by Barb Hendee
It’s not in there. It’s in the ladies’ room.
“Go ahead to the seats,” she told the man. “I think I left my wallet in the restroom.”
“Your wallet?”
“Yes, you go on. I’ll be quick.”
Philip knew the impulse he’d placed felt natural, as if she would never consider doing anything else, and she hurried over to the ladies’ room, disappearing inside. The lobby was now empty, and the ushers were about to close the doors.
Philip glanced down at Eleisha, and then he walked right into the restroom. The woman was looking inside the stalls in confusion, as if unsure why she’d come. She was the only person here—except for Philip.
She gasped when she looked over and saw him standing there.
“Forgive me,” he said. “I’m in the wrong room.”
He turned on his gift.
Philip’s gift had always made hunting easy, especially in situations like this. He exuded an overwhelming sense of attraction—and his face did the rest. He kept his gift turned down to a minimum, not leaning upon it nearly as hard as Eleisha had.
The woman stared at him, her voice wavering. “I should . . . I need to . . .”
He increased his gift slightly, clouding her mind.
“No, stay here.”
She focused on his face, listened to his accent, and he backed her inside the large handicapped stall. She let him.
Up close, he could see she was a little older than he first thought, but still lovely, with shining brown hair and delicate features. This felt like real hunting . . . the way he used to hunt, and he could feel the tension building in his chest. Hunger hit him like a wall.
He was driven by an urge to pin her against the bathroom stall and turn off his gift so he could absorb her fear before he drained her. He wanted it so badly, he started shaking.
Eleisha should not have suggested this—or he should have refused.
He fought for control. “You’re tired,” he said, “so tired. Go to sleep.”
She dropped into his arms. He crouched, still holding her—still shaking—and forced himself to carefully puncture her wrist with his teeth. Warm blood flowed down his throat, and shadows of her memories passed through him.
He saw a luxurious kitchen with granite countertops. He saw her preparing for dinner parties, smiling at numerous people even though she was tired . . . and drinking more than she should to compensate. Then he saw her sitting alone in a dining room, looking down at the roasted game hens on the table getting cold as she waited for her husband . . . and she drank too much while waiting.
He swallowed just enough blood to strengthen himself, and he jerked his mouth away, closing his eyes and reminding himself that Eleisha was standing just outside the restroom. He had to stop now.
Opening his eyes again, he dug through the woman’s bag and found a bottle of Chanel N°5, which struck him as somewhat dated but pleasant. The glass of the bottle was thick, so he smashed it against the floor, breaking it into pieces. He used one shard to connect the holes between his teeth marks and then dropped it on the floor. Reaching inside the woman’s mind, he altered her memory. She’d come in, found her wallet, noticed the perfume in her bag as she put the wallet away, and decided she needed a small spray. Taking the bottle out, she’d slipped on a wet patch of the floor, shattered the bottle, and landed on some of the glass, cutting herself. Then she’d passed out.
Philip backed out of the stall, forcing himself away. He walked away from the bathroom, leaving the unconscious woman behind.
But as he came into the lobby, Eleisha saw his face, and her expression turned to alarm.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
“Nothing.”
“Is she all right?”
He nodded, and her alarm shifted to concern.
“You did well,” she said. “Much better than me. That was smart to wait until everyone was gone and then send her to the ladies’ room.” Her hazel eyes were so worried for him, for his happiness. He wanted to grip her face in both hands.
“Yes, but . . . ,” he started.
How could he tell her that games like this were torture for him, that they only reminded him of what he’d left behind? She was trying so hard.
“It’s nothing,” he said. “Let’s go home.”
By the time they reached the church, Philip was feeling a little better. After all, he had managed to control himself, and the cravings inside him were beginning to fade. Eleisha moved ahead of him to the front doors, her hair swinging across her back.
“Oh, Philip, I bought us some Alfred Hitchcock movies,” she said.
He frowned. “Who is that?”
“A wonderful director, very unique.”
Philip didn’t like how that sounded. If the word “artistic” came out of her mouth even once, he would revolt.
“Don’t worry,” she said. “We’ll start with Psycho tonight and then watch Vertigo tomorrow. You’ll like them both. I promise.”
“Oh . . . all right.”
Usually, when she said he’d like something, she tended to be right, and she’d introduced him to a number of films, books, and musical CDs that had surprised him. Suddenly, he began to feel much better. All things considered, in spite of his internal struggle, tonight had been not been dull, and now Eleisha had planned to watch a movie called Psycho with him. He was happy.
As they headed through the sanctuary and through the door behind the altar, she’d just begun chatting about something involving the use of light and shadow when Wade stepped from his office.
“I sent Seamus back to London,” he said without even a greeting.
Something in his voice caught Philip’s attention—a hard determination.
“Why?” Eleisha asked.
“Come look at this.”
A feeling of trepidation began to grow in Philip’s stomach as they followed Wade into the office and Eleisha pulled up a chair so that she and Wade could look at the computer screen together.
From where he was standing, Philip could see the headline.
WILD MAN STRIKES OUTSIDE BRITISH MUSEUM
The trepidation turned into a knot as Eleisha began silently reading. She stopped and looked at Wade. “Again . . . ,” she said. “Almost the same story.”
“Except this time the woman suffered blood loss. Even if Seamus can’t pinpoint a signature, I think we should check this out ourselves.”
“Where’s Rose? Does she know yet?”
“No. She’s in her room, and I didn’t want to disturb her,” he answered.
Philip just hung back by the door.
Eleisha finished scanning the story, but her face was unreadable when she looked over at Wade and nodded. “Yes, we have to go. But how long do you want to give Seamus first? We shouldn’t leave until we’ve let him finish his search. He might learn more this time.”
“Agreed. We should give him at least a few days,” Wade said, reaching for a map. “But I think we should get a hotel in this area. It’s central, and it’s close to several Tube stations.” He pointed down, but Philip didn’t bother looking.
Wade and Eleisha continued their discussion, and all plans for watching the Hitchcock film evaporated. Philip understood. This was their purpose; this was why they’d bought the church in the first place. Wade’s job was to locate a lost vampire. Eleisha would make contact and establish trust. Philip would provide protection.
He understood.
But he also couldn’t help dwelling on the memory of the past few months, when Eleisha hadn’t seemed interested in anything but him. Now they were about to launch a new search, a new mission, and a part of him couldn’t help feeling that he’d just lost something.
chapter two
VALE OF GLAMORGAN, WALES
Julian Ashton walked through the long dining hall at Cliffbracken Manor, noticing cobwebs in several corners and reminding himself to contact the Cardiff agency to arrange for a more competent maid. The last two had been hopeless, and
he vowed that if he could engage someone capable, he would not feed on her.
Good help was hard to find, and he couldn’t deny that Cliffbracken was gaining a rather dim reputation for disappearing servants.
He walked down the darkened hallway to his study, his favorite room. The fire he’d built earlier burned in the hearth, making the aged chairs and couches look almost new in the soft yellow light. A pile of maps and newspapers completely covered a round table in the center of the room. He leaned down to examine several of them.
Julian was a large man with a bone structure that almost made him look heavy. His dark hair hung at uneven angles around a solid chin, and he pushed it back, away from his face, wondering where to start first.
His nights had taken on a kind of routine while he waited for Eleisha to find a new lead. He usually woke, built a fire, went to the stables, took his horse out for a long ride, and then he would come back here to do research. Wade and Eleisha were taking so long to find someone new to track that he’d decided to try to take matters into his own hands, just to see what he would find. So he’d begun subscribing to international newspapers. He decided to start with Germany tonight and picked up a copy of Der Spiegel.
He’d just begun reading when the air beside him shimmered, and a transparent teenage girl appeared.
She was his spy, Mary Jordane.
In addition to her being transparent, the most striking things about her were her spiky magenta hair and shiny silver nose stud. Thin, with a hint of budding breasts, she was wearing a purple T-shirt, a black mesh overshirt, torn jeans, and Dr. Martens boots.
“They’ve sent Seamus back to London,” she blurted out immediately, and seemed about to rush onward.
Mary had never lost her penchant for babbling the instant she appeared.
“Slower!” he ordered.
She pursed her mouth and glared at him. By performing a ritual séance, he’d called her from the other side, manipulating her cooperation with a mix of promises for the future and threats of sending her back to the gray, in-between plane where he had found her. However, recently, the nature of their relationship had begun to change, and he sometimes wondered if she now enjoyed working for him. The very thought made him uncomfortable, as he wanted only servants who feared him, but he needed her too much to send her back.
“To London?” he asked, knowing the question would jar her from pouting.
“Yeah, I listened while Wade talked to Eleisha in the office. They had the computer up. That wild man from last summer attacked someone else.”
This got his attention. He’d been hoping Eleisha would continue to investigate that lead. He believed one of the elders may have escaped him and gone feral. It was possible.
Two centuries past, Julian’s kind had been far more numerous, and they’d existed by four laws. The most sacred of these laws was “No vampire shall kill to feed.” They’d retained their secrecy through telepathy, feeding on mortals, altering a memory, and then leaving the victim alive. New vampires required training from their makers to awaken and hone psychic abilities, but Julian’s telepathy never surfaced. He lived by his own laws, and so the elders began quietly turning against him. His own maker, Angelo, tried to hide this news from him, but he knew. He heard the rumblings, and he acted first, beheading every vampire who lived by the laws, including Angelo—who would have turned against him sooner or later.
Julian had left a small crop of younger vampires, untrained vampires like Eleisha and Philip, alone. They were not telepathic, did not know the laws, and were no threat to him.
Then with no warning, Eleisha suddenly developed fierce psychic abilities, and she began actively looking for any vampires who might have escaped Julian’s net and remained in hiding.
She’d found several vampires who didn’t count, such as Rose de Spenser, an uneducated creature who knew nothing of her own kind.
But Eleisha had also found Robert Brighton, a five-hundred-year-old elder who practiced the four laws like a religion. Robert had come out of hiding for Eleisha, who was so very easy to trust. Julian could not allow him to contaminate the others, to start the whole nightmare over again, and so he’d tracked Eleisha down and taken Robert’s head.
That Robert had survived and hidden for so long told Julian he couldn’t possibly be the only one. Now Julian was simply waiting for Eleisha to find more elders, to lure more of them out . . . and to lead him right to them.
Had she finally found another elder?
“Is she preparing to leave?” he asked.
“No. Wade wants to wait and see what Seamus can track down first. But he says they’re definitely going this time, whether Seamus pinpoints something or not.”
“Wade?”
This was an oddity Julian had been noticing in Mary’s reports. More and more in the past few months, Wade seemed to be making the decisions and giving the orders. Why would Eleisha—or Philip for that matter—ever take orders from a mortal? Julian wasn’t certain what this meant, but it bore watching.
“You want me to alert Jasper, tell him to be ready to move?” Mary asked.
Julian’s brows knitted. He rarely gave much thought to Jasper Nesland—a young vampire he’d created to serve him.
“No, not yet. Just go back to Portland and keep listening. Come to me as soon as they purchase tickets.”
“Okay.”
She sounded disappointed about something. He wasn’t sure what, but he didn’t give it any thought.
“Go,” he ordered.
The air shimmered again, and she vanished. Julian began digging through the newspapers, looking for the most recent issue of the Evening Standard. He wanted to see the article Wade had found.
Eleisha sat in her nightgown before the mirror at her dressing table. She picked up a silver brush and absently ran it through her hair—with several things on her mind.
First, she was hungry and now wondered about her wisdom in not feeding when she’d had the chance. Since Julian had proven himself a danger to any of the lost vampires they found, Philip had strictly forbidden Wade, Eleisha, or Rose from going out alone at night, and they had all agreed to this.
Eleisha had reason to believe that for now Julian was no threat to her, but Philip hadn’t changed his mind.
If she told him she needed to go hunting again, he’d want to know why, and then she’d have to tell him what happened tonight, and it would spoil any enjoyment he’d taken from the game they’d played. If she tried slipping out alone, his reaction would be worse.
She didn’t know what to do.
But also, for months now she’d been dwelling on a specific memory she’d seen in the mind of another vampire, Robert Brighton. He had existed for hundreds of years in the company of a woman named Jessenia whom he loved—no, more than loved. He’d been in love with her. Due to Eleisha’s youth spent as a servant, followed by nearly two centuries as a caretaker, she’d never experienced any of the things Robert had, and seeing his memories with Jessenia had been a revelation. Eleisha sometimes closed her eyes and relived what he felt as he touched Jessenia, kissed her . . . while joining his mind to hers.
Apparently, the love of vampires was different from the love of mortals, but just as physically intense.
Such acts were foreign to Eleisha.
They were foreign to Philip.
She knew he’d had lovers when he was a mortal, but something happened to him when he was turned, and as a result he couldn’t remember anything—anything at all—of his mortal life. It was as if he’d been born the night he was turned. After two hundred years, any remnants of humanity that might once have remained with him were long gone.
She ran the brush through her hair again.
The bedroom door opened, and Philip walked in. He glanced at her nightgown in surprise. “Dawn’s still an hour away.”
He wore jeans and a black T-shirt. Philip was quite possibly the most handsome man she’d ever seen—or anyone had ever seen for that matter. But she didn’t care what h
e looked like. His appearance was just part of his gift, something to fool mortals. He could have been disfigured, and she’d have loved him the same. When she was with him, she didn’t feel alone.
“I know,” she answered. “I just felt like getting ready for bed early.”
Looking at his reflection in the mirror, she could see he was unhappy about something—probably the impending trip to London and everything that went along with such a search.
“I’m sorry about the Hitchcock film,” she said, not sure what else to say. “We’ll watch it tomorrow if Seamus hasn’t come back yet.”
He shrugged. Philip had never been skilled at speaking. No matter what he was feeling, he often didn’t know how to put his thoughts into words, and he’d shared enough of his memories with her that she understood how much this disability frustrated him. He wished he could master verbal communication.
Eleisha turned in her chair, looking around. This room pleased her in a way no other bedroom had before. She liked that it was halfway underground. She liked the antique sloped ceiling and the cream-colored walls and the white trim. The bed was covered in a white eyelet comforter and a ridiculous number of Philip’s pillows. He technically had his own room, but he never slept there.
“Philip,” she began, uncertain how to even broach the image in her mind. But they could be leaving for London as early as tomorrow night, and then they would all be embroiled in a difficult search. “I wanted to try something new tonight . . . to try showing you a memory.”
He dropped down into the chair beside her bed and pulled his boots off. “You’ve shown me memories.”
“Not like this. I want to try showing you a memory I saw in someone else.”
He stopped moving, and the muscles in his arms tensed. “Who?”
“Robert.”
As soon as she said it, she’d let out a secret she couldn’t take back. Philip looked up, and she wasn’t sure what she saw in his eyes. Anger or anxiety? Maybe both.
“Robert showed you his memories?” He bit the words off. “How many?”