Prince of Twilight (28 page)

And then her vision started to close in, darkness surrounding her from all sides.

“What…?” she muttered, unsure if she said the word out loud, losing the rest of her question before she spoke it.

She saw a woman—and she recognized her. Elisabeta, looking the way she had in the portrait. It startled Stormy terribly at first. My God, had she come back to finish what she'd tried to begin?

But no, she didn't look menacing, or cruel. There was something frail about her, and fear in her eyes. And it hit Stormy all over again how much the young woman's face resembled her own. They could have been sisters. Maybe they were, in a way.

“Beta?” Stormy whispered.

“They're making me go!” Beta cried. “I don't want to go!”

The pain in her voice gripped Stormy's heart and
twisted, and in that moment she realized this Beta she was seeing wasn't physical. She was opaque, nearly transparent. Melina and Lupe must be performing the rite.

Stormy felt her throat tighten, her eyes well in empathy. “It's what we all do when we die, Beta,” she told the frightened girl—for she was that, once again. Just a girl. Afraid and confused. “It's what we're supposed to do. Look, look behind you.”

Beta turned slowly and saw what Stormy did. Beyond her, resting on the water, was a glowing, golden light. It had a texture to it like liquid gold, and it pulsed and called to her. There was something incredibly beautiful about it, something magnetic. It drew Stormy. She moved closer, involuntarily, and yet she wasn't afraid.

“It's beautiful,” Beta whispered.

“Yes.”

Beta paused, swallowed hard; then she closed her hand around Stormy's. “Will you walk with me?”

Stormy nodded and found she wanted to move closer to the glow. And as they drew near, something became visible within the light: a woman. She might have been a goddess or an angel, or the blessed virgin. But she felt much more personal than any of those. And she looked…

“She looks like us,” Stormy whispered, glancing at her companion.

Beta had tears streaming down her cheeks. The woman seemed to be speaking to her, but Stormy couldn't hear. The golden woman's expression was incredible; serene and loving and transcendent.

“I know,” Beta said to her in reply. “I know I was supposed to come sooner. But I was trapped. And then I was afraid.”

The woman lifted a hand, holding it out to Elisabeta.

Beta turned to Stormy and blinked back her tears. “I understand now,” she said softly.

“I don't. Who is she, Beta?”

“She's…she's us. She's you and me and all the women we've ever been. She's all of us. Everyone we ever were or will be. She's…our higher self.”

Stormy looked at the beautiful woman standing within the golden light with her arms reaching out, and she heard herself whisper, “I love her.”

As she watched, Elisabeta pulled free of her hand and moved forward. And then the woman opened her arms and embraced her, and it seemed that Elisabeta was absorbed into the light.

Stormy was awestruck, and then she moved closer, too, reaching out her hands.

The woman met her eyes. “Not you, Tempest. Not yet. Not for a long, long time. But at least now you will be complete. The parts of you that were missing, shall now be restored.”

She held out her hands, and a beam of that golden light surged from her palms and hit Stormy square in the chest. It was like being hammered by heat and light. It knocked her backward as surely as a speeding train would have done. And then the light faded, and she was alone in the dark, yet unafraid. And she felt…wonderful.

 

Vlad carried Tempest aboard the yacht in a state of panic. “Rhiannon! Damien! Help her!” he shouted.

Rhiannon raced forward, meeting him at the hatch that led below, Damien close behind her. “What happened?” Rhiannon demanded. She took his arm and tugged him through the hatch, down the stairs and into one of the cabins. She led him to a small sofa, where he laid Tempest down and bent over her. He stroked her hair, her face.

“I don't know,” Vlad said quickly. “She was fine—and then she just suddenly started walking toward the sea. She was…talking to someone—Elisabeta, I think. She kept saying her name. And then she just flew backward, landing on her back on the
ground.” He pressed his hands to his head. “Gods, is it past midnight? Did those Athena women fail to set Beta free? Is she dying now?” He closed his eyes. “It can't be. Gods, I can't lose her now.”

Rhiannon bent closer, touching Stormy, seeking, Vlad knew, for signs of life in her. She was alive, he knew that. But when Rhiannon stood rigid and wide eyed and whispered “By the gods!” he was frightened, even more than he had been.

“What, Rhiannon? What is it? By the gods, tell me I haven't waited all this time for her only to lose her again so soon.”

“Lose her?” Rhiannon blinked her long lashes several times. “Don't you feel it? Vlad, don't you smell it on her?”

Damien moved closer and whispered, “The antigen. Belladonna.”

Rhiannon met his eyes and nodded, then shifted her focus to Vlad.

And he felt it. He sensed it the way a vampire could always sense one of The Chosen. That energy was coming from
her
—from Tempest.

He lifted his eyes to those of the vampiress he'd made. “But…how can it be?”

Even as he asked the question, Tempest blinked her eyes open and whispered his name, drawing his
gaze back to her. She smiled at him. “She's all right,” Tempest said. “Elisabeta is all right.”

He could only frown at her, searching her face.

“Melina and Lupe must have done the ritual. They must have freed her. I saw her, Vlad. I walked with her. God, it was so beautiful. There was this woman, all clothed in golden light. Or maybe she
was
the light. And Beta went into her arms and they just…they sort of melded.”

Vlad sank onto the sofa to gather her gently into his arms. “I'm glad if Beta has found peace. But, Tempest, are
you
all right?”

Her smile grew brighter. “I'm wonderful. Better than ever. That woman, she…gave me something. She filled me with…something.”

Rhiannon put a hand on Vlad's shoulder, repeating slowly what she had told him before. “When we die, our souls merge with our collective soul, our higher self. That being is our source. All that we are melds and combines to generate the next soul and the next, and the one after that. Stormy has been missing a part of herself. The part that was Elisabeta. The part that had never melded with her source. She has that part now.”

“And that part includes…?” he asked.

“The Belladonna Antigen,” Rhiannon whispered.

Stormy shifted her gaze from Vlad's—though it seemed to take a great effort—to Rhiannon's. “What?”

“You're one of The Chosen now, Stormy,” Rhiannon told her. “You can become one of us, if and when you choose it.”

She shot her eyes back to Vlad's. “Is it true?”

He nodded. “I don't pretend to understand it the way a priestess of Isis does,” he said. “But yes—you have the antigen now. And it's not weakened or diluted or different in you the way it was in Brooke's body. Perhaps because it was meant to be in you as it was never meant to be there.”

“Then…” She blinked and searched his eyes. “Then we can be together? Forever?”

“If you want it, Tempest.”

She slid her arms around his neck and hugged him close. “I do. You know I do.”

Rhiannon smiled slowly. “Oh, may the gods have mercy on us all.”

Stormy shot her a questioning look.

“Well, do you blame me? As a mortal you're almost unbearably full of yourself and…
feisty.
I detest feisty.”

“You
exemplify
it,” Damien said with a chuckle.

“No, I exemplify arrogance,” she said. “And with good reason. It's not the same thing.”

“I stand corrected.”

“She'll drive us all mad,” she said, turning as she and Damien walked to the cabin door. But she glanced back, caught Stormy's eye and winked.

Stormy took it as a “welcome to the family” sort of gesture.

 

Vlad walked her to the upper deck, where the full moon hung very low in the sky. It would set before too long, and the sun would rise. Vlad removed all her clothing, and all his own, and then he brought her legs around his waist and entered her. And while she moved over him, he sank his teeth into her throat and drank her very essence into him. He drank until she trembled, until she weakened, until she sank so completely into his arms that it was if they were one. And then he jabbed a blade into his own neck, gently, just piercing the jugular with the tip, and he brought her face to him there.

She didn't move until the blood touched her lips. And then she did. She parted her lips and tasted, and then she latched on and drank, and drank, and drank. He moved inside her as she did, and he bent his head to drink more of her.

They were locked that way, mouths to throats, bodies mated, straining and moving and striving. And he thought that by the time he released his
seed into her that their blood had mingled several times over.

She went limp in his arms, and he picked her up, and carried her below into the cabin again. A bed and blankets waited. He lowered her into the bed and climbed in beside her.

“Listen!” she said suddenly. “Do you hear it?”

“What, my love?”

“The ocean! I can hear it….”

“Well, we are in a boat,” he said with a smile, though he knew exactly what she meant.

“Oh, it's different. I can hear…the fish swimming past. And I can smell it—not like before—I can taste it, but it's…”

He nodded. “I know. Your senses are heightened, all of them, a hundred times what they were before. And soon, perhaps, a thousand times. You'll be powerful, Tempest. As strong as Rhiannon. Perhaps stronger.”

“Stronger than Rhiannon?”

He nodded. “Perhaps. In time. My blood is old. Only one vampire lives who's blood is older, and you've got his running in your veins, too, just as I do.”

“Damien,” she whispered.

“Gilgamesh,” he confirmed.

She sighed and snuggled close to him. “I don't care how strong I am, Vlad.”

“You're a terrible liar, Tempest.”

She smiled and kissed his chest. “All right, I care. I'm going to love being powerful. And I'll taunt Rhiannon about that for the rest of our lives and enjoy every minute of it.” She almost laughed at the notion. She liked the teasing, almost friendly relationship she seemed to have developed with the vampiress she'd once considered the haughtiest bitch of the bunch. “But more than that,” she whispered, returning her attention to where it belonged, “more than anything else, Vlad, I'm going to love being with you.”

“You'll be with me,” he promised her. “Forever.”

He kissed her deeply, and when he broke the kiss, she curled into his arms and knew she would still be there when they awoke. And she would be again and again, every sunset, for the rest of eternity.