Prince of Twilight (16 page)

“My threats, Tempest, are far from idle. And I don't think you will mind at all when I carry them out.”

 

Vlad carried Elisabeta, in Brooke's body, to the house a few miles away where he'd holed up for the night, and where he'd sensed the presence of a mortal upon waking this very evening. Even without his heightened senses he would have known that someone had been there. There had been shards of broken glass on the floor. Curved, as if from a wine glass. And the small rickety wooden table had been
moved, and bore the soft drippings of a recently burned candle. A black candle. Which suggested workings of negative magick.

The scent that lingered was that of a woman.

This woman, he realized now. Though not precisely this one. She was different now. She was
Elisabeta
now.

He took her into the house, but not down the basement stairs to where he'd set up a secure haven. Instead, he carried Elisabeta into the back part of the house, where a sofa was covered in a filthy sheet. Then he yanked the sheet away, relieved that the fabric beneath it appeared far cleaner.

“Here now,” he said, lowering her down onto the cushions. “Just rest. Are you still in pain?” He lifted her blouse to just below her breasts, to see the bruises already darkening the skin that covered her ribs.

“It's…it's better now,” she said, her accent slighter than it had been. He supposed she'd had sixteen years of listening while she lived inside Tempest.

“I forgot how much it hurts to be…alive,” Beta said.

He frowned as he drew his gaze from her bruised ribs to her face. Her meaning, he knew, went beyond the physical pain she had been dealt this night.

“Is it as bad for you?” she asked. “Pain, I mean. Hurting?”

“Worse.”

“Worse?”

He nodded, lowering her shirt again. “In vampires, sensation is magnified. Pain included.”

“God, how will I bear it?”

His eyes shot to hers. “How will you—”

“But you heal fast, don't you? Every ache and pain goes away as soon as the sun comes up. And when you wake again, you're as good as new. That's the way it works, isn't it?”

“Yes.”

She nodded. “It's starting to feel better.” She smiled at him and tried to sit up a little. “When will you do it?”

“Do what, Beta?”

“Change me, of course. I want you to make me immortal. A vampire, like you.”

He stared at her, shook his head slowly as what she was saying became clear to him. And only then did he realize what he hadn't before. He smelled it on her, sensed it on her. The Belladonna Antigen. But it was different somehow. Weak. Thin. Altered in some way.

Brooke had not possessed it before. Of that he was certain. Had The Chosen been so close, he would have sensed it at once.

“It has to be done in just the right way, Beta. At just the right time.”

She clasped his shoulder and drew herself nearer to him, brushing her lips over his jaw and cheek. “When will that be?”

“I don't know.” Her mouth slid around to his, and for a moment he kissed her. But then he clasped her shoulders and held her while he tugged his mouth from hers. “Beta, we have to talk.”

“But I've missed you so, Vlad. I don't want to wait.”

“It won't be long. But if you want to be made over—”

“All right.” She pursed her lips, then turned so that she was sitting up on the old sofa and leaned back against it. “What is it you need to know?”

He nearly sagged in relief. “Tell me about Brooke.”

Her head came up, eyes narrow.
“Brooke?”

“It's her body you're using, Beta. I need to know about it. She…wasn't one of The Chosen. I'd have known if one were that close.”

“Oh, no. Do you mean…?”

“No, love, no. I sense the antigen in you.” He stared at her. “I suppose you must have brought it with you somehow.”

She smiled. “Maybe I did.”

“But it's not full blown, Beta. It's not strong. I'm not sure it's quite the same. The transformation might not work.”

“Or it might.”

“If it fails, you'll die, Beta.”

She blinked rapidly. “Well, we don't want that.” Then she frowned at him. “Are you sure you're telling me the truth, Vlad?”

“Why would I lie?”

Shrugging, she watched his face carefully. “Because of her, of course.”

“Who? Brooke?”

“Tempest.”

He shook his head. “She no longer has anything to do with this.”

“She does if you're in love with her. If you've decided you'd rather be with her than me. I've waited five hundred years, Vlad.”

“You didn't wait at all, Elisabeta. Not even three days. You believed them when they told you I'd been killed on our wedding night, and you flung yourself to your death.”

“A living death,” she whispered. “Trapped, like being buried alive. You did that to me.”

“I was trying to save you.”

“You destroyed me. All so you could have me
back again. If you've decided you don't want me now, after all I've been through…”

“I haven't. I'm telling you the truth, Beta. We need to take some time, be sure you'll survive the change before we proceed.” She didn't argue, so he pressed on. “Where is Brooke now?”

Beta sighed. “She's here, Vlad. Cowering inside this body. But she will not remain long. This I know.”

“How do you know?”

“I simply do.” She held his gaze; then, lowering her eyelids to half mast, she lay back on the sofa, her hands going to her blouse to open its buttons. “None of it matters. Not really. I'm here now. We can be together at last. The way we've both been waiting to be for all these years.” She rose from the sofa, trailing her fingertips over his face. “Take me now, Vlad. Take my blood. Make me immortal.”

He licked his lips, staring at her as she pushed the blouse apart, baring her breasts—no, some other woman's breasts. And he
did
want her. But he bent to snatch the sheet from the floor and draped it over her. “Not yet. You're not strong enough. There's something…not right.”

Something changed then, in her eyes. Something dark came into them and shadowed her face. She backed away from him, and, moving so quickly
he didn't seen it coming, she yanked out a blade she'd had hidden somewhere in the clothes she wore and drew it swiftly across her palm.

“Beta, don't!” He reached for her, but she danced away. Then she lifted her hand. Scarlet blood welled in her palm. His eyes fixed on it, and he couldn't look away as she moved closer again. And then she pressed her palm to his lips.

Hunger raged in him. He hadn't fed sufficiently in far too long. He had been obsessed with this situation to the exclusion of everything, including his own needs.

He closed his eyes, tasted the blood from Elisabeta's hand, and the bloodlust swelled in him. He gripped her wrist and licked a hot path over her palm, taking every droplet.

And then he drew away, his eyes narrow. “It's partly your blood, Beta. The Belladonna Antigen, the thing that made you one of The Chosen when you lived in your own body, it's there. But just barely. It's still partly Brooke's blood, coursing in your veins. She didn't have the antigen. You know this.”

“How would I possibly know?”

He shook his head. “It doesn't matter. I know. She didn't have it, or I would have sensed it the moment I set foot in this town, much more so on the
grounds of Athena House. She didn't have it, and now that you've taken possession of her body, she does. But only slightly.”

“It's enough. It has to be enough. Make me over, Vlad. Make me what you are.” She stared up at him, her eyes pleading.

“It wouldn't work. Not like this.”

She lowered her head and turned away from him. “I don't believe you.”

“Beta, I'm telling you the truth. If I try to change you now, this body you've stolen will simply die. I'm sure of it.”

“I didn't steal it! It was given to me.” Blinking, she turned and stared up at him. “Do you still love me, Vlad? Do you still love me at all?”

“I'll always love you.”

“Then prove it to me.” She moved closer, slid her hands, one of which was now wrapped in a handkerchief, up the front of his shirt, tugged at the buttons there. “Show me you love me and not her. Do it now.” She reached up to kiss his neck, to bite it and tug at the skin there. “Prove it to me,” she whispered, pressing her hips to his.

Vlad closed his eyes, his hands lowering to her shoulders and then to her waist.

She tipped her head up for a kiss, and he
couldn't refuse her, not with the longing and hope he saw in her eyes. He kissed her. Her fingers twisted in his hair. She sucked his tongue, drove hers into his mouth and kissed him with a fervor he'd never felt in her before. And when she broke the kiss, she pressed his head to her throat. “It
is
me you love. I knew it. Take me, darling. It's been so long.”

Very gently, he pulled free of her.

“What's wrong, my love?” She blinked up at him, searching his face. “Is it this body? Is it not to your liking?”

“No, it's not that.” There was nothing unattractive about the body Elisabeta occupied. Brooke's body.

“I can't do this. Not now, Beta. You're far too weak.” And even as he said it, he felt like the worst kind of hypocrite. He'd taken women before. But not like this. In the past, when he'd needed to feed, he'd lured women to him, used the power of his mind to ease every inhibition in theirs and then ascertained the depths of their desire.

Sometimes he only drank. Other times, he took them in every imaginable way, but only if he sensed that, deep down, they wanted it. And always he left them with no memory of what had transpired.

This was different. He couldn't reach Brooke's
mind, because Elisabeta was in control of it. He couldn't test her desire, because Elisabeta was ruling her body. But she would be aware. A captive inside her own body. He'd heard Tempest describe it enough times. And even he, even Dracula, wouldn't stoop so low. He'd never needed to.

“I do not understand you. What could be wrong with—”

“It would be a rape, Elisabeta. It's not your body. Brooke—”

“Who cares about Brooke? She will be dead soon enough. She is not coming back, Vlad. It won't matter at all.”

He frowned down at her.

“I have what I needed from her. A body. I would have preferred the other one but—”

“How can you sure Brooke's soul will leave this body?” he asked. Partly to change the topic, and partly because he needed to know exactly what was happening.

“I do not know
how
I know, only that my soul has taken this body, fully taken it. I can feel her weakening, even now. She will be dead in a few days. She will move on to some other realm. She cannot last.”

“Why not?” Vlad asked. “You did. You lasted
years inside Tempest's body, even though she was in control.”

“Yes, but I
could not
move on. I was bound, Vlad, by the power of the ring.”

“I see.”

“If that little bitch would simply have died as she ought to have… But I do not wish to talk about her. Or even to hear her name again.”

He frowned. “She's a part of you. A part of all of this.”

“I hate her,” she said. “I wish her dead. When I am a vampire, she will be my first kill.” As she said it, she smiled slowly, but her smile froze, perhaps at the look of surprise she must have seen in his eyes.

“Oh, Vlad, darling, don't look that way. Death is not horrible. I used to think it was, when I was young and naive. I howled in pain when my family died of the plague. My brothers. My baby sister. I wanted to die with them. But now I understand so much more. Death is…it's a lie. There is nothing to fear in it. When you kill someone, they do not stop existing. They only…move out of the way.” She sighed, smiling wistfully. “To be a vampire—it must be like being a god,” she whispered.

“No, Beta. It's not like being a god.”

“Oh, but it is. I've been paying attention all these
years. Tempest, she deals with your kind all the time. You never die.”

“We can die, just as anyone else can. Only the means are different. Fire, or loss of blood, or sunlight—”

“You can read minds. Influence the thoughts of mortals.”

“So can some mortals,” he said. “There's nothing so godlike about those skills.”

“Vampires have the power of life and death in their hands.”

“As does any criminal with a handgun,” he told her. “We're not animals, Beta. We don't kill simply because we can.”

She frowned up at him. “I do not remember this side of you.”

“What side?”

She shrugged. “Vlad, this is not who you are.”

“Not who I was, perhaps. But, Beta, it's been centuries. Perhaps I've changed.”

“It's more than that. You refuse to make love to me, and it has nothing to do with the simpering ghost of a spirit still clinging by a strand to this body. It's
her.
It's Tempest.”

“She has nothing to do with this. I told you, I've changed.” He studied her. “You've changed, too.”

“Yes, well, being imprisoned for a few centuries will do that to a person.” She turned and started across the room toward the door.

Vlad gripped her shoulders to stop her. “Where are you going?”

“If you will not change me, Vlad, I'll find some other vampire who will. Trust me, I know where to find them. I learned a lot while I was trapped inside Tempest Jones.”

She pulled free, but he gripped her arm again. “Dammit, Beta, don't leave like this.”

She turned so fast that he didn't see it coming, didn't see her hand drawing the knife she'd tucked into the pants she wore. But he felt it. The blade sank deep into his belly.