He was patient. He had learned patience. He knew he was closing in on her. He had time now. There was no need to hurry this. He could afford to grow in strength. From his dark grave he stalked her, every touch of his mind to hers making the connection between them that much stronger. He had no real idea of what he was going to do to her once she was in his hands. He wouldn’t kill her right away; he had spent so long in her mind, it sometimes seemed as if they were one. But she would surely suffer. Once again he sent himself to sleep to conserve the remaining blood in his veins.

She was asleep at her computer, her head resting on a stack of papers. Even in her sleep, her mind was active. Jacques had learned many details about her. She had a photographic memory. He learned things from her mind that he had either forgotten or perhaps had never known. He often spent time studying before he subjected her to his harassment. She was a source of knowledge for him, knowledge of the outside world.

She was always alone. Even the flashes of long-ago memories he caught were of a small child isolated from others. He felt as if he knew her intimately, yet he really knew nothing personal about her. Her mind was filled with formulas and data, with instruments and chemistry. She never thought about her appearance or anything he would expect a woman to think about. Only her work. Anything else was quickly banished.

Jacques focused and aimed. You will come to me now. You will not allow anything to stop you. Awaken, and come to me while J am resting and waiting.He used every ounce of strength he possessed to embed the compulsion deep within her. He had forced her several times over the last two months or so to walk toward him, to be drawn through the darkened forest in the vicinity of his prison. Each time she had come his way as he had bidden her, but her need to complete her work had been so strong in her, she had eventually turned back. This time he was certain he had enough strength to force her compliance. She felt his presence within her, recognized his touch, but she had no real idea that they were linked. She thought of him as a dream—or rather, a nightmare.

Jacques smiled at that. But there was no amusement in the white flash of his teeth, only the promise of savagery, the promise of a predator stalking its prey.

Shea jerked awake, blinked to bring the room into focus. Her work was scattered everywhere, the computer on, the documents she had been studying a bit crumpled where her head had rested on them. The dream again. Would it never stop, leave her in peace? She was familiar with the man in the dream now, his thick mane of jet-black hair and the touch of cruelty around his sensuous mouth. In the first few years she had been unable to see his eyes in that nightmare dream, as if perhaps they were covered, but the last couple of years he had stared at her with black menace.

Shea shoved at her hair, felt the little beads of perspiration gathered on her forehead. For a moment she experienced the strange disorientation she always did after the dream, as if something held her mind for just a heartbeat of time, then slowly, with great reluctance, released her.

Shea knew she was being hunted. Where the dream was not reality, the fact that someone was stalking her was true. She could never lose sight of that, never forget. She would never be safe again, not unless she found a cure for herself and the handful of others who shared the same rare disease. She was being hunted as if she were an animal with no emotions or intelligence. It didn’t matter to the hunters that she spoke six languages fluently, that she was a skilled surgeon, that she had saved countless lives.

The words on the paper in front of her blurred, ran together. How long had it been since she had really slept? She sighed, swept a hand through her thick, waist-length, silky red hair, shoving it away from her face. She pulled it back rather haphazardly and, as always, secured it with whatever happened to be handy.

She began to review the symptoms of her strange blood disease. To catalog herself. She was small and very delicate, frail almost. She looked young, like a teenager, aging at a much slower rate than a normal human. Her eyes were enormous, vividly green. Her voice was soft, velvety, often called mesmerizing. When she lectured, most of the students were so enthralled by her voice, they remembered every word she spoke. Her senses were far superior to others of the human race, her hearing and sense of smell extremely acute. She saw colors more vividly, registered details most humans missed. She could communicate with animals, jump higher and run faster than many trained athletes. She had learned at an early age to hide her talents.

She stood up, stretched. She was dying slowly. Every minute that ticked by was a heartbeat less in the time she had to find the cure. Somewhere in all these boxes and reams of paper, there had to be a solution. Even if she found the answer too late for herself, she could prevent those like her from the terrible isolation she had felt all her life.

She might age slowly and have exceptional abilities, but she paid a high price for them. The sun burned her skin. Although she could see clearly on the darkest night, her eyes had a hard time in the light of day. Her body rejected most foods, and worst of all, she had to have blood every day. Any blood. There was no blood incompatible with hers. Animal blood kept her alive—barely. She desperately needed human blood, and only when she was close to collapse did she allow herself to use it, and then only by transfusion. Unfortunately, her particular disease seemed to require oral transfusions.

Shea flung open the door, inhaled the night, listened to the breeze whispering of fox and marmots, of rabbits and deer. The cry of an owl missing its prey and the squeak of a bat sent blood rushing through her veins. She belonged here. For the first time in her lonely existence, she felt a semblance of peace.

Shea wandered outside to her porch. Her snug blue jeans and hiking boots were fine, but her thin T-shirt would not stave off the cold of the mountains. Snagging her sweatshirt and hiking bag, Shea hurried out to the beckoning land. If only she had known of this place earlier. She had wasted so much time. Just a month ago she had discovered the healing properties in the soil here. She had already known of the healing agent in her saliva. Shea had planted a garden, vegetable and herb. She loved working in the soil. Quite by accident she had cut herself, a rather deep and nasty gash. The earth seemed to ease the pain, and the cut was nearly closed by the time she finished working.

She began to wander aimlessly along the trail, wishing her mother could have experienced this place of peace. Poor Maggie. Young. Irish. On vacation for the first time in her life, she had met a dark, brooding stranger, one who had used her and discarded her. Shea shook her head, tears welling up; she refused to shed them. Her mother had made her choice. One man. He had become her life to the exclusion of everything else. To the exclusion of her own flesh and blood, her daughter. Shea had not been worth the effort of trying, of living. Only Rand. A man who had deserted her without thought, without warning. A man who had passed on a disease so vile, his daughter had to hide it from the rest of the world. And Maggie had known. Yet Maggie hadn’t bothered to research it or even to ask questions of Rand to find out just what her daughter would be facing.

Shea stooped to grasp a handful of soil, then let it trail through her fingers. Had Noelle, the woman her mother had named as his wife, been as obsessed with Rand as Maggie had? It sounded very much as if she had. Shea had no intentions of ever taking a chance that she shared her mother’s failings. She would never need a man so much that she would neglect a child and eventually kill herself. Her mother’s death had been a senseless tragedy, and she had abandoned Shea to a cold, cruel life without love or guidance. Maggie had known her daughter needed blood; it was all there in the diary, every damning word. Shea’s fist clenched until her knuckles turned white. Maggie knew Rand’s saliva carried a healing agent. She had known that, yet she had left it to her daughter to find out on her own.