Free The Perfect Kiss by Amanda Stevens Page B

of?”
    “Then you will remain as you are now. Belonging to neither the day nor the night.”
    When at last Anya’s weeping subsided, Freida touched Anya’s dry cheek with her fingertip. “See,
liebchen?
You no longer even have tears. Those, too, have been taken from you.”
    And somehow, at that moment, that seemed the greatest loss of all to Anya.
    Over the next few days, Freida’s predictions all began to come true. Anya’s blue eyes took on a silvery glint. Her hair grew even more lustrous, her complexion more silky smooth. And the hunger, the insatiable thirst, began to creep up through the dark emptiness inside her to torment her night and day. If it hadn’t been for Freida and Karl, for their unfailing strength and support, Anya knew she would never have survived. She would have succumbed to those loathsome urges.
    But her will was strong, and Anya continued to resist.
    Eventually she learned the Aldermanns’ story as well,and discovered why they were so willing to help her. Their daughter, Katrina, had also been seduced by Gershom, but she hadn’t been as strong as Anya, Freida told her. Katrina had welcomed the darkness. She had craved Gershom’s kiss. She had eagerly made the transformation. She had taken her first victim.
    Because they had loved Katrina more than life itself, Karl and Freida had destroyed the monster she’d become in order to save their beloved daughter’s soul.
    From that time, two years ago, they had vowed no other young girl would meet such a fate at Gershom’s hands. They had watched him, studied him, followed him. They had tried to get to Anya in time, but Gershom had been cunning as always. He had tricked them, had slipped through their grasp. Now, they would do everything they could to help her resist his lure, to save her from the ultimate darkness.
    And so the battle for Anya’s soul began. Gershom couldn’t enter Karl and Freida’s house—they had seen to that—but Anya couldn’t keep him out of her dreams. Night after night he called to her, tormenting her sleep with visions of what she would someday become. Night after night Anya woke up screaming in terror at the images.
    “His pull is getting more powerful everyday,” Freida told Anya one day, when she had brought Anya a bowl of the broth she had concocted to assuage Anya’s growing hunger. “Here, near his home, his powers are the strongest. We must take you back to the place that is
your
home, where your resistance will be strengthened. Gershom won’t follow you. To stray so far from his native soil would weaken him. But he won’t relinquish his control over you, Anya. Make no mistake about that. He will use his powers and cunning to try to make you come to him.”
    Within a week the arrangements had been made. A nightflight to Paris. A hotel room to wait out the day. Another night flight via the Concorde to New York. Then eventually, always traveling by night, Karl, Freida and Anya had arrived at her grandmother’s estate, the only place Anya had ever called home.
    For ten years, they had lived a quiet existence outside the tiny village of Towering Oaks, while Dr. Traymore searched two continents for the answers that would save Anya. For ten years, Anya had fought the evil planted inside her—the dark, insatiable hunger. For ten years, no one had threatened her control.
    Until now.
    You can never know the love of a man, for a man who arouses your passions will also unleash your hunger.
    Slowly but surely the images of the past dissolved inside Anya’s mind, replaced by a shimmering vision of Zach Christopher. She could see the lushness of his green eyes and the lustrous gold of his hair. She could hear the sound of his voice, could feel the warmth of his skin beneath her own. If she closed her eyes, if she concentrated hard enough, she could smell the warm scent of his blood, an essence as unique to him as his fingerprints.
    Anya shuddered. “There is a way, Freida. There is a way to get the