In Memories We Fear

Ten minutes later, Wade decided to follow Eleisha’s lead—in however she wanted to move through the following hours of this night. Although the crisis seemed to have passed, the situation was far from resolved.

But Philip stood back, away from everyone, and Maxim wouldn’t go near him. Eleisha had somehow gotten Maxim to put the tree branch down, and she was leading him back toward the shack. Wade couldn’t help being fascinated by the difference in this tragic creature from the last time he’d seen him.

She was holding Maxim’s hand as she led him closer. “Maxim, this is Wade,” she said. “You’ll like him. He’s nice, like Brandon.”

He can speak telepathically if you link with him, but he can’t instigate. Don’t go anywhere alone with him yet. Stay with Rose. I don’t know how he’ll act around a mortal, but he always responds to her gift.

Wade should have known. No matter what happened, no matter who it was they needed to help, no matter how grateful Eleisha might be to Wade, in the end, she would go running to Philip.

Philip’s coat was still open, and his ivory chest shone in the moonlight. His head had stopped bleeding. He saw her coming toward him and glanced away, as if he couldn’t bring himself to look at her. She was still unsettled over being so affected tonight by the mere sight of him.

His physical appearance was just part of his gift, part of the illusion he needed to hunt. She’d never let herself think much on it before.

Maybe because she had spent so much time in Maxim’s memories, among the vanity of vampires, and love of personal beauty, this thought was foremost in her conscious mind as she looked at Philip now. In her opinion, Maxim’s beauty had been a shadow next to Philip’s.

Philip was tall and fierce and strong. The clean lines of his face and his red-brown hair were perfect to her—even with his gift turned off.

When she reached him, neither one of them spoke at first, but she pointed to a large headstone near the trees. “Over there.”

She walked over and sat on the ground, leaning against the back of the headstone and thinking it poor manners to sit on the other side, on top of someone’s grave.

He followed and crouched down. “You don’t trust me,” he said finally, and from the pain in his voice, she knew what this had cost him to say.

“You didn’t trust my judgment,” she answered, regretting her response instantly as his face closed up. Attacking Philip was never the answer, and she knew it. Talking was not going to fix this.

She could feel his hesitation, and then his mind opened up. She rushed inside him, showing him her perspective from the night he’d first tried to take Maxim’s head, how Philip looked to her eyes, sounded in her ears. She showed him the dilemma of lying on that bed at the suite with her throat torn open, trying to decide what to do . . . and how difficult the final decision had been. She showed him scenes of her and Rose washing Maxim, and trying to trigger his ability to speak, all the while hoping Philip would understand later.

Suddenly, he pushed his own thoughts inside her mind. The onslaught was intense, and she had trouble absorbing the images and emotions at first, nearly falling over and catching herself on one hand. He started with the night Maxim had attacked her, showing her the same scenes from his own point of view. The scenes from his viewpoint were ugly, but she didn’t push him out. He saw Maxim as a feral, mad creature that had to be put down.

Then Eleisha manipulated Philip several times and abandoned him, putting herself and Rose in danger, leaving him and Wade in limbo with nothing to do but worry. He bitterly resented that she’d chosen Maxim over him, and he was embarrassed by this resentment, but he couldn’t help it, and he didn’t know what the future would hold if Eleisha continued down this path....

She wondered how other couples might be able to bridge vast divisions if they could share viewpoints like this. She felt terrible, having seen herself through his eyes, but he’d seen himself through hers.

“I didn’t put Maxim before you,” she said softly. “But I put the mission before everything else. That won’t change.”

He was quiet for a while and then said, “You saw that memory in Robert. The one of . . . me when I was like Maxim.”

Each word sounded torn from his mouth. Why did he care so much about that? She didn’t. As far as she and Philip were concerned, only one of Robert’s memories mattered.

“I don’t care about that memory,” she whispered. “I care about the one I showed you. The one you won’t even talk about.”

He rocked back on the balls of his feet. “The memory you . . . is that why you’ve been . . . don’t you know I . . . ?”

Without warning, he moved forward and gripped the back of her head, pressing his mouth down against hers. The sensation was shocking, and she stiffened, but then her mind became tangled with his again, and she could see that he had thought about Robert’s memory, over and over while he sat on a couch for the past few nights.

She reached up, kissing him this time. Neither one of them knew how to do this, but she wanted it more than anything else in that moment. She ran her hands down his chest, and he moaned. The sound was electrifying, and she kissed him harder, startled when he pressed his tongue into her mouth.

But she tried to respond, licking the tip of his tongue with her own. He pushed her back against the ground, and she could feel his weight on top of her, but she wasn’t afraid.

Almost instantly, the glow of his gift washed over and through her, making her want him even more. For the first time ever, she regretted her own gift. She didn’t want him to see her as helpless.

But he pushed her shirt up, running his hands up her back, touching her skin in a hungry rush, and she turned her gift on to join with his, only she channeled it and altered it slightly, focusing it upon how helpless she was without him.

He moaned louder at that, pushing harder against her, moving his hands over her breasts, then down her lower back, over her hips. He pushed deeper with his tongue. She lost herself inside his gift as Jessenia had with Robert, letting hers combine with his, until a great release burst inside her mind, flowing rapidly down through her body until she jerked and gasped. Philip had stopped kissing her, and his teeth were tightly clenched. He had a hold of the back of her neck with one hand, with his temple pressed up against her cheekbone as his body jerked several times.

Wade was growing more fascinated with Maxim by the moment—to the point where he was beginning to suffer guilt over having ever agreed with Philip that Maxim might be a hopeless case.

Not that Wade was ignoring Eleisha’s warnings. He was well aware that he was dealing with an unstable vampire. Somehow, Maxim looked smaller than Wade remembered. Maybe this was because he was wearing Philip’s too-large sweater and rolled-up pants?

“How did you get him talking?” Wade asked Rose quietly. He’d been inside Maxim’s mind back in London, and he’d seen no concept of language then.

“Eleisha forced his memories to surface. He started speaking soon after. She said he’d forgotten his own name.”

Wade looked around the shack. It was somewhat decrepit and long abandoned, but adequate for their needs, except for the temperature, which was cold. He wondered if the fireplace’s chimney was clear, and if he might start a fire. He looked through an open door at the back of the main room, spotting a mattress on the floor.

Maxim walked into the bedroom and lay down in the center of the mattress, but the short way, across it, so that his head, torso, and thighs were on the mattress, and his feet stretched out over the floor. He pointed to the left side. “Leisha.” Then he pointed right. “Rose.”

Oh, they’d all been sharing the mattress. That made sense, but it still surprised Wade. Eleisha and Rose seemed to have accepted Maxim rather quickly—not that he blamed them.

There were no windows in this room. Wade could almost not believe this was the same vampire from the streets of London. Rose was in the doorway, smiling at Maxim, and suddenly, Wade wanted to be alone with his new “patient” in spite of Eleisha’s concerns.

Maxim started slightly, and Wade wondered why, until he realized that his mental voice must sound so different from Eleisha’s inside Maxim’s thoughts.

The answer came clearly, and although Maxim’s speech patterns were still rudimentary, his mental voice was not hoarse like his spoken one.

He closed his eyes, and Wade locked into a memory of a fishing village in Hastings. The shack around him vanished as he was swept inside the image.

Rose didn’t wish to intrude, but she wanted to keep an eye on Wade. Once Wade launched into “a project,” he could be quite capable of losing perspective. She peered through the open door to see them both sitting cross-legged and sharing a memory. Good. The sooner Wade fully understood the situation, the better he could help restore some of Maxim’s former self.

Also, this had been a night of high emotions, and a little quiet time was more than welcome. She sank into a chair.

“Are they talking alone?” he asked, looking through the open door from a poor angle, so he couldn’t see the mattress.

“Is Eleisha all right?” she asked. Philip had almost lost control of himself earlier, and Rose never wished to see that again.

“Kissing him?” Rose’s mouth fell open, and she closed it quickly. “Are you sure? He’s not hurting her?”

“No, he’s not hurting her. I think she started it.” At the sight of Rose’s stunned face, Seamus shrugged. “Ah, Rose, I don’t know what she sees in him, but she’s not the first woman in history to use her body to solve a problem with a man, now, is she?”

Julian was on the verge of calling Mary back to the suite for some semblance of a report—anything—when she blinked back into the sitting room. Jasper had been watching television, and he stood up, hitting the off button on the remote.

But Julian could immediately tell something was wrong. He could always read Mary’s face, even when she didn’t burst into babbling the second she materialized.

Standing near the couch, close to Jasper, she crossed her arms and made a strange sound, almost as if she were breathing.

She shook her head. “It’s no good. The vamp isn’t so crazy anymore. Eleisha’s got him talking now, and Philip wouldn’t take the swing.”

While her word choices were confusing, the basic facts came through. Eleisha’s group was reunited, and Philip was back under her spell—and completely useless. Julian nearly closed his eyes. “What have you learned about the vampire himself? Is he new?”

Again, Mary shook her head. “No. Eleisha said he’s been alone for nearly two hundred years, and I think she meant a lot more alone than any of them. That’s probably why he went so fruit bat crackers. He’s been hiding from you someplace where he’s been really alone.”

Putting his fist to his mouth, he rolled all the things Mary was relating through his mind. First, he’d never heard of an elder named Maxim, and yet . . . one existed. Second, Eleisha had this elder speaking again, so every moment he spent with her group was a risk for Julian.

Wade pulled away from Maxim’s memories through sheer effort, choking and gasping for air. Maxim was lying on his side, gagging, when Rose ran into the bedroom.

Wade was still absorbing what he’d seen, all the way from Maxim’s childhood through Adalrik’s death. He hadn’t meant to go so far, but once they’d started, he’d just kept going.

Eleisha should have prepared him. Maxim had been a nineteenth-century literary protégé, and he’d watched Julian take off his maker’s head in their own library. Eleisha should have warned him. But then again . . . she’d just told Maxim to show Wade images of Brandon. She hadn’t known they’d go so far.

Other thoughts passed unbidden through his mind. Eleisha had compared him to Brandon. Was that how she saw him? As a sexually ambiguous, kindhearted scholar? But he also fully realized what she’d meant when she told him Maxim had lost his gift. That aspect was more complicated than he’d expected.

As if on cue, the front door opened, and Eleisha walked in. She was a mess, with dirt in her hair. But Wade didn’t have time to ponder this. Philip came in after her, and even from the bedroom Maxim could see him and started hissing, jumping up into a crouch.

“Stay here,” Eleisha told Philip, and she hurried into the bedroom, dropping down beside Maxim. “It’s all right,” she said.

The back of her shirt and her jeans were smeared with dirt. Maxim’s dark eyes moved over her face in relief. “Leisha.”

She frowned at him, and then scooted across the mattress to lean against the wall, holding out her arms. “Maxim, come here. Let me show you pictures of the church.”

Like a child, Maxim crawled over, sitting beside her, pressed up against her, and they both closed their eyes. Philip stood in the doorway. Wade expected him to react with his usual selfish jealousy.

His coat was open, and his hair was crusted with dirt, too. He just watched Eleisha with an almost-accepting expression, as if he actually understood what she was doing. Something between them had changed. Wade couldn’t bring himself to ask, but he was suddenly worried that Philip might be more human than he’d ever realized.

By the time Julian’s taxi reached Caufield Cemetery, dawn was less than an hour away, and he’d come to a decision. A shed and small house were directly to the left, but Mary had explained that Eleisha’s group was farther away, hiding in the shack of an abandoned graveyard from years past. So as soon as the driver stopped the cab, Julian reached over the seat, grabbed the man’s head with both hands, and snapped his neck with a loud crack.

“Get rid of the car, and meet me back here,” Julian ordered, climbing out. He looked up at the sky. “But don’t be long.”

Without waiting for an answer, he walked through the headstones toward the house, his long black coat swinging around his legs. He heard the taxi pull away. The shed was dark, but he saw a light in the house. Someone was an early riser. He tried the door, found it locked, and kicked it open.

He turned on his gift and hit her with a wave of fear. She fell back, and the sleeve of her right wrist came up, exposing a white bandage. The sight of it bothered him.

She appeared too filled with terror to even scream, but her mouth twisted as she writhed on the couch. He crossed the distance between them and grabbed the back of her head. She wasn’t at all to his taste, and he didn’t need to feed yet, but he was never one to waste an opportunity. Driving his teeth in, he ripped out part of her throat and then began drinking, gulping until her heart stopped.

He was surprised by how quickly he’d drained her, and he dropped her body on the floor, watching residual blood leak into the cracks of the hardwood.

He pointed to the woman’s wrist. “While watching Eleisha, have you ever seen her feed from someone’s wrist and then leave the victim alive?”

“Sure, she does it all the time. So does Philip . . . but he still kills people sometimes, when he’s hunting alone.”

Her expression shifted to anger. “How am I supposed to know what to tell you unless you ask? You got pissed off when you found out Philip was sleeping in Eleisha’s bed, but then you tell me not to speak to you unless you ask me a question. What do you want, Julian? You can’t have it both ways!”

He was trembling slightly, wishing he could strike her, and trying to digest this new development. Was he already too late in trying to stop a resurgence of the laws? Should he just take Eleisha’s head and then turn to destroying her companions as quickly as he could? If she was feeding and replacing memories and leaving victims alive, she was already practicing the first law, whether she knew it or not.

He closed his eyes. No, not yet. This changed the situation, but she was still unearthing elders—and they responded to her call. As soon as he was certain she’d exhausted her resources and could not find anyone else, then he would catch her outside the church and end this.

“No. Find something to cover those windows.” Julian paused. “We’ll let them sleep out the day, and we’ll move in after dusk, when they have just woken for the night. That is the best time to catch someone off guard.”

Jasper nodded, picking up a heavy blanket from the back of the couch, seemingly glad for something to do. “Tonight,” he said.