Chapter Fifteen

If Max had still been human, the hurt in Erica’s eyes would have broken his heart. At that moment, he considered himself fortunate to be dead. It lessened the pain he felt for her.

Part of him wanted to walk away. He couldn’t bear the thought that she’d been touched by Carlisle--or anyone else--that another vampire had held her and drank from her to nourish themselves. She was his. She had to be his alone.

And part of him wanted to avenge everything she’d been through and make it all right again. He wondered if she felt his hands tremble as he searched her body for marks they might have left on her. The only evidence of what had happened to her was the bloody bruise on her neck and the butterfly stamped above her breast.

“Get dressed.” The order left a bitter taste. He wanted to take her to bed and sooth away with the hurt with his hands and his mouth. But it would never be over until he told her the truth, until he kept his promise and found out exactly what her sister wanted from her.

“Max, please don’t leave me now.”

“I’m not going to leave you. I’m going to take you with me.”

“Where?”

“To see your sister.” He held up his hand. “Don’t ask any questions. Ask her when you see her. This ends now.”

Her eyes fell and a sob escaped her. She turned away and walked into the bedroom. He stood rooted to the spot, fighting the urge to follow her. If he touched her again, he’d lose control and neither of them could afford that right now.

When she returned she looked better. She wore jeans and an oversized blouse over a cotton T-shirt. She’d cleaned the blood off her neck and the dark makeup from her face. She looked innocent, like she had this morning. Innocent and broken.

She walked past him and retrieved her keys from the floor where she’d dropped them. When she stood, he grabbed her arm and pulled her to him. “Tell me one thing, Erica. I need to know.”

“What?” Her voice was thick and he saw tears well in her eyes as she looked up at him.

“Tell me you’re not part of the game.”

“I don’t know what you mean, Max. What game? Where’s Elena?”

“I’m not sure where she is, but I know where she’ll end up.”

“What do you mean? Where are we going?”

“To her apartment.”

* * * *

Erica watched Max as he drove. She didn’t say anything when he bypassed Fortune Drive and eased onto the empty highway. Wherever he was taking her, it wasn’t to Elena’s.

He didn’t look at her. He didn’t say a word until they reached a bungalow development in South Windsor. There, he parked the car, got out and waited by the back fender for her to join him.

“I don’t understand, Max. How did you find her? She was supposed to be at The Underside last night.”

“No, she wasn’t. You were supposed to be. Don’t you see? You were set up. I don’t know why. Your sister has been playing you.”

“No.” Erica shook her head. She refused to accept that. Elena wouldn’t do that. She used Erica, took advantage but only because she didn’t know any other way. Her sister would never hurt her deliberately. “Elena needs help. Maybe someone is forcing her to--”

“Come on. Let me show you.”

He took her hand and led her across the parking lot to one of the rundown bungalows in the development. The small house had a rusty awning over the front door. Empty flowerpots sat in a metal stand next to the concrete slab that served as a porch. The name scratched into the wrought iron mailbox was Blake, K.

Erica didn’t comment when Max produced a key from under the tattered welcome mat and opened the door. “Whose place is this, Max?”

He gave her a sour look. “Maybe you can’t smell it as well as I can, but come on ... can’t you tell?”

He pulled her over the threshold. Inside, clothes lay on every surface in the small living room. Cartons of oriental take out languished on a round table in the corner, and on the mantle of the faux fireplace stood a picture that drew Erica’s attention immediately.

She crossed the room and picked up the battered silver frame. Her own face stared out at her.

“She’s living here?” She croaked the words out as she struggled to set the picture upright in its frame.

“Has been for a while. She calls herself Kyra and she’s a feeder. A popular one.” His voice sounded raw. She saw the truth immediately when she looked at him.

“Your feeder?”

He nodded but didn’t meet her gaze. “Mine and a lot of others. She prefers not to be exclusive.”

Erica’s jaw clenched and she turned back to the picture on the mantle. It was all she could do not to smash it. “When did you...?”

“Friday night. After I left you.”

“She’d been missing for two days by then.” But Erica hadn’t seen her sister in person for months before that.

“She was with a friend of mine tonight. Another investigator. He took her with him to Gregori’s.”

“Where is she now?”

“He said he dropped her off here. I was here earlier and by the looks of the place, she never came inside.”

“So now she really is missing?” Panic welled in Erica again. To come this close and still not find Elena was torture.

“Not for long. She’ll turn up. She has regulars.”

Erica closed her eyes and sighed. “And you’re one of them?”

“I was.”

“Does feeding include ... other things?”

Max whispered the answer. “Sometimes.”

“Take me home, Max. I don’t need to see any more.”

* * * *

Once again, sunrise threatened as Max drove himself home. He’d reluctantly left Erica at the door of her apartment and he hated himself for having too much pride to beg her to let him stay. He needed her. He hadn’t figured out why yet, but he did. He needed to know that somehow she would forgive him eventually for the things he’d done with Kyra--Elena.

It rocked him that they were the same person. Erica’s twin looked nothing like her. Acted, tasted, smelled nothing like her. The woman he’d come to know as Kyra Blake was like the negative image of Erica, dark where her sister was sunny, hard and jaded where Erica was soft and too naïve for her own good.

He made it home just as the sun broke over the horizon and he sank wearily into the dark leather couch. The case wasn’t closed yet. He still had to figure out what Benton Carlisle had to do with it, and he had no intention of letting Kyra off the hook. He planned to find her and make her answer every question he had. Even if Erica had no further desire to talk to her sister, he couldn’t leave it alone. He had to have the answers for her, even if she didn’t want them.

He dialed Lucas on his cell phone as he unbuttoned his shirt.

“Yeh?”

“Did I wake you?” Max asked.

“It’s the crack of dawn, for chrissake. Of course you woke me. What’s up? Besides you.”

“I need to tell you something about Kyra.”

* * * *

Erica didn’t go to the bank that morning, and she didn’t go to work either.

When the sun rose and the first rays blazed through her bedroom window, she sat contemplating a bed she could no longer sleep in and wondering why it hurt so bad to know that Max had been with Elena.

She hated herself for being jealous over a vampire. Of course it was natural to feel a little proprietary. She’d given him things she’d never given another man. She’d experienced sensations with him that a human man could never hope to recreate. Who wouldn’t want that to go on? But she’d learned her lesson. The part of her that had come out and enjoyed free reign this weekend was gone, banished now to the dark recesses of her mind where it belonged.

She called her office and told her manager she had the flu. She needed more than a day to recover, more than a day to figure out how to reclaim everything of herself that she’d lost and to mourn what she’d given freely.

At first she’d told herself there was nothing Elena could say to her, nothing she wanted to know. Whatever plan her sister had for her, whatever reason was behind Elena’s making her think she was in trouble and drawing her into the vampire world, didn’t matter to Erica. At first.

Curiosity burned in her though and she hated herself for it. Max could have told her a confrontation with Elena would do no good. He probably would have told her not to go, but she decided she had to.

She dressed slowly, careful in her movements. Her body ached and it scared her to think why. Whatever had happened to her between midnight and 4:30 a.m. had left her feeling bruised and tired. There were circles under her eyes and it took most of her strength just to force down a cup of coffee and a piece of dry toast before she left home.

Surprisingly, she had no trouble recreating the route Max had taken to Kyra’s. Despite the state she’d been in, she remembered every turn. When she pulled up, she turned off the car and sat for a long time staring at the bungalow that belonged to her sister.

None of it made sense. If Elena had a secret identity as a vampire feeder, why keep two apartments? Well, Erica shrugged, she wasn’t exactly keeping them both. Two months behind on the rent didn’t constitute keeping a place. But still, the apartment on Fortune Avenue was full of furniture and clothing that belonged to Elena. Why would her sister leave it all?

A frightening thought took over. What if Elena didn’t know who she was? What if Carlisle, or whatever vampire was involved with her, was actually using the mind control Max spoke of to convince Elena she was someone else? That had to be it. Elena wasn’t setting Erica up or trying to lure her into the dark underworld of the vampires. She was trying to escape the false persona that had been imposed on her by the creatures that fed from her.

With that thought in mind, Erica felt stronger. It wasn’t Elena’s fault. Erica could still save her.

She got out of the car and raced across the parking lot. She retrieved the key from where Max had left it under the mat and unlocked the door. If she had to wait all day for Elena to return she would. She’d do whatever she had to do to reach her sister.

The place looked a little different than it had a few hours before. A woman’s raincoat lay across the back of the threadbare couch and a pair of high-heeled pumps lay in the corner behind the front door.

Erica’s heart thudded. Was Elena here? Had she finally come home?

She called out tentatively as she moved through the apartment. The smoky smell of cloves grew more intense as she neared the bedroom.

Erica knocked on the closed door and waited. No answer. She hadn’t expected any. Elena slept like the dead.

That thought galvanized her and she turned the knob and flung the door open.

A body lay tangled in the flowered sheets of the queen-sized bed. A cap of short dark hair nestled on the pillows.

“Elena?” Erica approached the bed and drew in her breath. Her sister’s face was pale, bloodless. Her lips were blue. “No. No ... Elena!”