The scar-faced man nodded, his hands hovering about waist high, palms out. "Frank Stiles," he said. "And that"s why I"m here. I want to talk." He looked at Sumner. "To all of you. I don"t think you know what you"re dealing with."
Sumner glanced at Lou. "What do you think?"
Lou walked up to the man. "Put your hands up, pal." The man raised his hands a little higher, and Lou handed his gun to Max, quickly patted Stiles down, then took the gun back again. "Sumner, you wanna hear what this guy has to say?"
"I think we probably should, don"t you?"
Lou nodded reluctantly. "You try anything, I won"t hesitate. You understand."
"I"m not here to hurt anyone," Stiles said softly. "I just want to help."
Sumner stepped aside. Stiles walked in, with Lou and Max right behind him. "Help?" Max asked. "Is that what you were doing to my sister when we arrived the other night? Helping her?"
"I was checking her to see if she"d been bitten."
Max lowered her gaze as they all trooped through the house into the small sitting room off the main living area. She imagined that was so Morgan couldn"t hear or see them if she happened to come down the stairs. "Where"s Lydia?" Max asked as they all sat down.
"Upstairs, checking on Morgan." Sumner turned to Stiles. "If you have some explanation for attacking that girl, sir, I would suggest you give it now."
"I need to start at the beginning. If you"ll just give me five minutes, I can make you understand-"
"Yeah?" Max asked. "You gonna make me understand why you put a bullet in my best friend"s forehead, too, while you"re at it?"
Stiles looked her dead in the eye. "I was there. It"s true. I was at that apartment. But I did not hurt your friend. He did."
"He, who?"
"Dante. The killer I"m trying to track down."
"Vampires don"t shoot people, Stiles."
"They do if they"re trying to set someone up. Like me."
"So Dante framed you? Funny, the cops all seemed to think Lou did it. He was the one who ended up framed."
"Lou is a cop. They knew he hadn"t done it almost immediately. I was the next obvious choice." Max rolled her eyes, but Stiles went on. "Listen to me. Please."
Throwing her hands in the air, Max sighed and paced away. "Fine. Fine, you have the floor." She sank into a chair. Sumner and Lou were already sitting, but Stiles remained standing.
"For twenty years I was an agent with the CIA"s ultra-secret Division of Paranormal Investigations. Our headquarters was in White Plains. Our charge was the research and elimination of vampires."
Max nodded. She had already known all of this. Sumner seemed stunned as he glanced at Lou, then back at Stiles. "My G.o.d, you mean it"s all true?"
"What I"m telling you is true. The vampires revolted, attacked the headquarters, burned it to the ground and killed most of the operatives. That was five years ago. It was a disaster. Our funding was pulled, the division completely shut down. Any surviving agents scattered, going undercover, as I did."
"Why?" Max asked.
"To avoid debriefing. We know a lot of things the government would rather not risk being made public." He eyed Max. "That"s why I threatened you that night. I couldn"t afford for anyone to know I was alive."
"And when I told someone, even though it was five years later, you knew somehow."
He nodded. "I still have a few connections in the Agency. One of them told me about Officer Malone"s phone call."
"So you went to Lou"s place, lured my best friend there and shot her to teach me a lesson?"
"No! I went to his place to try to find out what he knew. That vampire was there, waiting in ambush. The girl was already unconscious. Before I could do anything, he shot her. Then he just gave me this evil smile and took off." He shook his head slowly and went on. "I knew he"d come after Morgan next, that"s why I drove all night to get to her. To warn her."
"And why did Dante do all this?" she asked.
"He knows what I"ve been doing," Stiles said. "Searching for the surviving members of the DPI, patting them back together, re-forming our group as an independent ent.i.ty. An elite unit of expert vampire hunters." He sighed, lowering his head. "Dante wants to put me away. He figured if he made it look like I killed your friend, you and Lou would find a way to put me behind bars."
Max leaned back in her chair, trying to digest all he had said. "That doesn"t explain what Dante was doing in Lou"s apartment in the first place."
Shaking his head, he said, "Don"t you get it? You and Lou were trying to find out who had killed that woman-Lydia Jordan"s friend. It must have been Dante. He must have been afraid you were getting close and gone there to see what you had on him."
"It"s a little farfetched," Max said, sighing, turning it over in her mind.
Lou said, "What I don"t get is, why do you want to kill all the vampires?" Everyone looked a little surprised, but he shrugged and went on. "Hey, if they"re anything like the way Morgan depicts them in the films, they aren"t so bad."
"Morgan is under the control of a powerful vampire, Officer Malone," Stiles said. "Trust me, I know what they"re capable of. He"s got her completely mesmerized. She"ll do anything he says, even turn against the people who love her in order to protect him."
"I don"t understand that," Max said. "How is that possible?"
"Your sister has a certain blood antigen. It"s called Belladonna," Stiles said. "And it"s slowly killing her."
"How do you know about that?" Sumner demanded, getting to his feet.
"Whenever the antigen was identified in a mortal"s blood, that information was forwarded to the DPI"s files. There aren"t many who have it. But those who do, attract vampires like honey attracts bees. They feed on them, suck the life out of them. That"s why they all die young. It"s not the antigen. It"s the vampire it attracts. And unless we kill this one, he"ll keep coming back, keep on feeding on your precious Morgan until she dies. But if we stop him, she"ll live."
Sumner averted his eyes, but Max saw the tears. "The doctor says it"s the blood condition that"s killing her."
"But he doesn"t know how or why. Everyone with the blood type dies young. I"m telling you what the doctors don"t know, Sumner. It"s because they become victims. Belladonna blood is the vampire"s favorite kind."
Max stared at him. "Are you telling me that she can get better? She can live?"
He nodded. "She can live. But we have to protect her from the vampire."
Blinking, Max looked at Lou, silently asking him to tell her that he believed this man, G.o.d, she wanted it to be true.
But Lou shook his head almost imperceptibly. Before he could speak, though, Lydia came charging into the room, breathless, wide-eyed. "She"s gone!" she shouted. "Morgan is gone!"
Chapter 22.
*Dante"s body surged with pleasure but not vigor. It was an odd sensation. He was sated, yet still groggy, weak. Maybe he had only dreamed the pleasures of release, of possession...
He lifted his head, blinked his vision clear. And frowned, more disoriented than before. He was on the floor, his back braced against the cool stone wall. And the lantern was burning. He didn"t remember lighting it. He didn"t remember waking.
He wasn"t wearing his shirt. His jeans were undone and halfway down his hips. He tasted blood on his lips.
And then he saw her, lying naked in a puddle of white satin.
"Morgan!" Dante surged to his feet, only to sink to his knees again at the wave of dizziness that drowned him. One hand pressed to his forehead, he forced himself upright and walked on his knees to her. She lay on her side, curled into a fetal position, hair covering her face. "Jesus, Morgan... " He caught her shoulders, rolled her onto her back. Her hair fell away from her face, and he stared down in horror at her white skin, her closed eyes, her parted, pale lips. He had to force himself to look at her throat, at her body. And when he did, tears welled in his eyes. Tears. He didn"t remember the last time he had cried for anyone, much less a mortal. Her throat bore the marks of his invasion. And there were more. Tiny pairs of pinp.r.i.c.ks on her b.r.e.a.s.t.s and shoulders. Her belly and thighs. It hadn"t been a dream. He had ravaged her. Taken her in every way. Her body. Her blood.
"G.o.d, Morgan, what the h.e.l.l have I done?" He returned his gaze to her face, cradling her upper body in his arms, bending over her. "Please wake up. Please, Morgan, live. I can"t have done this. Not to you." He listened for her breath. He felt for her heartbeat. He scanned for her life force... and sensed it, still there. Weak, but there.
Her eyes opened to the merest slits, and her lips curled somehow into a shadow of a smile. "Oh, my love... "
"Hush. Don"t try to speak. G.o.d, Morgan, I"m sorry. I"m... "
"I... brought something for you."
He shook his head, not understanding what she meant, but she shifted her eyes and his gaze followed; he saw the books on the wobbly table.
"Your journals."
"My journals... " He searched his memory. "I left instructions with an attorney. They were to be shipped to a storage unit for safe-oh, h.e.l.l what does it matter now?"
"It matters," she whispered. Her jaw clenched; she swallowed, began again. "The script, too. On a disk, there with the books. The one I"ve been writing. Destroy it, Dante."
He stared at her, shaking his head.
"You have to know you can trust me. I brought them all to you-to prove myself."
"You"re worried about whether I trust you? My G.o.d, Morgan, look what I"ve done to you."
"You did what I asked you to do," she whispered. Weakly, she lifted a hand, touched his face. "Tears? Why are you crying?"
His hands trembled in her hair as he bowed over her, holding her head to his belly, shuddering with barely contained anguish. "How can you ask that? G.o.d, Morgan, I"m so sorry." His voice broke, and he shuddered with emotion as he held her.
"Fix it," she breathed. And she spoke now as if each word was an effort. "Feed me. Make me immortal, like you are."
Tipping his head back, Dante closed his eyes, clenched his jaw.
"Dante...please. You won"t let me die. I know you won"t."
A hot tear rolled off his cheek and fell onto her face as he lowered his head to look at her. "I can"t transform you, Morgan. Not now. I"m too weak. You wouldn"t survive the ordeal, and if by some miracle you did, you"d be little more than a mindless zombie."
She expelled a long, wavering breath. "I don"t understand... I thought-"
"Sharing the gift takes a vampire at his strongest. And even then it drains him, weakens him. Last night I nearly bled to death before the day sleep healed my wound."
"But you drank from me."
He lowered his head.
"It"s because I"m so ill, isn"t it? My blood has barely any life left in it. That"s it, isn"t it?"
He nodded without looking her in the eye. "I"ve seen the effects of the gift gone bad before, Morgan. A vampire brought into this life with weak blood, or too little blood. Mindless sh.e.l.ls with no reason, no thought, no personality, who exist only to feed. Monsters, truly monsters. I can"t curse you to that kind of existence. I won"t." Finally he met her eyes again. "I"m sorry, sweet Morgan. I"m so sorry."
"Well, you"ve done it again, haven"t you, love?"
The voice was Sarafina"s, and it came from near the entrance to his lair. Dante looked up at her. She wore red, full sweeping skirts of it, with a sheer black overskirt and enough jewelry to please a queen. "Tina. Thank G.o.d."
"Don"t thank G.o.d for me, Dante. He has nothing to do with my existence." She narrowed her eyes on his face. "Are those tears I see? My G.o.d, look at you. Reduced to weeping over a mortal." When she tossed her head, her earrings jangled.
"You have to help her," Dante said. He saw Sarafina"s anger, felt it like a red hot cloud around her, but he had to try. "She"ll die unless you bring her over."
She released a burst of air, waved a dismissive, ring-bedecked hand, and her bracelets rang. "You want her so badly, bring her over yourself."
"I can"t. I"m too weak."
"Oh, come now, Dante, you"d love her as an imbecile. She would obey your every whim. Be your slave forever, even better than a mortal one. They"re so fragile, you know. She could hunt for you, serve you. Wouldn"t you like that?"
He lifted his head. "You"re the one with the penchant for mindless drones, not me."
"No, but you do seem to be the one more apt to f.u.c.k a mortal to death. This makes what, now? Two?"
"She"s not dead."
"Give her an hour."
"Why won"t you help me?"
Sarafina lifted her brows. "Because you"ve turned your back on me, Dante. You"ve decided, quite obviously, that I am no longer enough of a companion for you. That you need to bring in someone new. To replace me."
"That"s not how it is."
"No? It"s how I see it. I"ll tell you what, Dante. If you really want my help, let me finish the little b.i.t.c.h off for you. I would so enjoy devouring whatever small amount of blood you left in that pale, weak little body."
Anger heated his blood, and Dante gently lowered Morgan"s head and rose to his feet. Standing straight, he faced Sarafina. "I"ll kill you first."
She flinched. He saw it, a short flash in her eyes. A tightening of her lips. "And that proves what I"ve said, doesn"t it? You"d kill me, your life mate, for her?"
"You are not my mate. Or my wife or my partner or even my lover, "fina."
"I made you," she whispered.
"And therefore you own me?"
She stood so tense and so rigid that her entire body trembled. And then she said, "d.a.m.n you to h.e.l.l for betraying me, Dante! d.a.m.n you with the rest of my kin. I need none of you!" Then she whirled in a swirl of skirts and a clatter of jewels, and fled through the door, a blur of speed and motion.
Morgan"s soft but desperate sigh drew his attention from Sarafina"s pain-which he felt keenly. Logical or not, Sarafina was hurting. Now, though, he had no care for his dark mother"s pain. Only for Morgan"s.