"Stiles. Thank God you're still there. Listen, I don't know what the hell to do. We've... we've got another one."
"What?"
"Another one. Of them." Max swallowed hard, her eyes locked with her sister's ever-weakening gaze as she spoke on the phone. "I think he sent her. She tried for Morgan. Lou was here, they struggled, and she wound up going out the window. He didn't mean to push her, it just happened. She damn near took Lou with her."
"She was injured?"
"Yeah. Pretty badly, by the looks of it. I don't know, she was unconscious. We tied her up, but I'm not sure how long we can hold her. If she comes around... "
"Where is she now?"
"Lou took her to the house. He figured he couldn't very well hold her here, where someone might see. He's going to lock her up there or something. Told me to tell you he'd wait for you by the cliffs."
"I'll be there in twenty minutes." Stiles rang off.
Nodding her head slowly, Max pocketed the phone and sat down beside her sister, stroking her hair. Morgan's eyes were mere slits. "Just a little longer, babe. Hang on, okay?"
A nod so slight her head barely moved. Then the door opened, and Dr. Hilman walked in. "Maxine, you wanted to see me?"
"Yes," she said. She got to her feet to face him, lifted her chin and squared her shoulders. "I want to take Morgan home."
"Impossible." He said it quickly, without even thinking about it first.
"Let's just drop the bull from the beginning. We both know it's possible. Maybe not advisable, but possible."
Shaking his head slowly, the doctor said, "She may not survive the trip, Maxine."
"C'mon, Doc. Do you even expect her to survive the night?"
Licking his lips, he lowered his head. "Frankly... no."
"Then what's the difference? She wants to die at home. In her own bed, in the house she loves. There's nothing you can do for her here except maybe prolong her life a few extra hours. But you can do something for her. You can grant her last wish. I'll take full responsibility."
He lowered his head, pressing his lips together.
"If you say no, I'll take her anyway," Max added.
With a sigh, the doctor moved past her, bent close to Morgan, touched her face. "Is this what you want, Morgan? You want to go home, even though you might last a little bit longer here?"
She managed to nod, even pulled her lips into a ghost of a smile.
The doctor straightened, inhaling deeply. "All right. I'll get the paperwork."
"Time is a factor here."
"I'll be quick."
He was-amazingly so. Ten minutes later Max was signing beside the X and wheeling her blanket-wrapped sister out to the waiting taxi. A short while later they were pulling into the driveway, and Morgan sighed her relief audibly at the sight of the old house again. God, it really did mean the world to her.
Max studied Morgan's face for a long moment. She didn't look the way she had looked only days earlier. Her face was sunken, deep purple wells had appeared beneath her eyes, and her cheeks were concave. Her lips were pinched and chapped. She looked like an old woman.
Max paid the driver, got out of the cab, went around it to open her sister's door and hugged her gently. David came out of the house, and when Max moved aside, he scooped Morgan up and carried her easily into the house, up the stairs, and, moments later, was tucking her into her bed. Max stopped off in the study to take one of the smaller charcoal drawings of Dante from the wall. She carried it upstairs with her. When she got to the bedroom, she placed it in her sister's hands and saw just a hint of the former light flash in the dying woman's eyes.
"Hold on, Morgan. If you feel yourself slipping, look at Dante's face and know he's coming for you. I'm going to bring him to you myself. I promise."
A slight nod. A breath of relief. A single whispered word. "Hurry."
Max glanced at Lydia, at David. "Stay with her."
"You know we will. Be careful, Max," Lydia said, and gave her a quick hug.
Max hugged her back and whispered in her ear, "Tell her. It might be your last chance."
Sarafina lay on her side on the cool, damp ground above the cliffs. Her hands were cuffed behind her back, her ankles bound together with duct tape. She lay still, motionless, eyes closed, hair in disarray. She'd rubbed clumps of soil over her dress and her arms, smudged a bit on her face, hoping to look more convincing in the darkness.
Lou banked a hint of admiration for the woman. Brave. Then again, she had reason to be. She was stronger than ten ordinary men. Still, this was a risk. She must care a great deal about Dante.
"So I'm still not clear on your relationship with Dante," Lou said softly. He stood beside her prone form on the cliffs, watching the night, listening for Stiles to arrive. "You said you were his mother, sister and aunt. Just how the hell does that work?"
She opened her eyes, looking up at him without moving her head. "Sister, because all vampires are siblings. We come from a common source, we share the same blood. The same antigen that makes us unique. Mother, because I am the one who changed him from dying mortal man to powerful immortal creature. I birthed him into this life."
Lou nodded slow. "And aunt?"
"The usual way. Great-great-aunt if you want to get technical. I was his great-grandmother's sister."
He nodded again. "So you changed him because-"
"Hush! They're coming." She closed her eyes again. "He'll know the cuffs alone won't hold me, mortal. He'll try to drug me, as he did Dante. We can't let him."
Lou strained his eyes and ears but didn't see or hear a thing. Then again, her senses were supposedly working at some elevated level. Just how elevated, he could only guess. He didn't question their accuracy. Hell, after that jump from the third-story hospital window, he figured there wasn't much she couldn't do.
Eventually the sounds of footfalls in the grass reached his substandard ears, and he focused in that direction. Stiles's shape emerged from the darkness. He was wary, looking closely, moving slowly. He approached the fallen Sarafina the way Lou figured he would approach a sleeping tiger.
"She's unconscious," Lou reassured him. "She was hurt pretty badly in the fall."
"That's what the redhead told me on the phone," Stiles said. He drew a syringe from his pocket, held it upright and checked its contents, then took another halting step forward. And another. He started to reach for her, then drew back.
"Oh, for Pete's sake, will you do it already?" Lou asked.
Stiles finally moved closer, dropped down on one knee, brought the syringe toward Sarafina's arm. She flung her head up suddenly, slamming Stiles in the chest, knocking him off her and the syringe to the ground. Lou threw himself at her, and they struggled for a moment as Lou picked up the syringe and quickly squeezed its contents onto the ground, hiding his actions from the other man.
"There, goddammit," Lou growled.
Sarafina went limp, let her head fall to the ground, closed her eyes. Lou got up, disentangling his limbs from hers, brushing himself off. He handed Stiles the empty syringe. Stiles eyed it, then him. "Thanks," he said.
"Bitch tried to kill me," Lou said. "That's twice in one night. You were right about them, Stiles."
Stiles nodded. "She won't try again." He dropped the syringe to the ground, bent and scooped Sarafina up into his arms. "Remember," Stiles said as he turned to trudge back toward the house. "You tell no one. This is over. You and' everyone else involved just need to forget all about it. Understood?"
"I won't forget," Lou said. "But I will keep it to myself." He forced a smile. "Hell, who'd believe me, anyway?"
"Exactly."
Lou walked with Stiles around the house to where the man's car waited. He winced when the bastard tossed the woman into the trunk. She landed hard, and then he slammed it closed. Stiles said, "You won't be seeing me again."
"No offense, Stiles, but I sure hope you're right." Lou waved him off as Stiles got behind the wheel and drove away.
As soon as the taillights vanished around a curve in the road, Max pulled up in Lou's car, flung open the passenger door, and Lou jumped in.
"It's been so long," Lydia said, pacing the bedroom an hour later. "Why haven't they come back by now? God, it will be dawn soon."
David put a hand on her shoulder. "Try to have faith, Lyd. It's going to be okay. It has to be."
She smiled at him in a way that told Morgan there was something between them. Something they'd kept from her.
"Max was right," David said softly. "You should tell her."
Lydia held his eyes for a long moment before turning to Morgan. Sniffling, she came to sit on the edge of the bed, clasped Morgan's hand. Lydia's felt strong and warm around it. Looking Morgan in the eyes, she said, "Morgan, I am the woman who gave birth to you and Max. I'm... I'm your mother."
"Mother... " Morgan whispered the word. She wasn't entirely shocked by the news. She'd wondered why Lydia seemed so connected to Max, why she seemed to care so much about her, when they'd only just met. She'd caught the woman crying over her in the hospital, and, knowing she was adopted, it hadn't been such a wide leap.
"I gave you both up for adoption because I thought you would be better off. I wanted you to have a good life. But I was told you were both going to the same family. It was a decade before I knew you'd been separated."
Sighing, Morgan nodded with her eyes. She was too weak to move her head. Then she slid her gaze to David. "Father?" she asked, despite the effort it cost.
"No," David said. "Though we thought for a time I might have been." He came closer, too, sat down on the bed. "I was one of Lydia's... clients. Young, wealthy. I always liked her. When she told me she was pregnant, I agreed to be tested. And when I learned you weren't my children I... I walked away. It was a mistake, Morgan. It haunted me. I looked Lydia up again a year later, and she told me you'd been adopted, though she didn't know the details, except that you were happy. So I hired an investigator to find you. Maxine was fine, in a loving, healthy family. But you... " He shook his head. "I didn't like the people who'd adopted you. And I didn't know how the hell to undo what had already been done. So I moved to the West Coast, and became your adoptive father's best friend. It was the only way I could stay close to you, watch over you. And I was compelled to do that. I didn't contact Lydia again to tell her, because-well, because I knew it would kill her if she realized she'd handed you over to people like that."
He leaned down to kiss her cheek. "I'm sorry, honey. I'm sorry I never told you the truth."
She closed her eyes. "Love you."
When he sat up, he had tears in his eyes.
Morgan wanted to tell them both that it was okay. That she didn't hold anything against either of them. But she couldn't. This damned weakness was robbing her of the ability to do much of anything. She was existing from one breath to the next, more uncertain with each one she drew whether she would have the strength to draw another. But she tried to tell them with her eyes. And that was the best she could do.
"What's taking them so long?" David asked.
Max stopped the car when she saw that Stiles had slowed down. She'd been driving without headlights, in pitch darkness, guided only by the distant red glow of his taillights. It was risky at best. Stupid at worst, but it was for her sister. She couldn't believe how badly she had managed to screw up. She had to make it right.
She put the car in reverse, saw no traffic behind her and backed up with nothing more than her own reverse lights to guide her. When she was out of sight of Stiles' car, she put the headlights on and found a place off the roadside to park. Then she shut the car off and turned to Lou. "This is it."
"Not for you, it's not. You take the car and go. Get some backup out here. I don't care what you have to say, just get some cops to head this way. I'm going in alone."
"The hell you are." She whipped out her cell phone, dialed 9-1-1. Then she frowned at the thing when nothing happened. "Dammit, we're out of range."
"Like I said, you go for help."
"Even if I did and help came running, they wouldn't get here in time. We have to do this now, Lou. You and me. With maybe a little help from the Mostly-Dead-Duo in there, if we're lucky and they're in a good mood." She left the keys in the ignition, got out of the car, not even waiting for Lou to reply, and started trudging forward.
He caught up to her in short order. "You could get hurt, Max. I couldn't live with that."
"My sister's dying, Lou. I caused it. I have to do this. If I don't, and she doesn't make it, how the hell do you think I'm gonna live with myself?"
He swallowed hard, staring at her in the darkness. "Dammit, you're so fucking stubborn."
"Yeah, and you love it."
"Here." He slapped a gun into her hands. Small. His handgun.
"What about you?"
He lifted his opposite arm, and she saw for the first time the dark outline of the shotgun he carried. "I figured it was time to break out the big guns."
"Good thinking."
They strode side by side along the road until they could make out the shape of Stiles car in the overgrown driveway of a falling-down house. It looked abandoned. But there was light coming from inside,
"Do you think Sarafina is still in the trunk?" Max whispered.
"He'd be an idiot to leave her there."
They moved in closer to the house, leaving the car for now. If Sarafina were in the trunk, she could probably get out, Max thought, and there was no sense wasting time or tipping off the enemy by rattling around trying to open a locked trunk. She assumed Lou agreed when he passed by the car without stopping.
They were approaching the rotten-looking front steps when Max felt a gun barrel in her spine. "Move and she dies," a man said.
She jerked her gaze sideways and saw Lou looking at her, a horrified expression on his face. "Okay, okay, easy," he said. "We're friends."
"Drop the shotgun."
Lou bent at the knees, laying the gun on the ground, and straightening again.
"You, too, hon," the man said.
"I don't have a gun to drop," she said. "You wanna loan me yours?"
"Fine, I'll get it myself," the man said, and he started patting her down, apparently certain she carried her gun taped to her crotch, judging by the amount of time he spent groping the area. He finally located the gun Lou had given her, took it and then nudged her forward. "Get inside. Both of you."
Lou and Max walked forward into the dilapidated house. Its door hung crookedly from one hinge. Max blinked in the white light of a gas lantern as she was prodded into a room where Stiles and two other men sat at a table.
"Well, what have we here?" Stiles asked, rising.
Through a doorway to the left, Max could see Dante strapped to a table and Sarafina strapped to another. She pretended not to notice them. "Impressive," she said, addressing Stiles instead. "So this is the new DPI headquarters? Talk about high tech."
"This is a temporary holding area," Stiles said. "So, do you want to die now, or would you prefer to tell me what the hell you're doing here first?"
Lou interrupted her before she could zing Stiles with a sarcastic reply. "I followed you."
"I knew it."
"Hey, if you knew it, why did you leave?"
"What are you talking about?"
Lou licked his lips. "After you left, I picked up that syringe and saw that there was still some of that drug left in it. I was worried she might not be out after all and jumped in the car to come and warn you."
Stiles lifted his brows, nodding as Lou spun his lies. He whistled long and low when Lou had finished. "And here I thought this was all a setup so you could get Dante out of here. So tell me, Lou, where did you leave your car? I didn't hear it pull into the driveway."
"Ran out of gas," Lou said. "Just a little ways back."
"Right." Stiles looked at the man behind Max. "Take them out back and shoot them."
Max shot her eyes to Lou. He stared back at her, and she saw that he was afraid-for her, not himself. Then the other man grabbed him and shoved him out of the house. She was being shoved right along behind him. They marched the two of them around to the back of the house, shoving her forward until she and Lou stood side by side, their backs to the men.
"Get on your knees."
"I'll die standing, thanks," Max said.
"Have it your way." The gun barrel moved from the small of her back to the base of her skull.
Lou moved suddenly, ducked low, and jammed the man behind him with an elbow. Then he turned and threw himself at the one with the gun to Max's head. The gun went off, deafening her, but she didn't feel pain, and reasoned that the shot had missed. She found herself on the ground, probably the shock of that gunshot next to her ear, but she got up as she saw one of the goons scrambling for his dropped gun. She went for it, too. He got it first and leveled it on her. Lou was grappling with the other man, both of them rolling around in the weeds.
Max held up a hand instinctively, and the gun, aimed right at her chest, went off. As it did, a dark form lunged between her and the shooter, like a black streak. Another shot, from behind her. Lou had won the fight for the other gun and shot her would-be assailant in the chest. The man went down in a heap. Behind Lou, his partner lay bleeding and unconscious.
She heard a car, tires squealing. Stiles and the one remaining thug getting away, no doubt. But she was too horrified to go after them. Dante, her sister's only hope, the man who had just taken a bullet for her, lay on the ground, bleeding, gasping, clutching his chest.
"Oh, God," she whispered.
"Just... stanch it." He ground out the words through clenched teeth. "Just get it stopped before I lose too much."
Nodding, she tore a strip from her blouse, balled it up, pressed it to the wound. Held it there.
Dante caught his breath. "Now... get me to Morgan."
"Lou, get the car," she said.
Lou ran into the darkness to comply. Sarafina came out of the house, looking at Max, at Dante in her arms. The handcuffs were still on her wrists, dangling like bracelets, their chain snapped in two.
"If you try to transform her tonight, it won't take," Sarafina said coldly.
"You don't know that."
"She's too far gone. And now you're wounded. Not at full power."
"I'll make it work."
"It could kill you."
"Then I'll die."
Sarafina lowered her head, closed her eyes. The car came screeching back. Sarafina went around the house to meet it, and Max wondered why. When she returned, Lou was at her side, and she held the roll of duct tape he'd used to bind her ankles. She tossed it to Max.
"Cram more padding into the wound. All you can fit. Then wrap him tight in this tape, all the way round his chest. Tight as you can make it."
Max didn't question her. She nodded her compliance, tore more fabric from her blouse and did exactly as Sarafina had instructed her.
When he was bound up tight, Sarafina said, "Now step away."
Max eased Dante's head to the ground, and Sarafina knelt beside him. "You have made your choice, Dante. Between me and this mortal woman you crave. You've chosen her."
"Why must I choose at all?"
"Will you come with me now? Leave her behind?"
He grimaced in pain. "I can't do that."
"Then you've chosen her." She brought her arm to her lips, bit a gash in her wrist, and pressed it to his mouth. Dante clutched her hand and drank as Sarafina went on. "This is the last time I will ever help you, Dante. You'll never have the chance to betray me again."
She jerked her wrist away, grabbed a strip of cloth Max had left on the ground and twisted it around the wound, using her teeth and one hand to knot it tight.
"I haven't betrayed you. Sarafina, wait... "
Without another word or a backward glance, she walked away, into the night, skirts dancing in the wind, bracelets and bangles jingling like bells. Dante closed his eyes. Aching, Max thought.
"Come on, Lou. Let's get him into the car. We have to get him back to Morgan."
Lou glanced at the sky as they hoisted Dante between them. "It'll be dawn soon."
"She won't last another day. It has to be now. If we're not already too late." She searched Dante's face. "Was she telling the truth about that? That it might not even work."
"If she's too near death, if I'm too weak... " Dante sighed and shook off their supporting arms, walking the rest of the way to the car unsteadily, but under his own power. He got into the back seat. Lou and Max got in the front. "It'll work," Dante said as Lou started the car, backed out the driveway. "It has to." Lou put the car in drive, and stomped the accelerator to the floor.
