Ghosts of Memories: A Vampire Memories Novel

by Barb Hendee

  He looked over at her and saw the pleading expression on her face.

  Knowing full well that he should answer it, he shoved the phone back in his pocket and let the call go to voice mail. Eleisha and Philip would never leave the mansion and abandon Christian, so they were safe for now, and he was in the middle of something important as far as the mission was concerned. If he answered, he’d just spend the next ten minutes listening to Eleisha lecture him, and then he’d end up making his excuses, and he didn’t want to break what little connection he’d made with Ivory. Was she beginning to trust him?

  But then he thought about everything he’d seen in her mind, and he realized Eleisha and Philip were at the mansion with a vampire who could influence their drives and emotions. He needed to get back and get one of them off alone. This situation was shifting almost faster than he could keep up.

  Hopefully, Ivory would keep talking to him. He started the car.

  “I do think we need to get back,” he said.

  She seemed sad. “All right.”

  chapter thirteen

  Eleisha sat in the backseat of the Mercedes, growing more and more unsettled the closer Christian got to the Seattle Center. Following Philip’s instructions, he headed down the east side and took Fifth Avenue, turning into a large parking garage.

  She hated this place.

  The first night she’d met Philip, he’d stolen a car and forced her to come here with him. Closing her eyes briefly, she couldn’t help seeing what he’d looked like back then, in his designer clothes, with his thick, red-brown hair hanging all the way down his back, his eyes devoid of almost anything besides boredom and hunger.

  He used his gift to talk four teenagers into bringing him home. He’d murdered three of them and forced a situation where Eleisha had had to kill the last one. Then he’d tried to make her drink from his wrist, and she’d kneed him in the stomach hard enough to make him spit blood.

  That whole night was one of the ugliest memories of her existence, and this place brought it all back.

  She’d felt so off-kilter…so “not herself” since arriving here, and she didn’t want to be reminded of what a savage killer Philip had once been. She didn’t want to have to get out of the car and walk around in this place and see all the same places she’d seen that night.

  But Christian pulled into an open space and shut off the ignition.

  Philip turned in the passenger seat and looked back at her. “You ready?”

  “Wait just a minute,” she said. Maybe she wouldn’t have to get out.

  Focusing all her inner strength, she closed her eyes and reached out with her mind.

  Wade? Wade, are you here? Please answer me.

  She felt nothing. No one answered. They’d have to get out and go looking. She reached for the door handle.

  “I’m ready.” No matter what else was surfacing in her thoughts, she couldn’t stand the idea of Wade out there trying to guard Ivory by himself—with just that gun for protection. “We have to find him.”

  Mary materialized back inside the First Avenue parking garage, and she got a surprise.

  The white BMW was gone.

  She wanted to curse, and she looked around wildly, hoping to see its taillights—or anything that might help her. But the car was gone. Quickly, she focused her senses and felt a jolt. Somewhere…not too far away, she sensed three distinct holes in the fabric of life.

  Julian’s rental car came rolling around the corner, and she blinked out, rematerializing in his passenger seat.

  He started slightly, not having expected her to just appear like that.

  “Game’s changed,” she blurted out. “Wade’s car is gone, but I’m getting three clear signatures. Maybe the others came looking for him.”

  Julian’s jaw twitched, and he pulled into an open spot. Then he got out of the car and looked around. “Get me an exact location.”

  She nodded in relief. Christian might be right here on the center’s grounds. “I will. Maybe we can finish this tonight and you can send me back.”

  He’d been so distracted that her words seemed to catch him off guard. A flash of open surprise flickered across his face. It vanished just as quickly, and he said, “Yes, yes, of course.”

  His reaction made her nervous…no, more than nervous. Did he have any intention of keeping his promise?

  What should she do?

  In the moment, she didn’t see any choice but to go on, and so she blinked out.

  “The amusement park is well lit,” Christian said, leading the way. “It should be a good place to get our bearings.”

  The Space Needle loomed above them.

  In spite of his comment about staying in the light, Christian had reached a surprising revelation that after all these years, he wasn’t afraid of Julian. This amusement park was not his home or anyplace that Julian had read about in Angelo’s book.

  They were on equal ground. He was armed. He was on guard and ready for an attack, and Julian probably knew it. In fact, if Christian got lucky, Julian might even try to take Philip out first. That was a pleasant thought. He pictured Philip’s head flying across the bumper cars.

  Only one thing disturbed him, and that was Eleisha’s overly emotional concern about Wade. She seemed worried to an almost distasteful degree…about a mortal. He realized that if she was going to stay with him, he would have to isolate her completely, and that now appeared to mean getting rid of both Philip and Wade.

  But he wasn’t concerned.

  Although the trappings of this situation were different from what he’d dealt with in the past, he’d easily dispatched any and all rivals before. The core of the matter was the same: two other men who had to go.

  First, though, he wanted a little more time alone with Eleisha. He needed to set the groundwork to make her more dependent upon him. That way, once she really was isolated, she’d turn to him without thinking. She was such a different creature from Ivory, so anxious to please. He almost couldn’t wait to make the change.

  Her appearance displeased him at the moment, however. What was she thinking with that child-sized T-shirt and her hair hanging in a tangled mess down to the top of her jeans? Did she have any idea how unrefined she looked? He’d put a stop to that in a hurry once she was working with him.

  As they walked among the carnival rides and canned music, Philip kept swiveling his head back and forth. He seemed so focused on finding Wade that Christian decided to make his move.

  “Philip,” he said, “Eleisha and I have a decent view for several blocks all around from here. This might go faster if you just leave us here and do a full sweep of the grounds by yourself.”

  Philip glanced back at him. “No.”

  The word was so adamant and so simple that Christian knew further argument would be fruitless. So instead, he summoned an impulse and sent the emotional suggestion into Philip’s mind.

  Eleisha will be safer from Julian here under the bright lights. You can move much faster on your own, and if you find Wade quickly, you can get her right back to the mansion.

  Philip immediately stopped walking and turned around. “Eleisha, maybe I can find him faster on my own. You stay here under the lights.”

  Christian hid a moment of mild surprise. He hadn’t expected it to be quite so easy. Philip’s mind must be very open to suggestion. Manipulating Ivory took a good deal more effort.

  “Are you sure?” Eleisha asked, grasping the sleeve of his coat. “I don’t want you in the darkness all by yourself.”

  How distasteful. What a display. Christian wanted to pull her hand away and remind her to behave with some semblance of decorum.

  “I’ll be fine. You just stay right here,” Philip answered. Then he jogged away, heading toward the monorail. Within seconds, he’d vanished from sight.

  Once he was gone, Eleisha glanced at their surroundings, and Christian noticed something unusual in her eyes: revulsion. He was a master at reading faces.

  “You don’t like it he
re?” he asked.

  “I hate it.” She said this so bluntly that her own words seemed to surprise her, and she looked up at him apologetically. “I’m sorry, Christian. I know you’re worried about Ivory. I promise we’ll find her.”

  He smiled. There it was again, that eagerness to comfort him, to please him. He couldn’t get enough of it.

  He summoned an impulse and sent it.

  You’re safer here with Christian. Philip is too simple to outwit Julian, and Christian knows how to use his head. Just stay with him.

  She blinked, and he could see her fighting the impulse, looking almost guilty at the feelings he’d inflicted. He’d get past her walls soon enough and start planting deeper impulses. But she had to begin depending more upon him first.

  Turning his head, he gasped softly and pointed west. “Look. I think I can see Ivory’s hair. Hurry.”

  He broke into a jog, and to his great satisfaction, she followed him without question.

  Julian was moving east, away from the First Avenue parking garage toward the science center, when he heard a loud, “Psssssssst,” coming from a shrubbery.

  He stopped and peered through the budding leaves to see Mary hiding in the bushes.

  “I haven’t pinpointed Philip,” she whispered, “but Eleisha and Christian are heading toward the Children’s Theatre building. It’s been closed for hours, so that whole area’s a dead zone.”

  “Which way?”

  “To your left. You can’t miss it.”

  While he was relieved to have a location for Christian, part of this news frustrated him. Why did Eleisha always seem to end up as the single companion to his target? She was by far the most dangerous to him, and he didn’t want to kill her yet. She was too useful in locating other elders.

  He considered his options, which were limited.

  “Is there anywhere to hide around the outside of that building?” he asked.

  “Sure. I spotted a couple of deep doorways around the back, and I wasn’t kidding. That place is deserted.”

  Well, that was something. Could he hit them both with an onslaught of fear before even stepping into view? No, he was uncertain of Christian’s telepathic abilities—or how well Christian could block another vampire’s gift.

  Better to fall back on tried-and-true methods. If he played this right, he could take Christian’s head and not damage Eleisha too much. He’d just need to knock her unconscious first and then swing his blade for Christian’s throat. As long as he moved hard and fast and didn’t miss, he could end this tonight.

  At least Philip wasn’t there. That counted for something, too.

  “All right,” he told Mary, “this is what I want you to do.”

  Eleisha and Christian were just moving around a corner of the back of the Children’s Theatre when she reached out to stop him. They were alone in the dark here, and there were nooks and shadows all along the back of this building. So far, she’d seen no sign of Ivory or Wade, and she wondered if maybe Christian had made a mistake.

  “I don’t see either of them,” she said, “and we need to get back to the carnival. It’s not safe for you here.”

  “For me?”

  He sounded insulted, but he had no idea what they were up against. She steeled herself against worrying so much about his feelings.

  “Yes. Philip and I both have…defenses.”

  “And what would those be?”

  “He’s good with a sword. Better than…forgive me, but better than you from what I saw in your memories. He’s better than Julian, and Julian knows it.” She could see that Christian didn’t care at all for this conversation, but she didn’t stop. “Philip’s just had more training. His father started teaching him when he was about six years old, and after he was turned, he forgot his mortal life, but his body remembered things like how to ride a horse and use a sword.”

  Christian was silent for a few seconds and then asked, “And what about you?”

  She hesitated. “Do you remember back in your room, when I made your body freeze?”

  He glanced away, his mouth in a tight line, and she could see this topic wasn’t any better.

  “If you’d been ready, you could have stopped me,” she rushed on, “shut me out. But Julian can’t. He has no defenses against a telepathic attack. I can freeze him and hold him. I can send nightmares into his mind. I can drop him to his knees. But so far, he hasn’t killed one of our core group, and we haven’t managed to kill him. We’ve just…hurt him a few times.”

  She said this in a matter-of-fact voice. Eleisha took no pride in being able to hurt Julian. Regardless of how or why it had happened, he was her maker, and she’d never wanted to have to hurt him. He just hadn’t given her a choice.

  But Christian leaned closer, and his eyes glowed in the darkness. She was suddenly startled by his handsome face and steel hair. He seemed interested in what she was saying now.

  “You’ve faced Julian more than once?” he asked.

  She nodded. “But when it happens, we have to move very fast. We have to keep him distracted or wounded until I can drive a command inside his head. We can’t give him even a second to turn on his gift.”

  “What’s his gift?”

  “Fear. And I can’t describe it to you. It’s crippling. He may not be telepathic, but his gift is strong.”

  Christian seemed to be taking all this in carefully. His light eyes were still glowing when he said, “Eleisha, I can create fear, too. I can create blind rage or confusion or humiliation. I can send any emotion I want, and my gift is strong.”

  When he spoke, she felt the truth of his words inside her mind, and she nodded. “Yes, yours is good.”

  “And I may not have started training with a sword by the time I was six,” he went on, “but if you freeze Julian, I’m certainly capable of taking off his head.”

  He said this with a smile, and she smiled back. Of course he was right. She’d been foolish to think she needed Philip to fight Julian. But beyond this, deeper inside herself, she thought it must be wrong to find a joke about Julian’s death amusing. Why had she smiled?

  “Now, I’m sure I saw something in this direction,” Christian said. “Let’s just look a bit longer.”

  A part of her heard his words and knew he must be right, but another part struggled against his suggestion. “Christian, there’s no one back here at all. Why would Wade and Ivory come this—”

  The air shimmered beside her and a flash of color made her look away from the back of the building.

  “Ahhhhhhhhhhhhh!” someone screamed.

  The girl ghost with magenta hair materialized, screaming and waving her arms, and without thinking, Eleisha stumbled backward into a dark doorway.

  She saw the fist coming before it connected, but there was no time to form or focus a mental command. In the split second she had, she made one instinctive telepathic cry.

  Philip!

  Then a loud cracking sound echoed in her ears and everything went black.

  Christian didn’t flinch from the girl ghost, but alarm bells went off in his head the second Eleisha took a step back and he simultaneously heard the loud crack. Before she even fell, something glinted from the darkness, and he whirled just in time to see a blade sweeping less than an inch from his throat.

  But it missed and kept moving into empty air.

  His coat was open, and he jerked his blade from its sheath, managing a partial block as the blade in the air came back toward him instantly. But the weight of the sword and the strength behind it almost knocked him over. Somehow, he managed to stay on his feet and scramble backward, trying to regain his balance.

  Eleisha was on the ground, as still as a stone, but he’d only just glanced at her before a large, dark-haired vampire with a heavy bone structure came swinging out of the dark doorway.

  Julian.

  On little more than panicked instinct, Christian swung back. His blade was short and light—as he tended to depend upon speed—and Julian’s sword was
long and weighty, and it nearly knocked Christian’s blade from his hand when he tried to block.

  If Christian could just get an instant to stop swinging or blocking, he knew he could focus an impulse, but he remembered what Eleisha had told him about not giving Julian time to focus his gift.

  It’s crippling, she’d said.

  So Christian kept swinging, but Julian had no trouble blocking, and his sword was longer. In a flash of clarity, Christian realized he was about to go down quickly, unless he tried something else.

  He dropped and rolled, coming up six feet away, and as Julian rushed, Christian managed to send the first impulse that came to him.

  Your arms are heavy.

  It was a weak ploy in the heat of the moment, but at least it was something, and although Julian didn’t slow down, his swing was slower, and Christian spotted the confusion on his face as Christian dodged more easily this time.

  Your gift won’t work. It’s broken.

  At that, he saw the confusion increase, and then he felt the first wave of fear coming at him, but he fought for control.

  No, it won’t work. It’s broken. You’ve lost it.

  Julian roared and swung hard, aiming directly at Christian’s head. Christian didn’t even try to block that time but just ducked, feeling the sword rush past the top of his hair. Real fear mixed with Julian’s gift hit him now.

  He needed a moment to think of something, some deeper impulse to stop Julian, but the onslaught didn’t let up.

  Then he heard the sounds of footsteps coming toward them, and he glanced left just long enough to see Philip running along the ground at full speed, machete in hand.

  He’ll kill you, Christian sent to Julian. You know he will. Your gift is broken.

  He glanced back to see Philip nearly flying over a sidewalk, but while glancing, Christian was also instinctively moving to defend himself from another blow, and when he looked back… Julian was gone.

  The dark air where he’d been standing was empty.

  Philip skidded to a stop, looking around wildly. “Where is he? Where did he go?”

  “I… I…” For once in his life, Christian was speechless. He didn’t know where Julian had gone. He knew only that he’d been inches from losing his head.