Books by Maggie Shayne (180 page)

"We could just put in a new tape," Lydia suggested.

"It's not on tape. It stores the messages electronically."

"Buy a new machine," Lydia said. "Take the old one and stash it somewhere safe."

Max nodded slowly. "It's a good plan. Later I can transfer the message to tape and destroy the machine, just for good measure. But for now, that's the fastest solution. And we have to get it done before they decide to search my place."

"I'll take care of it. Stay here, see your friend."

Max nodded. "Use cash. And buy it someplace busy, like Wal-Mart, where they won't remember you. And don't make your appearance too memorable."

Biting her lip, Lydia frowned hard at her. "Just what are we dealing with here, hon?"

"The government. A part of the CIA, I think. A secret part that may not even exist anymore, but the man who shot Stormy was a part of it."

Lydia nodded slowly. "You called them… vampire hunters."

"That's exactly what they were. Maybe still are." She sighed. "Look, I'll tell you everything I know. But you can't mention it to a soul. That's what got Stormy shot."

"Okay. Understood. But not now. This isn't the time or the place. I'll go take care of that machine of yours, and we'll talk later."

"May as well meet up at the police station," Max said. "They're going to want sworn statements from all of us."

"Noon?" Lydia said.

"Noon's good."

"See you then."

After Lydia left, Max waited around until Lou finally returned from donating blood with a bandage on his arm. He looked at her as if checking her over, like he was searching for signs as to how she was holding up, and while her independent-woman side thought it was hopelessly old-fashioned of him, the rest of her loved it that he worried.

"I'm okay," she told him before he bothered to ask.

"No, you're not, but I don't see how you could be." He looked around. "Where's Lydia?"

"Had some things to do. She's gonna meet us at the station at noon, so we can give them our statements."

"And then what?"

She shrugged. "I'm gonna go home, make some tapes of my voice for Stormy's mom to play for her, gather up a few CDs and my programmable player, and get it all set up in her room. Then I'm gonna pack."

"Pack?"

"I hate to leave Stormy, Lou. But according to what I've been able to find out online, that screenwriter lives in Maine. And we really do need to talk to her. She's the only lead we have right now, besides Stiles, and we can't find him."

"If he knows about the films, we're as likely to find him in Maine as anywhere else."

She blinked twice, then stared at him. "We? Does that mean you're going with me?"

"Yep."

"Will they let you, before this case is solved?"

"Nope. I'll just have to be sneaky. Good thing I've got an expert to help me on that." He gave her a smile, lopsided and sad, but real.

She thought about hugging the big lug, but Storm's parents came walking up to her then, her crying softly, him holding her. "Go on in, Maxine," Mr. Jones said. "We cleared it with the doctor, and we both think hearing your voice will do her a world of good." He pointed her down the hall. "Two-oh-seven."

"Okay. You two ought to get something to eat, and maybe rest a bit. I know you want to be here, but you're gonna need time off, too. If you go getting sick, you won't be much help to Stormy, after all."

"We'll be fine. Go on, go see her now."

She glanced at Lou. "Go ahead, Maxie. Take your time. I'll be here waiting."

Sending him a grateful nod, she went down the hall, searched for the door marked 207, and found it. There was a moment, though, when she almost couldn't go in. She stood with her hand on the door, not pushing it open, and she wondered if some deluded part of her mind thought this wouldn't be real until she saw it with her own eyes. Or if she was just afraid Stormy would die while she was in there.

Didn't matter. Stormy mattered. That was all. She swallowed her fear, pushed the door open, peered inside.

It did not look like Stormy lying in that bed, and for the barest instant Max thought she had the wrong room. But then logic made her look more closely. Yes, she was more still and pale than she had ever been, and her eyebrow ring had been removed. Her short, bleached hair had vanished. It might be swathed by the skullcap of bandages she wore, or it might have been shaved. Max didn't know.

But the elfin face and fine-boned features were Stormy's. There were leads going from her head to a monitor, from her chest to another, from her nostrils to an oxygen pump, from her wrist to an IV bag, and from somewhere under the sheets to a bag at the foot of the bed, which she did not want to think about.

The nurse smiled at Max. "Well, Tempest, you have a visitor. Isn't that nice?"

"Call her Stormy," Max said firmly. "Make sure you tell the other nurses, too. She wouldn't answer to Tempest even if she was fully awake."

The nurse nodded, turning with her hands on her hips. "And here I was thinking what a gorgeous name you had. I love Tempest!" Then she shrugged. "I suppose Stormy is nice, too, though." She was leaning in, adjusting the covers and talking to Stormy as if she were wide awake and hearing every word.

Max liked the nurse. She liked her attitude. She liked the caring in her eyes. "I'm Maxine," she told the nurse, as she came closer.

"And do you have a preferred nickname, too?"

"Mad Max, but don't spread it around."

The nurse laughed, patting Stormy's shoulder. "Did you hear that? Mad Max. Girl, I like your friends. Well, have a seat Mad Max, and I'll give you two some private time."

Max sat down, and the nurse left. The constant beeps of the monitors were dragging. Steady and almost hypnotic. "Man, we're gonna have to get them to turn off the sound on these contraptions, Stormy. You think?" She leaned closer, clasped Storm's hand. "It's Max, honey. I'm here, and I know what happened, okay? I know it wasn't Lou. I don't want you to worry about that."

No response. She lay there completely silent and still.

"I know you're in there, Storm. I know you can hear me." She spoke louder, more firmly. "Everything is fine. Your parents are fine, I'm fine. And the man who did this is going down. Understand?"

Still nothing. Just the monotonous beeps.

"You have to focus, hon. Focus every ounce of your energy on waking up. You hear me? That's all I want you thinking about. And you might as well know you aren't going to get a moment's peace until you do. I'm getting your favorite CDs, and someone's gonna be in here talking your damn multiply pierced ears off until you wake up. No one's gonna leave you alone. You got that?"

The beeping patterns changed. Picked up speed a little.

Max glanced around her at the machines, as if she would know a damn thing by looking at them. But something had agitated Stormy. What had she just said? No one's gonna leave you alone. She licked her lips. "Being alone worries you, does it?"

Again the pace picked up.

"No one will leave you alone. I'm gonna have someone guarding your door, and someone else in here with you, twenty-four-seven. I promise you, you're safe here. Okay?"

She couldn't tell if she had eased Stormy's mind or not. But the beeps slowly resumed their former pattern.

"Keep trying to wake up, hon."

The nurse came back in, told Max it was time to go. Max nodded. "I gotta leave for a bit, babe, but I promise you're not gonna be left alone. I promise." She turned to the nurse. "Can you stay with her until her mom gets back?"

"Of course I'm staying. It's almost time for my program!" She reached for the remote, flicked on the room's television, and pulled up a chair. "I hope you like
Passions
, girl, 'cause I never miss it," she told Stormy.

"She loves it," Max said. "I'll see you later, Storm. Don't be scared, hon. I've got your back, okay?"

The nurse nodded in approval, and Max left the room. Back in the waiting room, she went to Lou, leaned against his chest and hoped he wouldn't complain. He didn't. He hugged her instead. "We need to get guards on her room, Lou. If he finds out she's alive, he might come back."

"He would have no reason to."

"What if she saw him?"

"Hon, you saw him. You already know what he looks like, as well as his name. Being ID'd is not on his list of worries for some reason."

"Still… "

Sighing, he nodded. "I'll get right on it."

She closed her eyes. "We have time to get some breakfast?"

"Yeah. I phoned in, told them we'd be coming in at noon to talk to IAD and give our statements. We have a couple of hours yet." He took her arm, and they walked to the elevators together.

Morgan slept through most of the day again. It was afternoon when she woke, stretching her arms above her head and arching her back, feeling good. She opened her eyes, and everything that had happened the night before returned to her. She felt a delicious sensitivity at her throat, and, flinging back the covers, ran to her dressing table to examine it in the mirror.

A purple bruise and the marks of his teeth. No punctures. No. He hadn't tasted her blood, but he'd fed her his own. She could still taste him on her tongue.

What did it mean? she wondered yet again. How did one become a vampire, if it were possible at all? Was she already changing? Was this vitality singing in her veins a part of it, or only a temporary side effect from drinking him? This sleeping through the day, waking only late in the afternoon, was this a sign that she was becoming as he was?

She only knew she'd been getting steadily weaker until he had first come to her. Now she felt stronger, as she had the last time. She thought, the way she had been feeling, she might well have been dead by now without his intervention. His… his blood. He was keeping her alive.

But for how long? She had to know. And she knew where to find the answers. Or hoped she did. Dante's journals. There were still one or two she hadn't read completely through. That was what she would do for the rest of the afternoon, she decided. Read. Research. She had several hours before dark, and that was precisely how she would fill them. She stripped off the torn, buttonless nightgown, pulled on her white satin robe, tied it and moved down the stairs to the study, where she kept the journals locked away in a safe.

But when she stood in the open study doors, she saw the mess on the floor and realized she had other work left to do. Broken boards lay beside the hole. If it were true that the scarred man was hunting Dante, and if he were to come back here and somehow see this…

Damn.

Her afternoon passed more quickly than she would have liked. She had to shower, dress. Then, taking one broken piece of wood with her, she drove into town to the nearest lumber yard and purchased matching pieces of the correct length to patch the damage she had done. She bought a hammer and nails, a small crowbar and a handsaw.

When she returned home with her purchases and faced the task before her, she felt a hint of doubt that she would be able to pull it off. Ordinarily this kind of physical labor would be far too much for her to tackle alone. She'd toyed with the idea of hiring someone to do the job but realized she had no idea who she could trust. How would she explain the need to keep it quiet, and even if she did, wouldn't that just make the worker more likely to tell? Her being who she was, he would probably sell the tidbit to a scandal sheet for a few thousand dollars.

Besides, she didn't
feel
as if the job was too much for her. Not today. Shrugging, she knelt on the floor, took up the crowbar. She would never know until she tried, she decided.

It took her an hour to pull out the old nails that held the broken scraps of lumber to the main beams underneath and remove the bits of wood. Then more time as she measured the hole and marked her new boards at the right length.

Now the test, she thought, as she took up the saw. If she could manage this, it would be a miracle.

Swallowing her doubts, she laid the sawblade across the line she'd drawn and drew it backward. Then she began to pump the saw back and forth, as smoothly as she could. The short end fell away, clattering to the floor, and she looked at it in something like shock. She drew a hand over her brow, felt sweat beading there. Her heart was pounding, her body warm with exertion. God, when was the last time she had felt this way?

She continued to work, sawing the boards, fitting them in place, nailing them as she went along. When there was only one board to go, she paused to kick all the scraps, the old lumber, the broken pieces, the sawdust, the bent, used nails, into the hole. Then she nailed the final board into place.

It didn't look perfect when she finished. The boards were a different color, lighter, newer looking, unfinished, and the joints were less than tight. But it was the best she could do at the moment. Her newfound energy seemed to be starting to wane.

She got a broom to sweep up the remaining bits of sawdust and dirt. Then she pulled the oriental rug back down to cover the new boards.

Brushing her hands and straightening, she was finished.

Only an hour now, until sundown. She looked down at herself, realized she was damp with sweat, and had sawdust clinging to her skin and her hair. If he came back—God, she hoped he would—she didn't want him seeing her like this.

"I need to get ready," she whispered. "For Dante." Yet more of the day wrested from her hands. She would barely have time to read at all. Still, it was important.

A half hour later, she returned to the study, freshly showered, her hair clean and lavender scented and blown dry, flowing loose down her back. She wore the white satin robe that tied at the waist and hung all the way to her bare feet, and she carried a pot of herbal tea and a cup with her. It was a special blend, supposedly good for boosting one's energy. Hers was running low, though still higher than it had been before Dante had come to her.

She turned on the gas fireplace, then went to the safe in the wall, took out one of the precious journals, one of those she still hadn't read all the way through, and curled up in the big armchair nearest the fire. Filling her teacup, she flipped through the pages until she found the place where she had last left off. And before very long, she was immersed once again in the tales of the vampire, hearing them as clearly in her mind as if they were spoken in Dante's deep, rich voice.

Sarafina tried to warn me. "Never mix with mortals. Never." She said it early in my education and repeated it often. "Our kind must live alone."

"What about the Chosen?"

I knew the term. That surprised her to some extent, I think, because I hadn't heard it from her. We sat by a fire that night, in a grove of trees, the way we had done in our mortal lives. I think that at the beginning, that was what Sarafina envisioned. A band of two—two Gypsy vampires, living the way we had before. She was trying, I think, to recapture some of what she had lost when she had lost her family, her tribe. But of course it was impossible. I accepted that long before she did.

"The Chosen are humans with a connection to us. Something about the blood," she told me. "We know which ones they are because we sense them. We feel drawn to them, and sometimes they to us. But we do not make ourselves known to them, Dante. That must be understood at all costs. We do not."

"They can become vampires. Like us," I said.

"They can. And do you know what happens when they do?"

I shook my head.

"They go mad."

She said it so simply, as if it were an established fact. "All of them?" I asked, even though I knew better. I hadn't gone mad, nor had Sarafina.

She didn't answer that. "Some become so morose they refuse to feed until their bodies become dormant, brittle shells that lie as if dead for untold centuries, their souls trapped inside. Some become giddy with their newfound vampiric power and go on gluttonous killing sprees, leaving so many bodies in their wake that the mortals realize what is happening and hunt us like animals in their vengeance. They die, too. We kill them ourselves. We have no choice, unless the mortals beat us to it."

I sat there listening, rapt with attention.

"Some simply open a vein and let themselves bleed to death. Others walk deliberately into a fire like this one and burn to ash."

I studied her for a long time. The way the fire danced on her face and in her eyes. "I was one of the Chosen," I said. "You sensed it in me and transformed me."

"I had no choice. You were dying."

"You had a choice. You could have let me die."

She averted her eyes, shrugged as if my words were of little consequence.

"I think you planned to transform me all along, Sarafina. I think that's why you came back to the family, singled me out."

She looked at me again, pierced me with her eyes. "Perhaps I wished for that, Dante, but I would not have done it without careful consideration. This life is not an easy one. I know it must seem so to you at this point, but it's not."

"You think this life seems easy to me? I lost everyone I loved, 'fina. My own mother, my family, my very way of life. Everything I knew was torn from me that night. It's been far from easy. Yet I have not gone mad, or ended my own life."

"It will become harder."

I mulled that over for a moment. How certain she sounded. Was she so unhappy, then? I began to realize how very lonely she must have been all those years before I had crossed over to join her in darkness. "Most mortals cannot bear the shock of the change. The loss of all they were. Even those who do adjust and accept do not all last A hundred years, perhaps two, and then the reality of eternal life begins to reveal itself to them as it really is. As much curse as blessing. As much pain as pleasure. And they, too, often choose not to continue."

"And what of those who do?"

She was silent for a long moment. "Those who do continue, I suppose, find a way to make peace with what they are. They stop fighting it. They stop hoping for a cure to make them mortal again. They stop looking for rhyme or reason to explain their existence or justify it. And they simply accept."

"Have you reached that point?" I asked her.

Meeting my eyes, she shook her head. "No. But I've seen that acceptance in the eyes of some of the old ones. I've heard them speak of it And I am determined to survive, on my own terms and in my own way, until I find it for myself."

And she would, I thought. But for now, she was restless. Seeking something, maybe this peace she spoke of, maybe something else. I couldn't know.

"Then what do you do, 'fina?" I asked. "For… companionship?"

"We have each other for that."

"That's not the kind I meant." I had to look away, still not comfortable with the lustier aspects of what I was, still not understanding it, as this was very early in my preternatural life. I couldn't face her as I spoke. "When I feed from the humans… especially the women, though sometimes with the men, as well… I feel… "

"Desire," she said, finishing the sentence for me. "I see now what it is you need to know. How to sate it."

Eyes fixed on the fire, I nodded.

"Do not be embarrassed, Dante. We are sensual creatures. It is our nature. Every physical sensation is heightened to degrees far too intense for mere mortals to bear. We feel everything a thousand times more keenly than we did before. Pain, yes. To the point where it can paralyze us. But pleasure, too. God, the way we experience physical release is beyond comprehension."

My throat went dry, and I felt a stirring of desire at her description.

"The blood lust and sexual lust are very closely bound in our kind," she went on. "You cannot experience one without the other. Should you attempt to have sex with a mortal, you'll end up biting deeply into her flesh before you've finished, drinking her into you. The two go hand in hand. The ecstasy of the drinking enhances the orgasm, and the orgasm enhances the ecstasy of the blood. The combination of the two is such potent, mind-numbing pleasure that you give yourself over completely to sensation. You hurt them. You kill them."

I studied her through narrowed eyes. "I don't think I believe it."

"No?"

"No. Certainly I sense that some of what you're saying is true, but not that physical pleasure could drive me beyond the ability to control myself. Certainly not that."

"Perhaps," she said slowly, drawing out the word. "It's less likely you'd kill one of the Chosen, though still a risk. It's best to stick with other vampires, or make for yourself a few slaves."

"Slaves." I said the word with contempt. She always kept several at her disposal. Mortals, not of the Chosen caste, whom she had made virtual zombies, utterly devoted to her. She drained them, but not to the point of death. Then replenished their bodies with a modicum of her own cursed blood. She did this over and over, keeping them captive for days at a time, until the bond was forged. One night she would rise to find them utterly hers. Ready to obey her every command, their very existence based on their desire to please her. I did not know how she managed to mate with these mindless drones without killing them. I think she usually did end up killing them in the end, but how she kept them alive in the meantime, I do not know.

I hated them. I hated the sight of them. And I had no desire to know the details of what she did with them.

But for me, I knew my own soul. And I knew that I could never become so drunk on pleasure that I would kill an innocent. "I don't believe you," I told her. "I think you only want to keep me from being close to anyone other than you."

She lifted her brows. "Do you now?"

"Yes. Perhaps you don't have the inner strength to control your lusts, to have sex without murdering your partner. But I do."

"Well. That's very good to know."

I was not to know it then, but my dear benefactor had a plan in mind to teach me, once and for all, the truth. It was weeks later. We were staying in a fine home, guests of some wealthy old man who was utterly smitten with Sarafina. I disliked mixing with the mortals this way. Living among them, making excuses for the hours I kept. This did not bother Sarafina. She didn't mind living with them. She kept herself hidden away behind a patina of lies. No part of her, body or soul, ever touched them. Not on any level beyond that of predator and prey. She was playing make believe as their friend, their guest. She felt nothing for them. Nothing. And I was fairly certain she had been hunting peasants in the nearby village. Three people had gone missing since our arrival.

I did not like to think that my aunt was murdering the innocent. However, it was her choice. Not mine. We did not sit in judgement of the acts of another vampire unless they directly endangered us as a whole. So long as she was careful to dispose of the bodies and didn't kill too many in one town and draw suspicion on herself, I had no business telling her it was wrong, much less trying to stop her. She would have to deal with her own guilt, or karma, or sin, or whatever were the results of her actions. It was not my place. This was one rule among our kind, and the first my aunt had taught me.