Blue Twilight (29 page)

“Jesus, just tell us what you want!” Max cried. “Don't hurt her. I swear to you, she wasn't trying to trick you. She's been having these episodes for days now. I swear.”

“I want Gilgamesh. I want to know how to find him.
And then I want to know all there is to know about this…Storm.”

“I can't just tell you how to find a vampire so you can hunt him down to steal his power.”

He bent his head then, opened his mouth and closed it over Stormy's neck. Lou gasped and lunged forward, but the vampire only turned to keep Stormy between them. Stormy let her head fall backward against him, closed her eyes, opened her mouth and gasped as if in pain or pleasure—it was impossible to tell which. She lifted her hands to his head, threaded her fingers into his hair.

The vampire lifted his head. His eyes gleamed with bloodlust and passion. Two small wounds remained in Stormy's neck. She opened her eyes, and they were swirling and changing. She cupped the vampire's head, moving her hand slowly, caressing him. She didn't try to get free. If anything, she leaned into him even more closely.

He frowned but otherwise ignored her touch. “Shall I drain her, or will you tell me before your friends arrive to destroy what I have worked so hard to build here?”

“It's your own lust for power that destroyed your kingdom, my love,” Stormy whispered. “Just like before.”

He scowled at her, pulled her around to face him. “What are you doing?”

She muttered. “Do you not know me? Do you no longer love me?”

“Stop it!” he cried. He flung an arm toward her just as Max dove at her and took the brunt of the invisible
force that wafted with that arm. It caught her off guard, and she slammed backward into the wall.

Lou lunged at the bastard. “You brutal son of a—”

And then he was locked in combat with the powerful creature. They spun, fought, slammed each other bodily into walls and furniture. Lou smashed into the wall, and something heavy fell from a shelf and cracked as it landed atop Max's head.

The two men froze. The vampire looked stricken and lunged forward, but Lou shoved him aside and went to Max himself.

“Are you truly the heartless bastard you seem?” Stormy cried.

The prince turned to the woman called Stormy, even as Malone gathered his own woman into his arms. Blood trickled down her forehead. Jesus, had he killed her?

“Can't you see it's over?” Stormy asked him. “The others are drawing near. You'll soon be dust if you don't get out of here.”

“How do you know they're near?”

She scowled at him. “Are you so blinded by hate that you can't sense them? Open your mind! Let these two go. You have no use for them.”

“I have plenty of use for them. As hostages.” He turned away from her, striding across the room toward Lou, only to be stopped by the small hand on his shoulder.

“I know you,” she whispered. “You're not this being you pretend to be. You're a great leader, a prince. You are Vlad Dracul. Dracula. Prince of my heart.”

He stopped there—stopped dead in his tracks. “What did you call me?”

He turned slowly, staring at her eyes with their constantly changing colors. “How can you know to call me that name?”

She pressed her hands to either side of her head, and tears sprang into her eyes. “I don't know. Jesus, I don't know. I only know…you. Somehow, I know you. Please, Vlad…”

He moved closer to her, slowly. She didn't back away. She looked past him once, then said, for his ears alone, “Take me as hostage, if you must have one. Leave them. Let them be.”

“Do you know what you're asking?” He caressed her with his eyes. “I will not let you go until it pleases me to do so. And if I find out you have been attempting to trick me with this—”

“It's not a trick. Maybe…maybe you're the only one who can help me to find out what it is.”

He held out a hand. She lifted hers, and it trembled, but she placed it into his. And then he whirled her into his arms and carried her out of the castle.

 

Max lay on the floor with her head pounding like a bass drum, but she managed to open her eyes. Lou was holding her against his chest, her face buried in his neck, his in her hair. He rocked her gently, and she felt wetness and thought it might be tears. “I've been such an idiot,” he whispered. “God, Max, don't die on me. Not now. Don't do it, don't go. I love you. I've
loved you the whole goddamn time. I was just too stubborn and too damn scared to admit it. I was so afraid I'd mess up your life. So afraid I'd end up losing you in the end. The way I lost my wife…and my little boy. Baby, I couldn't stand it. I couldn't. I didn't want to risk that again, but lemme tell you something, Mad Max. You're worth it. You're worth any risk. Every risk.”

His hand was at her wrist, and she thought he might be feeling for a pulse. There must be one. She was certainly alive, but he wasn't finding it, and she thought maybe that was a good thing. “I'll do anything, Jesus, anything. Just don't take her from me. God, what was I doing? Thinking I could keep from tying myself to her, when I've been tied to her all along in every way that matters? I love her. I've always loved her.”

Hell, now she knew she was alive. And if he couldn't feel her pulse, he must be the one near death, because it was pounding.

“Lou?”

He loosened his arms a little, just enough to let her body relax away from his so he could look at her face. “Max, baby, you're alive.”

“Yeah. So far, yeah. You had some doubt?”

“I couldn't feel a pulse. Jesus, Max.”

“I'm here. I'm fine. I think you panicked.”

He shook his head, doubting it. “How long have you been awake?”

“Long enough to—where's Stormy?”

Lou shot a look across the room. “No,” he whis
pered. “Goddammit, no!” He got up, helping Max to her feet as he did.

Then there was the sound of doors breaking to smithereens, the whisk of movement.

Morgan and Dante appeared, looking furious and ready for battle.

Morgan surged across the room and swept her twin sister into her arms. Dante came forward, clapping Lou on the shoulder.

“You look like hell, my friend,” Dante said.

Lou shook his head. “Yeah, well he got his share, too.”

“Who? The vampire? Vlad Dracul?”

Lou and Max looked at each other, then at Dante. “What do you mean, Vlad Dracul? He wasn't…”

“He was,” Morgan said. “It's all over the preternatural world that he's been living out here—set himself up like a king and had an entire town under the control of his mind. No one's had the nerve to bother him—no one saw it as overly urgent to stop him, since he wasn't killing his victims.”

“When we got home and Lydia told us you were in Endover, we came immediately. We were nearly here when your friend Jason phoned.” Dante looked at Lou in awe. “You held your own against Prince Vlad. The one and only Dracula.”

“And I'll have to again, by the looks of things,” Lou said. “The bastard kidnapped Stormy.”

“We have to go after him!” Max shouted.

“We will. We will.” He touched her hair, the wound there. “You need this stitched up.”

“Take care of her,” Dante said. “We'll get on his trail and contact you when he beds down for the day sleep. You can catch up with us then. All right?”

Lou nodded.

Max shook her head. “I can't just let them go.”

“You aren't,” Morgan said softly. “I swear to you, as your sister, we'll stay on their trail, Max. I promise.” She sighed softly. “I owe her, you know. Storm and I—we have a bond now. I won't let harm come to her.”

Max lowered her eyes. “Okay.”

Lou scooped her up in his arms and carried her back down the stairs and out of the mansion. He moved all the way to the beach, finding the boat Stormy and Max had brought out here. Gently, he lowered Max into it and sped as rapidly as he could back to the mainland.

On the shore, he spotted Gary, who helped him pull the boat in and seemed worried when he saw Max. “Hell, what happened?”

Gary looked different, Lou noticed. His eyes weren't as clouded as before. Both his face and his wit seemed sharper.

“She had an accident. Out on the island,” Lou explained.

“The island?” Gary looked past them. “Well, what was she doing out there? No one goes out there. There's nothing there but woods and weeds.” Then he frowned. “What…what's burning?”

Maxie lifted her head and stared out toward the island. The flames were rising into the night, licking at
the very stars, it seemed. Morgan and Dante had finished the job she had begun. The place would be nothing but smoldering ash by sunrise.

“Where can he be taking her?” she whispered to Lou. “Where could he be going with Stormy?”

“Max, listen to me. You said the language she was speaking…was Romanian.”

Max looked into his eyes, silent for a long, searching moment. Then she said, “You don't think—you don't think there could be some sort of…connection.”

“Did you see the way she was kissing him? And he wasn't putting those words into her head, Max. He was dumbfounded, accusing her of tricks. So if it wasn't him, what the hell was it?”

Max swallowed hard, recalling the theory Martha had suggested. Some kind of past-life explanation for Stormy's odd behavior and symptoms.

“We'll find them,” Lou told her. “I promise. I owe you that.” He carried her up the hill to the motel, brought her into his room and dropped her onto the bed. He vanished into the bathroom, for a towel, then stepped outside and returned with the towel full of ice from the machine. “Press this to your head.”

She lifted it to her head, leaned back on the bed and watched as Lou yanked a duffel out from under his bed and began stuffing everything he'd brought into it. It took him all of five minutes.

“Can you walk?”

She nodded, and he took her hand and tugged her to her feet, leading her out of his room and into hers. She
reached for her suitcase, but he wouldn't let her. “Just sit and keep that ice on your head. I'll get it.”

She thinned her lips. “I'm not hurt that badly.” It was a lie. Her vision kept blurring, and she was dizzy as hell. She had a concussion, at the least.

“You are, or else you would be with your sister chasing after Storm,” he said.

Damn him, he knew her too well.

He paused in stuffing her belongings into her suitcase, looked her in the face. “I thought you were dead, you realize that? I thought it was over out there.”

“I'm not dead.”

“I know.” He stopped packing to lean closer, cupped her face in his hands. “Max, I'm sorry about the way I acted after we—I didn't mean any of it the way you took it.”

“Didn't you?”

He stared into her eyes. “This isn't easy for me, you know.”

“I know.”

Nodding, he stuffed the rest of her things into her bag, closed it and took her hand, drawing her to her feet again. He led her out to Stormy's room and told her to wait there, by the door. Then he ran across the parking lot to her car, flung the bags into the trunk and drove the Bug over to park it in front of where Max stood waiting. He opened the door to Stormy's room and led her inside, again insisting she sit and hold the ice to her head while he gathered up Stormy's things, shoving them into her overnight bag. He spoke as he packed.

“I want to tell you something, and I don't want you to respond right away. All right?”

She nodded.

“When we made love—and that's what it was, Maxie. Don't even think it was anything less. When we made love, and I was lying there, holding you and thinking about what had to happen next, I wasn't feeling defeated or conquered or painted into a corner. I was feeling…mostly…relieved.”

“You were?”

He nodded, and paused with Stormy's hairbrush in his hand, staring down for a moment at the yellow hairs, reflecting the light he'd flicked on when he'd entered the room. “I don't think Storm is in any danger from that vampire,” he said.

Max blinked at the total change of subject. “What makes you think that?”

“Because when he looks at her…there's something in his eyes.”

“He doesn't even know her.”

“Even so, that look—it reminds me of the way I feel when I look at you.”

She lifted her gaze to his. But he just gripped her hand and tugged her to her feet again, leading her out of the room. He tossed the bag into the car on the way, then took her into Jason's room. She knew the drill by now and sat down in the chair. Lou looked in the closet, yanked out Jay's coat, then skimmed the room for the handful of things Jason had acquired while in this town.

“My ice is melting.”

“Hold on a little longer. I got off the subject. Where was I?”

“You were relieved after we made love.”

“Yeah. I was relieved. Mostly because I was so tired of resisting you. Tired of saying no, tired of trying to keep my feelings under control so you wouldn't see them.”

She frowned. He wasn't looking at her. He finished checking dresser drawers and moved into the bathroom, returning with a handful of items he dropped onto the coat.

“Why didn't you want me to know?”

He rolled the coat up, toiletries and all.

She got to her feet before he could pick it up. “Lou, could you stop bustling for a minute and look at me?”

He did. He looked at her, and he looked tormented. “I'm so fucking scared I'll screw this up. I tried to make marriage work once, Maxie. I tried, and I failed, and I ended up bleeding, and so did she. I lost her. I tried to be a father to my kid, and I lost him, too. If I hurt you that way, I don't think I could live with myself.”

“I'm not gonna let you hurt me, Lou. And you're sure as hell not gonna lose me.”