by Barb Hendee
The woman’s heart stopped beating, and Philip raised his head, looking into her dead face.
He’d never fed like this before—killing a victim without reveling in pain or fear.
Even though the choice had been his, he suddenly felt . . . unsatisfied. He didn’t allow himself the luxury of killing very often, for fear of Eleisha finding out, and now he’d just wasted a chance. What was wrong with him?
A flash of hot anger surprised him as much as his earlier moment of pity had.
Eleisha was doing something to him, and he knew it. But he needed her more than he needed his freedom.
The anger passed.
Still looking down at the dead woman, he picked her up and carried her toward the river. Several of her memories stayed with him for the entire walk to the water.
Strange.
He leaned over and dropped her, watching her slip beneath the dark current, still thinking of Matthew’s cold face when he’d sent her away.
Then he straightened and forgot about Matthew and forgot about the woman.
Eleisha was waiting for him to come home.
chapter 2
Eleisha was alone in her room, sitting on her bed, mulling over the news Wade had just shared. Had he really found something this time?
In London?
That seemed too close to Yorkshire—where Julian kept a town house—to be promising. Wouldn’t he have already found someone existing in England? But perhaps not. Wade relayed the phrase “wild man” from the news story, and she had no idea what this might suggest about their potential find.
But what if . . . what if they really had found someone else? Someone who needed help, who needed a home and other undead companions?
Someone who needed the old laws.
Eleisha would keep all her promises to Robert.
She stood up, trying to push her hopes away until they learned more.
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. Walking over to the closet, she opened one side and looked up.
A small cardboard box peeked over the top shelf’s edge. She took it down and went over to her dressing table, sitting in the walnut chair and looking into the mirror.
Slowly, she opened the box.
Inside was a set of antique silver brushes, a mirror, and a comb. Eleisha had brought them with her from Seattle. They had once belonged to a vampire named Margaritte Latour—Maggie. Philip had made Maggie in the early nineteenth century—only a year or two after he was turned himself. She had been his lover in their mortal days and his closest companion afterward, but they’d abandoned each other when Julian’s killing spree began.
Maggie moved to America soon after and then later, much later, had become a close friend of Eleisha’s.
But Maggie was dead now, turned to dust, like so many others.
Eleisha fingered the largest silver brush. Maggie would have liked this church, this home. She would have liked the company of her own kind.
Pulling the brush closer to her chest, Eleisha tried to shake off the unwanted feelings of sorrow and loss. Everyone living here in the underground had lost people they cared about. Wallowing in regret would not change that.
But her sadness wouldn’t pass away so easily.
The bedroom door opened, and Philip walked in. He never knocked. He didn’t need to.
She smiled at him and then noticed his black T-shirt, remembering that he’d been wearing an Armani button-down earlier in the evening.
“You changed your shirt. You didn’t get blood all the way through your coat, did you?”
He shrugged. “A little.” Upon seeing her expression, he held up one hand. “Don’t worry. I was careful.”
She nodded. Such things could happen even when one was most careful.
After closing the door, he walked toward her. He was quite probably the most handsome man she’d ever seen.
But that didn’t matter. She didn’t care about aesthetics. In the past, the person she’d loved most in the world had been tragic to look upon.
She also knew it was quite unexpected that she should now prefer Philip’s company to anyone else’s. Before developing his telepathy and learning how to alter memories, he’d been a savage killer who hunted for pleasure.
He was also vain, self-centered, and easily bored.
But . . . he had a great capacity for living and enjoying himself—something Eleisha lacked. He had come into her life when she’d needed him; he’d protected her from Julian and then stayed to help with the underground when he could have gone anywhere in the world. He’d stopped killing mortals and adapted to feeding in the manner of their predecessors, even though this change of practice was difficult for him. Most important, when Eleisha was with him, she was distracted from dwelling on sad thoughts, and she didn’t feel alone.
“What are those?” he asked, looking down at the brushes and hand mirror.
She hesitated. Philip didn’t like talking about the past.
“They were Maggie’s,” she finally answered. “I brought them in my suitcase from Seattle.”
He frowned. “Pourquoi?”
Why had she kept them? She didn’t know what to say, and he crouched down beside her. His ivory face had a little color tonight, and his skin glowed. She couldn’t talk to him about this. He wouldn’t understand, and he already thought she’d been half mad for bringing some of Robert’s ashes home and burying them in the garden.
“I just . . . I wanted us to keep something that was hers, so we wouldn’t forget,” she said.
He shrugged and stood up.
“The sun will be up soon,” he said.
Summers in Oregon weren’t exactly conducive to being a vampire. Winters were perfect: The sun was down by four thirty in the afternoon and stayed down until seven thirty the following morning. But the nights in summer were short—the sun stayed up until nearly ten at night and seemed to rise again a scant few hours later.
Philip walked over to the bed and sat down, taking his boots off and pulling his T-shirt over his head, tossing it to a chair. He glanced over to make sure the shade was tightly closed and then leaned back against the pillows. Eleisha was barefoot. She was still wearing her tank top from earlier but had changed into a pair of faded gray sweatpants.
Leaving Maggie’s silver brushes on the dressing table, she moved to join Philip, crawling up the bed until she was close enough that he could reach out and pull her down against his shoulder. She suddenly remembered that she hadn’t told him Wade’s news—and that Seamus had gone off to London. But her eyelids were heavy, and his skin felt . . . almost warm. She hoped he hadn’t taken too much blood from his victim.
“Did your hunt go well?” she asked carefully, not wanting to sound accusatory.
“Bien,” he murmured, rolling onto his side and using one arm to pull her against his chest. “Sleep.”
Pressing the top of her head beneath his chin, she closed her eyes.
The nights here were so short in the summer that Wade spent more hours awake and alone than he had in the spring.
He was back at the computer again, but hearing footsteps out in the hall, he looked up and saw the sky slowly turning gray. Was it near dawn already? For a moment, he assumed the footsteps must be those of Philip returning, but then he noted the light, quick sound and realized they belonged to Rose. He got up and went to the door.
She was coming toward him down the hall, heading for her own room, and she smiled.
He smiled back, still surprised by how quickly his affection for her had developed. Rose was odd, even for a vampire—a strange mix of calm wisdom and manic anxiety. She was a lovely woman, from her long flowing dresses to the white streaks in her hair, and she shared his and Eleisha’s vision of finding other vampires and returning their kind to the old ways of practicing telepathy and feeding without killing.
But Rose’s smiles
were always a little lost, a little hesitant, and Wade still felt sorry for her. She was a creature of deeply ingrained habits, and she feared change more than anything else. She’d settled in San Francisco in 1870, and although she’d wanted to join Eleisha and Wade desperately, this new home in Portland must still feel so foreign. Her apartment in San Francisco had been small and cozy. The church was large and drafty, with winding staircases and three distinct floors.
“I didn’t realize how late it had grown,” she said. “Will you keep watch for Seamus?”
“Of course.” He reached over and opened her bedroom door. “Did you see Philip come in? The sky’s getting light.”
“No, but I’m sure he’s here. Have you checked Eleisha’s room?”
At those words, they both fell into an awkward silence. But her eyes were fluttering. Once the sun began coming up, she could not fight collapsing into dormancy.
“I’ll see you tonight,” she said.
He nodded as she slipped inside, and then he closed the door behind her. Turning around, he tucked his white-blond hair behind his ears, wondering what to do with himself now. Although he’d become accustomed to sleeping during the day, he needed only six or seven hours, and he wasn’t tired yet. He looked toward the stairs down to their apartment. Maybe he should make some food and watch the morning news.
But even as he walked down the stairwell, he knew what he was going to do first.
It was a twisted habit that he couldn’t seem to break. He promised himself every morning that he’d stop. But he never kept the promise.
The stairwell exited directly into the living room of their apartment. To his right was a small family kitchen. To his left was another hall leading to their bedrooms. He walked to Philip’s bedroom and opened the door.
The room was empty.
He knew it would be.
All of Philip’s clothes and furniture and personal belongings were here—just not Philip.
Something in their little world had altered, and Wade still wasn’t entirely sure what it meant. He thought back to a brief period of time when it had been just him and Eleisha—before Philip.
After a somewhat rough beginning, Philip’s entrance had not been unwelcome. He was unbelievably strong and a skilled fighter. They needed him. Wade had awakened his telepathy and taught him how to read memories . . . to share memories. They had both seen down the lines of each other’s pasts and knew far too much about each other.
Back in Seattle, the three of them had shared Maggie’s old home, all settling into different bedrooms and existing simply as a group of somewhat lost individuals who relied upon one another for different needs.
Then Rose contacted Eleisha.
Eleisha bought the church here in Portland.
She and Wade began making plans for the future, to find others like Rose.
They went to San Francisco and stayed a few nights in Rose’s apartment, but she had only one guest room, so Wade offered to sleep on the couch and let Philip and Eleisha share the guest room, as they both preferred to be shut away during daylight hours. This had seemed only sensible, but Wade could not forget the jolt he’d experienced the first time he’d opened the guest-room door and seen Eleisha curled up asleep on Philip’s shoulder.
He didn’t know why the sight bothered him so much. He wasn’t jealous. He just suddenly felt like he was standing . . . outside. Since returning home, Eleisha and Philip had kept their own rooms, but Philip seemed to sleep in his less and less often.
Wade closed the door to Philip’s empty room and walked a few steps farther down, opening Eleisha’s. She never locked it.
He went inside, finding his two companions asleep on top of Eleisha’s white lace comforter. They didn’t move. They didn’t breathe.
They were deep in their dormancy; nothing would wake them, which made Wade’s secret intrusions seem even worse. He had a PhD in psychology and was well aware that his behavior bordered on dysfunctional at best. But he couldn’t seem to stop doing this.
He just stood there, looking down at them.
Eleisha was sleeping up against Philip’s chest with the top of her head pressed into the hollow of his throat, her long hair tangled around one of his arms.
As always, Wade felt like an outsider looking in. He didn’t belong with other mortals anymore—as he made them too uncomfortable. In his heart, he knew he belonged exactly where he was and that he was following the correct path. But even here, he was still somehow in between.
Eleisha and Philip valued him, made him feel accepted.
But he was different from them and he knew it. Worse, they knew it.
He was a mortal living among the undead.
Someday, one of them might openly acknowledge this. But not today. Turning, he walked out of the room and closed the door.
VALE OF GLAMORGAN, WALES
Julian Ashton galloped his new horse down the path leading up to Cliffbracken Manor, his home. The night sky was showing the barest hint of gray. He would need to get inside the house before long.
Almost two centuries ago, his family had lived here, hunted here, danced and held banquets here. He’d always preferred his town house in Yorkshire, and so this place had long been empty but for a few servants cleaning the cobwebs.
Recent events had brought him back here, and he was beginning to find some peace in having the entire estate to himself. He’d purchased a horse, a decent hunter from a stable outside of Cardiff. Riding each night had brought back memories, making him more aware that with his father truly gone, he was now lord of the manor . . . whatever that meant.
The old stable loomed before him, and he pulled up his horse, jumping down with a thud. 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.
The horse stomped, kicked, and snorted in agitation, pulling on the bridle, trying to rush toward the stalls.
“Stop,” he ordered, taking a firmer grip. Julian always expected obedience.
The horse stopped kicking, and Julian led it inside the stable. Just as he’d tied off the animal to remove its saddle, the air shimmered beside him and a transparent teenage girl appeared.
His spy: Mary Jordane.
In addition to being transparent, the most striking things about her were her spiky magenta hair and shiny silver nose stud. She was thin, with a hint of budding breasts, wearing a purple T-shirt, a black mesh overshirt, torn jeans, and Dr. Martens boots.
“They’ve sent their own ghost to London,” she blurted out immediately, “to look for some wild guy who bit a lady in an alley.”
He tried not to wince.
Mary’s penchant for babbling the instant she appeared had never ceased to grate on him.
“Stop!” he ordered.
Julian used this word with great frequency.
She pursed her mouth and crossed her arms—as she often didn’t seem to realize she was a ghost. By performing a ritual séance several months ago, he’d called her from the other side, manipulating her into cooperation with a mix of promises for the future and threats of sending her back to the gray, in-between plane where he found her.
In spite of the fact that she was American, she’d proven quite useful.
“Slow down,” he said. “What’s happened?”
The meaning of her initial outburst was sinking in, and he wanted every detail of her report.
She glared at him petulantly a little longer and then began speaking. He was beginning to suspect that she enjoyed bringing him relevant news.
“Wade found a news story in London,” she said. “He sent Seamus off a little while ago. What do you want me to do?”
“What was in the story?”
One of Mary’s strengths was her amazing memory. She could recall conversations almost word for word. “I couldn’t listen in when Wade was talking to Seamus . . . ’cause Seamus can sense me if I get too close, but I listened through the st
ained-glassed windows when he was talking to Eleisha and Rose.”
She went on to recount the events of two policemen with dogs coming upon a man biting a woman in an alley near King’s Cross Station, the man fleeing, and the dogs turning upon their handlers.
Julian put his fist against his chin, thinking. “Any description of the man?”
“Nope. Not that I heard.”
If the attacker was described as “wild,” that would suggest someone who appeared both mad and unkempt. Julian was interested in locating only vampire elders—those who’d existed before 1825.
But perhaps one of the elders had escaped him and gone feral. It was possible.
In the past, for centuries, his kind had existed by four laws, and the most sacred of these was “No vampire shall kill to feed.” They retained their secrecy through telepathy, feeding on mortals, altering their memories, and then leaving the victims alive. New vampires required training from their makers to awaken and hone psychic abilities, but Julian’s telepathy had never surfaced. He lived by his own laws, and so the elders began quietly turning against him. His own maker, Angelo, had 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 and Maggie, alone. They were not telepathic and 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 found one who didn’t count: Rose de Spenser, another uneducated creature who knew nothing of her own kind.
But then Eleisha found Robert Brighton, a five-hundred-year-old elder who had practiced the 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.
