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…”
“Madam?”
She turned to see a doorman with a question in his eyes. “You’re going inside?” he asked.
“You tell that moron when he gets back that if he scratched my car, I’ll take it out of his hide. And it’s mademoiselle. Not every thirtysomething female is married, you know.”
“Of course, mademoiselle.” He opened the door, his face betraying no hint of emotion. It would have been much more satisfying if he’d been defensive or hostile or even apologetic. But…nothing.
She headed straight for her room and started a bath running, intending to phone Max and fill her in from the tub. She was upset. She was shaken. She was damned scared of what the sight of that ring had done to her.
She’d spoken in Romanian. And she knew exactly what she’d said, even though she didn’t speak a word of the language and never had.
The ring belongs to me.
Elisabeta. It had to have been her voice.
Sixteen years ago, she’d begun having these symptoms. Blacking out, speaking in a strange language, becoming violent, attacking even her best friends and, usually, remembering nothing. It was as if she were possessed by an alien soul, as if her body were a marionette with some stranger pulling the strings.
Max said her eyes changed color, turned from their normal baby blue to a dark, fathomless ebony, during those episodes.
Through hypnosis, she’d learned the intruder’s name. Elisabeta. And she knew, in her gut, that the woman had some connection to Vlad. An intimate one.
Vlad had been under attack, had taken her hostage to aid in his escape. Even then, she’d been drawn to him. His muscled, powerful body. His long, raven’s wing hair. His eyes—the intensity in them when he looked at her. She remembered kissing him as if there were no tomorrow. Or maybe that had never happened; maybe that was fantasy. A delicious erotic fantasy that left her with a deep ache in her loins and her soul. She remembered hoping he could help her solve the mystery of who Elisabeta was and why she was haunting Stormy. Trying to take over. And maybe he had. But though, upon her return, Max had told her that she had been Vlad’s captive for than a week, Stormy remembered nothing.
She only knew that since her
