Crimson Shadows Read online

  "Why did you finally come to me?" Meghann asked. "Did you ... is Mikal somewhere near Ellie now? Do you have some kind of evidence he's in New York?"

  "No, little one," Simon assured her. "I arrived simply because I could no longer bear to be separated from my wife and child. I had no idea I would arrive in time for Mikal's despicable slaughter of your dear

  friend. But don't worry, sweet—he won't harm anyone else. I will protect you, Elizabeth, and Lee." It

  came as no surprise to Meghann that Simon omitted Jimmy Delacroix from the list of those he'd watch over.

  "You do understand what needs to be done?" Simon asked her softly, his eyes almost looking regretful as they held hers.

  "How will we .. stop him?" she asked, unable to say aloud that she knew Mikal had to be killed.

  "What was Alcuin's plan to destroy me when I first emerged from obscurity to reclaim you?"

  "I was bait," Meghann remembered. "He didn't take me back to Ballnamore because he wanted to flush you out by leaving me in the open. Alcuin knew you'd come for me and then he planned to kill you... and that's what you're going to do with Mikal! You know he's found out where we live because he sent.. because he sent that awful thing to me. You're going to lift the barrier from the house and let him enter

  and then you're going to attack! But what if he strikes during the day?"

  "We will sleep elsewhere during the day," Simon explained. "And return to Southampton at night. We will not have to wait long, Meghann. Mikal is impulsive and impatient... he will not be able to resist his chance to hurt you and Elizabeth."

  Mehann nodded her consent to Simon's plan and they were silent when the plane descended into Gabreski Airport, the private airstrip that serviced the helicopters and private planes of the rich residents of the Hamptons.

  From Gabreski, it was only a ten-minute drive to the beach house. Meghann and Simon made no attempt at conversation—he was busy driving while she attended to Lee, wrapping a blanket around him to

  minimize his shock while she put a cold compress against his forehead.

  Grimly, Meghann stared out the tinted window of Simon's Bentley, thinking the grim rainstorm that had followed them from Chicago matched her mood. She watched the rain pour down on the world in a thick, heavy sheet that cleared the roads of all but the most foolhardy mortal drivers and wondered if the clouds that had settled over her own mind would ever lift. For even if Mikal was destroyed before he hurt anyone else, Meghann had already lost Charles, all ready felt in her heart a galling pain at the abhorrent task ahead of her.

  When they pulled up in front of the house, Simon helped Lee shuffle up the steps to the rotunda while Meghann rushed ahead of them, hands over her head in a feeble effort to avoid the rain.

  Meghann shook her waterlogged hair and kicked off her dripping sandals on the porch, frowning because she couldn't feel her daughter's presence anywhere within the house. Where was Ellie? Why wasn't she greeting her parents?

  Both those questions were answered when Jimmy Delacroix threw open the front door, disheveled and panicked as he grabbed Meghann and screamed "Maggie, Maggie, thank God you're back... Ellie has disappeared!"

  Ten

  The words were barely out of Jimmy’s mouth when Simon launched himself at Jimmy with a rumbling, wolf-like snarl, the force of his attack hurling Jimmy off his feet while Meghann stumbled backward, falling away from Jimmy’s grasping hands.

  “You failed to protect my daughter, you miserable swine?” Simon roared and wrapped his hands around Jimmy’s neck, seeming determined to decapitate him by sheer brute force. “I’ll have your life for this!”

  “Simon, no,” Meghann pleaded, snapping out of the miserable daze Jimmy’s words threw her into. “Don’t hurt him.”

  Simon ignored her, his entire attention focused on strangling Jimmy. Meghann stared in alarm at Jimmy’s bulging, unfocused eyes and blue skin. Was it possible to suffocate a vampire?

  “No!” Meghann said, putting more strength in her voice. “If you kill him, we’ll never find Ellie.”

  “What the devil are you talking about?” Simon snapped, not letting up one bit on the pressure he applied to Jimmy’s neck. “It is his fault entirely that she’s vanished. I ordered him to watch over her all last night and then sedate her so she’d spend the day asleep and unmolested. Somehow, he failed…unsurprising, considering what he is.”

  “But he was the last one to see her alive,” Meghann said and her voice broke on that last word. What if Ellie was no longer alive? No,no!

  I’d know if she were dead, Mehann thought desperately. I’d feel it. Hadn’t she heard her daughter call out to her barely an hour ago, telling Meghann she needed her? But what if Ellie had been killed since then?

  “Meghann.” Simon rushed over when she began crying frightened, miserable tears. Jimmy fell to the floor, gasping for breath, while Simon embraced Meghann, crooning. “Don’t weep, we’ll find Elizabeth and bring her home safe.”

  “But we need Jimmy for that,” Meghann sobbed, blowing her nose loudly in the silk handkerchief Simon gave her. “Don’t you see? We have to piece together when she disappeared and we can’t do that if you kill off the last person to see her.”

  “You are correct, Meghann,” Simon said and glared over at Jimmy, now making an effort to stand while he gingerly rubbed his neck. “I shall attend to you after we find Elizabeth.”

  “Fuck you,” Jimmy muttered and it was hard to say who looked more surprised, him or Simon, when Meghann screamed, “Stop it!” in a voice that shattered the beveled glass sunburst panel in the front door.

  “Stop it!” she yelled again, shrill and furious. “I’m so tired of you…both of you…behaving like such goddamned children! What the hell is wrong with the two of you? Stop it, or…or get out. I mean it. You can both just get the hell out of here and I’ll…I’ll find Ellie myself.”

  Simon and Jimmy both stared at her in sullen silence for several moments before Simon turned to Lee and took his arm, escorting the weak mortal inside the house. As he passed Jimmy, Simon’s mouth curled but all he said was, “We’ll be in the study,” in the same crisply authoritative voice he’d use to address a servant.

  Jimmy seemed about to retort but glanced over at Meghann and nodded curtly.

  “What’s the matter with Lee?” he asked Meghann as they walked into the house together.

  “He’s transforming,” Meghann replied.

  “Jesus!” Jimmy exclaimed. “Why the hell would he want to do that with Charles gone?”

  “To defend his daughter,” Meghann said and her voice trembled.

  “We’ll find her, Maggie,” Jimmy sad and pressed her hand tightly. Meghann felt the tension and fear in grip but instead of intensifying her feelings of dread, they calmed her somehow-as though she could find succor with someone as concerned for her daughter as she was. “I feel that Ellie’s okay, that nothing…bad…has happened to her. Come on, reach out with that famous Sight of yours and feel if Ellie’s all right.”

  “That’s what I plan to do,” Meghann said, pleased that Jimmy was starting to think like a vampire and implored her to call upon her occult powers. “Did Ellie sleep in her old room last night?”

  “Huh! Uh, yeah.”

  Meghann glanced at him quizzically, and then decided that brief hesitation she heard in his voice was merely anxiety. “Then that’s the first place I’ll go, after I ask you a few questions. I know I’ll be able to pick something up on Ellie if I stand in her bedroom.”

  “Yeah,” Jimmy muttered, looking rather ashen to Meghann. He must still be off-balance from Simon’s attack, she thought.

  In the study, Simon didn’t even wait for Jimmy to seat himself but immediately demand, “When did you last see my daughter?”

  “Right before I went to sleep,” Jimmy said, looking at Meghann instead of Simon. “A few minutes after Maggie called.”

  “Did you sedate her as I requested?”

  “That’s not fair,” Meghan
n answered before Jimmy could speak. “Even if Jimmy did force something on her, the strongest sedative we have in this house would knock her out for twelve hours at the most. She could have woken by six and left the house before Jimmy rose for the evening.”

  Simon neither disputed nor conceded Meghann’s point, simply saying thoughtfully. “I do not believe she was abducted from the estate. I have no impression of a struggle. It is my belief that someone lured Elizabeth away…she left here of her own free will.”

  Meghann nodded agreement, wondering who the hell could have been so persuasive after she and Simon had both pleaded with Ellie not to leave the house for any reason.

  “A friend probably wouldn’t have such influence,” Simon ruminated, his thoughts running parallel to Meghann’s. That leaves only one option. Has Elizabeth any serious beaux, Meghann?”

  “Mickey Hollingsworth,” she answered immediately.

  “Who the hell is Mickey?” Jimmy demanded sharply and Meghann turned to him, her eyes narrowed speculatively. Why in the world should Jimmy care who Ellie dated?

  “Ellie’s boyfriend,” Meghann answered, deciding the unpleasant note in Jimmy’s voice was probably some proprietary, fathering instinct; certainly he’d helped her raise Ellie almost as much as Charles and Lee had.

  “You say his name in Mickey? What does he look like?” Simon demanded, with a hard, driving edge that was the closest thing to panic she’d ever heard in his voice.

  “Tall,” Meghann said, cudgeling her memory for details of a boy she’d only met once. “Very tall and thin. Long black hair, wears it in a ponytail…”

  “When did Elizabeth meet him?”

  “Six months ago,” Meghann answered promptly and then the full impact of her response hit her. Six months ago…when Mikal had gone to Ballnamore and possibly tortured those vampires for information on where his mother and twin sister lived.

  “No!” Meghann screamed, horrified and sickened to think Ellie’s first boyfriend might be…

  “No!” she repeated and jabbered nervously at Simon, “I’d have recognized Mikal. His eyes…they’re still that strange silvery color, aren’t they? Mikal has blue eyes, plain old blue eyes…”

  “Have you ever heard of contact lenses?” Simon questioned tonelessly, looking as disturbed as Meghann felt.

  “How could I not recognize my own son?” she cried.

  “Meghann,” Lee interrupted, his voice barely above a whisper. “I think I hear the computer in the den…”

  Meghann cocked her ear and heard the chimes Ellie had chosen to herald the announcement of an E-mail. She rushed into the den, Simon and Jimmy following fast on her heels. The E-mail could be from Ellie.

  Please, Meghann prayed as she fumbled with the mouse to open the message. Let Ellie be safe. Let her have just been thoughtless and left the house for some silly reason. I won’t even yell at her for making me worry; I just want her to be all right…

  The E-mail had a video clip Meghan downloaded and then she found herself staring into the leering face of a boy known to her and Ellie as Mickey Hollingsworth but Simon immediately called Mikal.

  “Maggie,” her son said affably, the camera focused entirely on his face…his face!

  “How is he doing that?” Meghann said through numb, cold lips. “Vampires don’t show up on film.”

  “One of his mortal characteristics,” Simon said tersely. “He has a mirror image. I’ve often wondered if the ability to cast a reflection is related to his inability to fly the astral plane.”

  Meghann stared dumbly at the computer, trying and failing to find and resemblance between the sepulcher image on the screen and he endearingly awkward boy those nondescript contact lenses that his Mikal’s true nature? Certainly, he could not allow his eyes to be seen in public. People would run from him screaming in horror if they saw those flat, silver eyes that looked like two nickels welded into an unearthly pale face with a fine tracery of reddish veins marring the white surface. Meghann suspected Mikal had deliberately starved himself before making this video to appear as grotesque as possible before his mother.

  The video image of Mikal spoke with malevolent cheeriness, all his comments directed to Meghan. “I hope you do not mind my informality but I simply cannot address you as ‘Mother’ or think of you as Meghann, the exalted angel perching on Father’s pedestal.”

  The camera panned back to expose the room behind Mikal an Meghann screamed at the image behind him-Ellie nude, shackled hand and foot with thick steel cuffs to a dark wall, her legs spread while her head lolled on her shoulders.

  “Ellie,” Meghann moaned at the sight of her daughter’s body, a hideous mass of deep purple bruises and shocking welts. Shakily, Meghann’s hands touched the computer screen, caressing it as though she could reach Ellie and provide some comfort to her child’s tortured body.

  Mikal strolled over to Ellie and lewdly placed his hand between her legs but Ellie didn’t stir. Thank God, Meghann thought. Thank God her daughter had outwitted this monster by retreating to a state where nothing he did could disturb her.

  But Meghann could be disturbed, especially when Mikal first flicked his tongue between his sister’s legs and then attacked her left thigh, consuming Ellie’s blood save for the slight crimson trickle that poured down her leg and gathered in an unsightly pool by her feet.

  “Ellie,” Meghann cried again, and the ghastly sight of her daughter being tortured by the twisted beast that set out to lure his unsuspecting twin into incest started to fade as Meghann’s mind spun out of control. Her last thought before chaos enveloped her was that the despicable monster taunting her from the computer screen couldn’t possibly be…

  “Mickey,” Ellie said, holding the hand of a pleasant but not overly handsome young man. “This is my...sister, Maggie.”

  Meghann smiled ruefully at that hesitancy no one else would catch as Ellie introduced her daughter to call her sister as it was for Meghann to hear it. But the ruse was a necessity.

  “Hello, Mickey,” Meghann said and shook the boy’s hand “I’ve heard so much about you. Please come inside for a few minutes.”

  Did she sound too stuffy, Meghann fretted as Ellie and Mickey accompanied her into the atrium where Charles and Lee waited. God, she’d sounded so starched and pressed with that ‘I’ve heard so much about you’ business. In her own defense, she didn’t entirely have the hang of this yet, meeting and greeting her daughter’s boyfriends.

  Can I really have a daughter old enough to date? Meghann reflected with some incredulity. In theory, of course, Meghann was old enough to have a great great granddaughter going on dates but Meghann couldn’t reconcile the plump bundle she’s cuddled and cooed as to the whip-slim young lady smiling at her boyfriend.

  “What are your plans for tonight?” Lee questioned and Meghann smiled archly, thinking he sounded even more stilted than her.

  Well, no wonder…poor Lee was the one who’d written out a prescription for the Pill after Ellie’s stammered request. This entire meeting had come about because Meghann, Lee, and Charles insisted on meeting the boy Ellie said she might not be in love with, but was serious enough about to want to pursue a sexual relationship.

  “You don’t have to be in love to enjoy sex,” Meghann said during the heart-to-heart that followed Ellie’s request. She was determined not to lie or fill Elli’s head with ideals she’d never lived up to. Meghann hadn’t loved any of the men she took to her bed after she left Simon. “But at the very least, you ought to like and respect them…and make damn sure they respect you.”

  Mickey certainly seemed respectful, Meghann thought, to Ellie and the rest of them. He complimented the house and exhibited polite interest in all of them.

  He smiled when Ellie spoke of Lee’s many contributions to infertility treatments and asked insightful questions of him and Charles, currently engaged in enzyme synthesis work that might provide cures to people stricken with diseases like MS, but he showed the most interest in Meghann’s psychoanalytic
research.

  “In another century, you’d be called a witch,” Mickey said with a trace of upper-class British accent. “Seeing into men’s souls the way you do.”

  “One generation’s sorcery is another’s science,” Charles said, smiling at Meghann as he filled her wine glass.

  Mickey nodded and then spoke in a voice Meghann found charming. It seemed like he was always on the verge of laughter, listening to some delicious joke only he could hear. “I hope you will not think less of me, but I must confess I have a penchant for the true-crime novels written by so many of your contemporaries, Maggie. I love the way they allow you to glimpse of a dark mind.”

  “I don’t think less of you at all, Mickey,” Meghann smiled. “But you must be careful with those books. There are a few gems but most of them are unspeakable trash, written quickly and with little thoughts at all.”

  “Is there any book you’d recommend?” Mickey asked “I’m done with my courses at Oxford now and I’m finding it difficult to nourish my mind without aid of my schoolmasters.”

  “Helter Skelter,” Meghann said after a moment’s thought. “Marvelously insightful, well-written, a brilliant account of Charles Manson and his ‘family.’”

  “Wasn’t Manson somewhat unusual?” Ellie put in. “I thought psychos preferred to work alone.”

  “They usually do,” Meghann said, thinking not only of mortal psychopaths but vampires. For the most part, they were lone-wolf predators. Her friendship with Charles marriage to Simon Baldevar was most unusual in their world…vampires tended to remain unattached, not wishing to share their prey with any fellow immortals nearby.

  “But Manson managed to gather a nest of misfits together,” Mickey said, looking boyish in his avid interest. “How do you think he did that, Maggie? Put the instability of his family members to work for him?”

  “He was intensely charismatic,” Meghann replied “Not unusual in sociopaths…they have a tendency to blend in with their surroundings, to be able to identify a persons strengths and weakness and then prey on them to suit their own warped needs.”