by Barb Hendee
She did not reach out telepathically but relied upon Seamus to warn her of danger. He’d promised he’d stay close. Without warning, he materialized beside her and pointed down.
“There,” he mouthed silently. He’d already promised he would not materialize inside unless she called for him. Even then, he couldn’t do much to help her, but she wanted as few “invaders” inside as possible.
Following his finger, she saw a small hole—barely large enough for herself—in the rotting boards. She didn’t need to bother asking whether the vampire was inside. Seamus would not forgo the sound of the speech otherwise.
She set down the backpack and steeled herself.
There was only one way to do this.
Clearing her mind, she dropped down and darted through the hole, coming up into darkness and the musty smell of decay . . . and she heard a screaming wail before she hopped up to all fours.
Even in the darkness, she could see his twisted white face across from her as he screamed and hissed. He seemed shocked, so he hadn’t sensed her outside and she’d caught him off guard.
He charged.
Stop! she fired, driving the command directly into his mind.
The sudden halt caused him to hit the ground face-first, but she held him there, using every ounce of telepathic strength she could. He did not try to push her out. Perhaps he did not know how.
A huge orange cat jumped up onto a box and hissed at her once, but it did not seem to know what to do and kept watching the vampire, as if waiting. A sleek gray tabby hopped up next, looking equally confused.
Eleisha ignored them, focusing entirely on holding the vampire as he writhed and choked in panic.
Without allowing herself to read his thoughts, she began sending her thoughts in simple, calming messages.
I won’t hurt you.
Here to help you.
I am like you.
Keep you safe.
I am Eleisha.
She kept this up, repeating several phrases over and over until he ceased to writhe and just stared out at her through his black eyes. Still, she kept a hard mental hold on him, ready to freeze him again if he charged.
Here, she got her first truly clear look at him. His white face was slender with high cheekbones, but so much of him was obscured by years of filth, and only the remnants of a tattered shirt remained on the top half of his body. His grimy hands were small and delicate, almost like a woman’s.
He pushed himself partially up, and she tensed, ready to freeze him again, but he did not rush her. He opened his mouth, curling it into a snarling shape without releasing sound and exposing pointed yellow teeth. Even without reading his mind, she could feel the waves of fear and confusion pouring off him.
She repeated for the sixth time, I won’t hurt you. Keep you safe.
Bracing herself, she knew it was time to connect to his thoughts. Nothing was certain here until she knew whether any thoughts she sent got through to him—if he at least understood the emotions if not the words.
Both the cats were still watching them in puzzled caution, giving Eleisha an idea to try before she opened her mind to him. She pointed to the cats.
Molly and Silverpants.
She had no idea whether the vampire knew these names, or whether they were simply something the old man outside had come up with, but she needed to try.
The vampire’s eyes flickered ever so slightly, and then Eleisha opened herself to his thoughts, preparing for the onslaught of images as they hit her. But urgency and a myriad of driving emotions were not so manic this time. They came quickly: fear, confusion, anger at being invaded . . . but they were not as intense as before.
Then she flashed again, I am Eleisha.
He was aware that something had changed, and she was reading him now. She could feel it in his shift of thoughts.
What is your name? she flashed.
Images flooded his mind . . . and she watched them pass by: a rocky beach; the front of a faded building in an old fishing village; the round face of a man with thinning red hair; image after image of trees, wildlife, and dark forests.
What is your name? she repeated.
Maxim.
The word surfaced with an emotion of surprise, like something buried so long it had been completely forgotten.
He pushed himself up to all fours, his eyes shifting back and forth in a kind of excitement. Eleisha kept a close watch on him, knowing he could break down again and rush her at any second.
Keeping her voice soft, she said, “Maxim?”
He froze, and the moment was crucial. The sound of a voice was very different from a telepathic joining. But he didn’t attack her. He just studied her face.
Maxim, he sent back amidst his jumbled thoughts.
Without knowing why, Eleisha began to communicate with a series of pictures. She started with her memories of the church: the rose garden, Wade’s office, the downstairs living room, and the sanctuary. Then she moved to images of her companions in normal nightly activities: drinking tea at the table, reading aloud, playing cards, working in the garden. . . .
She could feel his fascination, like a hunger, begin to grow as he watched everything she showed him.
Now you, she flashed. Show me.
She had no idea if he would understand, but he’d already shown her a few images of his past—whether he’d meant to or not.
Some part of him did understand, and he sent back more mental pictures of the fishing village, of the man with the thinning red hair . . . and then an aged stone house set among a mass of dark trees. He showed her what appeared to be a small library inside the house.
He seemed to get stuck there, and he let out a frustrated hiss, as if trying to make his mind work.
But Eleisha couldn’t help being startled when the images ceased, and he began slamming the heel of his palm into his forehead.
“No!” she said aloud, moving to him. “Don’t do that.”
He stopped, and his eyes flew to her face in warning, but he didn’t attack. She kept her thoughts clear and ready to freeze him if need be. She had made the mistake of trusting unfamiliar vampires before, and that would not happen again. He leaned his white face closer to hers, and she tried not to wince at the stench coming from his mouth and body.
“Maxim,” she said softly, sending the same images of the fishing village back into his mind.
She was certain of one thing now. He was not a newly created vampire, but someone who might predate herself. His memories, even the memory of his own name, had been locked away for many years. The attacks in London had started only a few months ago. Where had he been?
Now that she’d started this, he seemed desperate to pull up his own past, but he was unable. Yet every memory that surfaced, no matter how vague, seemed to bring him slightly closer to attempting communication with her.
His memories were intact. They were just buried beneath layer upon layer of years without access. She did not know why, and she needed to know. Grimacing, she pushed her thoughts deeper into his mind.
Let me in, she flashed.
She hadn’t wanted to do this so soon, but she had to get closer to his being able to offer real communication before Philip found them. She had to make progress . . . and she had to do it quickly. If she could just get Maxim to begin at any solid point in his life, she could focus the memories into a chronological stream from which he could not break.
I’m going to touch you. Don’t flinch.
Reaching out slowly, she still did not know if he understood her, but when she touched his hand, he did not jerk it away.
Maxim, go back. Back to the beginning.
She felt him trying, struggling.
The world went dark, and then she was lost inside his past.
chapter eight
MAXIM
Maxim Patrick Carey was born in Hastings, England, in 1805. Hastings was a fishing town then, and there was nothing Maxim hated more than fish.
Except perhaps his life.
Until reaching the age of ten, he was fully convinced that someone had slipped into his parents’ home the night he was born, taken their baby, and replaced it with him. He believed he was a displaced spirit. He did not belong.
There was much evidence to support this theory. His papa was wide and muscular with dark blond, curly hair. His mama was stocky with dark blond straight hair. His two brothers and three sisters were all stout, with dark blond hair and gray eyes.
Maxim was small and wiry, with thick blue-black hair. His eyes were so dark brown they often appeared black, especially at night. His hands were slender, and his skin was pale. By the time he was ten, the local boys called him “pretty,” and sometimes they hit or kicked him. Seeing the cruelty in their faces, he was afraid, but he tried to keep his fear hidden and to take the pain they inflicted. He had no other defense against them.
His papa existed in a state of almost-constant, seething anger. Papa did not shout or beat his family, but rather he looked at the lot of them, including Maxim’s mama, with a kind of disappointed disgust. In his youth, he’d wished to be the captain of a sea vessel; however, he’d then been “trapped”—due to the impending birth of Maxim’s eldest brother—and forced into life as a fisherman to support a family.
Papa’s dissatisfaction with his own fate was like a poison drifting through the family’s small quarters near the docks.
However, some of his sentiments were not unjustified. Mama was neither a cook nor a housekeeper. She preferred to sit with other women and visit much of the time. As a result, Maxim’s home was a cluttered, untended place; his clothes were dirty, and he often had to fend for himself when it came to meals.
Papa complained about being surrounded by “filthy” children, and Mama pretended not to hear him. She pretended that nothing was wrong and that all was right in their household. Maxim’s brothers and sisters accepted her premise.
Maxim did not.
He found his family dull and witless. He was like a dark pebble thrown among a pile of tan stones. But for as much of a stranger as he felt among these people, they certainly did not disagree. His two elder brothers used any opportunity to kick him under the table or elbow him hard in the chest. He feared being alone with either of them.
“You think you’re better than us,” his elder sister, Edith, accused.
He didn’t argue. He did think he was better, and they hated him for it. As a child, Maxim didn’t know what he truly wanted. He knew only that he envied other children with clean homes and clean clothes and papas who cheerfully brought home bread and cheese to share.
Of his parents, Mama was the one given to intermittent bouts of kindness.
One night, as the family began preparing for bed, the crusty dishes from a supper of near-sour milk and two-day-old bread still littered the table. The threadbare rug was soiled by filth and crumbs, and both of Maxim’s younger sisters were covered in grime. Papa glared daggers of blame at everyone before striding off to bed alone.
The other siblings began slinking away, and Maxim was so filled with despair, he could not keep silent. “I don’t belong here,” he told Mama.
She looked up from her chair by the low fire, drinking ale from a tin cup.
“What do you mean?”
He was surprised she responded to such words. That wasn’t like anyone in his family. Except for Papa, they all pretended everything was fine. But then . . . Papa never did anything to try to improve the situation. He just placed blame.
“I think your baby was taken and someone put me in its place,” Maxim said. “I don’t belong here.”
“Why do you say that?”
Pent-up anguish poured from his mouth. “I don’t look like any of you. I’m not like any of you!”
She watched him for a little while, and then stood up. “Come here.”
Hesitantly, he followed her to a small chest she kept in the kitchen. Opening it, she took out a miniature portrait of a dark-haired lady.
“Look closer,” she said.
He did, seeing a small woman with pale skin, fine features, and blue-black hair.
“This was my mother,” Mama said without any feeling. “You look just like her. I named you after her father.”
Something inside him crumbled. He’d been wrong. He wasn’t a changeling after all . . . and this was his family.
Mama looked at him. “She was just like you, too, always wanting something better, thinking she was better than everyone else. She looked at me, at my hair and face, as if I were dirt.”
“What happened to her?”
“She drank . . . wine at first, gin later. Fell down a flight of stairs when I was seventeen.”
For the first time in his life, Maxim was moved by something Mama said. Even though she had just devastated him, he realized she’d been trying to make him feel better, to feel that he belonged. He wanted to say something, do something, for her in the moment, but he had no idea what that might be.
In the year that followed, he slowly came to terms with the fact that he indeed was a member of the Carey family, and that as soon as he turned twelve, he would be out on a fishing boat with Papa and his brothers, and there was nothing he could do about it.
Other men seemed to hate him, and he’d learned to fear them. The prospect of a life among them—netting and gutting fish—was like a death sentence.
Then, in 1816, a miracle happened, and the vicar of the local rectory died of a massive stroke. Besides resulting in his being excused from Sunday services for a few weeks, this event meant little to Maxim until the old vicar’s replacement arrived.
But when Maxim saw Alistair Brandon up on the pulpit at the Sunday morning service, he knew something in the world had shifted. For one, Vicar Brandon smiled at the people in his congregation, and the smile reached his light blue eyes. He had a round face and thinning red hair even though he was young—almost too young to be a vicar. This was the first time Maxim had ever looked upon another man without feeling fear. Its very absence affected him.
Vicar Brandon’s voice was clear and deep, and instead of making “his flock” feel guilty about a week’s worth of past sins, he gave a sermon on the virtues of avoiding the pitfalls of undue greed, and instead of a Bible, he held up a book called The Iliad written by a man named Homer, and he began speaking of something called the Trojan War. Maxim was on the edge of his church pew.
Apparently, in the story, Achilles was asked to give up a war prize—a girl—and he didn’t want to, and this made him behave badly.
“Most people see Achilles as a hero, a brave warrior,” Vicar Brandon went on, pushing back a few strands of red hair, “but he was plagued by greed and arrogance, and he neglected the needs of his men, leaving Odysseus to tend to such duties. Succumbing to the call of greed can bring out the worst in the very best of us, and we must ever guard against it.”
Just then, Maxim noticed that his two elder brothers were nodding off to sleep, and his father was frowning at the new vicar in disapproval. How could his brothers possibly fall asleep during such a story?
After church, most of the adults murmured to one another in quiet voices, but on the way out, as Papa tentatively shook Vicar Brandon’s hand and introduced himself, Maxim stared up, and Vicar Brandon looked down at him. Their eyes locked, and a jolt passed through Maxim. He did not know what it meant, although he did know it had nothing to do with fear. The vicar quickly looked away and nodded politely to Papa.
At supper that night, Papa asked, “Does the new vicar have a wife?”
Mama shook her head. She always knew the gossip. “Not yet. He’ll be a catch for some girl.”
But Papa’s frown deepened.
For the following five days, Maxim pestered Mama a good deal to send him on errands that might take him past the rectory. He hung outside the rectory garden as long as he could, not certain what he was hoping for . . . but only that he was hoping for something.
On the fifth day, a side door of the rectory opened, and Vica
r Brandon stepped out. He wore a plain shirt and trousers, and he carried a hoe in his right hand. He stopped upon seeing Maxim.
“Well, hello,” he said. But his voice sounded different now, almost cautious. Had he felt the jolt back at the church door, too?
Maxim didn’t answer. He didn’t know how and just stood outside the gate as Vicar Brandon approached.
“Can I do something for you?” the vicar asked. “Do you need something?”
Feeling as if he were about to burst, Maxim had the sense that this meeting was critical and that he had to say the right thing or the moment would vanish forever.
“What happened to Achilles?” he asked.
By way of answer, the vicar’s face broke into an open smile, the first one ever aimed directly at Maxim. He wanted to smile back but didn’t know how.
“You come inside, and I’ll show you the book,” Vicar Brandon said. “Can you read?”
“Yes . . . some.”
Mama had taught him his letters, but his family had no need for books.
Maxim spent the next hour sitting beside Vicar Brandon, listening to him read sections of the precious, faded copy of The Iliad, all about a Trojan horse and a fierce battle with a man named Hector. It was the best hour of Maxim’s life. He nearly wept when it ended and he had to go home.
Two nights later, lying in his bed, he heard his parents engaged in an open fight—something they rarely did.
“No!” Papa roared. “Something ain’t right about him. You tell him no.”
Maxim wondered whom his father meant, but he didn’t expect to find out, because whenever Papa took that tone, Mama would fall silent in a hurry. To Maxim’s surprise, she shouted back.
“That boy don’t belong on a fishing boat, and you know it! He’ll be less than useless to you, and I think . . . I think it might kill him.”
“So it’s good enough for me but not for the boy?”
“No, I didn’t mean . . . Please, give him a chance. He could make something of himself. The vicar ain’t even asking for money. He says the boy is gifted. Please.”