“The question is, why her and not the rest of us?”
Max shook her head. The gate was coming into sight now, and the sky was growing darker by degrees. Lou took his arm from around her. “My turn.”
Jason shifted Stormy back into Lou’s arms, but even as he did, she opened her eyes, lifted her head, blinking.
“Storm?”
Stormy frowned at Max, then up at Lou. Her frown vanished, eyes widening. “What the hell happened to you?”
Lou relaxed. It was Stormy’s voice, speaking English. And whatever color they’d been before, her eyes were the right color now, though it was rapidly becoming too dark to tell.
“Max, Lou is bleeding,” Stormy said. “What happened? Where…where are we? Where’s the lighthouse?”
“We’re on our way back,” Lou said. “You passed out again. And I had a run-in with a…a pissed-off squirrel. Walked right into it. No big deal.”
Stormy frowned, shifting her eyes from Lou’s to Max’s again, clearly not believing him.
“Just relax, Stormy.”
“Why are you carrying me?”
Lou sighed. “I told you, you passed out again. I wasn’t sure you were strong enough to walk.”
“I can walk. Of course I can walk. Put me down, Lou.”
Not liking the idea, Lou set her on her feet.
She straightened, but then her knees buckled and she had to catch herself on Lou’s shoulders. She steadied herself, then got her footing and let him go. “Damn. Little head rush, there.”
“You sure you’re all right?” Max asked.
“Sure.” She looked at all of them, and while Max and Lou were doing a pretty good job of looking casual, Jason was not. He was watching her as if she were a rabid dog about to spring. Stormy saw it. “Jesus,” she whispered. “What happened back there?”
“Come on, let me help you climb the gate, hon,” Max said. “We’ll talk about it back at the motel. Okay?”
Stormy reached out to grip the gate, then stopped and stared down at her hands. She lifted them, fingers open, then blinked up at Lou. “My nails are broken…. There’s…blood. My God, I did that to you, didn’t I?”
Lou sighed. “Look, you had a momentary lapse.”
“An out-of-body experience or something,” Max put in.
“I did that. I can’t believe…Jesus, why would I…?” She pressed her hands to her head, shaking it side to side. “What the hell is happening to me?”
Stormy had never been so frightened in her life—hell, not even when she’d taken a bullet after being lured to Lou’s apartment by someone trying to set him up for her murder. She hadn’t had time to be scared then. She’d walked through Lou’s door, heard a pop and felt her head jerk back. There had been no pain. That was all of it, nothing else, no time for fear, for panic.
This was entirely different. She felt as if she were under attack, but not from the outside. This attacker seemed to be hitting from within her, inside her own mind, her own body.
Somehow.
“You don’t look so good, honey.” Max walked beside her into Lou’s motel room. She’d tried to talk her into going back to her own, going to bed, but Stormy knew there was work to be done. And she never would have slept, anyway. “I’m gonna send Jason out to the diner for takeout,” Max said. “I’ll have him bring you back some herbal tea.”
“Thanks, hon. But I’m more in the mood for cheeseburgers, fries, a milkshake and about a sixpack of something carbonated and caffeinated to hell and gone.”
Max smiled. Stormy could see the relief in her eyes and vowed to keep trying to act like her old self—even if she was far from feeling it.
“How about the rest of you?” she asked. “Empty calories all around?”
“Sounds good to me, and I’d kill for a beer to go with,” Lou said.
“Hang on.” Max went to the telephone stand in the room, picked up the pad there and made a short list. “So we need a fresh case of diet Coke, a six pack of Bud, and burgers and fries all around?”
“And a milkshake,” Stormy said. “Chocolate.” The thought made her stomach churn, but if she admitted to feeling sick, Max would be even more worried than she already was—if that were even possible.
Max scribbled and handed the notepad to Jason. “You willing to make a food run?”
Stormy looked at him. He looked horrible, almost as bad as she probably did. His eyes had rings around them, and he seemed dazed, shell-shocked. She doubted he had any intent of pursuing his interest in dating her after what he’d just seen. Hell, if she were reading him right, he was afraid of her now. And who could blame him?
“I couldn’t eat,” Jason said. He looked outside the window, unfocused, distracted. “Yeah, I’ll go. Not much else I can do right now. For Dee. God, I want her back. This is killing me.”
“It’s going to be okay, Jason. One more night. That’s all. One more. Tomorrow we’ll get out to that island, come hell or high water,” Max said.
Jason nodded, tore the top sheet off the notepad and headed out.
Max licked her lips. “We also need someone to track down some of those other women. Talk to them, see if we can learn anything.”
Stormy nodded slowly. “I could get started on that tonight.”
“Storm, tonight you should rest. After what happened—”
“After what happened?” Stormy said, cutting her off. “The problem is, we don’t know what happened. Not really.” She looked at Lou, who’d walked through into the bathroom and was standing there now, in front of the sink, pressing a wet washcloth to his face. “How could I do that to Lou and not even remember it?”
“I don’t know.”
Stormy shook her head, paced to the bed and sank onto it. “You guys should lock me up someplace until we figure this out. God only knows what else I might do. I feel like I’m losing control of my own body—like someone else, some stranger, just takes over at will.” She closed her eyes. “God, it’s a horrible feeling.”
“It must be.” Max sat down beside her.
“What do you think it is, Max?”
“I don’t know.”
Stormy stared her friend in the eyes. “You have a theory. Come on, Max, you always have a theory. What do you think is going on here?”
Max pursed her lips, lowered her eyes, cast a quick look into the bathroom. Lou had closed the door now, and she heard the shower running. She supposed he was beyond overhearing. “It seems to me it’s got something to do with the coma.”
“I thought of that, too. But I don’t understand….”
“You remember how after you came out of it, you said you’d been lost? Wandering around in some dark place, unable to find your way back? And how you met my sister there?”
“Morgan. Yeah, I remember. She helped me find my way back.” She lowered her head. “And she remembered it, too. She recognized me when she saw me, even though we’d never met before.”
“Which means it was real, on some level. That place where you went. You were able to interact with other people, other…beings.”
“I guess so. Yeah.”
“Do you remember encountering…anyone else while you were there?”
Stormy frowned, thought back, searching her mind. “No…I…no.”
“You seem uncertain.”
She shrugged. There had been other encounters, but they had been with herself. She’d seen her life unfold before her eyes, scenes of her own childhood. She’d seen her early childhood, happy times with her parents. She’d seen herself finding Jason and Max, way back in the second grade, and how they’d become friends from the start. She’d seen so much.
But none of that counted. “There were others. Flashes, speeding by us so fast. We thought they were people who weren’t…stuck or lost like we were. We thought they knew where they were supposed to be—it was like a parade of souls flying past like comets, to the other side, or from it. They went in both directions. It seemed like we were in some kind of…way station. An
in-between point. But besides them, I didn’t see anyone else,” she told Max.
“I think maybe you did. Maybe you don’t remember it, or maybe you weren’t even aware of it, Stormy, but I think maybe someone…or something…sort of…came back with you.”
Stormy’s face went utterly lax, and every whisper of breath fled her lungs. Max’s theory—it fit what she had been feeling so perfectly that it gave her chills.
“Maybe some kind of…I don’t know. Do you think maybe…something walked into your body while you were out of it? Sort of took up residence and now doesn’t want to leave?”
Stormy closed her eyes. “Like…some kind of possession?”
“When you blank out, Storm, your eyes change color. Your voice changes. And I can’t be sure, but I think you’re speaking in a different language. It’s like you’re someone else.”
She couldn’t stop the sob that rose up, nearly choking her. She doubled over, clutching her waist, fighting a sense of panic that wouldn’t release its grip.
Max stroked her back and shoulders. “I could be wrong, Storm. It could be something else entirely, but—”
“It doesn’t feel wrong. Jesus, Max, I just want it out of me. How do I get it out of me?”
“I don’t know. But I promise you, we’ll find out.”
It was dark when Jason Beck pulled up at the diner. He got out of the Jeep and started for the entrance, but the vampire didn’t let him go inside. He snapped his powerful arm around the young man’s neck from behind. Before Beck could blink, the vampire pulled him into an alley and shoved him up against the cinder-block wall.
“What do you think you’re doing, Jason Beck?”
“Ah, Jesus, easy, would you?”
The vampire eased his grip, but didn’t release him. “I have no intention of being easy on you. You’ve been given your orders. I told you to be patient. To wait for further instructions. And yet you let those prying bastards break into my lighthouse.”
“It’s not like I could stop them! Not without tipping them off. Jesus, will you let me loose? I’m not going anywhere.”
The vampire let him go and heard his thoughts. This is no man, he was thinking, but a vampire. The animal who holds my sister’s life in his hands.
Jason’s feet settled more firmly on the ground, and he smoothed his jacket where it had bunched around his shoulders.
He lifted his chin. “Is all this cloak-and-dagger crap really necessary? Couldn’t we talk over a beer inside the diner? It’s not like anyone in this town is going to challenge you.”
The vampire made sure his smile was slow and deliberate. “Quite correct. So what is this, an attempt to befriend me? It won’t work, Jason Beck. I don’t have any friends. And I never drink…beer.” His smile faded. “But you already knew that, didn’t you? What did they find at the lighthouse?”
“I saw where you were holding my sister. My God, what kind of a monster would put a young girl in a hole like that?”
The vampire felt a twinge of conscience and had to lower his eyes, but only briefly. “The girls were there only for a short time. I assure you, their current accommodations are nothing short of luxurious, as you saw for yourself when you visited them. They have use of a theater, a pool, even a sauna. My house has every convenience. They’re getting gourmet meals and the best of care, and they will continue to—as long as you follow my instructions to the letter.” He frowned then, staring hard into Jason’s eyes and seeing there the man’s nightmarish thoughts. “Your fears are unfounded, Beck. I haven’t…tasted her. Children are not my preference. Stop torturing yourself with such thoughts and focus on what needs to be done.”
Jason Beck didn’t know whether to believe that or not, the vampire sensed. But the young man hoped it was the truth.
“I understand the listening devices on the telephones in the motel rooms are no longer functioning.”
“That wasn’t me. It was the ex-cop, Malone. He found one in his room and then checked all the others. Hell, if I’d stopped him, he’d have known something was wrong.”
The vampire searched his eyes, his mind, and then nodded. “It doesn’t matter. I can keep tabs on you without the aid of electronics.”
Jason swallowed, nodded. “I did what you asked. I got Max and Storm to come here. I don’t know what more you want from me.”
The vampire lifted his dark brows. “Oh, a good deal more. I’ve found some of the information this Stuart woman has gathered on…certain matters. But I still don’t know all I need to know about her. And far less than I need to know about the other woman. The one you call Storm. She interests me far more.”
Jason’s head came up sharply. “What interest could you possibly have in her?”
“That, Jason Beck, is none of your concern. She is…ill?”
Jason shook his head. “She took a bullet to the head a few months ago. Spent some time in a coma. Now there seem to be…side effects. Or something.”
“Or something?”
Jason shrugged. “She’s passed out a couple of times. Seems to have blackouts where she—I don’t know, loses it.”
The vampire narrowed his eyes but could find no sign in the young man’s mind that he was lying. “When you took her to the hospital, what did the doctors find?”
“Nothing. They couldn’t find a damn thing. Malone seems to think you might be the one messing with her head.”
“I am not. If she is ailing, it’s not due to any interference from me. You…you have feelings for this… Storm?”
“We’re friends. That’s all.”
He nodded slowly. “You’d do well to see to it you remain no more than that.”
Jason frowned. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
“You’re not to touch the woman called Storm. Do you understand?”
Jason didn’t answer, didn’t acknowledge the words. He was angry, fighting angry, but he knew better than to challenge the man who stood in front of him. He didn’t stand a chance against him. He was smart.
And it was lucky for him, the vampire thought, that he was.
“I need the women. Both of them. You are to bring them to me, on my island, without the man.”
“No. Look, if you want to talk to Max, why don’t you just go to the motel and ask her whatever the hell it is you want to know. Jesus, there’s no way she’ll refuse to tell you if she knows my sister’s life depends on it.”
He held the young man’s eyes. They were intense and determined. “You will bring the women to me, on the island. By night, only by night, and without this Malone. If you do this, I will release your sister and her friend. If you don’t…”
“They’re my friends,” Jason said. His voice broke. “Jesus, I can’t just hand them over.”
“I do not intend to harm them.”
Jason shook his head slowly. “How the hell am I supposed to believe that?”
“I don’t really care whether you believe it or not. I need the women. You will deliver them. Find a way.”
Jason lowered his head. “I’ll try.”
“Three nights. Beginning with this one. If, by midnight of the third night, you have not brought them to me, I will come for them. Blood will be spilled. Your blood. Malone’s blood. And that of your sister, for good measure. Do you understand?”
Jason nodded, unable to look the man in the eye.
The vampire knew there was no doubt in this young man’s mind that he would betray the best friends he’d ever had in order to save his sister.
Jason lifted his head and dashed the moisture from his eyes when the vampire bade him good night. He tried to stop his shaking as he made his way out of the alley and into the diner.
Max watched the page print out and pulled it from the printer tray, eager. “Where the hell is Jason with our food?”
No sooner had she said it than someone knocked on the door. Stormy went to open it and Jason came in, his arms loaded down with bags. Stormy relieved him of one bag, set it on the bed, then too
k out the six-pack of beer and two six-packs of soft drinks. “We’re gonna need some ice.”
Jason was already unpacking the other bag, setting their burgers and fries, all wrapped individually, on the paper plates that had been tucked into the bag beside them.
“Any trouble, Jay?” Lou asked.
“Nope. The service was a little slow. This town really needs a fast-food joint or two.” His tone was a little too cheerful, a little too light, Max thought. As if it were false, forced. “What have you guys been up to?” Jason asked.
“We went through the list of victims. People who’ve come up missing only to be found later on. Turns out a couple of them aren’t too far away. Or weren’t, when the articles were written. Storm’s been using the Net to track them down. We thought maybe we could talk to them.”
“Good idea,” Jason said.
Max set aside the sheet of paper. “I’ve got some phone numbers. Going to call them after dinner.”
“Tonight?” He seemed surprised.
“Sure, Jay. Tonight. Why wait? The sooner we can unravel this thing, the better it’ll be for Delia.”
He nodded.
“Why? Is there some reason you think we should wait on this?”
“No.” The denial was instant. “No, not at all. I’m just surprised. You sure do work fast.”
“It’s the only speed she knows,” Lou said. “Let’s at least eat first, though.”
Max smiled and moved the computer aside, making room on the table for them to sit around it for their meal. “We got those arrangements made for Sid and his mom. Storm called in a favor from a friend with connections. They’ll be getting a call from a private school tomorrow. I think it will work.”
“That’s good,” Jason said. “The quicker the kid gets out of this hellhole, the better.”
Several burgers, fries and colas later, Max dialed the telephone, her stomach a little fluttery. She glanced at the clock, just to assure herself it wasn’t too late to be phoning people. It wasn’t quite nine, so she thought it was safe.
Sitting beside her, Lou looked at the list of names on the printout. “Starting from the top?” he asked.
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