Chapter Sixteen

“My contact told me that Benton Carlisle made a brief appearance at The Underside last night. He was with Vera Nighe and they had a feeder with them,” Lucas said.

Max grimaced. He stifled the urge to throw the phone. “Carlisle is behind all this. I don’t know why. He could have any feeder he wants. Why bother with Erica or Elena?”

“You said it yourself, Max. He can have anyone. He arranged to get what he wanted.”

“If he’s drugging unwilling feeders, he’s got to be stopped. We have to let Beaumont know.”

Lucas sighed and there was skepticism in his voice. “Carlisle is like a fortress. Letting Beaumont know might not produce any results.”

“It’s against our rules, Luke. If we don’t live by rules then we’re no better than monsters.” Max rose and paced. Through a small, tempered window in his bedroom he saw the morning sky and it made him ache for Erica. He’d called her twice already, but there was no answer. She’d probably gone to work, in an attempt to get back to her life. Maybe she needed to be somewhere he couldn’t follow.

“I’m not disagreeing with you, Max. But Carlisle is old school, like Gregori. That civilized veneer they wear is very thin. Vampires like him still believe they’re superior to humans. They feel they deserve whatever they can take.”

“He’s not going to take Erica.”

“From what you told me, I’d say he already has.”

Max bared his fangs and made an inhuman sound. He couldn’t live with that. He wanted Erica back, wanted to taste her again, to feel her.

Lucas spoke again after a long silence. “Max? Are you still there?”

“I’m here. But I shouldn’t be. I should be with Erica. Luke, can you do me a favor? Luke?”

After another long silence, Lucas returned, his voice low. “Max, I’ve got my police scanner on.” Part of Lucas’ assignment as an investigator was to monitor human police activity and make sure that crimes that were reported didn’t have anything to do with vampires.

“So?”

“There’s been a 911 call from Kyra’s development. A woman reported that her sister’s been murdered.”

* * * *

Strangers surrounded Erica as she sat on the sofa waiting for the ambulance attendants to wheel Elena’s body outside. Friends and neighbors of the woman Elena had become had gathered to lend support to the sister they’d never known she had.

“Ma’am? I have a few more questions to ask you about your sister.” A South Windsor police detective loomed before her. Erica saw only a blue blur and the gleaming brass of a badge quickly flashed in front of her eyes.

“What do you need to know?”

“Did she have any enemies? Anyone you know of who might have wanted to hurt her? What about a boyfriend? Current or ex?”

Erica blinked, tried to focus on his face framed by thinning gray hair. “I don’t know. She ... knew a lot of men, but I don’t think she had a boyfriend.”

“If you think of anyone who might have had a reason to be upset with her, you need to give me a call, all right?” The detective pushed a business card into her hand. Erica stared at it, unable to discern the name or the numbers printed on the card. She thought of Max and nodded absently.

A moment later the detective moved off, mumbling into his radio. Before Erica could process his questions further, a woman from next door put a steaming mug of herbal tea in Erica’s hands and watched with watery blue eyes while she sipped it.

“I can’t believe you’re Kyra’s twin sister,” she said in a soothing, motherly voice as she settled herself next to Erica on the sofa. “You don’t look anything alike.”

“They’re obviously fraternal,” a man said. He sat on a kitchen chair that he’d brought into the living room. Erica didn’t know his name.

“That’s your picture on the mantle, isn’t it?” the woman asked. Erica nodded and frowned into the tea. Someone said it was chamomile but it didn’t taste right. She didn’t care if it was drugged. In fact she hoped it was.

“How long did you know...Kyra?” she asked. It bothered her to think that these strangers knew more about her sister than she did. It broke her heart to think she’d never know the truth.

“She’s been here a few months. Always said hello,” the man said. Erica raised her eyes just enough to catch a glimpse of him. He looked about fifty. His face was puffy and ruddy and he wore a stained T-shirt, but despite his gruff appearance, he seemed kind. He smiled ruefully at her. “She leant me money last month when my disability check was late. I hadn’t paid her back yet, but I’ll get the money to you ... I promise.”

Erica shook her head. “You don’t have to.” Elena leant someone money? If she hadn’t been dead inside she might have laughed.

“Ma’am...we need you to sign this.” One of the ambulance attendants came forward with a form on a clipboard and handed it to Erica.

She stared at the blurry page for a few seconds. “What is it?”

“It’s the release. As your sister’s next-of-kin you need to give permission for an autopsy.”

The mug wobbled in Erica’s hand and the nameless woman steadied it, easing it from her grasp. “I’ll hold this, sweetheart. You take the pen.”

Erica scribbled something that might have been her name and handed the clipboard back. The attendant gave her a sympathetic look and thanked her, then he and his partner took up the ends of the wheeled stretcher. The last Erica saw of her sister was the black bag that encased her as the attendants removed her body from the bungalow.

“Is there someone we can call for you?” the woman asked. She put the mug back in Erica’s hand and patted her arm. “What about your parents?”

“They’re dead.” The words came out with surprising ease. Erica had always had trouble admitting it when people asked. It wasn’t so much the grief, which had dulled over the decade since they’d been gone, but the reminder that she was alone, except for Elena. Her twin had never been much of a family. Now even she was gone.

“May they rest in peace,” the man said. “What a terrible thing to have to tell them. In a way, they’re lucky.”

“They are,” Erica agreed. They didn’t have to see what had become of their daughters.

“I don’t drive, otherwise I’d take you back home. Do you live near here?” the woman asked. “We can call you a cab.”

“It’s all right. I’m going to stay here a while and just ... I’ll call someone later if I’m not up to driving myself home.” It bothered Erica that she couldn’t remember the woman’s name, and that she didn’t care enough to ask again.

“Are you sure? In this state, it’s probably better if you weren’t alone.”

“She won’t be alone. I’m here.”

Erica looked up and the tea splashed on her leg when she saw Max. He swept into the room and tossed aside the dark cape he’d held over his head. Another man, blond and brash looking, followed him inside and did the same thing.

Erica dropped the mug and flew into Max’s arms.

“Max! She’s dead ... she’s dead ...”

“Shh. It’s going to be okay. Elena isn’t dead,” Max said after the other man escorted the neighbors to the door.

“What!?” Erica sat up and pushed away from Max. “I saw her, Max. They ravaged her. She was bleeding, all over ... they--”

“They turned her.”

* * * *

The look of defeat on Erica’s face lasted only a moment, but it was long enough to cut Max to the bone. In that one fatal second he saw it in her eyes, the utter disgust with his kind. Her sister was a monster now--or would be when she awoke.

Erica had found her sister, and lost her in the same moment.

She sank to the couch, her eyes blank. “Are you sure?”

“Lucas checked it out. After you called 911, the call came up on his scanner. He made a few calls. You reported the bite marks, that tipped him off and he had our ambulance come for her.”

She blinked and stared at him. “What do you mean, your ambulance?”

“She can’t be taken to a hospital. They’ll put the body in the morgue and she’ll wake up in a metal drawer. We lose a lot of newly turned that way.”

“Lose them?”

“They go ... insane.”

Erica swallowed hard and clutched at him. Her fingers dug into his shoulders. “What’s going to happen to her? What are you going to do with her?”

“They’re taking her somewhere safe where she can wake up in her own time. Lucas will arrange to be with her. They were close.”

“They were?”

“They were friends. She may hate him now. That’ll be hard for him to adjust to.”

“Why? Why would she hate him?”

“Erica ...” Max pulled her close and rubbed her back as she settled against him. “Female vampires are different. Elena may not be like you remember her.”

“Max, I don’t know how I remember her. I don’t know who Elena is anymore.” Tears ran down her cheeks and he brushed them away. “They changed her. They made her into Kyra--whoever that is. She’s a feeder, who helps her neighbors and....sleeps with vampires. That’s not who Elena was.”

“You think someone used mind control on her?” Max considered the possibility. If Benton Carlisle had been controlling Kyra, it didn’t make sense that she would have been the fiercely independent woman he knew. Carlisle liked his feeders subservient. Kyra/Elena wouldn’t fit the bill.

“It’s the only thing that makes sense, Max. That’s why Elena kept calling me. She remembered who she was--maybe just a little. She wanted to get free but they kept making her forget. That’s why she wasn’t at The Underside. She wasn’t using me .... I know she wasn’t.”

Max wanted to believe her. He didn’t want to think that Kyra was involved in some despicable plot to destroy Erica just for Benton Carlisle’s entertainment. “I hope you’re right. If that’s the case, the mind control will be erased when she wakes up. She’ll be Elena again....” Or a new, hungrier version of Elena.

“I need to be with her, Max. When she wakes up.”

“No. You don’t.” He shook his head. “That’s not something you want to see.”

“She needs me, Max. You can’t keep me from her.”

“It may not be safe for you to be anywhere near Elena right now. If Benton Carlisle is involved, you should stay away, because I think, after what happened to you last night, he may be after you.”

“Why me? What could he want with me?”

“I don’t know. But I intend to find out. Whatever he wants from you, Erica, he’s not going to get it.”