Fresh Blood (13 page)

“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!”

“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.