by Barb Hendee
But he’d forgotten one element of this act, and his small oversight changed things between them forever.
Just a few seconds after she started, his most recent memories began to flow. When a vampire killed while feeding (and he’d experienced this many times while reliving their memories), the victim’s entire life poured out. But when feeding like this, Eleisha would see only bits and pieces and shadows, and Wade’s most vivid memories of the past weeks involved him standing over Eleisha and Philip while watching them sleep on her bed.
As she swallowed mouthfuls of his blood, she experienced the raw, unexplainable feelings of being “shut out” that he suffered while looking down at them. She felt his internal struggle over trying to stop and being unable to overcome the compulsion.
Panic hit him.
She drew down hard once more, swallowed, and disengaged her teeth, staring at him. Her eyes looked so large in the darkness, but her skin had a hint of color now.
“Wade . . . ?” she stammered.
“It’s not how it looks! I just like to check on you.”
They both knew that was a lie. She’d been inside his head for only a few moments—but it was enough.
Blood from his wrist dripped onto the lowest stair.
“Eleisha!” Rose called from above. “Are you out here?”
Eleisha’s eyes widened farther, but she managed to call back calmly. “Yes, I’m here. Coming, Rose.”
She got up and opened the back door, which led into Wade’s makeshift gym. “Can you bandage your wrist alone?”
“Yes,” he answered stiffly, wondering how she could say anything so mundane after what they’d just been through together.
“Then go. I’ll go up and meet Rose.”
He moved to slip through the door.
“Wade?”
He paused.
“Nothing,” she said.
He walked inside.
chapter three
On the second night of his search, Seamus materialized in an alley near King’s Cross Station in London, making certain he was alone in the darkness. After being away from Rose so long, he wasn’t up to full strength anymore, but he was still strong enough to search, and he’d finally sensed the hint of an undead signature . . . for a black hole in the fabric of life.
A presence, or perhaps an absence, hit him almost right away, close by, and he blinked out, rematerializing in another alley off Belgrove Street, casting out with his senses again and becoming frustrated with his inability to track down this presence.
He had come looking for this vampire twice before, and he didn’t want to fail Wade a third time.
Seamus had spent nearly two hundred years alone with Rose, never letting her see how a part of him longed for true death, how he’d suffered through the empty nights, one after the next, where nothing ever changed. But another part of him could not bear to leave her all alone. She was his blood and kin, and he endured the endless nights for her sake.
Wade and Eleisha had changed all that, and now he was a part of something much bigger. The underground wouldn’t even exist without him. He was their seeker, their searcher, the one who brought everyone together. They could never have found each other without him.
He’d also not realized how hungry he’d been for friendship, and Wade had proven himself a true friend. Eleisha had won Seamus’ affections as well, for she was always gentle with Rose.
At first, Seamus had hated Philip, but his feelings were more conflicted now. Since returning from Denver, while Philip had not exactly been kind to Rose, he had not been unkind either, and he’d succeeded in helping hone her telepathy in areas where Wade had not. Yet . . . some of Seamus’ instincts still screamed that this new side of Philip was nothing more than a facade to hide the killer he’d always been—always would be. Seamus would never completely trust him.
Although the alley was dark, he could see numerous people walking down the street just past the entrance. This was a busy part of the city, but quite shabby, with many decaying buildings and a large homeless population.
He drifted closer to the entrance, reaching out with his senses and feeling himself growing even weaker. This was the cross he bore in order to be useful to his companions. Shortly after being separated from Rose, he began losing his hold on this world, and the greater the distance, the more rapid the process. All ghosts on this plane were tied to a place or a person. Their spirits remained here due to strong—overwhelming—emotion at the time of death. Seamus was no exception. He’d told Wade that being away from Rose simply weakened him. But this was not the complete truth.
Rose was his only reason for remaining here, and whenever he left her, he could feel himself slipping away and being pulled to the other side. While away from her, he had to constantly fight back, using all his strength to remain.
He’d now been away from her—across an ocean—for more than twenty-four hours, and he was working harder to keep from succumbing and being pulled from this plane to the other side. The effort to remain was agony, but he fought to stay.
He was onto something. He was sure of it.
Last summer when he’d hunted this presence, it had been much fainter, almost imperceptible, but this time he could sense it more clearly—just not as clearly as he’d sensed all vampires in the past.
He focused all his remaining energy on the signature and blinked out again, rematerializing inside a dark, abandoned building just off Euston Road. He could see movement and hear shuffling behind some rotting wooden boxes, and he froze.
But he wasn’t prepared for the scream.
A sound like a wailing animal exploded around him just before a figure shot out from behind the boxes. Nothing in this world could hurt Seamus, but he flinched and floated backward anyway.
Then he saw a young man—a creature?—crouched down on all fours across the room. It—he?—hissed sharply, exposing long canine fangs, and Seamus cursed himself for having fully materialized. But he didn’t blink out. There was no point now.
The man, hissing and spitting, never stopped moving, shifting about on his hands and the balls of his feet. He was slender, with shocking white skin and black eyes. His blue-black hair was filthy and hung jaggedly around his narrow face. His clothes were in tatters, especially the remnants of his shirt, which exposed the white hairless flesh of his chest and shoulders. His feet were bare.
Seamus looked around, wondering if this place was some kind of “home,” and if so, whether he could lead Eleisha back here. But there were no blankets on the floor, no flashlight, no sign at all that anyone had been staying here.
The man hissed at him again, and then he bolted, moving faster than Seamus could see toward a small hole in the wall. Seamus started after him, hoping to learn more, when a large orange cat jumped from the darkness onto a box near Seamus and slashed at him, spitting and snarling in an eerie echo of the man. Again, Seamus pulled away out of instinct rather than any necessary fear, but the action broke his concentration. A sleek gray tabby jumped to the box on his other side, snarling and slashing from the right.
Seamus blinked out, materializing back in the alley on Belgrove. He reached out with his senses again, but he could no longer pinpoint the signature, and the experience in the dark room had further weakened his hold on this plane. He felt himself slipping.
He’d seen enough here. It was time to report. It was time to get back to Rose.
Eleisha sat on the couch, watching Psycho with Philip. She could hear Wade in the kitchen helping Rose learn to control her telepathy. He was a patient teacher, and his low voice carried through the archway.
Everything seemed normal.
But it wasn’t.
Eleisha kept her expression calm, glad that Philip had become wrapped up in the film quickly. She knew he’d like this one, and he sat riveted during the famous shower scene and the detailed cleanup scene afterward. He even commented on how unusual it was for a film to follow a character for so long—Janet Leigh’s, in this case—before
the story line completely changed. This was fairly analytical for Philip.
But Eleisha’s mind wasn’t on the movie. It was on their impending journey. It was on her having just swallowed blood from Wade’s arm. It was on the clear memory of his leaning over her and looking down as she and Philip slept. It was on the loneliness he never expressed.
She had always viewed him as so . . . solid, the rock of their team. Now she would forever see him differently.
She wasn’t angry with him; she was worried. She’d picked up enough to see he was fighting a compulsion that consistently left him feeling more and more isolated, yet the thought of his standing over her and Philip while they slept—every morning—made her shiver. Should she start locking the door? Worse, she didn’t even know how to help him. If she tried to spend more time with him now, be more intimate with him, he’d interpret it as pity.
“Okay,” he said patiently to Rose, “I’m going to push harder. You keep my thoughts out.”
Eleisha couldn’t believe how calm he sounded, as though the turmoil inside him weren’t even there. She couldn’t stop thinking about the strength in his hands when he’d pinned her arms, or of him pushing his wrist deeper into her mouth. He was a stranger to her, and yet he was still Wade.
She glanced at Philip. He hadn’t mentioned the memory she’d shared with him last night, and she was beginning to think he might not. That act had taken courage on her part, but he seemed to be pretending it never happened. She had hoped for more from him. She wasn’t certain what . . . just more.
“Norman should kill his mother,” Philip said. “Then he would be free.”
“Well . . . keep watching.”
Something shimmered through the archway of the kitchen. She tensed.
“Eleisha!” Wade called instantly. “You out there?”
She hit the PAUSE button on the remote and jumped to her feet, moving quickly through the arch to see Seamus standing by the table. He looked exhausted, all his bright colors faded and even more transparent than usual.
“Seamus,” Rose said in alarm, “you promised you wouldn’t push yourself this hard.”
“Did you find anything?” Philip asked, coming in after Eleisha.
Seamus nodded, as if trying to gather the strength to speak. “Yes,” he said finally. “Different . . . and I can’t always make a pinpoint, but I can get close.”
“You think it’s a vampire?” Eleisha asked.
He nodded again, floating closer to Rose. “It’s a vampire . . . but he’s wild, like an animal.”
Eleisha just watched him for a few seconds, taking this in. Since returning from Denver, she’d had moments when she wondered if maybe they were all that remained, if they’d already found the few survivors, and what this meant to the future of the underground. But Wade and Seamus had found another, and he needed their help. The world had just shifted.
Her entire focus shifted.
“All right,” she said, nodding back at him. “We need to get ready and buy three plane tickets.”
“Maybe four,” Wade put in.
Eleisha forced herself to look at him. It was the first time she’d looked directly at him since the stairwell. He was wearing a long-sleeved shirt. “What do you mean?”
He didn’t meet her eyes. Instead, he turned to Rose. “I think we’re going to need Seamus with us on this one . . . maybe much of the time, and that won’t work unless you’re with us, too.”
“Wade, no,” Eleisha cut in. “You can’t ask her to—”
He held up his right hand, and Eleisha paused, watching him warily. Rose had a phobia of travel, and she’d never been on an airplane. They’d only managed to bring her from San Francisco by barricading themselves into a cabin on a train and closing the shutters on the window. Although for Wade’s sake, Eleisha had been allowing him to take greater charge of things, to feel more essential, she was still in control here, and she’d shut him down in a heartbeat if he tried to make Rose do something she feared.
“I think I can help you,” Wade said, still speaking directly to Rose. “If you let me into your mind, I can take you someplace else, keep you from knowing where you are until we land, even until we reach the hotel if you want me to. Will you try?”
Eleisha’s protective instincts surged up, and she got ready to fight him on this if necessary, but Rose’s expression did not close up. She seemed to be contemplating his words, and she looked over at Eleisha with hope.
“I so want to help you,” she said. “Let me try this.”
“Are you sure?” Eleisha asked, still uncertain.
“We’re going to need Seamus,” Wade stated flatly. “She has to come.”
“Yes,” Rose answered. “I want to try.”
Philip had his arms crossed and was leaning back against the refrigerator, watching Wade with a slightly puzzled expression.
“Good. But we need a few more ground rules,” Wade went on. “For one, nobody turns off their cell phone, and everybody answers when it rings—do you understand?”
“You can’t bring your gun into London,” Philip said quietly, changing the topic.
Eleisha glanced over at the warning tone in his voice, and she didn’t like where this was going. Wade seemed to be attempting to put himself in the position of leader—without anyone casting a vote—and Philip didn’t take orders from anyone, not even Wade.
Wade frowned. “What?”
“You can’t bring a handgun into England. Airport security does random searches of luggage, so if you try to hide it in your suitcase and check it in, someone could still search your bag. You’d be arrested when we hit the ground.”
“What about your machete?”
“I can just pack that in a box and send it through with oversized luggage. Julian travels with a sword all the time. But laws there are different for guns.” Philip paused, as if something had just occurred to him. “Has anyone here ever been to London?”
His question stopped the conversation. Eleisha already knew the answer was no.
She’d grown up in Wales without ever seeing anything outside of the Cliffbracken estate. After turning her, Julian had put her on a ship bound for America in 1839. She’d seen almost nothing of Europe. Wade had never been out of the country. Rose had been born in Scotland, never gotten far outside her home village, and then lived the existence of a shut-in after coming to America.
“Have you?” Eleisha asked Philip.
“Many times.”
Philip was the traveler in their little group, and he’d spent most of his time in Europe. That put him in a unique position here.
But Wade wasn’t ready to give up. “I’ll book the tickets.”
“No, I’ll do it,” Philip said, just an edge of warning in his voice. “I need to account for the time difference so we can take off in the dark and land in the dark.”
Wade opened his mouth, but Eleisha shook her head at him slightly. He closed it.
“We should get packed,” she said. She glanced from Philip to Wade. “The only thing that matters now is that we’ve found another lost one—who needs help.” She hesitated. “That’s all that matters.”
Wade had the good taste to look slightly chagrined, but Philip just walked out of the kitchen. Eleisha’s stomach tightened. They were about to embark on a search that had a chance of success only if they worked together and depended upon one another’s strengths without question. How was this going to play out with so many rifts cracking the connections between them?
She didn’t know.
The following night, Julian had just finished saddling his horse when the air shimmered and Mary appeared beside him at the stable.
“They’re in a taxi, on the way to the airport,” she said immediately.
For once he wasn’t annoyed at her sudden appearance and manner of blurting out words.
“Who’s on the mission?”
“All of them.”
He put his large hand on the horse’s shoulder. “All of them?”
Julian digested that information, as he knew Rose suffered from a debilitating phobia of travel, and she always remained behind at the church. Why would they risk bringing her unless they believed they’d found something important . . . an elder?
“What have you learned about the vampire they’re seeking?” he asked.
“Nothing. They had a meeting in the kitchen, but I couldn’t get close enough to listen. Seamus was there.” She frowned. “And if Rose is going to London, he’ll be with them all the time. That’s going to be a bitch for me.”
Julian glanced at her, trying to ignore her crude speech patterns. She was American after all, and allowances must be made. Mary had much greater freedom of movement than other ghosts, as she was not tied to any one person or place; unfortunately, however, Seamus could sense her presence if she got too close, and Julian didn’t want Eleisha to know when or if she was being watched.
However, Seamus’ doing sweeps of London in search of a vampire could be problematic in other ways. Julian would not be able to book a hotel inside the city.
“You want me to teleport to London and see what I can learn on my own?” she asked.
He put his fist to his mouth for a few seconds, thinking. If Eleisha had found an elder, every move he made would be vital. He had to intercept her quickly once she’d made contact and take matters into his own hands. History could never be allowed to repeat itself, so he had to get closer without getting too close.
“No . . . go to San Francisco. Tell Jasper to book a flight and meet me at the Great Fosters hotel on Stroude Road in Surrey. It’s only about nine miles from Heathrow Airport. He should have no trouble.”
She brightened. “Okay.”
He started to turn away and then stopped. “But tell him to calculate the time zones properly. London is eight hours ahead of California, and he has to land in the dark.”
Her transparent forehead wrinkled, and then she said, “Oh . . . yeah, I’ll make sure he’s careful.”