Wings In The Night - Blue Twilight Part 13

She looked at him oddly, her eyes narrow, probing, as if she thought maybe he was cracking up. He asked himself if maybe he was. Hearing voices in his head-how real could that be? Then again, he didn't imagine people being mauled by wolves was exactly a common-place occurrence in twenty-first centuryNew England .

Not for the first time, he thought maybe he should just come clean and tell Max the truth, all of it.

Do not even think of doing that, Jason Beck. If you do, your sister will pay the price.

Beck nodded, acknowledging inside his mind that he had to do what that voice bade him. Even if he was putting his old friends at risk in the process. Delia's life was at stake. He was her brother. He had to take care of her; it was his job.

But he hadn't antic.i.p.ated that voice demanding Stormy. Stormy. He'd thought himself in love with her once. Maybe still.

In love with her, the vampire thought, hearing every whisper that pa.s.sed through the young man's mind.So that was the shape of things.

What is wrong with her? the vampire asked.

"I wish I knew, " Jason said. Then he glanced sideways at Max. "What's wrong with her, I mean." Max nodded.

The vampire knew they were rapidly moving farther away than his power could reach. He could stop them, but there was no need. He'd seen inside Beck's mind. Ile would come back. He would bring Tempest back, because he loved his sister above all else.

See her to the hospital, then. But she must not remain! I will have her returned to Endover before this night is out. Is that understood?

"Yeah, " he said. "I understand." His head was clearing, he thought. He rolled down the window to breathe in the fresh air. He felt the rush of it rejuvenating him.

In the back of the Jeep, Stormy moaned.

By the time Lou pulled into the hospital parking lot and got out, Stormy was awake and arguing. He could tell by the way her mouth was moving and the angry expression on her face in the glow of his headlights, when Max and Jason tugged her out of the Jeep and herded her toward the entrance.

It didn't look like much fun, but Lou opted to join the party, anyway. He walked up to them somewhere in between "Come on, Storm, it's only common sense to get it checked out" and "If I have to see one more f.u.c.king doctor I'm going to need a shrink instead!"

He smiled in spite of himself as he joined them, and his mere presence earned him a scowl from Stormy that should have wilted him. "Hey, don't look at me. I'm just along for the ride."

"Oh, thanks, Lou, " Max snapped. "Don't let him kid you, Stormy. He's the one who talked me into this"

"I'm fine." She said it with her jaw clenched.

"You're probably right, " Lou said. "Maybe there's nothing wrong at all. Tell you what, you tell me what it was you said back there, and no one will make you see a doc tonight, okay, kid?"

Her brows rose, but then she smelled a rat and lowered them. "What do you mean, what I said back there?"

"Wait a second, I jotted it down on the way over." He dug in his pockets, his face all innocence. Max was watching him, he noticed, curiosity in her eyes. Maybe a hint of awe at his tactics. h.e.l.l, he wasn't that good. He was mighty relieved, though, at the way she'd snapped at Beck just before they'd all left the visitor center. Maybe she wasn't as unequivocally trusting of her old friend as she'd been pretending to be. He finally found the slip of paper, the back of a gas receipt. "I wrote it phonetically, of course." He cleared his throat. "New! Keen-ay sko-ah-tay sah-be-ah, de sah-be-ah va pi-ere-ay." He glanced at Max. "That was it, wasn't it?"

"More like, 'keen-eh sko-uh-tay, "' she said. "Other than that, you nailed it. Well, you butchered it, butyou got the gist." Her eyes touched his, just briefly. Grat.i.tude, a little humor, some of the affection he was used to seeing there.

He'd missed it during her recent snit. He didn't know what the h.e.l.l he would do if he screwed up his oddball friendship with Mad Maxie. He'd been afraid he'd damaged things beyond repair, but the look they'd exchanged just then gave him hope that maybe their friendship could still be saved.

Max turned her gaze to Stormy, who was looking from one of them to the other, suspicion oozing from her eyes.

Lou thought the four of them must look pretty conspicuous, standing huddled in a hospital parking lot, tinder the streetlights, talking gibberish to one another.

"What are you talking about?" Stormy demanded. "When did I say anything like that?"

"You said that and a lot more. But I was scribbling in the dark, " Lou told her. "I don't think I even want to attempt to repeat the rest of it. It was when that wolf had you backed up against the tree in the woods back there"

"Wolf? There was a wolf?"

"Actually, Lou, she didn't say any of it, until you drew down on the wolf, " Max clarified. "I almost got the feeling she was protecting it, telling you not to shoot."

"You guys are making this up."

Max moved closer to her, her expression serious and concerned. "Look at your blouse, Stormy."

Stormy looked down at the front of herself, seeing the slight tears in the fabric of her blouse and the distinct paw print atop one breast. Her brows drew together. Her lips trembled. "Oh, my G.o.d."

"You...you reached out. You petted the wolf, " Max told her. "It was the d.a.m.nedest thing I ever saw.

You petted it, and it stopped growling. It dropped to the ground and ran away."

Stormy's eyes, wet now, met Maxie's. "Why don't I remember?"

"I don't know, baby. I don't know. That's what we're here to find out" Max slid her arms around the other woman, held her for a second. "It'll be okay, though. We're here for you."

Stormy straightened, but the defiance was long gone from her face and her stance. There was stark fear in her baby blues now. Fear and confusion.

"I wonder what language that was?" Max asked as they moved toward the emergency room entrance.

Lou shrugged. "I don't think it was any language at all. Just gibberish. Does Storm even speak a foreign language?"

"Nope, " Max said.

"I do so, " Stormy said, a hint of weak humor in her tone: "I speak Spanish." They all knew her grasp of Spanish was pitiful, at best. "Was that Spanish, Storm?" Max asked.

Sighing, she lowered her head. "No. It's nothing I ever heard before. And I don't remember saying it, or anything about any wolf. Jesus, you'd think I would remember a wolf."

Max nodded. "You pa.s.sed out cold right after. Stayed out almost all the way here. That would account for being disoriented."

"Just get checked out, huh, Storm?" Lou asked. "For our sakes, if not your own."

"I agree with them, " Jason added. "It's only logical to make sure you haven't developed some side effect from the bullet or the coma. A blood clot or a hemorrhage or whatever."

She closed her eyes, nodded once. "All right. We're here, we might as well. I'll get a quick X ray. Have them send the films back to my doc in White Plains , just in case. Okay? Will that get you all off my case?"

"It sure will, " Lou said. Then he moved past her and opened one of the double doors, held it wide as Stormy and Max walked inside, with Jason bringing up the rear.

The place wasn't busy. Five minutes in the waiting area and Stormy was ushered into a treatment room, while Max continued filling out forms in the waiting area. She'd just finished with the forms when Jason appeared with three cups of hospital-stale coffee. He handed one to Lou, took another to Max.

Max accepted it and looked up at him. "I'm sorry I snapped at you back there, Jay. I was shaken up, that's all."

"I understand. I've been pretty shaken up myself the past couple of days. It's forgotten, okay?"

She clutched his hand in one of hers, squeezed it. "Okay."

Lou tried to pretend his grimace was due to the taste of the coffee, even though he had yet to take a sip.

Two hours and several cups of mud later, Stormy returned, with a forced-in-place smile and a clean bill of health. Max seemed relieved but not surprised. Lou couldn't believe it.

As they all trooped out to the waiting vehicles, Max walked close to him, and, leaning up, she whispered, "I told you it wasn't physical."

"You can't be a hundred-percent sure of that. Not until her head doctor in White Plains reviews the tests." Max shrugged. "That phrase she muttered back there.

The one you jotted down. You still got that?"

He sent her a narrow-eyed glance. "Yeah. Why?" "Can I have it?"

He dug the sc.r.a.p of paper from his pocket. She took it from his hand and jammed it into her own pocket with a quick glance at Jason and Stormy, who were walking a few feet ahead.

"What are you up to, Maxie?" Lou asked. "Gonna try to get it translated."

He shook his head. "It's gibberish."

"Maybe. But what if it's not?"

"How could it be anything else? You said it yourself, Max. She doesn't speak a foreign language. Even her high school Spanish is a running joke. There's no way she could just start spouting sentences in a language she doesn't know. It's not possible."

She looked up into his eyes and shook her head slowly. "Lou, haven't you learned by now that anything is possible?"

Chapter 10.

Even as they reached the vehicles, Max's cell phone bleated.

She frowned as she dug in her purse for it. "What do you know? It's working again. I didn't even realize it was still turned on." She hit a b.u.t.ton and brought it to her ear. "Maxine Stuart, " she said.

Brisk and businesslike-if the person on the other end had never met her, he would never realize he was talking to an impulsive h.e.l.lion with a huge imagination, Lou thought.

Stormy and Jason stopped walking and turned around. "Guess we have reception again, huh?" Jason asked, while Max covered her free ear and hunched over the phone as if she were having trouble hearing.

"Maybe it's only inside Endover the reception dies completely, " Stormy said, and the look she sent Lou told him she was starting to adopt Max's penchant for conspiracy theories. h.e.l.l, it was bound to happen sooner or later.

"Do I need to come back there, Officer Gray?" Max was asking.

Lou looked at her sharply. "What's going on, Max?"

She held up a hand. "All right. Thank you. Yes, I'll check in as soon as possible" She hit the cutoff anddropped the phone back into her purse, lifting her head to meet his eyes. "There was a break-in at the house."

Lou swore softly. "Someone probably saw you moving out and wanted to look for any valuables you might have left behind, " he said.

"No, not that house. The house in Maine . The mansion. The alarm system Morgan had installed alerted the Easton PD, and an Officer Sandy Gray went out to investigate. The front door had been forced open-that gorgeous stained-gla.s.s oval broken all to h.e.l.l and gone. The place was rifled. Computer's missing. They're not sure what else. They want me to come back and take inventory as soon as possible."

Lou frowned, a million questions running through his mind. "Why would someone go after your computer, Max?"

She shrugged. "I don't know. To sell it, I guess."

"Good thing I had the laptop with us, " Stormy said. "Don't worry, Max, there's nothing on your hard drive that we don't have backed up."

"Gimme the phone." Lou held out a hand.

Max handed it over, and he hit the incoming calls log b.u.t.ton to get the number, then pressed Send.

"Easton Police, Officer Gray speaking."

Lou introduced himself as a fellow cop and a friend of Maxine's, and proceeded to fire questions at the cop. By the time he hung up he had a better handle on things. "The televisions, VCRs and jewelry were undisturbed, as far as Gray can tell, " he said. "They left the computer monitor, the scanner, printer, all that. All they took was the tower. The break-in happened earlier today-they've been trying your cell every couple of hours since. Got the cell number off your business cards. The files were rifled. Not much else. Whoever did this was after something specific. Something they thought they would find in your files."

Max frowned. "Well, it's not like I have any top-secret information in there, aside from the..."

She stopped there, her eyes widening. "The DPI files, " she said. "The CD I stole five years ago from the burned-out ruins of that so-called research lab in White Plains . It had the case files of hundreds of vampires on it."

"You never copied that onto your hard drive, " Stormy said.

"No, but there were copies packed in our stuff. I never took the time to put them in the safe. We...we barely unpacked. What if someone got it?"

"You think it was Frank Stiles, that b.a.s.t.a.r.d who shot me and tried to murder Dante?" Stormy asked.

Jason was staring from one of them to the next, his eyes wide. "Wait a minute, wait a minute. Vampire files? DPI? Who the h.e.l.l is Frank Stiles?"

Max sighed, lowering her head. Lou could see the worry in her eyes, the regret. h.e.l.l, he didn't blame her for it. If those details about the undead fell into the wrong hands, a lot of innocent vampires might die. Innocent vampires. h.e.l.l, life since Max came into it was freaking surreal.

"Let's get back to the motel, " Max said. "Lou, you drive Stormy. I'll ride with Jay. He's got a lot of catching up to do."

Lou nodded. "Okay. Fine by me." He reached for Max and snagged one arm around her waist, tugging her against him. It was the only way he could think of to get her close enough to warn her. Bending his head until his mouth was close to her ear, he whispered, "Be careful what you tell him, Max. I don't trust him."

"d.a.m.n, " she whispered back. "And here I thought you just wanted to hold me" When she said it, her lips moved so close to his neck that they brushed his skin, her breath caressing, warm. It heated his blood. He felt a pulse in his throat beating harder. He did want to hold her, G.o.ddammit. What the h.e.l.l was the matter with him?

"I don't want to leave this case to go back there, Lou, " she whispered, successfully changing the subject.

He looked down into her face, her sincere, frustrated eyes, so wide and green. Her perfect, round cheekbones that always seemed to be begging to be touched. Traced. Kissed. He realized belatedly that his arm was still wrapped around her waist. He liked it there. She fit in the curve of his embrace.

With no small surge of regret, he let his arm fall to his side. "You don't have to go back. CallLydia .

She'd be glad to drive up there and take care of this until we can get back. You tell her where you left the CDs, and she can check to see if they're still there."

She lowered her eyes. "Lydia. I don't know, it seems like a huge favor to ask."