Prince of Twilight (13 page)

The wind increased. Her hair whipped, tugged against her scalp and tangled in the air. The candle tipped over and rolled across the floor. But there was no response from the board.

“You were one of The Chosen, Elisabeta. But I'm not. So how can I gain immortality? How is it possible?”

Still nothing.

“At least tell me this much, Elisabeta,” Brooke shouted into the wind. “Why does it have to be Tempest's body? She's not one of The Chosen either. So why her? Why?”

The wineglass shattered, exploding outward as if some unseen force inside it had expanded all at once. Brooke jumped, emitting an abbreviated shriek of alarm. Then the wind died utterly. The entire house went silent, still as a tomb. Elisabeta was gone.

Brooke calmed herself and went through the house, opening the ragged curtains, putting everything back the way it had been before. “I don't think I trust this bitch,” she said slowly, thinking aloud. “I think she's promising me the one thing she knows I want more than anything else just to get me to help her return to the land of the living.

“Well, I'll be damned if I'll let her give
my
reward
to Stormy Jones when I'm the one doing all the work to earn it.”

As she picked up the pieces of the broken wineglass, then tucked the spirit board, the candle and the scroll into the small bag she'd brought along, she mulled everything over in her mind. Clearly Elisabeta knew how to make an ordinary mortal immortal. She must know, because she would have to do that very thing to Tempest Jones once she took control of her body. Otherwise she would just end up dead again in a few years. But she'd been very clear about her goals. She wanted to return to life to reclaim the vampire she loved, and then to live with him forever.

Tempest did not have the Belladonna Antigen. She was not one of The Chosen.

So there had to be a way. But if Elisabeta succeeded, then what reason would she have to make Brooke immortal, as well, as she had promised to do? What was to stop her from using Brooke to get what she wanted and then just ditching her, leaving her high and dry?

Brooke wanted immortality for herself. She craved it. Sought it. Had risked everything to get it, and this was not the first time. She would do whatever it took.

There was one last item to put away. She picked the ring up from the small table and looked at it. Smiling slowly, she slid it onto her finger.

“Well, will you look at that?” she whispered. “It's a perfect fit. Maybe we'll just try doing this my way, Elisabeta. What do you think about that?”

Still wearing the ring, she took the scroll from the bag, carefully loosened the ribbon that bound it and unrolled it. She would perform the rite, just as Elisabeta demanded. She would just make one little substitution. “Now,” she said as she read, “let's just see what we need for the ritual.”

 

When they helped her back into the house, Melina refused to go to her room, heading instead toward the breakfast room, where a dozen or more women were sitting around, sipping coffee and munching fruit and pastries.

They went dead silent, every eye on Melina. And no wonder, Stormy thought. She was a mess. “We've been compromised by one of our own,” Melina said. “That puts us all at risk. We're going to Plan Q. Immediately. Don't delay, unless you know something that might help me trace Brooke.”

There was a collective gasp when she said Brooke's name. No wonder. She had been second in command here.

“Move,” Melina said.

And the women scattered, just like that, head
ing out of the room like a bunch of third graders in a fire drill.

“So what's Plan Q?” Stormy asked.

“Quit the premises. They'll be cleared out of here in twenty minutes, along with their notes, any personal items that might identify them as part of the Sisterhood, their computers, every sign they were ever here.”

Stormy raised her brows. “Impressive.”

“We drill for this,” Melina said. “Though I never thought it would happen for real. Never.” She blinked what might have been fresh tears from her eyes. “Where's Lupe?”

As soon as she asked the question, Lupe appeared with a first-aid kit in one hand and an ice pack in the other. Melina held up a hand, shook her head. “We don't have time for that.”

“Yeah, we do. You'll be more useful without that blood running in your eyes every time you frown too hard. Sit down.”

Melina sighed, but she sat. “We need to search Brooke's room. And her laptop. We need to go over it, as well. And—”

“And we will.” Lupe handed Melina the ice pack. “Press that to the lump on the back of your head. I'll deal with the front.” Melina obeyed as Lupe
opened the kit, took out a gauze pad and soaked it in antiseptic. Then she began dabbing at the wound on the front of Melina's head.

Stormy was still furious, but she needed action, not anger. For now. But she also needed reason. None of this made any sense. For a while she'd thought Brooke might be the one who stole the ring, but why would she leave it in Stormy's own room, only to steal it all over again?

She remembered the tape, the one Vlad had brought her. She had yet to view it. “I need to change clothes,” she said. “And then I'll…meet you in Brooke's room.”

“Wait for us in the hall,” Melina said. “Don't go into her room on your own.”

Stormy stared at her, not believing the woman was still issuing orders. But
she
was not one of the Sisterhood's devoted little robots. “I'm not waiting for anyone. If you're not there when I'm ready, I'll start without you. But before I go, there's something you probably should know. I put in a call this morning to a woman I thought could help us in exorcising Elisabeta's spirit and freeing it from the ring's hold over it. She'll be here tonight.”

Lupe paused in dabbing at Melina's head and turned to search her face.

“Who?” Melina asked.

“A vampiress by the name of Rhiannon.” Their eyes widened, and Stormy felt a rush of satisfaction. “Yeah, I thought you might know her. She sure as hell knows you. I have to say, I'm rather interested to hear
what
she knows.”

She turned and left the room, then headed up the stairs against the tide of women coming down, bearing backpacks, suitcases, duffel bags. It was a mass exodus. And it was fast and orderly.

By the time she reached the second floor, the stairs were clear, and she could hear vehicles outside, doors and trunks slamming, gears shifting and motors humming.

Stormy went to her room, thrust her hand under the mattress and pulled out the videotape. Answers. She needed answers, and she needed them now. Privately. She was no longer so sure she could trust Melina and the Sisterhood. Certainly Rhiannon didn't. Maybe she had good reason. She'd certainly been right about Brooke.

She took the time to change her clothes, discarding the nightgown in favor of jeans, a T-shirt, a pair of ankle socks and her teal and green running shoes.

She took the tape with her to Lupe's room, and barely took time to notice the darkly stained wood
work and earthy green bedding and drapes, before she spotted the tiny, outdated TV-VCR combo on a stand in one corner. She closed the door and turned the lock—she wanted privacy for this. At least until she knew what she was going to find. She realized that she was trying to protect Vlad, even though he was most likely trying to help Elisabeta kill her. And that, more than anything else, told her what she was expecting to find on the tape.

She was a fool where he was concerned.

Stormy put the video into the slot, hit the Power button, pushed Play and watched as a slightly snowy image of the ring in its display case filled the screen. The time stamp in the lower right corner read nine p.m. According to the police reports, the alarms had sounded around 1 a.m., so she located a remote, sat on the bed, and hit the Fast Forward button. Then she waited and watched the time stamp until she got close.

Finally she hit Play again, set the remote aside and leaned forward on the bed, her eyes glued to the screen.

Right on cue, she saw something. Bits of something flying into the frame. Glass, she realized. The museum's window had just been broken. And a moment later, a small form stepped into reach of the camera's eye.

Not a vampire. Vampires didn't show up in photos or on videotape. This form was mortal, and clearly a woman. Small and slight. She wore a black turtleneck, with a little black knit cap covering her hair. She kept her face turned away from the camera, and she didn't waste any time. She yanked the plexiglass cube from the display, took the ring from its tiny pedestal, dropped it into her jeans pocket, and then turned right back toward the window and walked out of the frame. For just an instant, as she moved off the side of the television screen, Stormy glimpsed the full length of her, from her head to her teal and green running shoes.

She caught her breath. Groping for the remote, eyes still on the screen, she rewound, stopped, then played the tape again, but this time she hit the Pause button at the moment when those shoes appeared, ever so briefly.

Teal and green Nike Shocks.

She rose to her feet and stared down at her own shoes. Teal and green. Nike Shocks. She'd bought them for running.

“It's not possible,” she whispered. “I
couldn't
have….”

But even as she said it, she remembered how she'd fallen asleep in the bathtub at the hotel that
night but awakened in the bed. She remembered the clothes she didn't think she'd worn, littering the floor in the morning, and the way her car hadn't been in the garage where the valet had parked it.

She closed her eyes, disbelieving even now. But she knew she couldn't deny what was being shown to her in black and white. And as she watched the entire theft again, she recognized her own form, her own clothes. But not quite her own stance and stride and manner. She had taken the ring. But she hadn't been the one in control when it happened.

“Elisabeta,” she whispered.

She pressed her hands to her head and fell back onto Lupe's bed, closing her eyes. And even as she did, a flood of memories came. Memories she had thought were lost to her forever.

 

“This is the place,” Vlad said in a voice that was oddly hoarse. He'd taken her to the mouth of a cave near the edge of the falls, below the Romanian cliffs where Stormy had found herself only a short time ago, shown her the cave where Elisabeta had helped him find shelter for the night, and now he had brought her to the place where the two had consummated their love, all in an effort to make her remember. To become Elisabeta.

She only wanted to get to the truth and be rid of the woman.

“I had gone to the cliffs that night for the same reason Elisabeta had,” Vlad told her. “To end my life. Oh, I wouldn't have flung myself from the top, as she did. I planned to await the sunrise there by the falls, the most powerful place I knew. But when I saw her, when she pitched herself from the brink, I felt compelled to save her.”

“And so you did?” she asked.

He nodded. “I propelled myself like a missile, through the air, and wrapped myself around her to break her fall before we hit the rocks and water below.”

Stormy didn't really look at the spot where he'd stopped walking. She was looking at him instead, and seeing what he tried to keep hidden: a pain that was almost beyond endurance. It was in everything about him. His walk had become less the powerful, confident stride she'd grown used to. His usual stance—shoulders broad, back straight and chin high—had softened, as if the steel inside him were gradually melting. And his eyes—the hurt that roiled in his eyes was something even he couldn't disguise.

“I was injured, broken. She helped me into the cave, stayed with me there, and I told her my secrets. Told her what I was, what she was. One of The Chosen. I told her I could cure the illness that was taking her life, but only if she would be mine forever. And she agreed.”

“So two suicide cases meet one night and decide to get married? Vlad, don't you see how messed up that is? You didn't even know each other, and neither of you was in your right mind.”

He glared at her. “No one has ever questioned my sanity, Tempest.” The tone held a warning.

“Sane people don't kill themselves, Vlad.”

“You have no idea what it's like to live for thousands of years. To live alone.”

“No, I don't, that's true. But I know lots of vampires, Vlad, and most of them aren't walking into the sunrise, no matter how old they are.”

Forcing herself to tear her gaze from him, she looked at where he'd brought her after the cave. It was a tiny grove of trees, with a circular patch of wildflowers and grasses amid them. It was private, quiet and beautiful. And she knew it was the place where he and Elisabeta had consummated their love.

One night. It was all they'd had.

Moved to tears herself, she put a hand on Vlad's shoulder. “I'm sorry this is so difficult for you.”

He swung his gaze toward her. “Don't pity me, Tempest. I don't want that from you. All I want—”

“Is for me to remember. I know.” She licked her lips and stared at the area around her, but no memories came. Nothing was familiar. “Has it changed much?”

“The trees are bigger. Some have died.” He nodded toward rotting black stumps amid the stand of hardwoods. “Others have sprung up to take their place,” he said, pointing out the spindly saplings that arched their backs as if standing up straight were too much of an effort. “Other than that, no. It's almost exactly the same.” He brought his gaze back to hers, searched her eyes. “Don't you remember anything? Anything at all?”