by Barb Hendee
He just dropped the body.
Simone was watching with fascination.
But he wanted more fear. He could feel months and months of pent-up hunger, and now that he’d started, he had no intention of stopping.
He turned his gift on again and moved closer to the woman.
As he approached, the young man next to her bolted, but Simone flew into action, catching him easily. Philip ignored them both, and he walked up to the trembling woman, increasing the power of his gift. Still shaking, she reached up to touch his face.
He lunged.
Simone had never fed like this.
Her body was stronger and faster than she’d ever realized, and she bit savagely into the man’s throat, draining him in hungry gulps, not even paying attention to the images of his life passing through her. She just ripped his throat deeper, letting him bleed, and she drank until his heart stopped beating. She’d never felt so satisfied after a kill.
She dropped him and watched Philip.
He was glorious.
She could almost feel him feeding on the fear as much as the life force. He shook the woman’s body by the back of her neck as he fed. His face and shirt were soaked with blood. Simone suddenly felt a stab of sorrow that she was just finding him now. Why hadn’t she found him years ago?
When he finished, he dropped to his knees, his eyes glazed over like he was drunk.
Maybe he was.
She walked over and fell to her knees beside him. Without warning, she grabbed the back of his head and kissed him fiercely, letting her gift flow. He kissed her back so hard that the blood on his face smeared up her cheek.
Then he pulled away, and his eyes cleared slightly. He seemed calmer, looking around at the bodies.
“That was good,” he whispered.
“Yes.”
After a while, he stood up.
“Come,” he said, walking farther along the creek.
She faltered. “Wait. Shouldn’t we take their IDs, cut their throats, anything?”
He glanced back. “Leave them. They have nothing to do with us, and no one will care.”
“Where are you going?”
“I’m not done yet.”
For so long, Simone had liked to be the one in control, in charge. This felt new. She followed him with her eyes on his back. She’d finally found someone she needed, after all this time.
Julian paced the floor of a suite at the Brown Palace in Denver.
Jasper had just arrived. He was sitting quietly in a chair, and they were both waiting for a report from Mary regarding Simone’s location. But while waiting . . . they had little to say to each other.
Jasper’s appearance had certainly improved, and he was holding his sword across his knees.
“Have you been practicing with that?” Julian asked.
“Yeah. I even hired a guy at a Shaolin school to give me lessons. He’s pretty good.”
Julian stopped pacing. “When?”
“Couple of months ago. I like this arrangement. I want to be able to do whatever you need.”
This news both pleased and disturbed Julian. Of course he wanted his servants skilled and useful, but at the same time he wanted Jasper to continue functioning on a combination of fear and greed. He wanted someone easy to control.
The young vampire sitting across from him looked almost . . . composed, nothing like the damaged creature Mary had found wasting away in that rat-hole apartment.
Julian wasn’t sure how to feel about Jasper’s transformation.
The air shimmered, and Mary materialized, looking chagrined.
“I’m really sorry,” she said immediately. “Eleisha’s still at the hotel, but I can’t find Simone or Philip anywhere. I’ll keep looking, but right now, I can’t even sense them.”
Jasper stood up, holding his blade by the hilt.
“Don’t worry, Mary,” he said. “If Eleisha’s at the hotel, then she’s safe for now.” He glanced at Julian. “That’s what you want, right? You want me to take out Simone before she gets near Eleisha?”
Julian shifted his weight from one foot to the other, growing more uncertain about both his servants.
But in essence, Jasper was right.
“Find Simone,” Julian ordered Mary. “Don’t come back until you do.”
She looked quickly at Jasper. “Be back.”
Then she blinked out.
Julian walked off toward his bedroom. He did not relish the thought of just standing around here the rest of the night with Jasper.
He wanted this over, and he wanted Eleisha safely back in Portland with Wade—so they could continue their search until they found someone who mattered.
At three o’clock in the morning, Eleisha was sitting on the hotel room carpet watching the door with her arms wrapped around her knees.
Philip hadn’t called. He wasn’t answering his phone.
She had no idea where he was.
She knew only that he’d gone to speak with Simone more than twenty-four hours ago, and he hadn’t come back.
Maybe time passes more slowly when a person is alone, but this had been the longest night of her life, just sitting there, watching the door, and going back and forth between ideas of what to do.
Should she call a cab and go to Simone’s house?
Philip had told her to stay here . . . but he’d done that last night, when he’d also promised he’d call.
Was he in trouble?
Or was it just taking him longer than he expected to win Simone’s trust?
The last thing Eleisha wanted to do was barge in and ruin any kind of success he’d achieved. But . . . it wasn’t like him to leave her sitting alone like this.
Something was wrong. She just didn’t know what to do.
Finally, she glanced down at her canvas bag on the floor beside her. She didn’t want to burden Wade or Rose with all this—especially when they were still in Oregon at her request—but she needed help.
Slowly, she reached over and dug out her phone, opening it and pressing a button to connect with the underground. Wade had told her to call his office first, as he was seldom far away from it, and when he was home, he tended to leave his own cell lying haphazardly about.
The other end started ringing.
Wade sat across from Rose at the kitchen table. She wore a simple cream dress with small silver hoops in her ears.
He’d arranged a string of objects in front of himself.
He was beginning to suspect that Rose’s mind-reading abilities were coming along more slowly because her psychometry was so strong. This revelation made him more aware that vampires all developed different strengths and weaknesses.
Eleisha was by far the best able to use her telepathy like a weapon, driving suggestions and visions into someone else’s mind—even other vampires if she could hit them before they blocked her—and Julian had no defense against her at all. Wade and Philip could both do this to a point, but not at the level she could.
Philip, however, seemed surprisingly able to control which memories he showed to another reader. This was something neither Wade nor Eleisha had been able to master yet. They both tended to be swept away and showed the reader too much.
But Rose’s new ability was startling and unique.
“Here,” he said holding out an ancient pair of hedge clippers. “Try this one.”
Rose had taken her gloves off. She’d been somewhat tense since their short trip to the Whole Foods store. But he made no apologies for his actions. A man had threatened Rose with a knife. If Philip had been the one guarding Rose, he would have killed that drug addict without a second thought. And Eleisha clearly found Philip more useful than Wade.
Wade had some catching up to do.
However, now that he was assisting Rose with her newfound psychometric abilities, she was growing more at ease with him again. She reached out and gripped the clippers with her bare hands.
She smiled, closing her eyes. “Can you see?”
At the invitation
, Wade slipped effortlessly into her mind. At first, he saw only Eleisha using the tool on an overgrown rhododendron bush, but then the image grew misty for a few moments, and he saw an old man in coveralls, working quietly in the church garden on a small hedge. The garden looked different, more manicured, and the fence surrounding the church was much more exposed. He could actually see the street and several cars from the early 1950s.
“Oh, Rose,” he said.
He could feel that she was in control of this memory—nothing like what had happened with the silver hairbrush. But the images were calm and even somewhat static. He couldn’t hear anything, but maybe there was nothing to hear.
Then he saw the clippers in an old-fashioned dry goods store, and the man from the garden was gripping them for the first time. He looked younger, and a golden retriever stood beside him, gazing up curiously. Now Wade could hear the dog whine.
“What do you think, girl?” the man asked her, holding out his chosen tool. “Will these do?” She barked once.
Wade pulled out of Rose’s mind.
“It’s incredible,” he said. “Different from reading a direct memory, more like watching home movies.”
She opened her eyes and put the clippers down. “Sometimes, I can feel what the person was feeling at the time, see through their eyes, but not always.”
His concern for her comfort and state of mind always took precedence at any of these telepathic training sessions. “Can you block the images if you don’t wish to see?”
“Not yet. Do you think you can help? I’d hate to have to wear gloves all the time.”
“Try picking up the clippers again,” he said. “Only this time, try to force the memories out exactly the same way you’d force me out.”
“All right.”
She was just reaching for the clippers when the phone rang in Wade’s office upstairs.
They both tensed.
“Go,” she said.
He walked quickly out the kitchen archway and up the stairs. By the time he reached the office, the phone had rung five times.
“Hello?”
The office was a mess, with maps and pens and notepads all over his desk, half burying the computer keyboard.
“Wade?”
The instant she spoke, his stomach tightened. He knew the various inflections of her voice, and in that one word, she sounded on the edge of desperation.
“What’s wrong?”
“I’ve lost Philip. I don’t know what to do.”
“Lost?”
“He left here last night after we got back from the cafe. We made a connection with Simone, but he thought he should talk to her by himself . . . that I wouldn’t understand her enough to explain things.” Her voice broke. “But he hasn’t come back.”
“What?”
Wade was furious at being twelve hundred miles away.
“Philip told you he wanted to convince her himself, and you believed him?” he nearly shouted.
Eleisha went silent.
Wade closed his eyes, running a hand over his face. Philip had never shown an ounce of interest in pursuing their goal of helping other vampires. He’d made it clear he was involved only because Eleisha and Wade were determined to follow this path.
“I’m sorry,” he said. The last thing he wanted to do was make this worse for her. He wanted to help. “Have you tried calling him?”
“He’s not answering.”
Movement in the doorway caught Wade’s attention, and he saw Rose standing there. He reached down and hit the SPEAKER button.
“Do you want me to come?” Wade asked. “I can head for the airport tonight.”
“No, don’t leave Rose there alone. I don’t think any of us should split up further. And even if you were here, you couldn’t help me. I just wanted to talk to you.”
“Have you heard anything from him at all?” Wade asked.
“He called just before dawn yesterday. I’d have a better idea what to do if I knew where he was. Can you send Seamus?”
“Hang on,” he said. “Rose is right here, and I’ve got you on speaker.”
“Oh . . . thank you,” Eleisha said softly.
Just talking to them did seem to be calming her a bit. He looked at Rose. “They’re separated, and she can’t find Philip. Can you call on Seamus?”
“I’ll try,” Rose answered. “Of course he’s nearby, but I don’t know if ...” She trailed off.
Wade understood. Seamus had pushed himself far past his abilities to be away from Rose again so soon. He’d been flitting between London and Denver and Portland too much. Since returning to the church, he seemed to be recovering in a state of invisible limbo, as if even manifesting was too much effort.
“Seamus,” Rose called.
Nothing happened.
Wade didn’t want to panic Eleisha, but he also didn’t want her setting off to search for Philip on her own. For one, none of them knew anything about the level of danger Simone might pose; two, none of them had any idea where Julian might be; and three, Philip could come back at any moment, and her leaving the hotel would simply prolong the separation.
“Just hang on, and we’ll send Seamus soon,” Wade said.
“Okay.” She was quiet for a little while and then said, “Thank you.”
She sounded small and sad.
He wanted to get on a plane and go to her.
“Just hang on,” he repeated.
She hung up.
When Philip finally climbed back into the Thunderbird, his mind was so thick and foggy, he had no idea how much of the night had passed.
But he was sated.
He couldn’t even remember the last time he hadn’t felt hunger or need crawling beneath his skin.
Simone had given him this. She’d helped him to shut everything off and do whatever he wanted.
She got in the passenger side, and he raised the keys toward the ignition.
“Wait,” she said.
He glanced at her, not wanting to talk. After feeding without restraint, he often had difficulty with speech for a few hours. The words didn’t form correctly in his head.
“I wanted to ask you ...” She trailed off.
She wanted to ask him something?
“Maggie once told me,” she went on, sounding desperate now, “that she had a great love that crossed wealth and poverty and death and time. Was that you? Was it you, Philip? I need to know.”
The question didn’t surprise him. He’d seen her memories and could still hear the sound of Maggie’s voice when she’d spoken those words.
He nodded.
“I knew it,” Simone said, and her china blue eyes began to glow, as if his affirmation more than pleased her. “I want to see the night she was turned. You made Maggie, and she made me. You and I are connected.”
He blinked, just watching her.
She wanted to see and feel him turning Maggie?
“Please,” she begged. “She said you were her great love . . . but I think maybe it ended that night, and I need to see.”
Had it ended that night?
And why would she want to see it end?
From the moment Rose touched that silver hairbrush, Philip’s distant past had been shoved right in his face when all he wanted to do was forget.
Simone increased the flow of her gift, making him envy everything about her, everything about her life. She was free to do whatever she wanted.
Why should he be so uncomfortable with his own past?
“Show me that night,” she whispered.
His vision blurred slightly, and the dashboard grew hazy. She wanted this, and he felt that he owed her . . . something.
Simone would not judge him or shrink away from him.
He shot one hand out and grabbed her wrist, sinking his own thoughts into her mind and helping her make a connection.
Then he closed his eyes and let himself go back. . . .
chapter 10
GASCONY, 1821
Philip climbed the t
rellis up the side of the gray stone house, pulling himself through Maggie’s open bedroom window.
He could have used the front door. She’d told him that his money paid the rent on the house and all the furniture belonged to him, but when she spoke of such things, he didn’t understand. The only area of the house that seemed familiar was the bedroom, and he always returned there.
He made the short hop to the floor, and he waited.
She wasn’t in the house. He could smell her from a hundred yards, so he knew she was nowhere nearby. He crouched next to the bed. His feet were bare, and his long red-brown hair hung in a tangled mess over his shoulders and down his back.
He hadn’t come here for a while. He didn’t know exactly how long, but he knew a number of nights had passed.
Tonight, he’d woken up longing to see her.
He just crouched on the floor and waited as the hours slipped by. Then, finally, he raised his head, catching a whiff of her perfume.
She was coming.
He heard the front door open and her light footsteps tapping a staccato up the stairs. She came into the bedroom, humming a soft tune under her breath, carrying a candle. She froze at the sight of him.
“Philip.”
She almost always wore red gowns. He remembered that much. Tonight was no exception. The color made her pale skin and chocolate brown hair stand out. Her thick hair was piled up on top of her head and held with a set of silver combs. He sniffed the air again, drinking in the scent of her perfume from close range. She put down the candle.
Her eyes were dark and slightly slanted.
When he first began coming here, he did not know why, but he understood that she had meant something to him before. The world seemed clearer to him now, and when she spoke, he was more able to understand and to answer.
“Where were you?” he asked.
Normally, whenever he spoke, she was pleased, and she often told him, “You’re getting so much better.”
But tonight, she did not seem pleased. She looked at his hair and his bare feet.
“I was out.”
“Where?”
She unfastened her cloak, exposing the white skin over her collarbone, and she took a piece of paper from the pocket.
