Prince of Twilight (14 page)

“I'm sorry,” she said. “I don't.”

“You have to. You will.”

She saw the desperation in his eyes just before he reached for her, and felt a quick jolt that might have been fear, or maybe desire. Or some twisted mix of the two. She didn't have time to analyze it, because he pulled her hard against his chest, snapped his arms around her, one hand going to the back of her head to keep her from turning away. And then he was kissing her.

And, God help her, she loved it. Wanted it—and more.

He opened his mouth over hers, then closed it slightly, as if he were devouring her taste. And when he used his tongue, she went hot right to her toes. Every coherent thought, every rational argument that this was a bad idea, fled her mind. The only thing that remained was sensation. The way he made her feel: wanted, desired beyond reason. It was heady, and it was too powerful to resist. That this man, who could have any woman he
wanted, wanted her. And she wanted him, too. Had, from the moment she'd set eyes on him, and maybe even before that.

She twisted her arms around his neck and opened to him, kissed him as passionately, as hungrily, as he was kissing her. God, it was going to be so good. So incredibly, unbelievably good.

He laid her down in the grass, pushing the nightgown from her shoulders, baring her breasts to the night, to him. He slid a hand between her shoulder blades to hold her up to him. And then he kissed her breasts, suckled them, gently at first, but with growing hunger, until he was nipping and tugging, making her gasp and pant and arch her back.

Lowering her down, he slid over her, his mouth moving over her collarbones, his lips tasting her neck. She tipped her chin up to give him room and whispered, “God, Vlad, I want you so much.”

“And I want you, Elisabeta.”

It was like being doused in ice water. She went stiff, then drove her hands between them and shoved at his chest.

He stopped kissing her and lifted his head, his eyes glowing with passion and beginning to cloud with confusion. She could feel how aroused he was—he was hard and pressing against her thigh.

“Get off.” She shoved him again.

“Tempest—”

“Exactly. I'm Tempest. I'm Stormy Jones. But that's not who you were making love to just now, is it, Vlad? That's not the woman you want. It's her. Elisabeta. Not me.”

“You can be her. You will be. Don't you see that?”

“No. No, I'm not, never was and never will be. She's trying to take over my body without my permission, and just now, Vlad, you came damn close to doing the same thing. Using me so you could have her, or fool yourself into believing you had her. You don't want me at all, do you?”

He rose slowly, pushed a hand through his hair, paced away from her. “If I've hurt you, I'm sorry.”

“No one hurts me,” she said, sitting up and tugging her nightgown over her. “I'm way too tough for that, Vlad, so don't beat yourself up over it. I'm not some needy suicide case like your child bride was. Not even close.” She got to her feet and started off through the forest.

“The castle is this way, Tempest.”

Leave it to Dracula to ruin the perfect, pissed off, overly dramatic exit, she thought. Worst of all, if she turned around now, he was sure to see her tears. Because despite her denials, he had hurt her. Way more
than made any sense whatsoever. She was an idiot where he was concerned.

“I need a minute. Go on ahead. I'll catch up.”

“There are wolves.”

“Yeah, well, I'm good and pissed off, so if they know what's good for them, they'll keep their distance.” She strode off into the trees, just far enough to give herself the privacy to wipe the tears away. She waved a hand to create what she hoped was a drying breeze and blinked to get rid of any residual moisture. And she breathed, deeply and slowly, to try to convince her tight airways to open up a bit.

Finally she turned and, holding her head up, walked back to where she'd left him. And found him waiting there…with another woman.

She turned, and Stormy blinked as the question rolled from her lips. “Rhiannon?”

Rhiannon frowned at her, then shot her eyes back to Vlad. “You've made her cry already?”

“No one makes me cry,” Stormy denied.

Rhiannon gave an exaggerated toss of her long, jet-black hair. She wore a floor-length dress that hugged her willowy form's every curve and might have been made of velvet. “This one could make the sphinx weep. There's no shame in it.” Then she dismissed Vlad with a wave of her hand and turned to face Stormy. “I heard
you'd been abducted by the Prince of Darkness himself. Thought I'd better…see for myself.”

“I never knew you cared,” Stormy muttered.

Rhiannon lifted her brows at the sarcasm in her voice. “I don't, particularly. But you happen to be one of those rare mortals I would, on occasion, lift a finger to help.” She examined her own nails as she said it. They were long and bloodred. “Given that you're a friend of several of my dearest friends, I couldn't just leave you to fend for yourself.”

“Fending for myself is what I do best.”

“Maybe so. You do have a reputation for being tough—for a human. But be realistic, Stormy. It's not as if you could hold your own against Dracula.”

“You might be surprised,” Vlad said softly.

Rhiannon glanced his way, and when she looked at Stormy again, it was with speculation in her eyes. “Then perhaps I've come to rescue the wrong party? No matter. Vlad, could we please have this conversation in more appropriate surroundings? Traipsing through the wilds of Romania collecting nettles in the hem of my Givenchy gown is not my idea of a happy reunion.”

“If I'd known you were coming—”

“Which begs the question, why didn't you? You're getting slow, Vlad. Not to sense another vampire mak
ing her way to you? It's disturbing. Makes me wonder just what has you so thoroughly…distracted.”

He didn't reply, just began walking back toward the castle.

F
ootsteps in the hall let her know the others were on their way to begin the search. She was out of time to dwell on this, and she had to fight down the wave of nausea and the surreal feeling that made her dizzy. God, she'd been a fool sixteen years ago, to let herself fall in love with a man who didn't want her, except as a vessel for his dead lunatic of a wife.

But she'd been young then. She was older now, wiser, far stronger. And yet she was still a fool. She still wanted him. Still loved him.

She had never thought she would be one of those women she'd always secretly pitied. The type to fall for the wrong guy, to hold on to a man who didn't care a thing about her. Damn him, he was as stupid as she was, to cling for all these years to his obsession with a woman he'd barely even known.

She steadied herself, ejected the tape from the
machine, shut the power off and took the video back to her room before going to join Melina and Lupe in Brooke's room.

Her entire day was spent searching. They searched every nook and cranny of Athena House, searched the grounds and the basement, searched the nearby towns for any sign of Brooke. They started to examine Brooke's computer, but it proved to be no easy task, since the entire machine was password protected.

In fact, they were still trying to break into her files when the sun went down.

 

The three women were huddled around a desk in the mansion's library—not the secret, hidden one, but the one in the house itself. They were leaning over Brooke's laptop as Stormy tried keying in everything anyone could think of as a potential password. She looked up from her work to see that dusk was painting the sky beyond the windows in muted tones of plum and purple. She nodded stiffly, her decision made, got to her feet, and made a show of stretching the kinks from her back and shoulders.

“I need a break,” she said.

Melina and Lupe frowned at her, but she stuck to her guns. “Keep trying if you want. I'm going to get some air.”

She left them there, thinking they surely had as good a chance of breaking the code without her as they did with her. They knew Brooke, after all. Stormy walked tiredly through the mansion, toward the back doors and out them. Then she circled the house until she stood on the grassy lawn underneath the bedroom she'd been using. Because that was where Vlad would come tonight. To her window. As soon as he woke, she thought.

She needed to talk to him. She needed to tell him about Brooke, and the missing ring and the rite. She had accused him of stealing the ring. Had even believed he might have been the one to leave it in her room, somehow stirring Elisabeta to life, knowing she herself would try to put it on. And though she knew that was his ultimate goal, she also knew he hadn't done it.

She wanted to tell him she'd been wrong about that. Despite everything, she felt compelled to tell him. And even if that wasn't logical, the rest was. She needed all the help she could get to find Brooke, and she knew that, with his powers, he would be more help than anyone else. Once they found the ring, she would find a way to keep it from him, to remove its curse and render it harmless. Right. All in the minuscule amount of time remaining.

She could keep her heart out of this and use her head. She
could.
She had to. Her life depended on it.

She hadn't explored this part of the lawn before. It bordered the gardens and featured a mammoth weeping willow tree whose tendrils dragged the ground on all sides. Curious, she parted the veil and stepped inside.

“I knew you'd come,” a voice whispered.

But it wasn't Vlad's voice. It wasn't the voice of a vampire, and it wasn't the voice of a man. It was a woman's voice.

She rose from the concrete bench that sat at the base of the tree. Around them, the tendrils of the willow moved with the breath of the wind, whispering their secrets, whispering a warning. It seemed to Stormy they were urging her to turn and run.

“Brooke?” she asked. But the woman who stood there wasn't Brooke, though it was Brooke's body. This woman didn't stand like Brooke, didn't hold herself the same way. And her eyes were black as jet.

“Not anymore,” she said. “Don't you recognize me, Tempest? I was sure you'd know me. We've been so close for so long, after all.”

Stormy felt a cold chill race down her spine, and her gaze slid down to the woman's hand, where the ruby ring glistened from her finger. She tried to
swallow, but her throat was too dry and too tight. “Elisabeta?” she whispered. “But…how?”

“How is unimportant,” she said with a bright smile. “Aren't you relieved, Tempest? I didn't have to take your body from you after all.”

Stormy took a single step backward, sensing danger. “Yes. Very relieved.”

“Well, you shouldn't be.” Elisabeta took a step closer, and Stormy backed up again. “I'm going to kill you anyway, Tempest. You've been sleeping with my husband, after all. And I don't intend to let you continue being a distraction to him.”

She reached behind her and, in a flash, brought a huge blade around in front of her, then lunged.

Stormy dodged the blow but tripped over a root that thrust upward from the ground and fell on her back. A second later the other woman was straddling her, raising the blade over her head to bring it down on a collision course with Stormy's chest.

 

Vlad couldn't believe what he was seeing. A woman was leaning over Tempest, bringing a knife down toward her with furious force. He lunged toward them, even as Tempest jammed the heel of her hand into the woman's chin, snapping her jaw closed and her head backward so hard she tumbled
off, rolling onto the ground, face down. And then Tempest scrambled to her feet. She kicked the woman in the rib cage as hard as she could, so hard the woman's body rose from the ground. Tempest delivered a second kick, flipping the woman onto her back. This time the knife went sailing through the air to land in the grass several yards away.

Tempest advanced, and Vlad thought she intended to kill the stranger. And then the woman on the ground spotted him, frozen there, amazed and unable to look away. She lifted a hand toward him. “Help me, Vlad. Please, don't let her kill me.”

That voice. And those eyes.

He blinked in shock; then, as Tempest surged forward, he gripped her shoulders from behind, stopping her.

Tempest whirled on him, her eyes blazing with anger. “She tried to kill me just now!”

“Who is she?” he asked, his voice a whisper.

The woman on the ground struggled to sit up. “It's me, Vlad. It's Elisabeta. Don't you know me? I'm your wife.”

He narrowed his eyes. “How…how could this…?”

“Her name is Brooke,” Tempest said, and she was a little breathless. “She's part of the Athena group. Vlad—”

His gaze was drawn to the woman, the stranger. His bride? Could it be?

Tempest gripped his shoulders and jerked him around to face her. “Listen to me, Vlad. I took the ring from the museum. It was me.”

“You?”

“Yes, but only because she was in control. Elisabeta took over. I didn't even know until I woke this morning to find her running the show again. She was about to put it on me.”

He frowned, searching her face.

“We were going to put it into the vault, where it would be safe. But Brooke stole it and also the rite, which was here all the time, locked away. Brooke thought somehow it could give her immortality for herself. She must have performed the rite.”

He couldn't stop looking from her to the strange woman with the familiar voice and eyes. “So my Beta lives…in that body. Not in yours.”

Tempest stared at him for a long, long moment. He felt her eyes on him but didn't meet them, because his gaze was focused on the other woman.

“Yeah, Vlad. She's not in my body anymore. She's not going to take over every time you get close to me.”

Elisabeta sent him a watery smile, and his heart
contracted in his chest. It was a familiar smile. So much about her was familiar.

“It's been so long,” she whispered. “I love you, Vlad. I've always loved you. I need you now, more than ever before. Please don't desert me, not now.”

“I would never desert you, Beta.”

“I'm hurt.
She
hurt me.”

He moved forward, reaching out a hand, and Elisabeta took it and let him help her to her feet. She brushed herself off.

“Poor thing. I shouldn't have done that, huh, Vlad?” Stormy asked. The sarcasm in her tone was clear, and, finally, he looked her way. She was furious. “I suppose I should have just let her sink that blade into my heart.” She shrugged. “Then again, you're doing a pretty decent job of that all by yourself.”

She turned and started to walk away.

Vlad released Elisabeta's hand.

“Vlad!”

He glanced back to see his bride sinking to the ground again, bending nearly double and hugging her own middle, where Tempest had kicked her hard enough to fracture her ribs.

He looked to Tempest again, then back to Elisabeta.

“Go ahead,” Tempest said. “Look, this is over as
far as I'm concerned. She's out of me. That's all I wanted. The rite has been performed—successfully, by the looks of things. I'm not going to die. What you do with her is totally up to you. I could care less.” She sent a glare back at Elisabeta. “But if you come near me again, I'll fucking kill you. No question. And no one, not even Dracula himself, will stop me. Got that, bitch?”

Elisabeta didn't answer, just sank to her knees, weeping.

“Yeah, that's what I thought. Brooke would have decked me for that.” She met Vlad's eyes. “Not that she doesn't deserve whatever your innocent little bride there did to her, Vlad, but you might want to find out what happened to Brooke before you two head off on your delayed honeymoon.”

She spun on her heel and strode toward the house.

Vlad needed time to process what was happening here. How could Elisabeta be alive in the body of this woman, this Brooke?

But right then, he could only focus on one thing. His wife was hurt, and she needed him. He couldn't just walk away and leave her lying there in the grass, bleeding and broken. He
couldn't.

He let Tempest go and turned to Beta. He slid his
arms beneath her, picked her up and carried her away, off the grounds of Athena House.

 

The pain lancing her heart was almost too much, Stormy thought, as she walked firmly and purposefully into the mansion. Just inside the doors, she stopped, then stood gripping the doorframe, waiting for the weakness to pass from her knees. She'd never wanted anything the way she wanted him. But she'd been deluding herself. For sixteen years she had hoped that Vlad would realize she was the one he wanted. That he would be with her if he could.

But now that he could, he had chosen to be with Elisabeta, instead.

“Fine,” she said, lifting her head and swiping away the tears with an angry hand. “I hope they fucking rot together. I'm done with this.”

“That's the tough little mortal I've grown to…tolerate.”

She blinked past the hot moisture in her eyes to focus on Rhiannon. The vampiress stood halfway across the sunroom, between two tropical plants, with the steam from the hot tub forming a misty backdrop. A photographer couldn't have posed her more effectively, as she stood there in a dress of paper-thin red silk, draping from her shoulders to the floor.

“Now stop the weeping and tell me what's happened.”

Stormy sniffed and shook her head. “It's over, that's all. I'm sorry you came all the way out here for nothing.”

“Did I?”

Stormy nodded, stiffened her spine and lifted her chin. “Yeah. You were right about Brooke, Rhiannon. How did you know?”

“We'll get to that. What has the little traitor done this time?”

“Stolen the ring. And the scroll. Turns out the damned Sisterhood had it all along, locked up in a vault. I guess our pal Elisabeta decided Brooke was an easier mark, because she's taken over
her
body now.”

Rhiannon's eyebrows arched. “Elisabeta is corporeal?”

“Sure as hell felt corporeal when she tried to kill me a few minutes ago.”

Rhiannon gasped, but Stormy waved a hand. “Don't worry. I kicked her ass and sent her packing.”

“Well, that goes without saying, doesn't it? And where is Vlad?” Rhiannon asked.

“Last I saw him, he was carrying her away. Probably helping her lick her wounds. I'm done with the both of them.”

“I only wish that could be true. For your sake, if not for Vlad's.”

Stormy shook her head. “It
is
true. I'm packing my shit and leaving. I no longer have any reason to stay involved in this mess. Let him deal with her.”

“Stormy, it's not over.” Rhiannon stopped speaking then and turned toward the doorway from the sunroom to the main part of the house. “We have company.”

Before she finished speaking, Melina and Lupe appeared. They came to an abrupt halt when they spotted Rhiannon.

“Well,” she said in her menacing purr—a purr that could become a growl without warning. “We meet again. Hello, Melina.”

“Rhiannon.”

Lupe just stared, her eyes wide but watchful. Finally she managed to tear her gaze from Rhiannon's to focus on Stormy. Then she frowned. “What happened to you?”

“Later. Did you manage to get into Brooke's computer files?”

“Yeah. The password was
immortality
.”

Rhiannon sniffed. “Brooke has been obsessed with obtaining it for quite some time,” she said. “And I suppose part of the blame for this mess be
longs with my friends and I, for not telling you of her duplicity long ago.”

“The Stiles incident,” Melina said. “We found her notes in her computer, only a few minutes ago. She had planned to steal the formula Frank Stiles developed—the one he believed would make an ordinary mortal, immortal.”