by Barb Hendee
“Good,” Maxim said, his dark eyes glittering.
Sometimes, his penchant for young women with long red hair made Eleisha uncomfortable. But the yuppie couple had vanished by now and the lot was deserted; this was a perfect opportunity.
She stood up, grasping Maxim’s hand and stepping from the shadows.
“Excuse me,” she said. Then she turned on her gift.
The young woman jumped slightly and turned in alarm. But Eleisha’s gift washed over her, through her, dulling her mind until she saw only a small, frightened girl coming toward her, leading a young man with downcast eyes.
“Can you help us?” Eleisha asked. “My car won’t start, and I have to get my brother home. He’s…he’s special.”
This was a ruse they’d played over and over—because it always worked. Maxim’s perpetually lost expression often led people to believe there was something not quite right with him. But once Eleisha turned on her gift, anyone caught in the vicinity was driven into an overwhelming need to “help.”
The young woman’s face shifted instantly to concern as Eleisha’s gift kept flowing. “Oh,” she said, coming closer. “What can I do? Can I call someone for you?”
“No,” Eleisha answered. “Could you just drop us at home? We don’t live far, and my dad can come look at the car tomorrow.” She took mental note of an old van on her left with a dented, jagged front bumper, but she let the intensity of her gift grow at the same time.
The woman blinked. “Yes…of course. This way.” She pulled a set of keys from her purse and pressed the UNLOCK button. A shiny blue Ford Focus beeped, and she opened the passenger door, letting Maxim in up front as if allowing strangers into her car was the most natural thing in the world.
Eleisha climbed into the backseat.
“I’m Angie,” the woman said. “Where do you live?”
She was just putting her key into the ignition when Eleisha telepathically reached inside her mind and said aloud, “You’re tired. You need to sleep.”
Angie’s head dropped to one side, and her eyelids closed. Maxim’s dark eyes were glittering, and he grabbed her wrist.
“Be careful,” Eleisha warned.
He didn’t even look at her and sank his teeth into Angie’s wrist, loudly sucking in mouthfuls of blood. But Eleisha wasn’t worried. She’d done this with him a number of times, and he always seemed to instinctively know when to stop. He was not a killer by nature. He was just…damaged.
Eleisha stayed inside Angie’s mind, keeping the woman asleep—and monitoring her heartbeat—while Maxim fed, but just as she was about to tell him to stop, he pulled out on his own, albeit reluctantly, licking his mouth.
Eleisha took a jackknife from her skirt pocket and handed it to him. “Here, you do the next part.”
She wanted him to do as much as he could on his own. Without a word, he took the knife, opened the blade, and carefully used its point to connect the puncture wounds, making the injury look more like a gash.
Then Eleisha shifted her thoughts inside Angie’s mind, taking her back in time to the moment she’d stepped from the elevator. She’d not met or seen anyone. She’d walked alone toward her car and then tripped, falling forward in front of an old van, cutting her wrist open on the jagged, dented fender. She’d made it to her car and then passed out.
“You’ll wake up in five minutes,” Eleisha whispered in her ear. She climbed out of the car and Maxim followed, closing the knife and wiping his face with one hand.
Eleisha had taught several other vampires to feed like this, but in those sessions, the point had been to teach someone else how to use his or her gift to lure a victim into a car, put the person to sleep, feed carefully, disguise the wound, and then replace a memory.
But Maxim had no telepathic ability with people—only animals—and he’d lost his gift. How could Eleisha ever help him learn to help himself, to feed safely and not call attention to himself by either killing someone or leaving someone alive who’d remember him?
Her thoughts must have shown on her face, because he stepped around in front of her, cutting her off.
“What…wrong?” he asked.
She liked his face and his messy blue-black hair. But now his dark eyes were nervous and searching, as if he feared disappointing her. That was the worst part. He cared how she felt. He’d been lonely and beyond miserable without even knowing it, and he seemed to believe she’d saved him and given him his life back. He loved living at the church and sleeping in a bed and having companionship. He wanted to please her.
She forced a smile. “Nothing’s wrong. You did just fine.”
Philip stepped out of the shadows from behind a huge yellow SUV. He frowned slightly at the sight of Maxim blocking Eleisha’s path. “All finished?” His voice was tight.
She moved quickly around Maxim. “Yes. Let’s go home.”
Wade took Mr. Boo through the front doors of the church into the sanctuary, which had been turned into a kind of library/sitting room with tastefully arranged couches and bookshelves. The main floor of the church comprised this large, open sanctuary—along with two back offices.
The upstairs sported six rooms that had once been engaged for Sunday school classes. Maxim was currently sleeping in one of them, and Wade and Eleisha later planned to use the others to house any more lost vampires they found.
The basement comprised a three-bedroom apartment where Wade, Eleisha, and Philip lived, as well as an industrial-sized kitchen the old congregation had once used for potluck dinners, but Wade had turned that area into a gym so he could work out at home.
He took Mr. Boo all the way downstairs to the apartment and headed into their small, private kitchen.
“Sit,” he said.
Boo just grunted and stood in the archway, looking hopefully at the refrigerator. With some reticence, Wade opened it and took out a package of raw hamburger. He’d been planning on cooking it later, to use in a pot of spaghetti sauce. But he unwrapped the plastic and dumped most of it onto a plate.
“Here.”
As he set the plate on the floor, Mr. Boo hurried over and began wolfing down the raw meat in rapid bites. Wade couldn’t help noting that for all the dog’s size, his ribs were showing. He’d probably not had an easy life.
“I’ll get you some water.”
He was just reaching for a bowl in the cupboard when someone gasped in the kitchen archway.
“Good Lord! What is that?”
Glancing over, Wade locked eyes with the only other woman in their household: Rose de Spenser.
“It’s a dog,” he answered, sighing.
“Yes, I can see that.” She sounded almost as appalled as he’d felt out in the churchyard, and for some reason, he couldn’t help smiling.
Rose was tall and slender, with long brown hair accented by white streaks. She appeared to be about thirty years old and almost always wore rayon dresses. She was the first vampire that they’d manage to “rescue” and bring back here, but she was a reserved person by nature, and sometimes Wade thought he might never know her very well.
Still, he liked her, and she helped balance out a household that was becoming skewed slightly toward too many men.
“New addition,” he said, pointing to Mr. Boo and still smiling—with no idea why. “Maxim must have drawn him here.”
“He’s staying? Here inside the church?”
Wade shrugged. “I was outvoted.”
“What did Eleisha say?”
He stopped smiling, filled the bowl with water, and set it on the floor. “She didn’t say anything once Philip piped up…and Philip likes the idea of a big dog around the place.”
They both fell silent for a moment. But Mr. Boo made loud sounds, licking every inch of the plate, and then he looked up at Wade in hope.
“Oh, for God’s sake,” Wade said, dumping the rest of the hamburger onto the plate. There went the meat for his dinner.
Rose still seemed at a loss for words when the air beside her shimmere
d and the final member of their group materialized into view.
“A dog?” he said in a heavy Scottish accent—only he sounded excited. “You brought home a dog?”
“I most certainly did not,” Wade answered, turning to Seamus.
Seamus’ body was transparent, as always. Though long dead, he looked like a young man, his brown hair hanging to his shoulders. He wore a blue and yellow Scottish plaid draped across his shoulder and held by a belt over the black breeches he’d died in. The knife sheath at his hip was empty.
He was Rose’s nephew, and he’d been murdered the same night she was turned, but he’d come back as a spirit, forever tied to her. He comprised a key component in the success of their missions. Once Wade found reason to suspect a possible location for a lost vampire, he sent Seamus to investigate. As a ghost, Seamus could zero in on a vampire—or anything undead—once he was in the general vicinity. Unfortunately, he couldn’t stay too long, as his spirit was tied to Rose, and the longer he stayed away from her, the weaker he became.
But still, the group would be lost—blind—without him.
Mr. Boo looked up and blinked. He’d shown no aversion to the vampires, but he did seem somewhat put off by the sight of Seamus. At least he didn’t growl. After a moment, he lowered his head and lapped at the water.
“What about Tiny Tuesday?” Rose finally asked, clearly uncertain about this decision having been made without her input.
“He won’t hurt her,” Wade said, trying to sound confident. “Maxim promised.”
Thinking of Tiny Tuesday, Wade knew she was probably sleeping in her kitty bed up in his office.
“Rose,” he said. “I need to get to work. Can you find Mr. Boo an old blanket or something and make him a bed? Now that he’s eaten, I think he’ll want to sleep. I have a feeling he’s been on the road awhile.”
Just like many of them.
But now the dog had found a home. Suddenly Wade didn’t mind the thought of one more lost soul thrown into the mix.
“Mr. Boo?” Rose asked.
“Yeah, that’s his name.”
Rose seemed to read Wade’s face—she was good at that—and nodded with some hesitation. “Yes, you go on upstairs. I’ll find him…something.”
Grateful, he moved past her, leaving Seamus to watch the dog in fascination. Seamus had liked horses and dogs when he was alive. Perhaps those penchants never changed.
Wade walked through the living room of the apartment and headed for the stairway leading up to the two rooms behind the sanctuary. He had furnished one of them into a home office for himself, and Rose was using the other one as her bedroom. His long legs took the stairs two at a time. He’d always considered his own appearance somewhat mundane in comparison with those of his housemates. Tall and slender, he was in his early thirties, with narrow features. The only element about him that truly stood out was his white-blond hair, hanging below his collar. He’d just kept forgetting to get it cut, and now it seemed easier to wear it longer.
Emerging from the stairwell, he headed for his office. It was probably his favorite room in the church, with books and maps spread out all over the place and his computer waiting for him on the messy desk.
As he pushed the cracked door farther open, a small gray and white cat raised her head from a cushy kitty bed.
“Meow.”
She had blue eyes.
“Meow, yourself,” Wade answered, walking to the desk. He’d put her food, water, and cat box in here, since this was where he spent most of his time. Maxim may have “adopted” the small cat, but Wade took care of her. Over the winter, she’d had a litter of four kittens, and he’d managed to find them all homes.
Getting up, she stretched and hopped up onto his desk—as she always did when he was working. She seemed to enjoy watching his hands move across the keyboard.
“We have a new addition that you’re not going to like,” he said to her, pushing the mouse so that his dark screen lit up.
She didn’t seem concerned and sat quietly while he focused on the screen, deciding to start his search in Europe tonight.
Their strategy was for Wade for seek out any online news stories of homicide victims drained of blood or of living people checked into hospitals with cuts or gashes that did not warrant an unexplained amount of blood loss. He’d once worked as a police psychologist, and he knew a good deal about where to search for such stories. Then he’d send Seamus out, and once Seamus pinpointed and confirmed the find, several members of their team would travel to the vampire’s location, try to make contact, and try to bring him or her safely home to the church.
Two of their attempts had ended in success, and two had ended in complete disaster.
But now, several months had passed since Wade had uncovered anything promising, and he was starting to feel antsy. He wanted a new mission.
He subscribed to an almost countless number of online newspapers, and he normally started with the Evening Standard from London. As he scanned through it, Tiny Tuesday meowed for attention, and he scratched the side of her face absently for a few moments. When he stopped, she batted at his hand.
“Let me read,” he said, moving on to the Connexion from France. As always lately, he found nothing of note, and after exhausting every online paper in Europe (or at least those published with an English version), he moved to U.S. papers, beginning with the Seattle Times. He knew what to look for, and he was capable of scanning quickly, so he almost missed a headline from the Arts and Leisure section:
Mysterious Psychic Causes
Stir in Puget Sound
by Randall Smith
Wade didn’t know why he paused on that one headline—but he did. Then he clicked on the story.
The affluent residents of The Highlands in Seattle appear to be fighting one another for a chance at a private audience with the newest guest of socialite Ms. Vera Olivier.
Christian Lefevre arrived in Seattle last week and has been quietly catering to the upper crust of Seattle society from inside Ms. Olivier’s home—by making contact with their dead loved ones.
Little is known about Lefevre, other than his high fees and that he is constantly in demand. Apparently, he dislikes the terms “psychic” and “medium” and refers to himself as a “spiritualist.” But an unnamed source recently described him as “clairvoyant to an unprecedented degree,” and he appears to conduct detailed conversations with the dead that convince even the most reticent of his clients. While his potential for public attention seems limitless, he will not do television and has consistently managed to avoid being photographed.
Scattered reports suggest that his séances are so intense that afterward, some clients are faint, weak, and dizzy. To date, he’s mainly worked in the South—Georgia, Louisiana, and Tennessee. But his arrival in Seattle is causing quite a stir. Who will be allowed to see him? Whose dead loved ones will he contact here? Exactly how much does he charge? I’ll be following up on this story soon.
Wade read the article twice. He knew something of Randall Smith—who had a tendency to cover sensational stories and bend the truth a tad. But Wade couldn’t take his eyes off one line: “Scattered reports suggest that his séances are so intense that afterward, some clients are faint, weak, and dizzy.”
That one line made his pulse race.
Philip led the way through the main doors back into the sanctuary, while Eleisha and Maxim followed.
“What will we do now?” Philip asked. He was in the mood for an action movie, something with guns and explosions. Lately, Eleisha had insisted upon trying to broaden his horizons, but one could watch only so many Alfred Hitchcock and Orson Wells films without needing a break. “Maybe we can get Wade to play poker?”
Philip liked playing cards, too, but Maxim couldn’t quite grasp concepts like five-card draw yet, and Eleisha didn’t like leaving Maxim out—so Philip doubted she’d agree. Still, he had to ask. His favorite times were these lulls in between missions when they were all home and Eleisha lavished a
good deal of her attention on him.
“Before we do anything,” she said, “we’d better check on Wade and see if he needs help with the dog.”
Maxim nodded. “Mr. Boo.”
Oh…yes. Philip had forgotten about the dog. The three of them headed for the door behind the altar of the sanctuary, and Eleisha was just about to open it when Wade pushed from the other side and stuck his head through.
“I thought I heard you,” he said. “Come and look at this.”
All Philip’s pleasure at possible entertainments fled. He recognized the look on Wade’s face. Wade had found something.
Eleisha hurried through the door and across the hall into Wade’s office. Philip followed more slowly, finding Eleisha and Wade already chattering away in front of the computer screen. As Philip entered the office, Maxim hung in the doorway. Tiny Tuesday sat perched on the desk, watching them all curiously.
“The term ‘spiritualist’ caught my attention,” Wade was saying. “In the Victorian era, that was the term used for a medium.” He paused, pointing. “But this part about his clients being left weak and dizzy…” He trailed off.
Eleisha kept reading. “Christian Lefevre,” she said softly as her eyes moved down the screen.
As she spoke that name, Philip froze, and a dull roaring began in his ears.
“What did you say?” he asked hoarsely.
She looked up at him in surprise, followed quickly by concern. “Are you okay?”
“What was the name?” he bit off.
“Christian Lefevre.”
The last name meant nothing to him…but the first name, Christian, was pounding in his ears, fighting to surface on the edge of his memory. He strode forward, moving in between Wade and Eleisha, and he read the entire story for himself. Nothing he read helped the struggling memory to surface, but that name meant something…something.
Turning, he looked at Wade and said raggedly, “Send Seamus tonight.”
chapter two
VALE OF GLAMORGAN, WALES