay?”
She opened her eyes and shifted to meet Adrien’s beautiful flecked teal gaze. She nodded. “I’m surviving.”
His lips quirked. “Sometimes that’s all that matters.” He lifted his glass to her. “For what you’ve been through, you’re doing great.”
His voice soothed her; that was what she understood, the deep resonance, the kindness. Maybe it was that quality that surprised her most of all, just how kind Adrien was.
Guilt pierced her suddenly, about why she was here, that she was using Adrien, and that she would go to any lengths to get her son back. “I don’t want to hurt you,” she whispered. “But how can this end well, any of it?”
“Lily, what’s going on? Tell me.” He tilted his head and frowned.
She wanted to tell him about Josh, she really did, but how wise would that be? She’d agreed to the terms of the mission. Was her need to tell Adrien the truth worth putting her son’s life on danger?
She touched the chain at her neck. On the other hand, this wasn’t a normal situation and the bond she shared with Adrien had already told her so much, had made her care for him. She almost opened her mouth to speak—but at that moment a very different Eve returned to the living room.
She was barefoot, she’d lost the makeup, and her long blond hair, only partially dry, hung about her shoulders. “I hope you enjoyed the wine.” She met Lily’s gaze and all the flirtation was gone. “I have an import business, and of course Italy is exactly the right place for it. So how are you liking our world?” She sat down on the couch, spreading her arms along the back of the cushions.
Lily glanced briefly at Adrien then back to Eve. “It’s not what I expected, not on any level.” Thoughts of Adrien catching the vampire child up in his arms in the Trevayne system raced through her mind, stealing her breath away all over again.
“We’re not all bad,” Eve said. “Or at least, not all the time, and for the sake of my friendship with Adrien I apologize for my earlier misdeeds.”
Oh, great. Now Eve was proving her character as well, which made the whole situation one big nerve itch. Good vampires. Bad ones. A world lacking a system of justice. A world of the individual. She liked too much of what she saw.
“Apology accepted.”
Eve nodded, offering a half smile. “So once I showered, I had a little chat with Rumy and he tells me that the shared chains have brought on a revisiting power—that you actually saw Daniel in Rumy’s office.”
“That’s true. I did.”
Eve narrowed her gaze at Lily. “Daniel’s one good-looking bastard, isn’t he?”
Lily nodded. “And very charismatic. It’s no wonder he’s caused all sorts of problems. He also seemed familiar to me, though I know I’d never seen him before.”
Eve glanced at Adrien and smiled. When her gaze returned to Lily she still wore a smile. “He might seem familiar because he’s fathered any number of children, all sons.”
“Really? But I thought they were rare?”
“In our world, you mean, yes, children are rare, but Daniel has great power and he doesn’t mind playing around with science. No doubt you’ve already seen one of his sons in passing.”
Lily shuddered.
Adrien cleared his throat. “And as fascinating as Daniel’s progeny might be, Eve, how about you tell us what we need to know. I take it Rumy already told you what we’re after.”
“Yes.” She wrinkled up her nose. “But the extinction weapon? What a nightmare.”
“Then you know something about it?” Lily searched her face, her heart rate climbing.
“Of course I do. And from the information I’ve received over the past several decades, a weapon like this could be used to take out an entire cavern system at once.”
Adrien leaned forward, his arms on his thighs, his hands clasped tightly together. “How the hell do you know this?”
Eve chuckled. “Because, darling Adrien, I sleep with a lot of men who tend to become talkative at certain times and I have a variety of skills that can keep them talking.”
She called for a glass of Silver Patrón. When the tumbler arrived, she took a long drink, savoring. She leaned into the couch again and released a deep sigh. “God, I love tequila, one of the human race’s finest achievements.” She chuckled softly. “You both look so tense.”
“Eve—” Adrien chided. “More details.”
“Fine. So here it is: In the nineteen fifties, just like in the human world, scientists in our major Paris university went mad with experimenting, especially with sound waves and bats, which have super-sensitive hearing, just like vampires.