Chapter Nineteen

Benton Carlisle’s scream echoed through the hallway beyond the candlelit room. Full of rage more than pain, it sliced through Erica’s fear. Galvanized, she ran by him as he doubled over and tried to claw the hardening wax off his face. She bolted into the hallway and up a flight of dark stairs.

She heard him snarling and pounding after her as she flung herself through another hallway on the next level. She ran, checking door after door until one flew open at her touch.

She screamed and backed up as a thin body lurched toward her. Elena stumbled through the door, her eyes wild, her lips parted to show bone white fangs.

It took a moment for Erica to realize her sister’s arms were bound behind her back and that the shadowy form behind her was Max.

“Carlisle’s coming! We have to--” Elena’s screech cut her off. Erica whirled around, practically falling into Max’s arms as Carlisle exploded into the hallway. He reached around Erica and grabbed Elena by the arm, yanking her across the hall. They crashed together into the far wall and while Elena struggled against him, Carlisle wrapped one hand around her slender throat.

* * * *

It had been decades since Max had felt anything like the emotion that coursed through him when Erica fell into his arms. The relief combined with something else he thought he would never need or want to experience again. A possessiveness laced with fear consumed him. She was his--safe in his arms again. He wouldn’t lose her, wouldn’t leave her ever again.

Behind him, Lucas struggled with a captive Vera Nighe. Carlisle’s concubine cried and cursed when Max produced a wooden stake and brandished it at her master.

“It doesn’t have to be this way, Carlisle,” Max said, his eyes on Kyra. Carlisle’s thick fingers dug into Kyra’s flesh and blood welled between them.

Coppery sparks danced in her eyes and she hissed through her clenched teeth. “Ricki, please don’t let him kill me ....”

“Do you want to watch your sister die, Erica? Call off your dogs and I’ll let her live.”

“Get behind me!” Max tried to push Erica behind him, and Lucas reached forward to grab her but she twisted out of his grasp.

“Don’t take another step,” Carlisle warned. “I’ll rip her throat out.” He squeezed harder and Kyra sobbed.

“Ricki!”

“That’s no way to kill a vampire,” Erica said. She broke from Max’s embrace and tore the stake from his hand in one fluid motion. She shoved the razor sharp point at Carlisle and he backed up--just a breath, but enough to show his fear. His back touched the wall behind him.

“She said you’d do anything for her.” He taunted Erica, but his eyes shifted back and forth, measuring, plotting. Behind Max, Lucas dropped Vera. She fell and lay sobbing at his feet.

“Don’t let her kill him, please!”

Max ignored Vera. He might stop Erica from killing Kyra, but not Carlisle. She lunged forward again and the other vampire twisted out of her way. Kyra screamed, a thin, tortured sound. Blood ran down her chest and spread in a crimson stain on the tank top she wore.

Any wound Carlisle inflicted would heal, another gift of the change, but that didn’t stop her from feeling the pain, raw and deep and so much more intense now with her heightened vampire senses.

The look in her eyes told Max this was something Kyra hadn’t bargained for and for the briefest instant, he pitied her.

“I’ll tear her head off--that will kill her.” Carlisle’s threats came in ragged gasps. “You had a chance. You could have had everything, could have saved Elena like you always wanted to.”

“She’s beyond saving now.” Erica’s voice was steel, a cold blade meant for her sister, but Max felt it, too. Her message was clear. No redemption for a vampire.

Carlisle growled and tore at Kyra’s pale flesh. Her scream died on bloody lips as she sank to the floor clutching her throat. Max dove for Carlisle. With Elena out of the way, Erica was his next target. But before he could pull her to safety, Erica surged forward and rammed the tip of the stake into Carlisle’s chest.

* * * *

She’d expected more resistance. The ease with which the stake plunged through Benton Carlisle’s chest and into his lifeless heart surprised her. The shock and horror in his eyes did not. He hadn’t expected it from her.

She held the stake in trembling hands, keeping it embedded in his ribcage as his large body sank to the floor next to Elena. He was dust before his head hit the floor--nothing more than a mottled brown skull and a pile of brittle bone fragments.

Vera screamed.

Erica dropped the stake and turned slowly. Framed in the open doorway, Lucas caught Vera and held her back. She sobbed and cursed, clawing at him to get to Erica, but Max blocked her path.

When Erica swayed, he caught her and she sagged against him, wishing she could feel his heartbeat beneath her palms.

“It’s all right, it’s all right,” he whispered against her forehead. He spread his hands against her back and she felt the welcome illusion of warmth.

A whimper from Vera drew their attention, and Lucas dragged her back away from the scene of her lover’s death. When Erica glanced back, Carlisle’s feeder hung limp in Lucas’ arms.

“She’ll sleep for a while,” Lucas said as he lowered Vera to the floor. “When she wakes up, she won’t remember what happened here.”

Erica broke reluctantly from Max’s arms and dropped to her knees in front of her sister. Elena’s eyes were huge--like those of a wounded animal. They’d taken on a rusty hue, like old blood. She snarled when Erica reached for her and scrabbled backward.

“Help her!” Erica reached for Max. She glanced back at him, searching his eyes. “What can we do for her?”

He took Erica’s shoulders in his hands and guided her away from Elena. “She’ll recover. Dead flesh doesn’t exactly heal, but it regenerates,” he said. “She’s feeling the pain now, nothing else. She doesn’t know you.”

“Her throat--”

“She’ll be all right.”

Lucas shouldered into the hallway and knelt beside Elena. She hissed at him and the sound became a pitiful sob. Erica shuddered when Elena’s bloody hands dropped limply from her wound. Her head fell back as Lucas lifted her in his arms. “I’ll take care of her,” he said. “You two, go home.”

“I can’t leave her.”

Max hushed Erica’s protest and crushed her to him again. She clung, squeezing her eyes shut to block out the macabre image of Carlisle’s dusty bones mixed with Elena’s blood.

“What happens now?” she asked as Max guided her through the door. She spared a glance at Vera, crumpled on the floor, blissfully unconscious.

“Nothing. Lucas and I will take care of it.” His laugh was hollow, forced. His brittle smile made her heart ache. She’d killed one of his kind...without thought or remorse. Did he see it as self-defense or murder? Did he think she could do the same to him just as easily?

“I don’t want to go home,” she said.

“Where do you want me to take you?”

She met his gaze and hoped he understood that she didn’t see him as a monster. “Your place.”

* * * *

More than a century had passed since the last time Max’s heart had pounded in anticipation or stuttered in fear. Despite the intervening years, though, he hadn’t forgotten the sensation.

Memories of past pain plagued him now as he led Erica up the stairs to his apartment. Through their silent car ride across town, he’d tried to figure out why she didn’t want to go home. He decided finally, it had to be because she didn’t want him in her home, in her life anymore. She could leave him here, walk away from the horrific world he inhabited and be done with him, done with her sister once and for all.

When he unlocked the door and showed her inside, she hesitated then took his hand and drew him in with her. The look in her eyes confused him, a sultry tease mixed with sadness. Did she want him, or want to be rid of him? She stepped into his embrace and he buried his face in her neck, not for blood, but to feed the empty hollow in his chest. She felt warm and pliant in his arms and the sensation chased away the ache that thoughts of losing her forever had produced.

She drew him forward into the apartment, still wrapped in his arms, and he toed the door shut behind them.

“I’m sorry for the things I said to Carlisle--not for him, but for you.” The words came out in a rush when she finally pulled back to meet his gaze.

“You don’t have to apologize.” His faint smile faded as he searched her earnest gaze. He molded her hips with his hands and drew her toward him. “Did he hurt you?”

She raised a finger to his lips and her touch was like fire. “He didn’t do anything to me. He would have.…”

Max shook his head to clear away the dark thoughts. If Carlisle wasn’t dead--he might have vowed to hunt him down and drive a stake into his chest just because he’d touched Erica--just because he’d wanted her.

She ducked her head and looked up at him from under lowered lashes. “I need you, Max. Make love to me.”

He felt something then, something akin to life. She needed him. Never as much as he needed her, but the degree didn’t matter. It wasn’t over for them. Maybe it had only just begun.

With a dark look, he led her to his bedroom.

* * * *

Erica sank down onto the hunter green sheets of Max’s bed and watched him as he moved across the room. The sparse décor faded from view and she saw only his eyes, smoldering, delving into her. The pressure of his gaze made her ache.

“Don’t move,” he said when she arched invitingly. She straightened and lay still but the simple command caused a pulsing in the sensitive flesh between her thighs. She bit her bottom lip against the need to slither out of her clothes for him.

As she watched him unbutton his shirt and shrug out of it, she wondered if he was using his mind control on her. The events of the day faded rapidly from her consciousness. The hurt, the fear all drained away leaving her feeling light, but far from empty.

Her gaze dropped to his hands as they unfastened his belt and the button of his pants.

A moment later he stood naked beside the bed. His eyes went dark like the midnight sky.

“Max...” She forced herself not to reach for him, but her hands ached from the need to touch the smooth muscles of his arms and the dark hair that arrowed down his chest.

“Who do you want?” he asked, holding her motionless with his gaze. “Who do you want inside you? A man or a vampire?”

She held her breath for a moment and wished she could answer without words, but he had to hear it. He had to know she loved him, regardless of what he was.

“I want you,” she said. “I don’t belong to a vampire. I belong to Max Hart.”

* * * *

The words didn’t mean as much as the look in her eyes. Her husky whisper drove Max over the edge. He’d never wanted anyone, anything more than he wanted Erica to love him. He’d never felt the blood lust as strongly as he felt his need for her.

Driven by her words, he undressed her, exposing her soft skin inch by inch until she lay naked beneath him. Feather light touches of his fingertips had left her near the edge already. He saw the anticipation in her eyes, and in her pebbled flesh, her tight nipples and the taut muscles of her belly.

He spread her legs with one hand, feeling the wet heat of her. The vampire in him wanted to play with his prize, to tease her until she begged for it hot and hard. The vampire wanted to taste her blood and drink in the luscious crimson drops of her desire until there was nothing left.

The man wanted to caress her until she came against his fingertips, to kiss her blind and sink into her slowly until he felt her pulse beat around him.

The man won out. He didn’t drink from her, though she asked him to. He didn’t ravage her, though she’d have been willing. He loved her until she shuddered in his arms and he let her feel him come inside her and fill her with his need.

Then he let her sleep.

When she awoke, she gave him her throat. She fed him with her body and her soul and he knew that a vampire didn’t own her. She owned him.

THE END