Prince of Twilight (8 page)

He went quiet and watched her face, her eyes, awaiting her response. She stared at him, her eyes moist. “And you think I'm her. And you think that with this ring and scroll, you can…make me remember the past?”

He nodded slowly. “I am not convinced you are her. Not yet. But if you are, then I think the rite would accomplish it, yes.”

Stormy closed her eyes, lowered her head. Vlad rose to his feet and began to pace. “We were attacked after burying her, by the same army we'd been battling in the days prior to her death. Ambushed. Everyone was killed. The king, the villagers, the priests. Everyone. Even me.”

She frowned, but then it faded as realization dawned. “But you revived.”

“I did, just before sunrise. But my body had been searched, stripped of anything of value. The ring and the scroll were gone.”

He moved past her, paced to the fireplace, bracing one hand on the huge stone hearth and staring into the flames. “I thought if I brought you here, to Romania,
showed you the places she knew, your memory might return on its own.”

“Not my memories,” she said, her throat dry. “Hers. And so far that's not happening, Vlad.”

“No. Nor would it, not in this castle. She never set foot here, as far as I know. No, it's the places she lived that I want to show you.” He looked toward the window. “But dawn is coming soon. I must rest. Tonight I'll take you to the village. To my father's castle. To the places she knew. Perhaps…perhaps it will stir something to life.”

“Oh, I've got no doubt. It'll probably stir
her
to life. She'll take over, and I won't have any control over my own body, my own actions. God, you have no idea what a horrible feeling that is, Vlad. I don't want to go through it again.”

“If that happens,” he said, turning slowly, “I'll take you away from whatever seems to have instigated it. I'll care for you until you return to yourself.”

She did not for one minute believe his lies. “And will you also keep me from doing anything I wouldn't do, if I
were
myself?”

He stared at her but said nothing, and she closed her eyes, her face heating as she turned away from him. “When she takes over, Vlad, you know what happens. Between us. Are you going to make me say it?”

He still didn't respond. And she was under assault
from within by the memories of the things she'd done during the episodes she'd spoken of. She'd flung herself into his arms. She'd kissed him, fed from his mouth with her tongue while moaning endearments in Romanian. She'd arched into him, pulled his hips hard against her and told him how she wanted him. Only it hadn't been her. It had been Elisabeta. Stormy had been no more than a silent witness. And yet she'd burned with the same desire the other woman felt for him.

“I need your promise, Vlad. Promise you won't make love to me…not unless you're certain it's really me.”

He caught her shoulders and turned her to face him, then lifted her chin so that he could watch her face. “And if I
am
certain it's really you?” he asked. “Do you intend to take me to your bed then, Tempest?”

“I don't know. I don't know if what I feel for you is real, my own desire, or something she's planted in me. I just don't know.”

“And you don't wish to engage in sex with me until you do,” he said, completing the thought for her.

She swept her lashes downward. “I know you don't have to wait. You can take me any time you want to, either by brute force or by using the power of your mind to bend me to your will. I'm not even going to lie to you and say I would hate you for it. I want it. I crave it. But I'm asking you not to do that. I'm asking you to wait.”

He caught a handful of her hair in his fist and tipped her head up, bent his head and took her mouth, but only briefly. It was a hungry kiss, and he swept his tongue into her mouth to taste her. Then he lifted his head away.

She was trembling. “Even if she takes over. Even if she begs you to take her.”

“It would be a test of my control. One I cannot promise I will pass.” He trailed a finger over her cheek and downward, tracing her jawline and then her neck. “But rest assured, Tempest, if I find out this is a game—if I learn you've been lying to me, trying to convince me you are my Elisabeta as other women have tried to do over the years—I'll take all you have and then some. I'll make you my slave, a mindless drone without a will of your own. You will exist only for my pleasure and only for as long as I will it.”

She lifted her eyes to his and whispered, “Is that supposed to be a threat, Vlad? Because it doesn't really sound all that horrifying.”

He lifted his brows but said nothing. Still, she saw the fire in his eyes and thought maybe it was for her, for once, and not the woman who possessed her.

She touched his shoulder, her eyes fixed on his. “I want to be whole again. I want to understand this thing, and more than that…I feel something for you, Vlad. Something powerful. And it's killing me that I can't tell
whether it's my own emotion or hers. I want to sort this out, and for the first time I feel as if there might be a chance to do just that. So yes. I'll go with you to the places she knew.”

He averted his eyes just as something came into them. He hardened his features. “It's not as if you have a choice, you know.”

She lowered her head and turned away quickly. “No, I don't suppose it is.” She sighed deeply, wondering if she were insane to be feeling so much desire for a man who'd abducted her against her will. Though in truth, it hadn't been against her will. Not really. She wanted to be with him. She wanted to figure all this out. And if she really wanted to get away, she doubted even Dracula himself could stop her. She wasn't exactly helpless.

Slowly, very slowly, she faced him. “What if she does manage to return, to take up residence in my body? Have you wondered about that? What future could you possibly have together, either way? Vlad, you're a vampire. I'm not. I'm not one of The Chosen. This body can't be transformed. Have you considered what that means?”

He lowered his head sharply. “I will not consider the inevitability of finding my love only to lose her again. I cannot.”

“Fine. Then consider this. If she comes back, Vlad, what happens to me?”

He glanced toward the windows. “The sun is coming. I feel it.”

Stormy felt as if a blade had been sunk into her heart. It didn't matter to him what happened to her, she realized slowly. He didn't care.

 

Stormy hadn't expected to have a companion with her for the day, but she couldn't find a way to get out of taking Brooke along when she returned to the museum. Frankly, she didn't know why she bothered returning to the scene of the crime at all. She knew damn well who had taken the ring. Vlad. It had to be Vlad, no matter what he had said. Who else would want it? And she knew he was near. She felt him. How big a coincidence would it be that he was in town when that cursed ring was stolen? Too big, that was how big. He must have taken it. He was still determined to evict her from her own body just to bring back his lunatic of a wife.

It shouldn't hurt, but it did.

“That's the room, isn't it?” Brooke asked as they moved through the corridors of the museum. There was no yellow police tape, but the doors were closed.

“Yeah, that's it.”

“Doesn't look like we're going to get a look at it from out here.”

“Well, you never know.”

Stormy glanced up and down the hall, and seeing no one, she gripped the knob and twisted it, then smiled. “Unlocked. What do you know?”

“Do you really think we—”

“It'll only take a minute. Look, why don't you go on a little tour? I won't be long.”

“No way. If you're going in there, I'm going with you.”

Stormy frowned but quickly ducked inside the room, with Brooke right behind her. She closed the door and took a look around. As she did, she asked the question on her mind. “Melina doesn't trust me, does she?”

Brooke seemed surprised. “Why would you think that?”

“She sent you along. And you act like someone under explicit instructions not to let me out of her sight.”

Brooke shook her head. “It's not Melina. It's me. I've…got a real interest in this case.”

“Really?”

She nodded. “I find it fascinating. Are you telling me you don't? I mean, you do this shit for a living.”

“Sure I do. That's why I'm in this business. But then
again, so are you, in a way. You and this…Sisterhood.”

Brooke nodded.

“So why the special interest in this case?”

Brooke shrugged and looked around the room, then pointed. “That must be how they got in, huh?”

Stormy eyed the window. A sheet of blue plastic had been affixed over it, probably just to keep out the elements until a crew arrived to replace the glass. She moved closer, lifting the plastic. The window glass was shattered, the remaining shards leaning inward. “Point of entry. Yes.” She looked beyond the glass. “There's a ledge out here. I suppose the intruder could have climbed up there, worked his way along to this window and then come in.”
Unless,
her inner voice whispered,
he just jumped up from the ground. It's only the second story. No challenge for a vampire.

Brooke peered around her, but Stormy let the plastic fall back into place. “So again, I ask you. Why the special interest in this case, Brooke?”

The other woman met Stormy's eyes and maybe realized she wasn't going to evade the question quite as easily as she'd hoped to. She thought for a moment, then said, “It's not often I disagree with Melina on anything. This time I do. And I'm eager to find proof of which theory is the right one.”

“It's important to you, being right?” Stormy asked. “Or is it her being wrong?”

Brooke shrugged. “I just want to know, one way or the other.”

“Okay.” Stormy filed that away and examined the room further. She spotted the surveillance camera mounted high in one corner, and her heart beat a little faster. If only she could get her hands on a copy of that tape. What it
didn't
show would tell her as much as what it did.

Voices in the hall jerked her off that train of thought, and she held up a hand to tell Brooke to be quiet. Brooke's eyes widened and shot toward the door, but she stayed still and silent, and the voices passed, fading away.

“We'd better get out of here. I think we've seen all there is to see.”

Brooke nodded, and Stormy moved to the door, pressed her ear to it for a moment, then opened it and, after a quick look up and down the hall, moved through. Brooke followed. No one saw.

“That's it, then? We're heading back?”

“Not just yet,” Stormy said. “I want to get a look at the point of entry from outside.”

They exited the museum, and walked down the sidewalk and around the corner to the side of the
building where the broken window was located. As Stormy took in the street from end to end, not missing a single detail, she tried to make small talk. “So how long have you been with the Sisterhood, Brooke?”

“Eighteen years. How long you been in the supernatural investigation biz?”

“Officially? About sixteen years now. Max and I were teenage sleuths before that. Kind of the Scooby Gang of our town, you know?”

“That's funny.” Brooke smiled, relaxing a little.

“You must have been just a kid when you joined this group, then, huh?” Stormy asked. She noticed a trash can that looked out of place. It was painted green and had a maple leaf symbol on it. It stood underneath a tree with a large, low hanging limb, right next to the museum building.

“Seventeen.”

“Really? And what about Melina?” A person could have climbed from that trash can to the limb, she thought, and from the limb, they could easily make their way to the ledge.

“What
about
her?” Brooke asked.

“I'm guessing you two are about the same age, aren't you?”

“She's a year older. But she came in about a year before I did.”

“Hmm.”

Brooke eyed her. “What?”

“Nothing.” Stormy had located other trash cans. They were green and bore the same logo. But they were not on the sidewalk. They were across the street, in a small park, spaced at intervals along the walking path.

“Come on, that ‘hmm' definitely sounded like something,” Brooke said.

Stormy shrugged. “Well, I don't know. I guess I was just wondering how it is that she's the one in charge and not you. Does it go by seniority or…?” Not one green trash can anywhere else on the street or on the sidewalk, Stormy noticed. They were all in the park. So someone had definitely placed that can underneath that tree. Deliberately.

A vampire would not need to move a trash can, climb a tree or inch along a second story ledge to reach that window. For the first time, she honestly wondered if Vlad had been telling the truth. Maybe he
didn't
have the ring.

“The former leader picks the new one. To be honest, Eleonore was grooming both of us to take her place. But she had to choose one or the other.”

“And she chose Melina.”

“Yes.”

“That must have hurt.”

Brooke shot her a look, her brows furrowed. “Don't be ridiculous. If I didn't like it, would I still be here?”

“I suppose not.”