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low in her body and realized she suddenly knew why the vamp groupies kept going back for more. She raised her fists to shove him away, but he was gone before she could touch him.
    “Forgive me,” he said, his rough voice nearly a growl. “It has been a long time. Beyond mere hunger, I have reason to believe I will need to be able to find you.”
    Tiernan blinked, her fury at his attack fizzling in the wake of utter confusion. “Forgive you? Did you just apologize to me?”
    “Even monsters can apologize,” he said dryly.
    “I didn’t—”
    “You did. And I deserved it, but again, no time for pretty speeches. Be warned and be prepared. I will send you an ally if I can, but even if not, these experiments need to stop. You and the Atlanteans may have to work alone, but know that I’ll be working toward you from the other side of this. Remember that not all of the shape-shifters who wear the faces of friends are true.”
    Tiernan had had just about enough of his cryptic riddles. “Who are you? I’ve had confidential sources before and never yet revealed a single one. You can trust me, if you really are on my side.” Everything in her was telling her that he wasn’t lying, but her senses didn’t always work with vampires. Truth and falsehood had different meaning to the undead, apparently, so vampire lies didn’t always resonate in her soul. Didn’t cause her highly calibrated senses to jangle with the discordant sound of dishonesty.
    He laughed, but the sound was wrong, somehow, as if he hadn’t used his voice for laughter for more years than she’d been alive. “I’ve trusted human women before. Twice. The first died, and the second paid a terrible price and despises me. Never, ever again.”
    “But—”
    “I have to leave you now. Don’t forget,” her captor whispered, his voice merely a darker shadow in the night.
    “Wait! How do I get out of here?” Tiernan pointed to the impenetrable greenery, but before she could say another word, his hand shot out and wrenched a handful of leaves and branches, and a gaping hole appeared in the hedge.
    She whistled. “Well, if you give up the mysterious kidnapper thing, you could try gardener, I suppose.”
    When he didn’t respond, she glanced over her shoulder and wasn’t really surprised to see him gone. “Bond, James Vampire Bond,” she murmured, before she leaned down and moved sideways through the gap in the hedge, toward the light.
    “Miss?” The long-missing valet rushed down the sidewalk toward her. “What happened to you? Are you all right?”
    He took her arm and she stood up, scanning the area to see how many people had seen her climbing out of the hedge. But luckily the driveway was momentarily clear. Or maybe it wasn’t “luckily” at all. Maybe the vamp had waited for privacy before he let her go. Vampires did have better than average hearing, or so the rumor went.
    “Miss? Talk to me. Are you okay? Your neck is bleeding,” the man said, pulling her toward the hotel in a fast walk, almost as if he were afraid to be out after dark.
    She clapped her hand over the bite mark and managed a smile. “Oh, if you only knew me. Just clumsy, clumsy, clumsy. I fell through those bushes in these terrible shoes. Can you grab my bag for me, please?”
    He started to protest, but she narrowed her eyes and lifted her chin. He recognized defeat and moved to lift her case from the sidewalk, where she’d dropped it when she’d been snatched by Captain Mysterious. She took advantage of the moment and grabbed a tissue from the front pocket of her backpack and wiped her neck with it, wincing at the sight of the fresh blood. She wadded it up and stuffed it in the pocket of her jeans as the valet turned around.
    “Ready to get checked in and get a good night’s sleep?” he asked, pasting a strained smile on his face. “Meetings start tomorrow morning at eight A.M. It looks like it will be an interesting conference.”
    She handed him her keys and