Read Online Edge of Twilight by MAGGIE SHAYNE - Free Book Online

seashore.
    He didn’t go inside. He didn’t need to. He could see what was going on just as easily from outside, just by probing and prying. It was bad form among his kind to eavesdrop this way, but he didn’t really give a damn about the protocol and etiquette of being undead. Never had. Normally this kind of snooping wouldn’t go undetected, but the women inside were far too distracted to pay him any mind.
    The woman they called ‘Fina was grieving over a dying mortal. Willem. She was his lover, Edge deduced. He felther pain and had to shut it out because it was too intense to bear. Nearly paralyzing.
    He wasn’t sure whether the Child of Promise and her “aunt” Rhiannon were aware of it or not, but it was clear to him the Gypsy Sarafina would not go on once Willem was dead. It was coming through his senses as clearly as the images of her dancing around a fire amid a village of painted wagons and reading palms in exchange for silver in some long-ago time.
    It was, of course, nothing to him. He had a feeling she’d known once what he knew now. How foolish it was to care for anyone other than herself. How utterly stupid and self-destructive it was to put anything or anyone above your own well-being.
    Stupid. She’d known it once. She’d put it aside. And now she was paying the price. She would die. There was no question. Within a few days—maybe hours—of her mortal lover’s death, she would be gone.
    He felt a little twist in his gut when he thought how much that was going to hurt Alby. Then he reminded himself that it was nothing to him. She was nothing to him.
    He focused again. The one called Rhiannon—with her he got a feeling of age and extreme power, and he saw flashes of desert sands and pyramids, Egyptian temples and pharoahs—had drawn Alby into a lower level room, and the two were sitting now. He opened his senses, witnessed it all in his mind.
    Rhiannon, seated in a thronelike chair, looked at Alby and said, “We are not going to let this happen.”
    â€œI’m not sure there’s anything we can do to stop it.”
    â€œNonsense. There’s one thing. And you know it as well as I do.”
    â€œRhiannon, I don’t know—”
    Rhiannon flung up a hand, and Amber fell silent. “You saw it. I saw it. Five years ago, Willem flung Frank Stiles from a cliff to the rocks below. The man should have been dead. But he wasn’t. He took a boat and he rowed away.”
    â€œWe can’t be sure that was him,” Amber said softly, even though she knew that it was. Edge felt the knowledge in her mind, and knew Rhiannon did, as well. “The man in the boat was too far away to see clearly, even for us. Stiles’s body could have been swept out to sea.”
    â€œBut it wasn’t. It revived, he survived, and he lives still.”
    â€œMaybe…”
    â€œAn ordinary mortal, Amber. Not even one of the chosen. The rumors, the whispers, they’re true. He made a serum from your blood, and he made himself indestructible. If it could be done once, it can be done again.”
    The pretty one lowered her head. “We don’t know how he did it. There’s no formula in his notes. He told no one, not even his most trusted assistants, what he was doing. No one knows how he accomplished it— if he accomplished it—other than the man himself.”
    Rhiannon seemed to consider that for a long moment. Then she said, “If you had the formula, would you let yourself be used in such a way?”
    â€œI’d give anything to save Willem. How is this any different from offering a kidney or a bone marrow transplant? Of course I’d do it.”
    Edge was stunned. Why would anyone be so willing to do so much for someone else? It made no sense to him. A small voice inside whispered that he would have done the same once, a long, long time ago. For his fledglings. For little Bridget. But God,