Creche (Book II of Paranormal Fallen Angels/Vampires Series) Read Online Free PDF Page A

awaken me like this? Although perhaps this was always the part you loved the most.”
    Despite the smile in her voice, my heart ached for her honesty and for the old hurts her heart carried. My wounds, I knew. I bent my lips to hers and kissed the marble again to silence her. “I love you, Sabine.”
    Another sigh issued from the carved lips. “I doubt it not—only whom you may still love more.”
    Thinking she meant Joslyn, I tried to hide the crease of sorrow that must have cut my brow.
    “Sabine, I am here.” It was all I could say.
    “Yes, you are, Ame,” she answered sadly. “But I am miles away.”
    Then she was gone.
    As quickly as she had appeared to me, the marble was inanimate and cold beneath my hand.
    “I don’t understand!” I lifted the stone again, dragging it into my arms. “It did not work.”
    Skylar approached tentatively to sit beside me. “It worked as well as it might. Look.” She pointed to the sky. “Night is upon us, and the anchorstone is only hers by day. The sea has stolen her from you temporarily.”
    Once more, I thought, bitterly. Must I be content with a stone that speaks her thoughts?
    Skylar bowed her head. “For now.”
    It was not enough for me all of a sudden. Many times I had denied Sabine all of myself, and had denied myself her love, but now I wanted all of her.
    “The riddle you know.” Even to my own ears, my voice was gruff, and I caught Skylar’s forearm tightly in my grasp. “The oracle you know about the Sphinx. You never told it to me. What is it? I must know it.”
    She winced a little and rubbed her wrist when I let go. “Sabine is right, Amedeo. Consider it: should you revive her now, like this, she will be only part herself. She will have only one leg and no hindquarters. How would she live like that? How would she hunt? She would be a burden to you and a sorrow to herself. The only thing to do is to determine how we might rescue her from the sea, or to restore the anchorstone and then revive her. That is even if we can decipher the oracle I have heard.” She hesitated. “All these eons and no one has yet made a Sphinx’s anchorstone arise.”
    “Others have tried?” I cried. “Tell me! Tell me now.” I examined the ground around me for the rest of the statue, for the haunches and legs and tail that so many times had turned me away from Sabine but that now I longed for. But there was nothing but fragments of stone threaded through with wildflowers.
    “I cannot.” Skylar helped me search, still wary of the stone head and the eyes that followed us both. We combed the bramble and brushes for anything resembling claw or tail tip.
    “Tell me,” I demanded again.
    Skylar straightened up and one hand wearily smoothed her hair behind her ear. “I cannot. To do so now would be a crime. I must seek approval.”
    “Approval! From whom?” I kicked at a pinecone, which skittered across the stony path. “You follow me and yet refuse to tell me why. You help me find Sabine but refuse to tell me how to save her! Approval from the Maker?”
    “No.” Skylar stopped and stared into my face. Her face was flushed and her lips pursed. “From the Council of Paleon,” she said eventually. “If you want to know the oracle, you must ask them yourself.”

CHAPTER FIVE
    T he water below had turned to blue ink lapping land that was a low, scrubby jungle of rock when Skylar eventually turned to me and said, “We are nearly there.”
    “You have not yet told me where there is.”
    “Silvenhall,” she said, as if there had never been a question. Without waiting for more questions, she surged on ahead of me, her face turned away from the Wind’s bite.
    Her answer, like her manner, annoyed me. Despite my need to hear the riddle, it had taken all of Skylar’s insistence to move me from Sabine’s anchorstone, or the little of it we had found. I had searched for hours. Even in the darkness, my frantic hands had sifted rock, seeking the glint of marble. I had wanted