Stormy felt warm all over. She rolled onto her side to hug her pillow to her with a deep contented sigh and felt a smile tug at her lips. And then she came fully awake and the smile died. The sigh died. The warmth turned to a chill that shivered from her toes to her throat, where it caught and lodged.
Vlad had been there.
She sat up in the bed, scanning the darkness of the room around her. The balcony doors were closed, their curtains still, blocking out the night beyond them. She saw no one lurking in the shadows. The luminous red eyes of the digital clock beside the bed read 4:15. There were no other eyes glowing at her from the corners. She reached out, groping for the lamp just to be sure, found the switch after a couple of false starts, and turned it on..
Light flooded the bedroom. She saw no one. But she felt them: eyes on her, watching her. The sensation was so real, she spun around to look behind her, but no one was there. Even so, it felt as if someone was standing right behind her, breathing down her neck.
Shivering, hugging herself, she moved across the room to the French doors of the balcony and tested them. Locked. Swallowing the dryness in her throat, she went to the closet and closed her hand around the cool brass doorknob. She stiffened her spine and jerked it open.
But no one was lurking inside. Sighing in relief, she turned and moved to the bathroom, reaching in first to flip on the light, then scanning the room. She'd left the shower curtain open, but she glanced behind it anyway.
Nothing.
She left the bathroom light on when she retreated to the bedroom, though it was a stupid, childish thing to do. Dropping to her knees beside the bed, she gripped a handful of covers and lifted them so she could peer underneath. But there was nothing there except an expanse of the same carpet that covered the rest of the floor. And then she shook her head at her own foolishness. The very notion of Vlad hiding under a bed... It was ludicrous.
She was alone.
But he'd been there. She was sure of it. It hadn't been just a dream. She ought to know, she thought. She'd been dreaming of him for sixteen years. She'd never felt like this upon waking. She felt relaxed; fulfilled. Sated.
Swallowing hard, she moved to the French doors again, unlocked and opened them, then stepped out onto the balcony and faced the darkness.
"Vlad? Where are you?"
The only answer was the gentle whisper of the wind moving through nearby trees, and sliding around the eaves and the railing.
"I know you're out there, Vlad. And I know you want that damned ring. Don't you try to put it on me, Vlad. Don't do it. I'm warning you."
There was still no answer. She stood there for a long time as bits of the dream that wasn't a dream came back to her. She remembered the way he'd touched her, the way he'd made her body come alive, made it sing.
Don't be stupid! It was me he was touching, me he wants, not you! Never you!
The voice, familiar and hated, shouted the words inside her mind, and Stormy gasped, gripped her head and closed her eyes. That was who she'd felt watching her. Elisabeta! She was getting stronger again. Rising up again.
She closed her eyes, chasing away the shivers of fear racing through her body. She had to focus on what he'd said, not on what he'd done.
He'd said he didn't have the ring.
Had he been telling the truth? Maybe so. Because if he had it, why hadn't he put it on her last night? Why wait?
Perhaps because he still hadn't located the rite that went along with it. Maybe he was just waiting for the one missing piece, biding his time.
From now on, Tempest, your nights, and your will, belong to me.
She heard his passionate whisper, a command, not a request. She lifted her head, staring out at the night. "No part of me belongs to you, Vlad. Understand that. I'm not the young, cow-eyed girl I was before. And I've been working with your kind for long enough to know how to shield myself. My will is too strong to be broken by a vampire. I'm my own woman, and no man owns me. Not even you."
She thought she had told him she loved him last night. But surely he couldn't take that declaration seriously. Not when she'd been asleep, believing it all to be a dream.
"That was wrong, Vlad. What you did last night, making me stay asleep, and trying to convince me it was just a dream? It was wrong. You violated me."
To get to me! And he will again and again and again, and you'll have no say in the matter.
"Shut up, Beta!"
She felt no response from Vlad, swallowed hard and lowered her head. She'd loved every second of it. But that didn't make it all right. He hadn't asked. He'd only taken.
Given, actually. But still... She wondered briefly if she was truly angry that he'd touched her without asking, or was it more that he had denied her seeing him again when she'd longed for nothing else for all this time? He'd kept her asleep, used his power over her to keep her from waking up. She wanted to see him. She wanted to throw her arms around him and weep for joy. She wanted to tell him how much she'd missed him.
"Right. The man has come to murder me. Get over it, Stormy."
Because it was true. He hadn't come for her. He'd come for the ring, and for Elisabeta.
"Don't let it happen again," she whispered. And on some level, she was sure he was out there, somewhere, listening. "Just don't."
She went back inside, locked the French doors and crawled back into the bed, determined to get another hour or two of sleep before it was time to get up and face the day. He wouldn't come back again tonight, she told herself. It was too close to dawn for that.
She only wished she could be as certain about Elisabeta. The sleeping intruder had awoken, strong and ready for a fight. It wasn't one to which Stormy was looking forward.
She rolled over, punched her pillow and closed her eyes. And she did get the sleep she'd been so determined to get. But it was far from restful, and filled with more pieces of her missing memories.
Vlad built a fire in the giant hearth and yanked the dusty sheets from the furniture, making a place for them to be comfortable on the ancient but still sturdy chairs. He located food, canned stew with gravy, certainly not cuisine, but she declared it edible and proved it by devouring every bit. She was starved. The castle's caretakers, he told her, only came in one weekend a month, and though he'd phoned ahead to tell them to prepare a room for her, the supplies they'd left in the pantry were meager at best.
"I'm not the original Vlad Dracula," he told her at length.
Stormy looked at him quickly. "You're not?"
"No. I am... far older. But that's unimportant right now. I was centuries old, already, when my travels took me to Romania. I cannot help but think it was fate that led me there. To her."
"Elisabeta?"
"Yes."
He was intense, his eyes focused on the dancing fire that painted his face in light and shadow, giving him an even more frightening appearance. And even more beautiful.
"The prince, the real son of the king, had been killed in battle before he was out of his teens, his body left to rot, unidentified and unclaimed. His father never knew what had become of him, and by the time I arrived, he had been mourning his lost son for some years. I knew the young prince's fate. I'd heard it directly from the enemy who'd slain him. That man panicked when he realized he'd killed the prince, knowing the vengeance the king would wreak should he learn of it. So he stripped the prince of his clothes, obliterated his face and dragged his body into a stand of brush, never to be found." He lowered his head. "When I arrived, the king mistook me for his long-lost son. I didn't have the heart to kill the joy in the old man's eyes. I saw no harm in playing the role."
"I see." She didn't, not entirely, but she was eager to hear more of his story. About Elisabeta, the woman who terrified her, seeming to possess her at times.
"I'd been living as Prince Vlad for nearly five years when I met her. We married a day later."
She shot him a quick, searching look. "That's it? You met her and married her a day later? That's all you're going to say about your... courtship?"
Vlad lifted his brows, spearing her with his steady gaze. "What else is there to say?"
"I don't know. How you met her. Where. What made you fall in love with her. It must have been... intense, if you married her so quickly."
"Intense." He turned his eyes toward the fire, stared into the snapping flames. "That describes it as well as anything. The details... the details are unimportant."
"The details are the only thing that's important."
He shrugged as if it didn't matter, and she knew he wasn't going to share his private hell with her. Not now. And maybe not ever. "The outcome is the same, with or without my most intimate memories being spilled at your feet, Tempest. I was called into battle on our wedding night. Enemies had crossed our borders. I led our soldiers to meet them, but we were severely outnumbered. It was ugly. Bloody. Many died. I was struck down, but one of my men dragged me into shelter and left me there, safe from the sun."
She sighed, disappointed that he'd refused to go into detail about his time with Elisabeta. She sensed that he didn't trust her with that kind of power.
"Was it luck that your soldier put you under cover?" she asked softly. "Or did he know?"
Vlad glanced her way. "No one really knew what I was. But by then my father and my closest comrades were used to my nocturnal leanings. They all knew I detested daylight, took to my rooms whenever the sun was shining. They knew I slept by day and that disturbing my sleep was an offense of the most dire sort." He shrugged. "They may have suspected more. Gods know the villagers did. Rumors about my nature were flying, even then."
"So it was you, not the original prince, who inspired all the stories," she said softly.
"Yes. It was me."
She nodded slowly, then swallowed the lump that came into her throat. "Some of them... are pretty gruesome."
He paused a moment. "I am not proud of the things I have done in the past, but I won't make excuses. I returned to the castle to find my new bride dead. And yes, I wreaked havoc on my enemies after that. I was brutal. Perhaps even insane, at the time. But it's done, and I can't undo it."
She drew a breath and shivered a little. "So you blamed them, your enemies, for her death?"
"It was well deserved."
"Did they kill her? Storm the castle while you were away and-" She broke off there because he was shaking his head. "How did Elisabeta die, Vlad?"
He set his jaw, fixed his eyes on the fire. "She received word that I had been killed in battle, and in her grief, pitched herself from a tower window."
At her tiny gasp, he shifted his gaze toward her again. She held her hand to her lips involuntarily and felt her eyes go damp.
"I'm so sorry," she whispered.
He shrugged and looked away.
"Why do you do that?"
"Do what?" he asked without looking at her again.
"Pretend it doesn't matter. That it doesn't hurt anymore."
"It was a long time ago."
"And it's been eating you up inside ever since."
"Don't pretend to understand me, Tempest. You couldn't begin-"
"You've spent all these years waiting for her to come back to you, searching for her. Don't try to pretend this obsession of yours isn't based on unbearable pain, Vlad. It won't wash, not with me."
"My pain is not the subject of this conversation. You wanted to know about Elisabeta. I'm telling you about her."
"Not really," she said. "But maybe I can piece it together from the scraps you're willing to share. Go on, Vlad. Finish the story. What happened next?"
"Her body lay in the chapel. My dear friend Rhiannon had arrived in my absence. It was she who told me what had led to Beta's death. And she told me more, as well. She told me that Elisabeta would return to me in five centuries."
She nodded slowly. "I know of Rhiannon. She's well versed in the occult arts, or so the stories go. Magick, divination, prophecy."
"She was a priestess of Isis, after all."
"So you believed her."
"Believed her? Yes. But I was not convinced Elisabeta's return would be enough. I wanted to ensure that she would remember me, that she would still be the woman I had loved. That she would love me again."
Tempest rose from the chair and moved to stand in front of him, staring down at him, blocking his view of the flames, so he had little choice but to look at her instead. "How could you do that?"
"I couldn't. But I knew of those who could. Rhiannon took her leave, and I had my father send horsemen into the farthest reaches, to bring back sorcerers, witches, magicians of every sort. I charged them with the task, and they assured me they had accomplished it. They gave me the ring from Elisabeta's finger, along with a scroll, rolled tightly and held within its circle. The told me they had somehow bound her essence to the ring, and that when she returned, I need only replace it on her finger and perform the rite contained in the scroll to restore her completely."
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 samse 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."
"So are you getting anything out here? Any clues or whatever it is you Scooby-types look for?"
Stormy thought she was getting a lot. Mainly, a question. If Vlad didn't have the ring, then who the hell did? And why was it she suddenly felt more vulnerable than she already had, when she knew damn well no one was more of a threat to her than he was?
"What do you say we get some lunch, huh? And then maybe we'll pop by the police department and see if we can get them to drop any hints about what they've got on this case so far."
"You think they'll tell us anything?" Brooke asked.
"Not on purpose. Come on."