“Edward,” he said.
The other vampire tried to smile at Stephen, as if to conjure old times and grand days. Edward Marburn—literally, a bastard, born to a duke and left to fend for himself with a sick mother; a good friend who always watched Stephen’s back, whether during a road robbery or a more subtle con job; a comrade missing in action just before the start of the Second World War.
Like their other close vampire brother, Roger, Edward had undergone a crisis of conscience when Stephen turned bitter after Cassandra had torn the figurative heart from him. He had began to study world religion and philosophy, undergoing a severe case of self-loathing even worse than Stephen’s. However, unlike his brothers, Edward had come to actively despise Fegan for turning him into a vampire, so he had broken from the gang’s clutches under Fegan’s threat of decapitation if he ever encountered the gang again.
Seeing Edward using Kimberly, his Kimberly, as a shield for the second night in a row, Stephen’s flesh twisted. His fangs speared from his gums. His face reshaped into what he knew to be a monstrosity.
He became the horror he detested—a form he couldn’t deny in his rage.
“If you harm her,” Stephen snarled, “I’ll tear you limb from limb.”
“That’s some welcome.” Edward had been teased for his pretty face often enough, and he had used his male-steeped beauty to great advantage many a time. But now he was hideous, perverse in his fall from grace. “I’d wished for a friendlier hello, Stephen.”
“You didn’t encourage it.”
All he could see was Kimberly, her red hair spread over the ground, her eyes closed in peaceful repose, her chest just under Edward’s clawed hand.
Then her neck…her lovely, vulnerable neck.
The saliva went hot in Stephen’s mouth, even as he denied how she lured him.
Edward caught on to his brother’s struggles. “She really is enough to melt a heart like yours, isn’t she?”
An injured gasp sounded from the right, and Stephen saw Kimberly’s friend, Darlene, shooting Edward a betrayed glare from her waiting spot near a hill. The other vampire ignored her, instead concentrating on the still-hovering Stephen.
Yet Edward’s words were ringing through air that was too thick, too hard to breathe. To melt a heart like yours.
But Stephen had no heart, no emotion.
No. No.
The protestations held no conviction because Stephen knew he could not deny his affection for Kimberly any longer. He had never wanted a human more, never wanted the agony of needing her like he did at this moment.
Edward clearly recognized this, and he repositioned himself above Kimberly for an attack. She was his leverage once again. He must have captivated her and the others just after Stephen had left in such greedy haste to find the rogue.
He guessed Darlene had much to do with luring Kimberly out here, as well.
“What do you want of me, Edward?” Stephen asked, his voice slashing through his throat.
“There we go.” The rogue—his old friend, for mercy’s sake—didn’t move from his vicious pose. Yet his voice held no rancor, only something like exhaustion. “All I want is for you to hear me out, Stephen. Please, brother. Please.”
His words were so soaked in desperation that Stephen found himself listening. How could he not with Edward? He had always been a thoughtful man, and that was why it had been so terrible to see his descent into hatred, then his shameful exodus.
“Why?” Stephen asked. “Why have you been draining these women? Why Darlene? Why—” his blood began boiling as he drank in the sight of Kimberly “—this?”
Edward paused, as if to measure how close Stephen was to attacking. But he must have realized his old friend would do nothing to endanger Kimberly, so he relaxed, though he didn’t cease from threatening her.
The resulting snap of relief wasn’t enough to set Stephen at peace because this wasn’t even close to over.
Kimberly, he kept thinking, I won’t allow you to suffer in any way. I will do anything, anything at all.
His heart pumped dread through him, and the sensation was fresh and raw. He felt alive, certainly—every inch, every cell. But, this time, it was a terrible thing.
Edward spoke again. “Since leaving the gang, I’ve spent years despising this curse of mine. Of ours.”
The reminder made Stephen sink closer to the ground, but he remained perched on air, alert.
“I’ve thought long and hard about what should be done,” Edward continued. “About what’s just and right.”
“Just and right? Fegan never taught us any of that.”
“I know.” Edward’s eyes gleamed with malice. “Funny how humans believe monsters in fairy tales are figments of the imagination. If only they knew our master walked among them, they would never sleep at night.”
It sounded as if Edward had decided Fegan was the sole source of their misery. Perhaps it was even true.
Yet Stephen had always known he could leave the gang at any time, just as Edward had. However, love him or not, Fegan was their father—part of the family Stephen had always told himself he needed.
Edward laid his fingers on Kimberly’s chest, and Stephen bristled.
“What are you trying to tell me, Edward?” he spat, too helpless, too attached, too beaten by emotion to know how to handle this mess besides proceeding warily. “What does all this have to do with those women you attacked?”
The rogue’s eyes went sorrowful. “I’ve tried to find Fegan. I’ve looked high and low, but he is a master—a master of hiding, of shielding. All of you are.”
“That is how we never got caught. Not for any of our crimes.”
“But we should have. We should have gotten caught and punished, Stephen.”
The remorse he had begun to feel of late was apparent in Edward’s eyes. In spite of himself, Stephen empathized fully.
“Brother,” the nobleman said softly, “I don’t want to hurt her.”
He motioned to Kimberly.
Edward was begging, but it was not enough to put Stephen off his guard.
“Then, all you have to do is leave her to me, Edward. I’ll listen, if you only let her go.”
“If you vow to give me Fegan, she is yours.”
The blasphemous request shook Stephen enough to make him drop to the ground, where he landed with a stumble.
Edward tilted his head. “I want to be free, to be human again. To start over. That’s all I’ve wanted for years now. Haven’t you thought about it, too, Stephen? Haven’t you ever recalled what it was like to feel the sun and to be so happy in its warmth that you didn’t know if you could stand it? And our crimes…I’m not talking about the petty things we did in our mortal days, but what we committed under Fegan’s instruction. The murders, the feedings, how many lives we must have ruined. I want to redeem myself by doing the only task that can possibly make up for them—ridding this world of Fegan’s stench.”
Stephen’s head was swirling. Kimberly had taught him just how destructive his bite could be to a human. He had sinned beyond redemption—or so he had believed, because he didn’t know any way to seek a new beginning. But Edward was talking of the profane, the unthinkable, as a way to cleanse themselves.
“You wish to kill your own creator so you might become human again?” Stephen asked on a warped whisper.
Edward nodded, eyes going back to that piercing gleam, like a knife hidden just under a black cape. “It’s the only way.”
“Killing a master and having that result in his children becoming human is merely a myth.”
“No.” The rogue emphatically shook his head. “I’ve seen it come true during my travels, with other vampire families. It’s the only way I know of to become mortal again, to start a new life and leave the sins in the past.”
In his anguish, Edward had tightened his fingers on Kimberly’s tank top. Stephen’s gut lurched, and he growled in warning.
Apologetically, the other vampire loosened his hold,
yet still remained in attack position.
Stephen tried to recover from the very thought of patricide; it was disdainful yet horrifyingly righteous, now that Edward was speaking of it. In the back of his mind, he had pictured bringing Fegan to justice many a time, especially while the creator reveled in his tales of unneeded bloodletting. Stephen and his brothers had, indeed, been rascals themselves, but they had stopped kilometers short of Fegan’s own isolated activities, hence forcing their father to sate his more unsavory appetites on his own.
It made no sense to stop murder with another murder. Still, at the same time, he had wondered when and how Fegan would ever get his comeuppance.
Now, as Edward brought his idea of justice to light, Stephen listened, compelled yet torn.
“Until now,” the rogue said, “I’ve been unsuccessful in isolating Fegan’s exact whereabouts. I tracked him to Las Vegas only a month ago, but there are so many hiding places here. The civilized vampire areas are confused by the presence of other creatures, and I attempted to sort them all out. But there was never a Fegan, never a sign of our gang that I could hold on to. And other creatures wouldn’t talk about him to strangers—that’s because they knew what would happen if they did. Fegan wields a reputation for destruction. No matter where he goes, he’s in charge, even from the ether where he’s cowering.”
Stephen fixed his gaze on Kimberly, the one reason he was not rotting apart, piece by piece, right now. How could he get Edward away from this woman he had come to treasure in such a short time?
His determination to do anything to get her back reasserted itself. He wanted to see her brilliant eyes flashing with such life, to feel her against him conjuring the heat he couldn’t seem to sustain within himself. He wanted to feel the emotions only she brought out in him; she could take him away from all this ugliness. Only Kimberly.
He tried his best not to allow Edward to see just how much of Stephen he was holding captive.
“Therefore,” Stephen said evenly, not betraying his true crumbling state, “you began draining victims in order to gain Fegan’s attention? And I can only surmise that you’ve charmed Darlene into your services, as well.”
Edward glanced at the woman staring at him from the hill. “Yes, pity, that. When I heard around town that you were in with this Van Helsing League, which was easily found on the Internet, I did my research. I read that my darling Darlene would be patrolling Mystique, looking for me. Poor naif. When the drainings weren’t working as quickly as I would’ve liked, I tried to arrange our first private meeting through her, you know, by setting her up at the construction site where she would most likely lure you. Yet you brought this hunter with you, this redhead.”
“Kimberly,” Stephen said, her name catching in his throat.
Edward scanned his leverage, then sighed. “I didn’t drain Darlene, only used her to perform such tasks as planting tonight’s e-mail, knowing your Kimberly would pass the information on to you and we would all meet again under circumstances more beneficial to my cause.”
Stephen quelled his rising anger, mainly culled from the tender way Edward was looking at Kimberly—as if he envied Stephen the emotion he had invested in her.
“And all the other women?” Stephen asked, his voice stabbing.
“The others.” Edward reluctantly glanced away from Kimberly. “I knew drainings would interest every local vampire; it would strike fear into every local master. If Fegan didn’t come out to play himself—which was likely for a coward—he would send one of his most trusted in his place so that I could be brought to court before His Honor and tried accordingly. I hoped the enforcer would be you or Roger.”
“And you believed we would hear you out and perhaps even come to your side.”
“Yes.” Edward’s smile shook with the effort. “Because I know you, Stephen. You and Roger—maybe even Henry and Rupert—hate what you are as much as I do, and you despise Fegan for it, whether you admit it or not. No one, not even a vampire, can remain loyal to a thing like Fegan forever.”
Something caught Stephen’s attention—a flicker near Kimberly’s hand. It was one of her fingers twitching.
Pure joy threaded through him, twining all his loose feelings until he was held together in gathered strength. In hope.
But there was something still weighing on him.
Edward wished to kill Fegan and become human—consequently turning every one of Fegan’s children human, as well.
Yet Kimberly craved the vampire in Stephen. Not the man.
If Stephen chose to go along with Edward in this plan to redeem all of them—a plan that ripped Stephen in two—he would be like any other man to Kimberly, no longer a vampire.
No longer enough to enthrall her.
Losing her mattered—mattered too much for him to withstand. Losing her meant a return to true darkness.
Stephen sought to distract Edward from his awakening victim. “Why didn’t you merely send word to the community that you wished an audience with Fegan? He might have called off his death vow against you and entertained your presence until you could attempt an attack on him. He might have considered that amusing.”
“Oh, Stephen, it wasn’t just about finding him.” Edward sighed. “It was about punishing him for the cruelty he’s enjoyed. He’s never learned what’s right, and he’ll always be there, on the dark side of every tragedy, to laugh and continue on to the next one. Has he felt any impotence during my attacks? Has he squirmed even the slightest bit?”
Stephen’s silence said everything.
“Then, I’ve done half my job, already,” Edward concluded.
“And while you’ve been carrying out your vendetta, you’ve harmed more victims in the process.” Stephen’s throat had almost closed around the words.
He had to do something, anything to get Kimberly away from Edward. Last time had just been a warning bite. This time, if Edward felt that Stephen had turned against him…
Even in the flash it would take for Stephen to get to Kimberly’s side, Edward would have the speed to carry out a fatal strike.
At the mere thought, Stephen died a little inside.
“I’ll let her go if you vow to give me Fegan,” Edward repeated.
Stephen jerked, as if yanked in Fegan’s compelling direction out of habit and bent loyalty, even as he clung to Kimberly. “How can you ask such a thing?”
“Please, Stephen. This is only a means to an end. Please don’t make me hurt her.”
But Stephen knew that his ex-gang member would do it. Blood was part of their existence, and spilling one more drop to balance the scales of justice would not matter to Edward at this point.
“Please,” his old friend whispered.
Stephen closed his gaze. But when the image of Kimberly refused to fade from his mind’s eye, he knew that there was no decision to make at all. Even if she awoke to find him mortal and unappealing, Stephen knew how this had to end.
Even if it meant losing her—losing the ability to feel reborn.
He tried not to think about how she might actually move on to the next vampire for its bite. She thrived on the sexual power, and he understood an addiction more than anyone.
But he would not be able to provide for her anymore.
To erase the devastation, Stephen attempted to think of what good being human again would do. He could redeem himself. He would not live on and on with the knowledge that Kimberly had turned him away just as Cassandra had; he would only have to endure the pain for years instead of centuries.
Edward clearly didn’t appreciate the process of Stephen breaking down, bone by bone. He reared back a hand, intent on digging it into Kimberly—
“No!” Stephen yelled.
Edward pulled back, a sublime expression of relief on his face.
Horror at the thought of Kimberly’s death pushed the exact location of the canyon hideout out of Stephen’s lungs. And while he revealed every detail of Fegan’s whereabouts, all the resentment he held for his master surfac
ed, as if it could take the place of the hope draining from his body. Every repressed memory impaled him, spilling guilt into the emptiness losing Kimberly had already left.
He recalled tales of what Fegan had done—gutting a tavern maid back in York so he could bury himself in her blood; torturing a young boy in Florence just to laugh at his screams…
Yes, this was the right choice, though Stephen would gain—and lose—everything after Kimberly realized what had happened.
After receiving what he wanted, Edward bowed to Stephen, then stood, backing away from Kimberly. Tears glinted on his face like glass wishes falling to be broken.
Stephen darted to her, holding her, so many unnameable emotions swarming inside him that he felt too much. As a result, he pressed her hard against him, and she gasped.
Last moments, he thought. This woman is going to stop wanting me as soon as Edward—
“Awaken,” the other vampire said to each sleeper, then split the night air in flight.
Darlene ran from the small hill to cry out at Edward’s departure. Then she sank to the ground, weeping, no doubt knowing she had only been used.
Kimberly was trying to choke out words.
“Shh,” Stephen said, brushing the hair back from her forehead, prizing these final moments if Edward should be successful in his quest. “Just rest, my love. Just let me hold you.”
His blood raced at the terrible thought of freedom, at the cost of it. After he turned, she would see him as any other man who had disappointed her. He would no longer be the dazzling creature who could woo with escapism and a false sense of joy.
“I heard—” she licked her lips, her eyes dark with fear “—I heard everything. What did you do, Stephen?”
His eyes filled with liquid heat. “Kimberly, he would have killed you, and I couldn’t bear it.”
“Your family—” she gathered strength, fire “—your existence.”
His vampire. She was already mourning its passing.
“Stephen…” A tear slid out of her eye.
Clearly, she had found a real-life fantasy—one that had brought her so much ecstasy—and it was going to be destroyed before her very eyes.
And his eyes.
The Ultimate Bite Page 18
