by Hendee, Barb
Instantly, she reached out with her thoughts, taking control of Trudy’s mind, rushing her back in time to the moment she walked into the parking garage.
The inside of the car fell silent, and even while she focused on Trudy’s memories, Eleisha could feel Philip’s tight shoulder easing beneath her fingers.
The memory of a simple fall would no longer work.
Eleisha created the image of a mugger as she rebuilt the last ten minutes in Trudy’s mind. Trudy walked toward her waiting Taurus. A man jumped out from behind the column, waving a knife and shouting for her bag. He slashed at her, and when she raised her arm, he cut her several times. She dropped the bag. He grabbed it and ran. Terrified, she made it inside the car and then passed out.
Eleisha opened her eyes and reached to Philip.
“Give me your knife.”
He was staring at her in confusion, as if he wasn’t sure what was happening, but he reached down into his boot and pulled out the hunting knife he always carried. Eleisha took it and leaned all the way over the seat, making a few shallow cuts in Trudy’s arm, hoping to cover the mess Philip had made. Then she handed the blade back to him.
“Get her bag from the floor,” she said. “Hurry.”
She was out of the car before he was, but he followed quickly, slamming the door and carrying Trudy’s bag. Eleisha headed for the stairs.
He followed.
Either no one had heard Trudy screaming or no one cared, but Eleisha didn’t even start to relax until they were back up Western Avenue again, moving farther away from the market.
Then Philip stepped in front of her, wiping the blood from his mouth onto his black sleeve. He didn’t touch her, but he wouldn’t let her pass.
“You’re angry,” he said.
Was she angry? She didn’t think so. She wasn’t sure what she felt. He shouldn’t be having this much trouble. The fact that they didn’t have to kill anymore shifted the entire balance of their existence. Why couldn’t he see that?
She shook her head.
“Then what is wrong?” he asked. “You are different tonight, even before . . . before that in the car. So quiet and no fun at all.” When agitated, he had more trouble with English.
But Philip always said she was no fun if she didn’t do exactly what he wanted. She was used to that.
Tonight he could somehow sense more. And he was right. She’d had something on her mind for weeks now . . . something she had not told him or Wade.
“Let’s just get a taxi and go back to the house,” she said. “We can talk there.”
“No.” He didn’t move. “Tell me you are not angry.”
He could be such a child sometimes. He looked ten years older than her. He was thirty years older, and he’d recently passed the two-century mark. Yet he often made her feel like the grown-up.
Still, she understood him. Philip hated being alone more than anything, and he’d spent one hundred and eighty-three years of his undead existence alone. Now that he had companionship, he feared losing it.
She reached out to take the bag from him, tossing it into a Dumpster.
“I’m not angry,” she said. “But you need to try harder.”
He had to learn to control his blood lust while focusing his telepathy at the same time.
His expression melted into relief. “Is that all? Yes, yes, I will try harder.” Then, as if forgetting the entire event in the parking garage had taken place, he turned and sidestepped so she could walk beside him.
“Did you rent a new movie for tonight?” he asked. “With guns and explosions?”
“No, I want to talk to you and Wade about something.”
“About what?”
“Let’s just go to the house.”
Wade often felt at odds, rattling around the house by himself as if he had nothing better to do than wait for Eleisha and Philip to come back.
Unfortunately . . . he didn’t have anything better to do.
Not quite three months ago, he’d enjoyed an orderly life, one he’d worked hard to create. He had a posh loft in Portland, Oregon, a career as a police psychologist, and the respect of his peers.
Now he had no job, no home of his own, and he was living in Seattle with two vampires.
What the hell happened to his life?
But he already knew the answer.
Eleisha.
Wade had always been a little out of the ordinary. For one, he’d been born telepathic, so he’d never expected a completely normal life . . . but this?
He wandered from the kitchen and into the living room, glancing at the television and the small pile of Philip’s DVDs on the floor. Eleisha never watched TV of her own accord. Yet for someone who’d been around since the early 1800s, she was surprisingly well-adjusted to the modern world. Philip, however, was not, and sometimes, Wade regretted having taught him to use the DVD player. Philip had developed a fascination with action movies—especially anything by John Woo with Chow Yun-Fat—and he tended to play one after the other when he was bored.
And if he wasn’t hunting, he was always bored.
A creak on the front porch sounded, and Wade turned to look hopefully at the door. Were they home already?
No one came in. The house must just be settling.
With that thought, he suddenly realized that none of them ever referred to this place as “home.” All three of them still referred to it as “the house.”
But that was probably due to the fact that they’d been living here only a month, and before that, the place had belonged to another vampire named Maggie Latour . . . who was dead now, turned to dust.
So none of them had roots or memories in this house.
He dropped into a chair near the fireplace, trying not to feel sorry for himself. He knew Eleisha and Philip were both working to come to terms with the chain of events that had brought them here, too.
Wade let his mind roll back. When had it started?
Last March? When a vampire named Edward Claymore had committed suicide by jumping off his own front porch in broad daylight, bursting into flames?
Or when the police investigation had dropped Wade right into Eleisha’s path, and he discovered someone just as telepathic as he was?
Or maybe it really began when he had quit his job in Portland to follow her here?
No, it began long before that, in Wales, in 1839 when a vampire named Julian Ashton had turned her undead and then cut her loose, sending her to America with no information and no real idea what she was, forcing her to figure things out on her own.
No . . . it started even before that, in France, in 1825, when Eleisha’s maker, Julian, had realized that unlike most vampires, he was incapable of developing psychic powers, and he fell into an obsession of fear and began killing his own kind. He’d spared any vampires who had not expressed telepathic abilities—and this included Eleisha and Philip.
But Wade had changed all that. He’d woken Eleisha’s and Philip’s latent abilities and, in doing so, turned them into targets.
And then Julian had come hunting them.
Somehow—and Wade still didn’t know exactly how—on the night Julian found them, Eleisha had forced her thoughts inside Julian’s mind and shown him something terrifying that caused him to freeze up . . . after which Philip kicked him out a twelfth-story window. Eleisha firmly believed that she had permanently driven him away, and they were all safe from him.
Philip didn’t seem so sure.
But four weeks had passed since that night, and Julian had not come after them, and now the three of them seemed to be existing in a state of limbo, waiting for something, but none of them knew what. Eleisha had suggested that Wade find a new job here in Seattle. He agreed. She had suggested he might feel better if he found an apartment of his own. He partially agreed. She had suggested that they might clear out all of Maggie’s things, buy new furniture, and make the house their own. He agreed.
But he’d taken no action to accomplish any of these things.
Voices coming from outside caught his attention. The front door swung inward as Eleisha walked inside with Philip on her heels.
“Wade, tomorrow will you see the new Rambo movie with me?” Philip asked before the door closed behind him. “Eleisha won’t go.”
Wade blinked. “There’s a new Rambo movie? Who’s playing Rambo?”
“Stallone.”
“Stallone? That can’t be right. The guy’s sixty years old.”
Philip turned to Eleisha. “Tell him I’m right. You saw the preview with me last week.”
“What?” Eleisha was pulling off her jacket with a distracted expression, as if she hadn’t been listening. “Oh, yes, Philip’s right.”
Looking at her face, Wade forgot all about Rambo. He could tell when something was bothering her.
The three of them had been together such a short time, but they knew each better than most people who’d coexisted for a lifetime. They had looked into each other’s minds and down the paths of time and personal experiences, seen fears and loves and private corners.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
Glancing back at him, she dropped her jacket on a chair, opened her mouth halfway, and then closed it again. For once, Philip seemed to forget about his own desire for entertainment, and he walked closer to her, his head towering over hers.
“Eleisha?” he asked.
Just when Wade thought he’d grown accustomed to their physical appearance, he’d look at them together like this and feel surprised all over again. Their pale, softly glowing skin made them both seem timeless, yet there the resemblance stopped. Eleisha was probably not what a typical American would consider beautiful. But she was alarmingly . . . pretty. Born in a different era, she was small and slender with a mass of wispy, wheat gold hair that reached the top of her jeans. Sometimes, just the sight of her left Wade speechless.
Philip, on the other hand, looked like someone on the cover of GQ posing for Calvin Klein’s fall fashion line, and without meaning to, he tended to make Wade feel diminished. They were both tall, but where Philip’s tight muscles showed through his shirt, Wade’s build leaned toward thin. Wade’s white-blond hair stuck out in different directions, as he wore it fairly short, but he often forgot to see a stylist for months.
His feelings about Philip were conflicted. He didn’t always exactly like Philip, but they were deeply connected by circumstance, and they knew each other far too well.
Eleisha glanced up over at Wade, almost as if she was nervous. “I need to show you both something, and I don’t know what you’ll say.”
She walked halfway over to the staircase, lifted the top of one of the steps, and took out an ivory envelope. Wade had no idea that step lifted up to create a hiding space. When had Eleisha discovered that? What had she hidden there?
She hesitated a moment longer, and then said to Wade, “Do you remember a few nights after . . . after Julian found us and we drove him off, that night when I tried to get you to start looking for a job here?”
He winced. “Of course I remember.”
“This came that same night.”
She handed him the envelope, and he opened it, reading the brief handwritten letter inside.
You are not alone. There are others like you. Respond to the Elizabeth Bathory Underground. P.O. Box 27750, San Francisco, CA 94973.
He was confused, having no idea what this meant, but before he could speak, Philip walked over and ripped both the letter and envelope from his hand.
“What is that?” Philip asked. He scanned the note and then raised his eyes from the paper to Eleisha’s face. “A month ago? This came a month ago and you didn’t show me?” His voice had lost its normal light, amusement-seeking tone. He sounded angry.
“Philip—” Eleisha began.
“It’s a trap!” he nearly shouted, his accent growing thicker. “Sent by Julian.” He looked at the envelope. “This is addressed to you. Here! By hiding this, you put yourself in danger! You put Wade in danger.”
Philip often behaved as if he needed to protect Wade—which was neither flattering nor comforting.
“It’s not Julian,” Eleisha said. “Look at the handwriting.”
“You aren’t to answer this,” Philip ordered. “You leave it with me, and you don’t go hunting alone until I say so.”
“I already answered it,” Eleisha said quietly. “And then she wrote back, and then I wrote back . . . and then she wrote back. We’ve been corresponding every week.”
Philip’s expression darkened into rage, but before he could explode, Wade asked, “She?”
“Yes, just look at her letters.” Eleisha hurried back to the staircase and drew out a small stack of ivory envelopes. Wade could barely believe she had been keeping this a secret. He thought he knew all Eleisha’s secrets. She gripped the letters in one hand and held her palm up toward Philip. “Wait. Just hear me out. Her name is Rose, and she is like us. She lives somewhere in San Francisco, but she won’t tell me where. She’s frightened, too.”
Digging through the envelopes, she pulled out a letter. “Here, Philip, come look at this one. She says that Julian could not have killed every vampire in Europe. She believes there must be others, only they are hiding . . . like she’s been hiding. She thinks they’re afraid of him, and she’s been waiting, just waiting, for someone to fight back. When she learned we’d survived an attack and driven him off, she knew the world had shifted. She needs our help!”
Philip listened to this outburst without a word, but then he walked slowly over to Eleisha, staring down at her with eyes so hard that Wade would have backed up—but Eleisha didn’t.
She stood her ground. “Look at the letter, Philip.”
“And how did she know where we are?” Philip asked, ignoring the letter. His tone dropped low. “How did she know we drove off Julian?”
Eleisha’s voice wavered. “She hasn’t told me that. But this isn’t a trap.”
She turned to Wade, stretching out her hand. “Just read this one.”
He was still reeling that she’d kept all of this from himself and Philip, but he took the letter and, scanning a middle paragraph, he could almost hear the polite, desperate voice behind the words. Without even asking, he flashed what he read into Philip’s thoughts.
. . . but the house you stay in now is not suitable. You must find someplace larger, someplace to fortify where you can protect yourselves and me and anyone else we might find. I wait to hear from you. I have waited so long, even before I knew your name.
He looked up, thinking on the initial note. “The Elizabeth Bathory Underground?”
“That’s what she calls it . . . or hopes to call it. It’s an underground we’ll create so we can look for others and help bring them in, keep them safe from Julian. Rose thinks the name is subtle enough to escape obvious notice but still offers a clue. Elizabeth Bathory was a countess from the sixteenth century who—”
“I know who she was,” Wade cut in, frustrated by this sudden shift. “She murdered young girls to bathe in their blood, and she became linked into the history of vampires. That isn’t what I meant. How could you get so involved in this without warning us?”
Eleisha looked at the floor. “I don’t know. I liked writing to Rose, and I was afraid you’d ask me to stop . . . and I want to find her, Wade. I need to find her.”
His frustration faded. He shared an empathy with both of his companions. He knew Philip reveled in having company after existing alone for so long—because of Julian. Philip’s greatest fear was being alone again.
But Eleisha was more complicated. In 1839, Julian had realized his father, William, was dying of Alzheimer’s disease—which had no name yet, but Wade recognized the symptoms while reading Eleisha’s memories. In desperation, Julian turned his father, only to condemn the old man to eternal dementia. To cover his mistake, Julian turned Eleisha in order to create a permanent care-taker for William, and he’d put them both
on a ship bound for America. Eleisha had spent nearly one hundred and seventy years caring for William, but like Maggie, William was gone now, too, turned to dust.
Eleisha missed caring for him. She possessed a need to be needed—which might explain her affection for Philip.
Now she wanted to look for lost vampires?
“You are not going anywhere,” Philip snapped. “And you will stop sending these letters.” He paced halfway across the room, muttering, “I have to think. I have to think what to do now.”
“I don’t need your permission,” Eleisha said.
He stopped pacing and looked at her in surprise.
“I am going find Rose and offer her a safe place,” she went on. “I want your help, and Wade’s, but I’ll do it alone if I have to.”
Wade had never seen the two of them like this, and the look on Philip’s face was beginning to worry him. Stepping toward Eleisha, Philip drew his lips up over his teeth in a snarl.
“You don’t think I can stop you?”
“No.” She shook her head. “Because if you do, I won’t forgive you.”
She might as well have slapped him. Releasing a sound between rage and anguish, he turned toward the door. “Then go by yourself ! Walk into a trap by yourself !”
“It’s not a trap! Just look at her letters!”
“This woman is terrified of Julian,” Wade managed to put in.
Philip ignored both of them and stormed out the door.
Predictably, he got as far as the front porch before he stopped and turned halfway around, his pale face gone white.
“Whatever happens, if someone else knows we are here, we have to find a new place.” He paused as if the next words pained him. “She spoke of finding a place we could fortify. If we do this . . . if we do this thing for you, we’ll have to begin there.”
For a few seconds, no one spoke. Then Eleisha said quietly, “I think I’ve already found one. I haven’t seen it myself yet, just photos.”
Wade’s mouth fell open. More secrets? “What? Where?”
“Back home,” she said. “In Portland. Let me book plane tickets, and I’ll show you.”