“I don’t know.”
She looked around frantically, but there was no sign of either Lou or Jason, so she turned her attention back to the boy. “Did you have something you wanted to tell us, Sid?”
The boy met her eyes. “Something to tell Lou.”
She nodded and fought for patience. “I don’t know where he is, Sid. I’m very worried about him, and I promise, I’m going to go find him very, very soon. But first, why don’t you tell me what it is you came to tell him? That way I can tell him for you when I find him.”
He pursed his lips and seemed to think it over.
Max decided to help things along by digging a twenty out of her pocket and handing it to him. “And I’ll pay you for him, too,” she added.
The boy smiled and took the money. “I came to tell him about the other one. Jay-man.”
“Jason?”
“Yeah. He’s hurt. Pretty bad, I think.”
By now Stormy was standing beside her. Max shot her friend a look of alarm and saw Stormy’s eyes widen with concern. “Where is he, Sid? Do you know where he is, so we can go help him?”
Sid nodded. He pointed behind the motel. “By the water. I go down there sometimes to look for seashells. He started to walk back here, but then he fell down. He didn’t get up again.”
Max blinked, not sure how the hell he knew as much as he did, and not wanting to take the time to ask. “You go home now, okay, Sid? I want you to stay in your house tonight.”
“I will. Mom says I have to go to bed early. ’Cause tomorrow we’re going away.”
The visit to the private school—right. She’d nearly forgotten. “That’s great, honey. You get home now, so you won’t be late.”
“Okay.” He turned and ran to his bike, got on and started off.
“Sid?” she called after him. He looked back, and she said, “Thank you for your help.”
His smile was quick and bright, and then he pedaled away.
When he was out of sight, she and Stormy exchanged glances. “We need to get inside Lou’s room,” Max said. “If he didn’t take his guns with him, we should.”
Stormy nodded and stood back as Max kicked the door open, too impatient to wait for a key. The two raced into the room and began tossing it in search of Lou’s guns. But Max paused when she saw the note lying on the telephone stand.
It was written in Lou’s hand, and it was addressed to her.
Max,
I’m heading out to the island, even though I know it’s going to piss you off. I figure I’ve screwed things up royally with you and me. And I’ve been kicking myself ever since. I just hope I get the chance to make things right again. Love, Lou.
She swallowed hard. “He went out there,” she whispered to Stormy, her fingers trembling as they traced the word love.
“Let’s go find Jason, see what he knows.” Stormy put a hand on her arm when she didn’t respond. “He’ll be all right, Max.”
“He damn well better be,” Max said. She shoved the note into her pocket, and the two left the room. They ran together into the woods behind the motel, far from the glow of the parking-lot lights and neon sign. They found the path and raced down it to the shore. The little boat that had been there the night before was long gone. And Jason lay still on the ground.
They fell to their knees on either side of him. “God, he’s bruised to hell and gone.”
“And for once, I know it wasn’t me,” Stormy said. She touched his face. “Jason. Jay, honey?”
Max ran to the water’s edge, scooped up a handful and brought it back to splash him in the face. “Dammit, Jason, wake up!”
His eyes flickered. Then opened.
“Where is Lou?” she asked, voicing the top question on her mind. Even though she was sorely afraid she already knew the answer.
“I—I—I…”
“If he says I don’t know—” she muttered.
“Island.”
Jesus, that was even worse. “He’s on the island? With that insane vampire?”
“Captured.”
“Let’s get him to the room,” Stormy said.
“You get him to the room. I’m going after Lou.” Max rose, fully intending to do just that. But there was no boat. She spun to Jason again. “You were on the island with him?”
He nodded weakly.
“How the hell did you get back here, Jason? How did you manage to get away and leave him behind, and all without a boat?”
Jason opened his eyes. “They…brought me back. Dumped me here.”
“They? Who?”
“The vampire’s thugs. Locals, I think. And Fieldner.” He closed his eyes; one was purpling and swollen, and his lip was split. “Don’t go, Max. It’s a trap.”
She stomped across the beach. “They’re gonna think it’s a fuckin’ trap when I get my hands on them—”
“Max.”
Stormy rose from Jason’s side and went to her. “Max!”
“What!” She hadn’t meant to snap, but dammit, she had to get to Lou.
“Help me get Jay to the room. We’ll get a boat and go right back out. Okay?”
Jason was already trying to get to his feet. Max turned toward him, to help him up, but then she heard something. Splashing. Voices in the water.
She turned and saw the boat moving slowly closer. Her heart jumped. “Lou?” she whispered, straining her eyes.
But no. It was a woman in the boat, her long blond hair blowing in the breeze behind her. No. Two women. Two…girls.
“Delia!” Jason cried. He went staggering into the surf, and probably would have drowned if Max and Storm hadn’t lunged after him, gripping his arms on either side.
“Jason!” Delia clambered out of the boat, into the water, and slogged toward him. The other girl was in the process of doing the same, so Max let go of Jason and went to grab the vessel before they let it float away. She tugged it to the shore as the happy reunion went down in the surf. Jason and the two girls dragged one another out of the water. Delia was hugging Jason and sobbing. Jason was crying openly, as well, and had one arm around the other girl, Janie.
“God, Jason, what happened to you?”
“There will be time for that later,” Stormy said, and she said it firmly. “Are either of you girls hurt?”
“No. No, he didn’t hurt us,” Janie said. “He said as long as Jason did as he was told, we would be set free.”
“As long as Jason did as he was told,” Max repeated, turning to pin Jason to the ground with a glare that should have set him on fire.
Janie nodded hard. “There’s another man out there—your friend. They were fighting, and he knocked the guy down and untied us. Told us to run, told us where the boat was, and to tell his friends not to come—that it’s a trap.”
“We didn’t know how to start the motor,” Delia said. “We had to row the whole way. I thought for sure that strange man would come after us. I think he was through with us, or he would have.” She stared at her brother. “He’s not human. I don’t think he’s human, Jay.”
“I know.” He hugged her close, his eyes meeting Max’s.
Max marched up to him, gripped his arm and jerked him away from his sister. She nodded to Stormy who got the message without a word. She took the girls a few steps away and continued questioning them to give Max a moment with Jason.
Max held his arm hard. “You betrayed us.”
“He said he’d kill her.”
“You led Lou out there like a goddamn sacrificial bull.”
“No, Max. He’s the one who insisted we go out there. I tried to stop him.”
“Why?”
He lowered his eyes. “Because you’re the ones this guy wants. You and Storm. Not Lou.” He paused, swallowed, caught his breath. “They took him captive and then beat me up to make it look good, and dumped me back here. I’m supposed to tell you where Lou is, so you’ll go out there after him.”
She nodded. “So can I trust you at all anymore, Jason?”
> “I’m sorry, Max. He said he’d kill my sister. I was only trying to keep her alive.”
She thought about her own sister, the lengths she had gone to, trying to protect her. Finally she nodded. “Will you do something for me? Can I trust you to do something for me, Jason?”
“Anything. Jesus, if I can make this up—”
“You can’t.” She dragged a pen from her jacket pocket and wrote a telephone number on the back of Jason’s hand. “I want you to take these two girls directly to your Jeep, get in and drive out of here. Don’t stop to take your stuff or check out or pay your motel bill. Nothing. Just go straight to the car and drive the hell out of here.”
He nodded.
“I’ll bring your stuff later, if I survive this. The second you’re out of range of Endover and picking up a signal on your cell phone, you call this number. You tell whoever answers that you are calling for Max, and that she’s in trouble. And then you tell them where I’ve gone. Warn them it might be a trap. Tell them there’s a rogue vamp on that island and that he has Lou. Understand?”
He nodded.
“Do you swear to me on your sister’s life that you’ll do this exactly as I’ve told you?”
“I swear. I will, Max. But I wish you wouldn’t go out there. Come with me. When your help arrives, then we’ll all—”
She shook her head. “I love him. I can’t leave him out there alone. I’m going. And a freaking army of rogue vamps couldn’t stop me.”
Stormy led the two girls back over to Jason. “Get him up there to his Jeep, and get out of this town,” she said.
“We will.”
“Good. Go.” Stormy turned to Max. “Don’t even think about telling me to stay behind. I’m going with you. Are you ready?”
Max nodded. “You realize we’re walking right into it, right?”
“Yeah,” Stormy said. “I picked up on that part of the conversation.”
“So there’s no point being sneaky. We may as well march right up to the front door.”
“I wish we had some of that goddamn vamp-tranquilizer that Stiles jerk used on your brother-in-law,” Stormy said.
“Remind me to stock up.” If we survive this, she thought.
They got into the boat and Max yanked the rip cord until the motor came to life. It wasn’t long before the island came into view, and then lights. Torches, she realized slowly, marking a lighted, fiery path all the way along the shoreline, leading the way to the house.
“Guess he really rolled out the red carpet,” Stormy said.
“Yeah, let’s just hope it’s not blood-red.”
They killed the motor, beached the boat and got out, and Max rubbed her arms against the chill that came only partly from the early spring night and the fresh, salty breeze that wafted in from the ocean. She started along the path.
And then she heard a sound. A man’s voice, crying out in pain.
Lou’s voice.
“Goddammit!” She stopped walking, grabbed a torch and ran. And she knew damn good and well that her best friend was right beside her. “What the hell did I do, Stormy?”
“What do you mean? You didn’t do anything. He came out here on his own!”
“I wasn’t here. I took off, left him alone, brushed him off because he hurt my feelings. Burst my little fantasy bubble. Didn’t feel the way I wanted him to feel. I left in a huff, and he did just what he always does. He tried to fix everything for me. He came charging out here thinking he’d have the vamp on ice and the girls safe and sound by the time I got back, and then I’d forgive him for the rest.”
She paused at a fork in the trail, held her torch out in front of her, peering in each direction.
“He didn’t come out here because of you,” Stormy said.
“Of course he did. If it wasn’t for me, he’d be on a fishing boat, sucking down a beer and telling cop stories with his friends.”
Even Stormy couldn’t argue with that.
The gut-wrenching cry came again, and, a moment later, another sound. A voice, deep and rich. Not loud in a normal way, but so full it carried all over the island, as if it were aided by a loudspeaker or megaphone. And yet Max had the feeling it wasn’t.
“Miss Stuart, don’t keep us waiting much longer. I don’t want to have to keep hurting your beloved, but I will if you delay.”
Max clenched her hands into fists at her sides and released a feral shriek that split the night.
She heard the vampire’s laughter then, echoing like that of a god, through the trees and reverberating on the very air.
Clutching her torch in her fist, she began running, racing for all she was worth, until finally the house rose into view, palatial and elegant. She lunged up the steps and pounded on the door.
It opened. Just swung slowly inward, as if by itself. She sprang inside and shouted, “Where the hell are you, you sick bastard!”
“Shall I provide more sound effects for you to follow?”
“That’s it. I’m done.” She lunged at the nearest window and swung her torch, painting the beautiful, lush draperies in strokes of pure fire. Then she moved to the next window, and the next.
“You don’t know who you’re messing with, do you? But you’re about to find out. And then you can burn in hell, you son of a bitch. Starting right now.”
21
Lou heard Maxie’s challenge, and saw the bastard’s face change from malicious and amused to afraid.
Goddamn, that woman was something.
His woman. That was what the vamp had called her. And he’d liked the sound of it. God, he’d been an idiot.
The vampire set the cattle prod down on the table with his other “tools” and, turning, sniffed the air. “She dares…”
“She dares anything,” Lou said. “And if you hurt her, I’ll make you suffer like you’ve never suffered in your life.”
The vampire slanted a look at Lou. “If you had any inkling of how I have suffered, you might realize how difficult that will be.” Then he was gone.
Lou tugged at the chains that held his arms to the wall in a rough approximation of a crucifixion. But it was no use. The bastard had jolted him with enough electricity to reduce his muscles to jelly. He was still shaking with it, feeling the ghostly aftershocks zapping his nerve endings. And even at full strength, he couldn’t have hoped to snap chains like these.
In a moment, the vampire was back, and he was dragging Max with one hand and Stormy with the other. He held each by one arm, and when he let them go, they stumbled to the floor.
“You’re both fortunate I managed to douse those flames. If you’d burned my home, I’d have seen to it you burned with it. And your friend here, as well.”
Max lifted her head, spotted him and then shot to her feet. “Lou!” She ran to him, her arms snapping around his neck, her mouth pressing to his face, his neck, her hands threading in his hair.
Damn his body for reacting to her touch, even in this sorry state, Lou thought. Who the hell had he ever thought he was kidding, anyway?
Eventually she backed off a little, and her beautiful green eyes slid over his face and then down his body. His ragged, torn shirt hung in tatters, hiding very little from her probing eyes. And then those green eyes narrowed, turned deadly dangerous as she spun to face the vampire.
“You hurt him. You low-life scum. You dare to hurt him? Do you even know who I am?”
“I fully expected to be asking you that question by now. Do you know who I am?” He shrugged. “It is of little consequence. I did your friend no permanent damage, Miss Stuart. And finding out who you are—and more precisely, what you know and how you know it—is only a small part of the reason I brought you here.” As he said that, his gaze slid toward Stormy. But he dragged it back to Max again. “You are some sort of a…detective. An expert on my kind. How is that?”
“Why do you want to know?”
He smiled slowly, walked to his table and picked up the long metal rod. Turning slowly with it, he took a step toward
Lou, and Lou felt himself tense up in expectation.
Max stepped bodily in front of him. “I get the message. I’m here to answer questions, and if I don’t do so fast enough to suit you, Lou gets hurt. You’re smart, I’ll give you that.”
He nodded, seeming surprised when Stormy walked right up to him and gently took the prod from his hand. She put it on the table. He spoke to Max, but his eyes were on Stormy. “I pride myself on finding others’ weaknesses. Scanning your mind was not easy.”
“I’ve been taught how to guard my thoughts from the Undead.”
He nodded, impressed. “And what about you, little one? Do you guard your thoughts, as well?”
Stormy met his eyes. Hers were smoky and distant, as if she were walking in some kind of a daze. “I wouldn’t know which thoughts to guard these days. Some of them are mine. Others are…someone else’s.” She couldn’t seem to break the grip of the vampire’s eyes on hers. Max wondered if she even wanted to.
He frowned at her, searching her face intently. Then Max went to Stormy, took her arm and led her to a chair in the corner, easing her into it. “Just rest here, babe. Okay?”
Stormy nodded. “Something’s off, Maxie. Something’s…” She closed her eyes, pressed her hands to her head.
“It’s okay. Just take it easy. Get a handle on it. I’ve got this.”
Max returned her attention to the vampire, but Lou noticed the way his gaze kept shifting to Stormy. He also noticed the way she sat there, almost in a stupor. He wondered if the vamp had done something to her before bringing her in here. Drugged her or something. Or if this was another of her spells. He worried about her.
“What did you find when you scanned my thoughts, vampire?” Max asked.
The vampire jerked his attention back to her. “I found that this man is the most important person in your life. That you would die for him without a second thought. You love him?”
“Madly,” she admitted. “So much so that I’ll tell you whatever you want to know—but I’ll ask for one concession first.” The vampire lifted a brow. She went on. “Take him down from there.”
The vampire glanced Lou’s way. “He’s too resourceful, and far too fearless.”
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