Prince of Twilight

“The latest from bestselling Shayne is an interesting, inventive tale.”

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“Maggie Shayne delivers romance with sweeping intensity and bewitching passion.”

—New York Times bestselling author Jayne Ann Krentz

Maggie Shayne

Prince of Twilight

MILLS & BOON

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Contents

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Prologue

Fifteenth Century

Romania

“We have to bury her, my son.”

Vlad stood in the small stone chapel beside his beloved new bride. Elisabeta’s skin was as cold as the stone bier on which she lay. She wore the pale green wedding gown the servants had found for her on the day their hasty vows had been exchanged. The skirt draped on either side of her, swathing the stone slab in beauty. Her hair, pale as spun silver and endlessly long, spread around her head, as if pillowing her in a cloud.

“My son—” This time the old priest’s words were accompanied by his hand, clasping Vlad’s shoulder.

Vlad whirled on the man. “No! She is not to be put in the ground. Not yet. I won’t allow it.”

A little fear joined the pity in the old man’s eyes. Not enough, not yet. “I know this is difficult—I do. But she deserves to be laid to rest.”

“I said no,” Vlad repeated, his tone tired, his heart dead. Then he turned from the priest and focused again where he needed to focus: upon her, upon his bride. Their time together had been too short. One night and then part of a second before he’d been called into battle. It wasn’t right.

The priest still hovered.

“Get out, before I draw my blade and send you out in pieces.” Vlad’s words were barely more than a hoarse whisper, yet filled with enough menace to elicit a clipped gasp from the cleric.

“I’ll send in your father. Perhaps he can—”

Vlad turned to send a warning glare over his shoulder. Brief, but powerful enough to reduce most mortals to tears.

“I’m going, my liege.” The priest bowed a little as he backed through the chapel doors.

Vlad sighed in relief when the doors closed once again, leaving him alone with his grief. He leaned over Elisabeta’s body, lowered his head to her chest, and let his tears soak the gown. “Why, my love? Why did you do this? Was our love not worthy of a single day’s grieving? I told you I would come back. Why couldn’t you have believed in me?”

A soft creaking sound accompanied by a stiff night breeze and the gentle clearing of an aging throat told him that his respite was over. Vlad forced himself to straighten, to turn and face his father—for truly, the man had become as much a father to him as any had been, since Utnapishtim.

The old king was pale and unsteady. He’d lost a daughter-in-law he’d been close, already, to loving—and for three days he had believed that he had lost his son, as well.

He crossed the small room, his gait uneven and slow, then wrapped his frail arms around Vlad’s shoulders and hugged him hard, as hard as his strength would allow. “Alive,” he muttered. “By the gods, my son, you’re alive after all.”

Vlad closed his eyes as he returned his father’s embrace. “Alive, father, but none too glad to be, just now.” As he said it, he looked back at his bride.

His father did, as well, releasing his hold on Vlad to move closer to the bier. “I cannot tell you how it grieves me to see you in such pain, much less to witness the loss of such a precious young woman as Elisabeta.”

“I know.”

“Your friend, the foreign woman—she told you what transpired?”

Vlad nodded. “Rhiannon is…an old friend. And a dear one. She said she arrived here for a visit just after I was called to defend our borders.”

“So she did. We put her up. Fussy one, she is, and I don’t believe she thought highly of your chosen bride. Were the two of you…?”

“As close as any two people can be,” Vlad told him. “But we had no claims on each other. She would not have been jealous.”

“She called the princess a—now what was the word she used…? Ah yes, a whiner,” the king said softly. “To her face, no less.”

Vlad nodded, not doubting it.

“When word came that you’d been killed on the field of battle, poor Elisabeta took to the tower room and bolted the door. I had men trying to break it down right up until—”

“I know, Father. I know you did all you could.”

The king lowered his head, perhaps to hide the rush of tears into his clouded blue eyes. “Tell me what I can do to ease your grief.”

Vlad thought about that, thought about it hard. Rhiannon was no ordinary woman but a former priestess of Isis and daughter of Pharoah. She was skilled in the occult arts, and she had told Vlad that he would find Elisabeta again—she had foreseen it—in five hundred years’ time, if he could live that long. What she hadn’t promised was that Beta would be the same woman he had loved and lost, or that she would remember him and love him again.

“There is something I can do for you,” the king said softly. “I can see it in your eyes. Speak it, my son, and it shall be done, whatever it is.”

Vlad met his father’s eyes and felt love for the man. True love, though the king was not his true father. “I cannot let them bury her. Not yet. I need you to send our finest riders upon our fastest mounts, Father. Send them out into the countryside to gather the most skilled sorcerers, diviners, wizards and witches in the land. I don’t care what it takes. I must have them here before my beloved is put into the cold ground.”

The king looked worriedly into his eyes. “My son, you must know that even the most skilled magician won’t be able to bring her back. Buried or not, she resides among the dead now.”

He nodded once, closed his eyes against that probing, caring stare. “I know that, Father. I only need to be sure she’s at peace.”

“But the priest—”

“His prayers are not enough. I want to be sure. Please, Father, you said you would do anything to ease my pain. This shall ease it, if anything can.”

The king nodded firmly. “Then it shall be done.”

“And Father—until they come, keep everyone from here. And even then, let them in only by night.”

The old man was used to Vlad’s nocturnal nature by now. He nodded, and Vlad knew the promise would be kept.

The king left, and Vlad drew his bloodstained sword, then stood between the bier and the chapel door. When the sun rose, he barred the door, drew a tapestry from the wall and wrapped himself in it. When the sun set again, he was forced to lay the fabric over Elisabeta’s body or witness it begin to change with the ravages of death. And before the third night was through, the scent of death and decay hung heavy on the air.

But finally, at midnight of the third night, the chapel doors opened again, and several men entered. No women were among them. They entered in a rush of wind, dressed in dull white traveling robes of wool, for the most part, though one wore a finer fabric in rich, russet tones, its edges embroidered with a pattern of twisting green vines.

They all dropped to one knee, bowing low before him. The one in the brown said, “My prince, we came as rapidly as we could manage. Our hearts are heavy with grief at the loss of the princess.”

“Yes,” he said. “Rise. I need your help.”

The men looked at one another nervously. There were five, he saw now. Locals, mostly, though one appeared to be from the East, and another was Moorish in appearance.

“We are honored if we can be of service,” the apparent spokesman said. “But I know not what we can do. Against death, even we are powerless.”

He nodded and thought of Gilgamesh, the legendary king of Sumer. His own desperate search for the key of life had resulted in the creation of an entire race—the Undead. Vampires. Like Vlad, and Rhiannon, and so many others. But it had never resulted in the great king’s dear friend Enkidu returning from death.

Maybe, Vlad thought, his own quest was just as mad. But he had to try.

“I do not ask you to conquer death. Only to ensure that when I find her again, I will know her—and that she will know me. And remember. And love me again.”

The magicians and sorcerers frowned, seeking understanding in each other’s faces.

“A powerful seer has told me that the princess will return to me in another lifetime. But it will be in the distant future.”

“But, my liege, you would be aged and she but an infant.”

“That’s not your concern, sorcerer. I want only to ensure that when she does return—and reaches a decent age—she will remember all that came before, that she will be the woman she was in this lifetime. Can you or can you not fulfill this request?”

One man began to whisper to another, and Vlad caught the words “unnatural” and “immoral,” but the man in brown held up a hand to silence them. Then he approached Vlad slowly, cautiously, and at last he nodded. “We can and we shall, my liege. Go, get sustenance, rest. She’ll be safe in our care, I promise you.”

Vlad gazed at the shape beneath the tapestry. No longer his Elisabeta, but a shell that had formerly held her essence. He looked at the men again. “Do not fear to try. It is a lot I ask of you. I give my word, I will not exact punishment should you fail, so long as you do the very best you can. On her memory, I vow it to you.”

The men bowed deeply, and he glimpsed relief on their faces. Truly, Vlad was not known for his mercy or understanding. He left them to their work. But he didn’t rest, and he didn’t feed. He couldn’t—not until he knew.

It was four a.m. when a servant boy came to fetch him back to the chapel, and as he hurried there, he saw that the door was open and the priest was coming out, wafting a censer before him. Behind him, men came bearing the corpse, buried in flowers, upon a litter.

And behind them came the wizards and sorcerers, who met Vlad’s eyes and nodded to tell him that they had been successful. The man in russet came to him, while the others kept the slow pace behind the funeral procession. The priest’s servant rang a bell, and the gruff-voiced cleric intoned his prayers loudly, so that others from the castle and the village joined in as they passed, many carrying candles or lamps. No one in the village had slept this night, awaiting the princess’s burial, and so the procession grew larger and longer as it wound onward, a writhing serpent dotted with lights.

“My prince,” said the man in brown. “We have done it. Take this.”

He handed Vlad a scroll, rolled tightly and held by a ruby ring—the ring he’d given to Elisabeta. It had been on her finger. Seeing it caused pain to stab deeply, and he sucked in a breath.

“I don’t understand,” he said. “You removed her wedding ring. Why?”

“We performed a powerful ritual, commanding a part of her essence to remain earthbound. The ring is the key that holds her and will one day release her. When a future incarnation of Elisabeta returns to you, all you will need to do is put this ring upon her finger and perform the rite contained on this scroll, and she will be restored to the very Elisabeta she was before. She will remember everything. And she will love you again.”

“Are you sure?” Vlad asked, afraid to believe, to hope.

“On my life, my prince, I swear to you it is true. There is only one caveat. And this could not be helped, for we risk our very souls by tampering with matters of life and death and the afterlife. The gods must be allowed their say.”

“The gods. It was they who saw fit to take her from me this way. To hell with the gods.”

“My prince!” The sorcerer looked around as if fearing Vlad’s blasphemy might have been overheard by the deities themselves.

“Tell me of this caveat, then,” Vlad snapped. “But be quick. I must attend to my wife’s burial.”

The man boldly took hold of Vlad’s arm and began walking beside him, catching them up to the procession, while keeping enough distance for privacy. “If the rite has not been performed by the time the Red Star of Destiny eclipses Venus, then the gods have not willed it, and the magick will expire.”

“And what will happen to Elisabeta then?”

“Her soul will be set free. All parts of her soul, the part we’ve held earthbound, and any other parts that may have been reborn into the physical realm. All will be free.”

“And by free, you mean…dead,” Vlad whispered. He gripped the man by the front of his russet robes and lifted him off his feet. “You’ve done nothing!”

“Death is but an illusion, my liege! Life is endless. And you’ll have time—vast amounts of time—in which to find her again, I swear.”

He narrowed his eyes on the sorcerer, tempted to draw his blade and slide it between the man’s ribs. But instead, he lowered him to the ground again. “How much time? When, exactly, does this red star of yours next eclipse Venus?”

“Not for slightly more than five hundred and twenty years, my liege, as nearly as I can calculate.”

Vlad swallowed his pain and his raging grief. Rhiannon had predicted he would find his Elisabeta again in five hundred years. His chief concern at the time had been wondering how the hell he could manage to survive so long without her; how he could bear the pain.

Now he had an added worry. When he did find her, would it be in time to enact the spell, perform the rite, and restore her memory and her soul?

By the gods, it had to be. He was determined. He must not fail.

He would not.

He was no ordinary man, nor even an ordinary vampire, after all.

He was Dracula.

1

Present day

“Melina Roscova,” the slender blond woman said, extending a hand. “You must be Maxine Stuart?”

“It’s Maxine Malone, and no, I’m not her.” Stormy took the woman’s hand. It was cool and her grip very strong. “Stormy Jones,” she said. “Max and Lou are busy with another case, and we didn’t think it would take all three of us to conduct the initial interview.”

“I see.” Melina released her grip and dug in her pocket for a business card. “I guess this must be out of date.”

Stormy took the card, looked it over. The SIS logo superimposed itself over the words Supernatural Investigations Services. In smaller letters were their names, Maxine Stuart, Lou Malone, Tempest Jones and beneath that, in a fancy script, Experienced, professional, discreet and a toll-free number.

She handed the card back. “Yeah, that’s pretty old. Maxie and Lou got hitched sixteen years ago now. Of course, we didn’t get new cards made up until we’d used all the old ones. You have to be practical, you know.”

“Naturally.”

“So why all the mystery?” Stormy asked. “And why did you want to meet here?”

As she spoke, they moved through the entrance and into the vaulted corridors of the Canadian National Museum. Their steps echoed as they walked. Melina paid the entry fee in cash, and led the way deeper into the building.

“No mystery. I want you to handle a sensitive case for me. Discretion—” she tapped the old business card against her knuckle “—is imperative.”

“You can trust us on that,” Stormy said. “We wouldn’t still be in business after all this time if we didn’t know how to keep our mouths shut.” She looked at a threadbare tapestry on display inside a glass case. Its colors had faded to gray, and it looked as if a stiff breeze would reduce it to a pile of lint. “So why this place?”

“This is where it is,” Melina said, eyeing several tarnished silver pieces in another case. Bowls, urns, pendants.

“Where what is?”

“What you need to see. But it won’t be here for long. It’s part of a traveling exhibit. Artifacts uncovered on a recent archaeological dig in the northern part of Turkey.”

Stormy eyed her, waiting for her to say more, but Melina fell silent and moved farther along the hall, among line drawings and diagrams of dig sites, framed like pieces of art. Then she turned to go through two open doors into a large room. There were items lining the walls, all of them safely behind glass barriers. Brass trinkets, steel blades with elaborately carved handles of bone and ivory. Stormy glanced at the items on display, then rubbed her arms, suddenly cold to the bone. “You’d think they’d turn on the heat in here. It’s freezing,” she muttered. Then, to distract herself from the rush of discomfort, she snatched up a flyer from a stack in a nearby rack and read from it. According to it, the items found didn’t match the culture of the area in which they’d been located, and many were thought to be the spoils of war, brought home by soldiers who looted them from faraway lands and conquered enemies. The dig site was believed to have been a monastery of sorts—a place where men went to study magic and the occult.

“Here it is,” Melina said.

Stormy dragged her gaze from the flyer to where the other woman stood a few yards away, in front of a small glass cube that sat atop a pedestal. Inside the cube, resting on a clear acrylic base, was a ring. It was big, its wide band more elaborately engraved than the gaudiest high school class ring she’d ever seen. Its gleaming red stone was as big as one of those, too, only she was pretty sure this stone was real.

“It’s a ruby,” Melina said, confirming Stormy’s unspoken suspicion. “It’s priceless. Isn’t it incredible?”

Stormy didn’t reply. She couldn’t take her eyes off the ring. For a moment it was as if she were seeing it through a long, dark tunnel. Everything around her went black, her vision riveted to the ring, her eyes unable to see anything else. And then she heard a voice.

“Inelul else al meu!”

The voice—it came from her own throat. Her lips were moving, but she wasn’t moving them. The sensation was as if she had become a puppet, or a dummy in some ventriloquist act. Her body was moving all on its own, her hands reaching for the glass case, palms pressing to either side of it, lifting it from its base.

A hand closed hard on her arm and jerked her away. “Ms. Jones, what the hell are you doing?”

Stormy blinked rapidly as her body snapped back on line. She saw Melina holding her upper arm while looking around the room as if waiting for the Canadian version of a SWAT team to swarm in.

Stormy cleared her throat. “Did I set off any alarms?”

“I don’t think so,” Melina said. “There are sensors on the pedestal. They kick in only if the ring is removed.”

Frowning as her head cleared, Stormy stared at her. “Why do you know that?”

“It’s my job to know. Are you all right?”

Nodding, Stormy avoided the other woman’s eyes. “Yeah. Fine. I…zoned out for a minute, that’s all.”

But it wasn’t all. And she wasn’t fine. Far from it. She hadn’t had an episode like that in sixteen years, but she knew the sensations that had swamped her just now. Knew them well. She would never forget. Never. She hadn’t felt that way in sixteen years, not since the last time she’d been with him. With Dracula. The one and only. And though her memory of the specifics of that time with him was a dark void, her memories of…being possessed remained. And memories of Dracula or not, she’d heard his voice just a moment ago, whispering close to her.

Without the ring and the scroll, I’m afraid there is no hope.

What did it mean? Was he here? Nearby? And why, when she remembered so little about their time together, had that phrase come floating in to her memory now?

No. He wouldn’t come back to her when he knew what it did to her mind and body. He’d let her go in order to spare her going through that madness anymore. Or so she liked to believe. She’d awakened in Rhiannon’s private jet, on her way back home. And, like all of Vlad’s victims before her, her memory of her time with him had been erased.

But not her feelings for him. Inexplicable or not, she had felt a deep sense of loss, and she’d been dying inside a little more with every single day that had passed since.

He wasn’t here. He wouldn’t put her through that again. Unless…

She looked again at the ring. God, could this be the ring he’d been talking about? And what had he meant by that cryptic phrase? It was hell not remembering. Sheer hell. She should hate him for playing with her mind the way he had. Over and over she’d struggled and fought to recall the time she’d spent with him, after he’d abducted her in the dead of night so long ago. She’d even tried hypnosis, but it hadn’t worked. Nothing had. He’d robbed her of memories she sensed might be some of the best of her life. Damn him for that.

“Ms. Jones? Stormy?”

Turning slowly, she met Melina’s far too curious brown eyes. “The ring is the reason you want to hire us?”

“Yes. What’s your connection to it?”

Stormy frowned. “I don’t know what you mean. I have no connection to it.”

“You certainly had a strong reaction to it.”

She shook her head. “I had a head injury a long time ago. Occasional blackouts are a side effect.”

“Speaking in tongues is a side effect, as well?”

“It’s gibberish. It doesn’t mean anything. Look, the condition of my skull is really not the issue here. Are you going to tell me what this job entails or not?”

Melina looked at her, pursed her lips and lowered her voice. “I want you to steal it,” she whispered.

Stormy wasn’t sure what she had said as she had made a hasty exit from the museum. She thought she had told Melina Roscova to do something anatomically impossible, and then she’d left. She hadn’t stopped until she’d pulled up in front of the Royal Arms Hotel, where she handed her car keys and a ten-spot to a valet.

“Be careful with her,” she told him. “She’s special.”

He promised he would be, and she watched him as he drove her shiny black Nissan, with the customized plates that read Bella-Donna into the parking garage across the street. As he moved into the darkness, she heard tires squeal and winced. “One scratch, pal. You bring Belladonna back with one scratch…”