In Memories We Fear

by Barb Hendee

  Healing mutual wounds with Philip might take longer, but at least he wasn’t in a rage.

  She nodded to Wade, reached back, and opened the door.

  “It’s all right. You can come out.”

  Tentatively, Maxim came toward her and stepped out the door. On seeing Philip, he stopped.

  “This is Maxim,” Eleisha said.

  Then Eleisha heard a whooshing sound.

  Philip opened his coat with his left hand and jerked out the machete with his right.

  He was the only one capable of doing what was necessary, and he had no intention of shirking that responsibility.

  Eleisha was not a fool in most ways, but she had a blind side when it came to other vampires. She had trusted Simone back in Denver. . . . She had tried everything to help Simone, and the result had nearly been her own death.

  That was not going to happen again.

  He strode forward without hesitation, even as Wade called out.

  “Philip! What are you doing?”

  The black-haired vampire’s eyes widened, and then it bolted left, running for the trees.

  “Philip!” Eleisha shouted.

  But he didn’t listen. Better he hurt her now than let that feral vampire hurt her later. He broke into a run, keeping the creature in sight as it passed the tree line. This time, it would not escape him. It was fast, blurring among the dense greens and browns of the forest, but Philip increased his own speed, gripping the machete. This would take only one swing.

  Freeze!

  Every muscle in his body went rigid at the same time, and he fell forward into the dirt. Eleisha was inside his head, and his mind roared back at her. How could she? How could she side against him even now?

  Raw anger such as he’d never felt before exploded inside him, and he used all his internal strength to push her out. She fought him, trying to keep him frozen. But he pushed back harder, feeling her control give way, and he jumped to his feet.

  The vampire was gone.

  Whirling around, he saw Eleisha standing about twenty feet behind him just beyond the tree line. Wade, Rose, and Seamus were behind her, nearer to the shack.

  Rage kept coming in waves, and, nearly blind with anger, he roared at Eleisha with his voice this time. Striding back toward her, he felt his lips curl up into a snarl.

  Wade almost couldn’t believe what was happening, but Philip was closing in on Eleisha, snarling and carrying a machete.

  He started to run toward them, but Rose grabbed his arm, dragging him back.

  He shook her off, scrambling forward as she cried, “Wade, no! Look at his face!”

  Something in her voice stopped him, and she grabbed his arm again.

  “He’ll kill you in that state!” she said. “She’s the only one safe from him! He might knock her out so she won’t try to stop him again, but that’s the worst he’ll do.”

  Her hands gripped tighter as he hesitated for just a second.

  Eleisha could hear Rose shouting behind her, but Philip was coming straight at her, and for the first time since the night she’d met him . . . she was afraid of him. He had a full block up, and she couldn’t get a command through.

  He was closing the distance between them rapidly, but she wouldn’t run—not from Philip.

  Then a high-pitched cry, like that of an animal, rang through the night, and a black and white blur came from the trees at high speed. Before Eleisha really understood what was happening, a loud thud sounded, and Philip pitched forward again, hitting the ground.

  She realized the black and white blur was Maxim; he dashed around Philip to get in front of her . . . and he was holding a tree branch. Philip’s head was dripping blood, but he jumped to his feet again, his eyes lost in a mad rage.

  “Leisha, back!” Maxim shouted, gripping the branch with both hands. He snarled at Philip. “No!”

  Philip stopped when Maxim spoke, taking in his stance and the branch in his hands.

  “Can’t you see?” Eleisha cried. “He’s protecting me! He thinks he’s protecting me from you!”

  Don’t move, she flashed to Maxim. Don’t attack him.

  Philip stood there, staring at Maxim, and Eleisha knew this might be the only moment she’d have to get through to him.

  “Philip, please. He can already feed without killing. I know I was wrong before, in Denver, but trust me this time. He can function.” She choked. “He’s been alone nearly two hundred years, and I can’t finish this by myself. Please.”

  Philip moved his gaze from Maxim to Eleisha. His head was still bleeding, but slowly, he lowered the machete.

  Mary floated in the darkness of the trees, close enough that at one point, she might have run her hand through Maxim as he dashed past.

  Seamus was too preoccupied to sense for her, so she watched the whole scene play out, thinking that any moment Philip was going to end this, and she’d be able to teleport back to Julian with good news.

  Then, Philip seemed on the brink of turning on Eleisha—something Mary had not thought possible—and Maxim ran back into the fight . . . to protect Eleisha.

  And he was speaking.

  The sound of his words, and the sight of him defending Eleisha, brought Philip to a screeching halt. Mary felt her hopes begin to sink.

  “He’s been alone nearly two hundred years,” Eleisha cried, “and I can’t finish this by myself. Please.” She was choking, and if she’d been mortal, she would have been sobbing. She was begging Philip—and he always responded when she begged him.

  As Mary watched the rage fade from Philip’s face, her hopes died.

  He lowered his blade.

  Cursing quietly, Mary blinked out. This was far from over.

  chapter fourteen

  Ten minutes later, Wade decided to follow Eleisha’s lead—in however she wanted to move through the following hours of this night. Although the crisis seemed to have passed, the situation was far from resolved.

  They were all still outside.

  But Philip stood back, away from everyone, and Maxim wouldn’t go near him. Eleisha had somehow gotten Maxim to put the tree branch down, and she was leading him back toward the shack. Wade couldn’t help being fascinated by the difference in this tragic creature from the last time he’d seen him.

  Eleisha had not been exaggerating.

  She was holding Maxim’s hand as she led him closer. “Maxim, this is Wade,” she said. “You’ll like him. He’s nice, like Brandon.”

  Maxim looked up. “Like Brandon?”

  “Yes, very much like Brandon.”

  Wade had no idea what this meant, but he didn’t interrupt.

  “Can you go inside with Wade and Rose, and maybe show Brandon to Wade?” Eleisha asked.

  “With memory?”

  “Yes, with a memory.”

  Rose reached out to help guide Maxim back inside, and suddenly, Eleisha flashed into Wade’s mind.

  He can speak telepathically if you link with him, but he can’t instigate. Don’t go anywhere alone with him yet. Stay with Rose. I don’t know how he’ll act around a mortal, but he always responds to her gift.

  Wade nodded and then asked aloud, “Aren’t you coming in?”

  “Not yet.”

  She was already walking backward . . . toward Philip.

  Wade should have known. No matter what happened, no matter who it was they needed to help, no matter how grateful Eleisha might be to Wade, in the end, she would go running to Philip.

  It would always be Philip.

  Eleisha walked through the aged headstones.

  Philip’s coat was still open, and his ivory chest shone in the moonlight. His head had stopped bleeding. He saw her coming toward him and glanced away, as if he couldn’t bring himself to look at her. She was still unsettled over being so affected tonight by the mere sight of him.

  His physical appearance was just part of his gift, part of the illusion he needed to hunt. She’d never let herself think much on it before.

  Or had she?


  Maybe because she had spent so much time in Maxim’s memories, among the vanity of vampires, and love of personal beauty, this thought was foremost in her conscious mind as she looked at Philip now. In her opinion, Maxim’s beauty had been a shadow next to Philip’s.

  Philip was tall and fierce and strong. The clean lines of his face and his red-brown hair were perfect to her—even with his gift turned off.

  When she reached him, neither one of them spoke at first, but she pointed to a large headstone near the trees. “Over there.”

  She walked over and sat on the ground, leaning against the back of the headstone and thinking it poor manners to sit on the other side, on top of someone’s grave.

  He followed and crouched down. “You don’t trust me,” he said finally, and from the pain in his voice, she knew what this had cost him to say.

  But his words struck her as unfair, considering how determined he’d been to kill Maxim.

  “You didn’t trust my judgment,” she answered, regretting her response instantly as his face closed up. Attacking Philip was never the answer, and she knew it. Talking was not going to fix this.

  Let me in, she flashed. Let me show you how I’ve felt, what I’ve thought.

  She could feel his hesitation, and then his mind opened up. She rushed inside him, showing him her perspective from the night he’d first tried to take Maxim’s head, how Philip looked to her eyes, sounded in her ears. She showed him the dilemma of lying on that bed at the suite with her throat torn open, trying to decide what to do . . . and how difficult the final decision had been. She showed him scenes of her and Rose washing Maxim, and trying to trigger his ability to speak, all the while hoping Philip would understand later.

  She showed Philip how much she feared his tendency to act first and ask questions later.

  She showed him how much she’d missed him.

  Suddenly, he pushed his own thoughts inside her mind. The onslaught was intense, and she had trouble absorbing the images and emotions at first, nearly falling over and catching herself on one hand. He started with the night Maxim had attacked her, showing her the same scenes from his own point of view. The scenes from his viewpoint were ugly, but she didn’t push him out. He saw Maxim as a feral, mad creature that had to be put down.

  It was the only way.

  Then Eleisha manipulated Philip several times and abandoned him, putting herself and Rose in danger, leaving him and Wade in limbo with nothing to do but worry. He bitterly resented that she’d chosen Maxim over him, and he was embarrassed by this resentment, but he couldn’t help it, and he didn’t know what the future would hold if Eleisha continued down this path....

  “Stop,” she said, putting both hands on the ground.

  He stopped.

  She wondered how other couples might be able to bridge vast divisions if they could share viewpoints like this. She felt terrible, having seen herself through his eyes, but he’d seen himself through hers.

  “I didn’t put Maxim before you,” she said softly. “But I put the mission before everything else. That won’t change.”

  He was quiet for a while and then said, “You saw that memory in Robert. The one of . . . me when I was like Maxim.”

  Each word sounded torn from his mouth. Why did he care so much about that? She didn’t. As far as she and Philip were concerned, only one of Robert’s memories mattered.

  “I don’t care about that memory,” she whispered. “I care about the one I showed you. The one you won’t even talk about.”

  He rocked back on the balls of his feet. “The memory you . . . is that why you’ve been . . . don’t you know I . . . ?”

  Without warning, he moved forward and gripped the back of her head, pressing his mouth down against hers. The sensation was shocking, and she stiffened, but then her mind became tangled with his again, and she could see that he had thought about Robert’s memory, over and over while he sat on a couch for the past few nights.

  He’d felt her stiffen, and he stopped.

  “What’s wrong?”

  Now he sounded uncertain, confused.

  “Nothing.”

  She reached up, kissing him this time. Neither one of them knew how to do this, but she wanted it more than anything else in that moment. She ran her hands down his chest, and he moaned. The sound was electrifying, and she kissed him harder, startled when he pressed his tongue into her mouth.

  But she tried to respond, licking the tip of his tongue with her own. He pushed her back against the ground, and she could feel his weight on top of her, but she wasn’t afraid.

  Turn on your gift.

  Almost instantly, the glow of his gift washed over and through her, making her want him even more. For the first time ever, she regretted her own gift. She didn’t want him to see her as helpless.

  But he pushed her shirt up, running his hands up her back, touching her skin in a hungry rush, and she turned her gift on to join with his, only she channeled it and altered it slightly, focusing it upon how helpless she was without him.

  On how much she needed him.

  He moaned louder at that, pushing harder against her, moving his hands over her breasts, then down her lower back, over her hips. He pushed deeper with his tongue. She lost herself inside his gift as Jessenia had with Robert, letting hers combine with his, until a great release burst inside her mind, flowing rapidly down through her body until she jerked and gasped. Philip had stopped kissing her, and his teeth were tightly clenched. He had a hold of the back of her neck with one hand, with his temple pressed up against her cheekbone as his body jerked several times.

  When the sensation finally faded, they stayed locked together for a while.

  Then he lifted his head and looked down at her. His eyes were full of wonder.

  Wade was growing more fascinated with Maxim by the moment—to the point where he was beginning to suffer guilt over having ever agreed with Philip that Maxim might be a hopeless case.

  Not that Wade was ignoring Eleisha’s warnings. He was well aware that he was dealing with an unstable vampire. Somehow, Maxim looked smaller than Wade remembered. Maybe this was because he was wearing Philip’s too-large sweater and rolled-up pants?

  “How did you get him talking?” Wade asked Rose quietly. He’d been inside Maxim’s mind back in London, and he’d seen no concept of language then.

  “Eleisha forced his memories to surface. He started speaking soon after. She said he’d forgotten his own name.”

  Wade looked around the shack. It was somewhat decrepit and long abandoned, but adequate for their needs, except for the temperature, which was cold. He wondered if the fireplace’s chimney was clear, and if he might start a fire. He looked through an open door at the back of the main room, spotting a mattress on the floor.

  “Maxim,” he said, keeping his voice soft, “is that where you sleep?”

  “Yes.”

  Maxim walked into the bedroom and lay down in the center of the mattress, but the short way, across it, so that his head, torso, and thighs were on the mattress, and his feet stretched out over the floor. He pointed to the left side. “Leisha.” Then he pointed right. “Rose.”

  Oh, they’d all been sharing the mattress. That made sense, but it still surprised Wade. Eleisha and Rose seemed to have accepted Maxim rather quickly—not that he blamed them.

  Maxim motioned his hand around the room. “Safe. No sun.”

  There were no windows in this room. Wade could almost not believe this was the same vampire from the streets of London. Rose was in the doorway, smiling at Maxim, and suddenly, Wade wanted to be alone with his new “patient” in spite of Eleisha’s concerns.

  “Rose, would you excuse us for a little while?” he asked.

  She had not heard what Eleisha said outside. “Of course.”

  Wade sat down cross-legged on the mattress. Maxim sat up to face him, and Wade slipped inside his mind.

  Can you show me Brandon?

  Maxim started slightly, and Wade w
ondered why, until he realized that his mental voice must sound so different from Eleisha’s inside Maxim’s thoughts.

  I’m sorry. I should have warned you.

  The answer came clearly, and although Maxim’s speech patterns were still rudimentary, his mental voice was not hoarse like his spoken one.

  Is all right. I show Brandon.

  He closed his eyes, and Wade locked into a memory of a fishing village in Hastings. The shack around him vanished as he was swept inside the image.

  Rose didn’t wish to intrude, but she wanted to keep an eye on Wade. Once Wade launched into “a project,” he could be quite capable of losing perspective. She peered through the open door to see them both sitting cross-legged and sharing a memory. Good. The sooner Wade fully understood the situation, the better he could help restore some of Maxim’s former self.

  Also, this had been a night of high emotions, and a little quiet time was more than welcome. She sank into a chair.

  The air wavered, and Seamus appeared.

  “Are they talking alone?” he asked, looking through the open door from a poor angle, so he couldn’t see the mattress.

  “Sharing memories,” she answered.

  He nodded.

  “Is Eleisha all right?” she asked. Philip had almost lost control of himself earlier, and Rose never wished to see that again.

  “I’d say so,” Seamus answered. “She’s kissing him and rolling on the ground.”

  “Kissing him?” Rose’s mouth fell open, and she closed it quickly. “Are you sure? He’s not hurting her?”

  “No, he’s not hurting her. I think she started it.” At the sight of Rose’s stunned face, Seamus shrugged. “Ah, Rose, I don’t know what she sees in him, but she’s not the first woman in history to use her body to solve a problem with a man, now, is she?”