Blood Memories vm-1

by Barb Hendee

  The room fell silent as he leaned down and kissed her. Everyone-including me-watched the gradual movement of his open mouth as he licked her lips and face. His pale hand moved up her side, feather touch, like a concerned lover. Nobody else moved.

  What was he doing? This didn't make sense. If he wanted to lure her away from her friends, he should have just asked. She'd have followed him off a cliff.

  The red polyester couch they sat on showed huge gaping holes of foam rubber. Becky's breathing quickened when he moved to her neck. Completely lost in his gift, she tried to put her fingertips on his face. The scene changed.

  Click.

  He ripped out a chunk of her throat before I could blink-right in front of her friends. Instead of falling into a hazy state of slow motion, the world rushed to a hundred miles an hour. Scott started screaming as blood shot out of her jugular and covered his T-shirt. Philip jumped over the back of the couch and landed on top of him.

  "No way, man," Culker kept repeating from the center of the room. "No way."

  Philip stopped Scott's screaming by flipping him onto his stomach and breaking his neck with a loud crack. Then he smiled up at Culker.

  Until that point, I'd been too off guard to move. What was he doing? He wasn't even feeding, just ripping and breaking bones. But they'd seen us. Both Jet and Culker could describe us right down to "any distinguishing features."

  "You son of a bitch," I said in despair.

  He turned his head toward me, laughing savagely. Jet bolted for the door. I caught her by whipping my left arm around her stomach and pulling her back into my chest. She was nearly a head taller than me. Her mouth formed a scream. Hating myself, hating Philip more, I grasped her entire chin with my right hand and jerked. Her body hit the floor before the scream ever escaped.

  Culker began crying.

  "Do it fast," I hissed to Philip.

  It sounds cliche to compare Philip to an animal, but that's what he reminded me of. I mean it. He couldn't even talk. Culker seemed to know running was a waste of time and backed up against the wall.

  Please don't let him start begging.

  Philip was on him in a flash, tearing at his neck, but this time I heard sucking sounds. Often frightened by my own kind, sometimes confused, that was the first time I ever felt ashamed.

  "We gotta go," I whispered. There was no way we could clean this mess up. Better just to leave it.

  Philip dropped Culker's body and stared at me as if he didn't know who I was. His eyes made me step back.

  "No," he said, finding his voice, red liquid dripping down onto his black shirt and vanishing against the darker color. "Not yet."

  I'd thought the worst was over, but it wasn't. Putting his own wrist to his teeth, he tore it down to open veins and held it out. "Here, like with Edward."

  For a minute I didn't get it. Then what he wanted came crashing down, followed by revulsion. "Stay away from me."

  "Like Edward."

  "Philip, don't."

  Jet's dead body lay between me and the door. But in the time it took me to glance down at her, Philip had his hand around the back of my head, gripping my hair.

  "You know nothing," he breathed in my ear. "You need me."

  Survival instincts told me to do whatever he wanted and get away as soon as possible-please him and run. But I didn't. Something snapped. Grabbing his shoulder for support, I rammed my knee into his stomach hard enough to make him spit out a mouthful of Culker's blood.

  "I don't need your arm." My own voice sounded unfamiliar. "I don't want you touching me. You're sick. You weren't even hungry, were you?"

  He gasped once, eyes glazing over. He didn't hit me. "But I thought…" He looked confused. "You hunt with me now, like with Maggie or Edward."

  "This isn't how we hunted! Any of us. Maggie left bodies sometimes, but at least she made sure they were drifters or dealers. She always took their ID, and she never killed anybody for any reason but to drain life force. Is this what you do in France?"

  "We do as we want," he whispered. "We are not sheep, Julian and I. And how many have you killed in just this past hundred years? How many?"

  "I'm not like you."

  "You are. This moral piety will not comfort the dead."

  His words hurt and left me wanting cool air. I ran into the hall and down to the street, not caring who saw me. The dirt and garbage still sat in large, ugly piles. The baby upstairs still cried.

  "I don't want to hurt you," Philip said into my ear. He must have followed me down, swift and quiet.

  "What do you want?"

  "For you to be happy, like with Maggie or Edward."

  Was that really his game? He'd been taught by someone that we have to live out our existence alone. Now was he questioning that? He and Julian had once thought me insane or weak for living close to other members of our kind. Did Philip want an instant family? He knew nothing of humans, and even less of vampires.

  "You can't have everything you want," I said.

  "Yes, I can." He smiled and threw his arms in the air. "We live forever. This is our heaven."

  Before I could respond, he glanced around and spotted an old Firebird among the Volkswagens. "This way."

  Not wanting to follow him, I looked down at my watch. Four o'clock. We'd been inside that apartment for over two hours? Felt like minutes. "All right, but we need to find a hotel. It'll be dawn soon."

  He didn't answer but scowled at finding the car locked. Using his right elbow, he smashed the driver's window and opened the door, then unlocked my side. "Get in."

  "Promise to take me to a hotel?"

  "Wherever you want."

  While he worked on starting the engine, I climbed in and watched him. "Why do you always take old muscle cars?"

  "These are fast, solid, and they almost never have alarms."

  "I thought you didn't care about police or getting caught."

  He flashed me a dirty look and whipped out onto the street. My manner with him in the past half hour had been leaning toward foolish. If I wanted any control at all, I'd need to turn the manipulation beacon back on. He just made my skin crawl.

  I was normally asleep by five or so. My eyelids felt heavy. "Have you ever been inside Maggie's place?" I asked.

  "No."

  "It's wonderful. I wish we could go there."

  The passing minutes didn't bother me too much. Philip was doing ninety by the time we hit northbound I-5. I was actually beginning to relax when the first siren roared from behind us.

  "Jesus, Philip, don't pull over."

  "I hadn't planned to."

  "Can you outrun him?"

  For an answer, he laughed out the shattered window. "Now we are having fun, no?"

  "No."

  This was all we needed. A cop chasing us down in a stolen car with Philip's wrist torn open and his shirt soaked in blood.

  "You'd better lose him. He'll be calling for backup."

  "Too many movies," Philip answered, and then he glanced over at me. "Put on your seat belt. I'm not used to passengers."

  Obeying him instantly, wondering how he could talk and drive so fast at the same time, I looked back to see the police car falling behind. A second siren wailed from our left.

  Philip might have gotten me into this, but somehow I believed he would get me out. He wasn't scared or worried or putting on some macho show for my benefit-as a mortal would. His expression was focused but calm, every fiber, every muscle and reflex moving in rapid sequence.

  Whipping to the right with no warning, he threw me off-balance, and I grabbed the dashboard.

  "Hold on," he said.

  We flew off I-5 onto the Bothell exit. Philip never took his eyes off the rearview mirror. Sirens still screamed, but no lights were visible. He turned behind the office building of an old wrecking yard and braked the Firebird so hard I jerked forward against my belt.

  "Get out," he said, shoving his own door open.

  We ran among rusty cars, trucks, motorcycles, an
d army jeeps as the sky slowly turned from black to dark gray. Our speed felt good, too quick for most mortals to keep up.

  Philip slowed down next to an abandoned barn. The changing sky bothered him a lot more than the cops had. Me, too.

  "We better get another car and find a hotel room," I said.

  "There's no time."

  Tearing the barn door open, he slipped inside. The building must once have been part of the wrecking yard. Hubcaps, blackened socket wrenches, and even an aged engine lay scattered in the grass. I followed Philip to find him on his knees, ripping up floorboards.

  "What are you doing?"

  He didn't answer, but my question had been pointless. I knew what he was doing-making a hole under the barn for us to sleep in.

  "Here," he said, "get under here."

  "We can't stay in this place. What if somebody comes? What if somebody finds us?"

  "You would rather take chances outside? No one has been here in years. We'll be all right."

  My eyelids felt even heavier than my arms, and what choice did I have? He was right. We had no chance outside. The sun would be up in a few moments. Walking over, I slid down into the crawl space between the ground and the barn floor. Philip's body dropped down next to mine. Lying on his back, he put all the boards back in place over us.

  Part of me wanted to thank him, but if not for his reckless behavior, we wouldn't be here in the first place.

  "Sleep now," he whispered. "We talk tonight."

  "I've never slept on the ground before."

  "Never?"

  "No."

  His next words were a jumble, and his hard body relaxed slightly in dormancy. I don't remember anything else.

  Chapter 20

  Upon waking that night, three different lines of thought pushed to the front of my brain. The first was Jet-not only my regret over her unnecessary death, but the experience of reading her mind. How was it possible? Could she have been special like Wade? If so, why didn't she sense my intrusion?

  The second thought, of course, was Wade himself. By now he figured I'd ditched him and run off to save myself. The hurt feelings of one mortal meant nothing-especially in trade for his life-but I wanted to talk to him, explain Philip's unannounced presence. Ridiculous really. And irrational. Wade's good health depended on my absence, not my words.

  The third struggling thought was a memory from long ago of a dog named Thorne. One of Lord William's female wolfhounds disappeared during a hunt, and then turned up three weeks later, running with a wild mastiff. Months later, she gave birth to a single puppy. I must have been about ten when he was born. I can still see his broad, swaggering little chest and hear him growling at everything that moved. He grew up useless for anything men consider important. Independent, vicious, refusing to be touched or petted, he received no one's favor but mine. I couldn't scratch behind his ears any more than William could, but that didn't matter. I saved him kitchen meat scraps and cheese and gravy that the cooks threw out. He eventually stopped snarling at me and even met me by the back door in winters when live game grew scarce. I didn't love him but respected his independence.

  Two days after my sixteenth birthday, he attacked a small boy-one of the groom's sons-and inflicted permanent scars. The boy admitted to having thrown a stick at the dog, but no one listened. The groom shot Thorne an hour later. I heard his gun from my room. It wasn't as though I'd lost a pet who was dear to me. He just somehow seemed more important than the boy. Why should anything so strong and fierce have to die like that? I'd put my cloak on, left William in Marion's care, found a shovel, and had Mr. Shevonshire lift the dog's dead body into an old wooden cart for me. Pushing the cart into the woods, I buried Thorne by the pond so he could hear flocks of geese coming home in the spring. I shed tears for him. His loss affected me in a way I can't explain. He was not a loss to me personally, simply a needless loss. He'd been magnificent in life, more worthwhile than most people could claim to be.

  And why would Thorne push to the front of my brain after so many years? Perhaps I was lying next to his kindred spirit. This Philip. This purist who saw no contrasting shades in the world.

  He stirred beside me and pushed up at the boards. "Eleisha, are you awake?"

  "Yes."

  "Come."

  After climbing back up into the barn, we walked outside, night air breezing across cool skin, making me feel alive. Half expecting Philip to start looking for a car, I was surprised when he sat down on the grass.

  "Sit," he said. "Answer questions."

  I stayed on my feet. "You need a new shirt."

  "That doesn't matter. Tell me things."

  "What things?"

  "You were afraid of being caught by mortals last night, no? Not a game. Not your gift."

  His face and hair glowed like a candle in the dark, emanating his gift, but I didn't care.

  "Why did Maggie leave you?" I asked.

  That caught him off guard, and he stood back up. "She… we were different before. I can't remember how, but we were different. She cried for lost walks through vineyards in the morning, the sun on my face at dusk, the warmth of our hands. None of that mattered to me. Useless, human trappings of a world long past. There is nothing but hunting."

  "Did you miss her?"

  His jaw twitched. "I thought she had gone to Wales at first, so I searched for Julian. But she wasn't with him. He said that my chasing after an undead whore was insane. He said I must have been mad for turning her in the first place."

  "You had a better reason for making her than he had for making me."

  Walking over, I stood beside him, my head barely reaching his chest. He gazed down at me uncertainly. "Your voice is soft tonight. You don't hate me anymore."

  His amber eyes searched my face when I didn't answer.

  "You spat angry words at me," he said. "You called me ‘sick.»

  We all have hang-ups. Philip seemed overly concerned about what others thought of him. An unexpected weakness. But that could work to my advantage, give me a little control, keep him from killing unless we found safe conditions to hide bodies.

  "You just surprised me," I said. "You're so careless."

  "And you've been keeping William safe forever."

  "Forever."

  That may have been the heart of my fear, of my shock at Philip's inhumanity. The prospect of a future without William meant either death at the hands of Julian or existence in isolation. Which would be worse? Philip presented a third option. But did I want his company? Did the seeds of friendship-or more likely respect-keep me here, or merely reluctance to be alone?

  "We could leave the country," I whispered. "Go to Sweden or maybe Finland."

  My words struck a chord, and his eyes widened. "Would you do that? Leave with me?" Then he smiled. "Julian will think us insane."

  "Probably. We could get on a plane tonight. Be far away before morning."

  "Tonight?" He frowned. "No, tonight we go to Maggie's."

  "Maggie's?" I stepped back. "We can't go there. Dominick's been watching the house, waiting for me."

  "You should have killed him nights ago, ripped his throat and watched him bleed. Maggie cared for you, little coward."

  William never spoke to me except in garbled sentences about chess games and rabbits. Philip's use of «coward» sliced like a thin blade. Thinking myself above it all, above him, above pain, the shame made me choke.

  Only because he was right.

  "He knows what we are," I said. "How to really end us, not like a peasant with stakes. He used a shovel to cut off William's head."

  "You and Maggie shared a weakness, having grown too dependent on your gifts. Not lions anymore, but snakes, waiting only for the right time to strike. William was no challenge, old and weak. I am still a lion, and I am not weak."

  His words weren't a hollow boast to impress me. Philip wielded the truth like a weapon. But he barely mentioned Maggie's name after leaving the hotel last night. I thought his mourning must either be intern
al or past. Now he wanted revenge. What good would it do? We couldn't get Maggie back.

  "Can't we just go, Philip? Just run? There's nothing left here. Killing Dominick won't change anything."

  "Are you coming, or do I go alone?"

  The thought of staying here by myself, wondering, waiting, frightened me more than Dominick did. "I'm coming. But promise you won't play with him. He's dangerous. Promise we'll just do it and go."

  "Whatever you want." He seemed pleased, like a little boy with a new puppy. He glanced around the old junkyard. "These cars don't work. We have to find others."

  "Couldn't we just call a cab?"

  A little over an hour later, we pulled up to Maggie's in a 79 Chevy pickup with Styx's "Pieces of Eight" flooding from the speakers-Philip had actually wanted to put in Boston. I was going to have a serious talk with him about music when we had time.

  "Didn't you ever watch MTV?"

  "What's that?"

  "Forget it."

  Somebody else must be buying his clothes.

  The house looked dark.

  Stepping from the car, I cast around with my mind for Wade. He wasn't here. That would be just like him, though, to come back here instead of running for Portland.

  Philip walked out the front gate and came back a moment later. "There's a dark-haired man two blocks down the street in a silver Mustang."

  "That's him." Fear crawled up the back of my neck.

  "Good, then he saw us drive up. Do you have a key?"

  "A key?" I tried to smile, but my teeth kept clicking. "Mr. Break-and-Enter wants a key?"

  "If I know Maggie, this place will be locked like a fortress."

  "Dominick broke in the night he killed William."

  "Then somebody got careless-left a window open maybe."

  Did we? I didn't think so. But that would be too much to bear. Guilt from William's death weighed heavily enough.

  I had a set of keys, but getting past the multiple locks on the front door still took a few minutes. Philip had been right about that. There was also a dead bolt that someone would normally have to slide back from the inside, but Wade and I left in a hurry the night before last, out the back.