Fresh Blood (14 page)

“Is there someone we can call for you?” the
woman asked. She put the mug back in Erica’s hand and patted her
arm. “What about your parents?”

“They’re dead.” The words came out with
surprising ease. Erica had always had trouble admitting it when
people asked. It wasn’t so much the grief, which had dulled over
the decade since they’d been gone, but the reminder that she was
alone, except for Elena. Her twin had never been much of a family.
Now even she was gone.

“May they rest in peace,” the man said. “What
a terrible thing to have to tell them. In a way, they’re
lucky.”

“They are,” Erica agreed. They didn’t have to
see what had become of their daughters.

“I don’t drive, otherwise I’d take you back
home. Do you live near here?” the woman asked. “We can call you a
cab.”

“It’s all right. I’m going to stay here a
while and just ... I’ll call someone later if I’m not up to driving
myself home.” It bothered Erica that she couldn’t remember the
woman’s name, and that she didn’t care enough to ask again.

“Are you sure? In this state, it’s probably
better if you weren’t alone.”

“She won’t be alone. I’m here.”

Erica looked up and the tea splashed on her
leg when she saw Max. He swept into the room and tossed aside the
dark cape he’d held over his head. Another man, blond and brash
looking, followed him inside and did the same thing.

Erica dropped the mug and flew into Max’s
arms.

“Max! She’s dead ... she’s dead ...”

“Shh. It’s going to be okay. Elena isn’t
dead,” Max said after the other man escorted the neighbors to the
door.

“What!?” Erica sat up and pushed away from
Max. “I saw her, Max. They ravaged her. She was bleeding, all over
... they--”

“They turned her.”

* * * *

The look of defeat on Erica’s face lasted
only a moment, but it was long enough to cut Max to the bone. In
that one fatal second he saw it in her eyes, the utter disgust with
his kind. Her sister was a monster now--or would be when she
awoke.

Erica had found her sister, and lost her in
the same moment.

She sank to the couch, her eyes blank. “Are
you sure?”

“Lucas checked it out. After you called 911,
the call came up on his scanner. He made a few calls. You reported
the bite marks, that tipped him off and he had our ambulance come
for her.”

She blinked and stared at him. “What do you
mean, your ambulance?”

“She can’t be taken to a hospital. They’ll
put the body in the morgue and she’ll wake up in a metal drawer. We
lose a lot of newly turned that way.”

“Lose them?”

“They go ... insane.”

Erica swallowed hard and clutched at him. Her
fingers dug into his shoulders. “What’s going to happen to her?
What are you going to do with her?”

“They’re taking her somewhere safe where she
can wake up in her own time. Lucas will arrange to be with her.
They were close.”

“They were?”

“They were friends. She may hate him now.
That’ll be hard for him to adjust to.”

“Why? Why would she hate him?”

“Erica ...” Max pulled her close and rubbed
her back as she settled against him. “Female vampires are
different. Elena may not be like you remember her.”

“Max, I don’t know how I remember her. I
don’t know who Elena is anymore.” Tears ran down her cheeks and he
brushed them away. “They changed her. They made her into
Kyra--whoever that is. She’s a feeder, who helps her neighbors
and....sleeps with vampires. That’s not who Elena was.”

“You think someone used mind control on her?”
Max considered the possibility. If Benton Carlisle had been
controlling Kyra, it didn’t make sense that she would have been the
fiercely independent woman he knew. Carlisle liked his feeders
subservient. Kyra/Elena wouldn’t fit the bill.

“It’s the only thing that makes sense, Max.
That’s why Elena kept calling me. She remembered who she was--maybe
just a little. She wanted to get free but they kept making her
forget. That’s why she wasn’t at The Underside. She wasn’t using me
.... I know she wasn’t.”

Max wanted to believe her. He didn’t want to
think that Kyra was involved in some despicable plot to destroy
Erica just for Benton Carlisle’s entertainment. “I hope you’re
right. If that’s the case, the mind control will be erased when she
wakes up. She’ll be Elena again....” Or a new, hungrier version of
Elena.

“I need to be with her, Max. When she wakes
up.”

“No. You don’t.” He shook his head. “That’s
not something you want to see.”

“She needs me, Max. You can’t keep me from
her.”

“It may not be safe for you to be anywhere
near Elena right now. If Benton Carlisle is involved, you should
stay away, because I think, after what happened to you last night,
he may be after you.”

“Why me? What could he want with me?”

“I don’t know. But I intend to find out.
Whatever he wants from you, Erica, he’s not going to get it.”

Erica paced back and forth in Kyra’s living
room while Max made phone calls. She’d grown tired of listening to
his conversations and started straightening the place up to pass
the time.

The other vampire, whom Max called Lucas, had
come and gone and when he left, Erica followed him to the door and
looked for rain. The sky was a beautiful clear blue and there
wasn’t a cloud anywhere.

When Max finished his last call, she met him
in the kitchen.

“Where’s the rain?”

He raised his eyebrows.

“When the neighbors left before, I thought I
heard someone say it was raining. Am I going crazy?”

“No,” he laughed. “It’s a trick we use when
we have to move around in the daylight. We use the capes and we
give people around us the impression of a sudden downpour so they
see someone huddled under an umbrella, or a newspaper. Whatever
people do so they don’t get wet.”

“I guess you prefer days when it really is
raining.” She managed a faint smile.

He nodded. “It’s not the daylight so much as
direct sun. It burns--but not like in the movies. We won’t burst
into flame. We just start to blister. It would take hours to
actually reduce a vampire to ash.”

Erica held up her hand. “I don’t really want
to know.” She sat wearily in a kitchen chair and leaned back as Max
began rubbing her back. “Will she remember me? Will she feel
pain?”

“Yes and yes. The change is difficult. It can
be violent. If she wasn’t expecting it ....”

“You don’t think she wanted to be turned, do
you?”

“Kyra never mentioned it. Some feeders, it’s
all they talk about. Their ultimate goal is to become one of
us.”

“But Kyra wasn’t like that?” The name felt
strange in her mouth, like she was talking about a stranger.
Technically she was.

“She never mentioned wanting to be turned. At
least not to me.”

“How often did you feed from her?” Erica
hated herself for asking. Like a self-inflicted wound, the sudden
pain of it shocked her. Her eyes stung.

“Don’t do this, Erica.” Max sounded tired.
She looked up at him and saw something in his eyes that touched her
heart. She’d wounded him, too.

“I want to know.”

“We feed every two to three days by
necessity. More if we have a regular feeder. I visited Kyra ...
maybe three times a week.”

“And you slept with her all those times?”

Max gave Erica a dark look. If she insisted
on opening up wounds, he could be coaxed into adding salt to them.
He saw it in her eyes. She wanted to hurt. She wanted him to
inflict pain.

“Most of the time.”

“Did you love her?”

“No.”

“Does Lucas love her?”

Max laughed, but the sound was cold. “Lucas
doesn’t love.”

“Why not?”

“Do you want to talk about Lucas or Kyra?
What do you want to know, Erica? Do you want to know if I enjoyed
it? Yes, I did. Do you want to know if Elena enjoyed it? She said
she did. She was always ready, so I guess she liked it. Did I feed
from her the night I met you? Yes. Why? Because I wanted you so
badly that if you’d let me, I’d have drained you. I’d have turned
you just to make you mine and keep you with me forever, because I
never met anyone who made me feel the way you did. Did I have sex
with Elena that night? No, because I couldn’t imagine wanting
anyone but you under me.” Max rose and grabbed her shoulders. He
shook her gently until she looked up at him. Hot tears spilled down
her cheeks.

“Max...tell me what to do. I don’t know what
to do about you.” She sank into his arms and he held her. At first
the contact was merely for comfort. He wanted to sooth her and calm
her trembling but unbidden his body began to respond to her.
Pressed against him, her heart beating against his chest, she felt
like part of him. She was the part he’d been missing for so
long.

He rocked her in his arms for a while longer,
then tilted her chin up and kissed her. “Let me love you,” he
whispered against her ear. “Let me make you feel something besides
pain.”

She nodded and tilted her head farther back.
He put his fingers against the fluttering pulse at the base of her
throat, reveling in the rhythm of her body. He matched his phantom
heartbeat to hers and, breath by breath, in unison, they moved
together.

He led her to the living room. With all the
shades drawn, it was night inside even though the sun was just
about to set.

“Stand still,” he told her. “Don’t move.” She
obeyed and he began unbuttoning her blouse. She wore nothing
underneath, which pleased him. He opened the shirt and let his
hands roam. She sighed as he cupped her breasts and kissed
them.

Next he opened her jeans. The snap and the
zipper were quick, but the slide down her thighs was slow and
sensuous. She obediently stepped out of the soft denim and kicked
off her shoes. He pushed the open shirt from her shoulders and let
it fall, then explored beneath the waistband of her panties. His
fingers found her wet center and delved inside. She gasped at the
gentle intrusion and closed her eyes.

“Take them off.”

She didn’t hesitate. He guided her to the
couch and stretched her out beneath him. He remained dressed for a
time, lazily stroking her, kissing her and tasting her until her
breathing became shallow. A gentle movement of his hips against her
produced a low moan. He swallowed the sound with a deep kiss and
guided her hands so that she could begin to undress him.

He took her slowly, watching her eyes dilate
as their bodies joined. She sighed through parted lips each time he
moved within her. This time he used his abilities to hold her
reaction steady, to keep the ache from building so high that she’d
beg for release. He thrust slowly, gliding in and out so that she
could focus only on the sensation of friction within her. When she
arched against him, he wrapped his arms around her and held her
until she settled back again, content to feel nothing but the
increasing pressure of his strokes.

“Let me...” she moaned. “Let me.”

“No. I want to hold you like this forever. I
don’t want it to end.”

She smiled through the haze of sensation. “We
can’t stay like this forever, but we can do it all again ... and
again. Let me come and then we’ll start over.”

He kissed her and let her feel his tongue
against hers. “You have to make another promise if you’re to get
what you want.”

Her eyes widened. “Don’t ask me for promises
I can’t keep.”

“Then make a promise you will keep.” He
punctuated his question with a movement that brought her to the
edge. She shuddered and clung to him, ready to dive. “Be with me,
Erica. Stay with me. Don’t make it end.”

She looked up at him, her cheeks flushed with
sexual heat, her lips parted. He moved again, a gentle thrust that
brought him deep inside her. He felt the first pulse of her orgasm.
“Love me.”

“I do!” She gasped the words out and rocked
against him as she came. The rhythm of her body brought on his own
release and he gave her the sensation of liquid heat spilling
inside her. She moaned. “I love you, Max. I need you.”

He slammed into her, roused by her words.
Even if she only meant it for the moment, for now it was enough. He
clutched her to him and held her tightly as she shuddered against
him. He breathed her name over and over until she slept, wrapped in
his arms, sated.

* * * *

He left her in Kyra’s apartment, asleep on
the couch. Before he rose and disengaged his body from hers, he’d
whispered to her to wait for him and not to think about her
sister.

He hated using mind control. Some vampires
relied on it to get away with everything, even murder. The ability
kept those around him from becoming suspicious about his true
nature, but it made him feel dishonest to use it. A side effect of
the change, it relied more on pheromones than mental powers, but
either way, it was a form of manipulation. Necessary now and then
perhaps, but dirty as far as Max was concerned.

With someone as stubborn as Erica, what
choice did he have? The last thing he needed was for her to go
looking for Elena and find something she still wasn’t ready to
accept.

He wanted to find a way to make it easy for
her.

Lucas didn’t answer his cell, but that didn’t
mean much. Max knew where to find him.

Gregori Nachevik’s old estate had changed
hands relatively easily when the balance of power in the vampire
world shifted abruptly last December. When Gregori chose Jake
Beaumont as his successor, the entire vampire infrastructure in
North America rattled. Rumor had it, there was a faction brewing
that planned to remove the new king from power and a faction that
remained dedicated to Gregori’s choice. It didn’t matter to Max
either way, as long as he had an ally in power when he needed it.
He planned to make sure Jake Beaumont was that ally.