Feral Passion

by Stephanie Bedwell-Grime

  “Somewhere safe,” he said tersely.

  “How did you find me?”

  He cast another furtive glance into the mirror. Satisfied they weren’t being followed at the moment, he sighed. “Your friend Alix seemed to think you were in grave danger. She called me.”

  “I was. Jeremy would only keep me as long as I was useful.”

  “Which probably wouldn’t have been much longer.”

  She cringed at his blunt assessment of the situation. “No, probably not.”

  They drove for half an hour out of the city core and into the suburbs. Exhaustion caught up with her and Xandra let her head loll back against the seat. Sleep tugged her eyelids closed. She dozed, only to wake suddenly a few minutes later. But even that short nap seemed to have improved her constitution. She felt stronger. More alert.

  Finally, Dante pulled up in front of a two-story house nearly indistinguishable from every other on the street. She wondered how many hidey-holes he had spread over the city and the countryside. It seemed unlikely that a policeman’s salary would pay for his stately house, the cottage he’d supposedly inherited and now this suburban nightmare.

  After a careful glance around, Dante hit the garage door opener and drove the car into the garage and out of sight of prying eyes.

  “Whose house is this?” she asked.

  His eyes shifted sideways like he didn’t want to tell her. “It’s a safe house. We use it for special witnesses. Ones we don’t want anyone to know about.”

  “Or anyone to get their hands on?”

  “Right.”

  “And you just happen to have the keys?”

  “Let’s just say I happened to have them in my possession right now.”

  Before she could ruminate further on this new development, the inner garage door to the house flew open and Alix raced down the cement steps into the garage. She launched herself at the car, peering in the windows. Seeing Xandra slumped against the seat seemed to reassure her. She backed up, giving Dante a chance to open the door.

  “You found her!”

  Xandra looked at her friend in dismay. Her eyes were sunken. It seemed like she hadn’t slept in days. “Oh no, Alix. You shouldn’t have gotten involved.” Dante got out of the car and came around to help her up.

  Alix followed him nervously. “I knew something was wrong. When your boss came to ask me all those strange questions, I just had this terrible feeling something was horribly wrong.” She glanced at Dante. “I was right, wasn’t I?”

  Xandra answered for him. “Yes, Alix, you were right. Something is terribly wrong, I just don’t know what. Or,” she added tiredly, “how exactly it concerns me.”

  “Come into the house.” Dante opened the door. “Let’s not talk out in the garage where we might be overheard.”

  They walked into a narrow hallway that led them past a laundry nook and into the kitchen. A living room decorated in nondescript beige furniture opened into a living/dining combo. The dining area had a circular table and four chairs that looked like they’d been purchased from the local discount store. The house smelled strongly of grease and takeout food. It was obvious from the matching beige prints of landscapes over the couch and dining room table that no one truly lived there.

  Dante helped her to a seat on the couch. She sank into the cushions wishing she didn’t feel so weak, or that her brain didn’t feel quite so muddled.

  Alix perched beside her. “Before you…disappeared, you told me you had a nightmare about the night your mom was killed.”

  Xandra nodded.

  “Maybe,” Alix suggested carefully, “the truth is locked in your memory somewhere.”

  It sounded a lot like something Dante had said. She glanced at him, but he was looking at Alix.

  “I think you might be right, Alix. But memories aren’t like videotapes. In the first place, they aren’t as accurate. They degrade over time. False memories are common. If you ask two different people about a single event, you might get two entirely different versions. Sometimes wildly differing versions,” he added.

  “That’s true.” Xandra had studied false memories in psychology classes.

  “But still,” Alix persisted. “There might be something stored away in your memory that might explain—” she waved her hand at Xandra still slouched in the corner of the couch propped up by pillows, “—all of this.” She looked up at Dante. “Don’t you think it might be worth it to give hypnosis a try?”

  Dante considered her question carefully. “It’s risky,” he said after a moment. “I don’t know how to do it.”

  Xandra raised an eyebrow.

  “Despite the many myths to the contrary,” he admitted. “I can sometimes plant a thought or a suggestion in an unguarded mind. But fishing around in a memory blocked by trauma—that’s best left to a professional. And involving a professional is risky.”

  “You’re afraid Jeremy might find out where she is?” Alix asked.

  “Jeremy or anyone else looking for her.” He glanced again at Xandra. “And we don’t know what drugs they’ve given her, or what they might have done to make unlocking that information difficult.”

  Xandra straightened. Damned if she’d let them talk about her like she was incapable of making a decision. “Like you said, it might be risky. But I want to try. I have to know what happened that night and why Jeremy’s suddenly turned on me.”

  And what linked Dante to the whole thing, she thought, but stayed silent on that count. She’d find that out later.

  “I have to know,” she repeated.

  Dante let out his breath in a rush. “Okay, but I can’t leave either of you here unattended. I’ll have to make some calls and see what I can do.”

  “I know someone,” Alix said suddenly. Xandra and Dante turned toward her.

  “Not a civilian,” Dante said. “It’s too dangerous.”

  “Maybe less dangerous,” Xandra countered. “Someone they wouldn’t suspect.”

  “A friend of mine is a parapsychologist. She went to college for it and everything.”

  Dante’s expression plainly told what he thought of that. “Have you considered this might be dangerous information for someone to have?”

  “We could ask her. Let her decide.”

  “And perhaps unwittingly tip them off to your location. I don’t like it.”

  “We may not have much time for debate,” Xandra said. “We might have lost Jeremy, but that doesn’t mean he’s not out looking for me at this very moment.”

  Alix shuddered. She glanced at Dante, her eyes wide. “You can’t let him find her!”

  He looked at Xandra, his expression softening. “Trust me, I’ll do everything in my power to stop that from happening.”

  Alix studied her. “If I can get in touch with my college chum, are you up to this?”

  Xandra sighed. “I’ll just have to be, won’t I?”

  “Do you want to have a nap first?” Dante asked.

  “No. I want to know now.”

  He held out his cell phone to Alix. “This is a secure line. Phone your friend and we’ll hope for the best.”

  Now what? Xandra wondered as she waited for Alix’s college friend to arrive. In a matter of a few short minutes, she might know the truth about what had happened that fateful night. Knowledge she may have kept buried deep inside. Did she have the strength to face the truth?

  She had the most awful feeling that whatever was about to happen, it would change her life forever.

  Dante disappeared into the kitchen. She heard him rummaging around in the freezer and then the sound of the microwave beeping. He emerged a few moments later carrying a plate. “You should eat something.”

  Her stomach protested at the sight of the meatloaf and reconstituted mashed potatoes.

  “I know it’s not the most appetizing fare, but you need your strength and we can’t run the risk of ordering in.”

  He had a point. She took the plate from him and took a tentative bite. She must have been hu
ngrier than she thought because it stayed down. Satisfied she’d been taken care of, Dante went in search of more food for Alix and himself.

  Clarice arrived in less than half an hour. The red-haired parapsychologist looked more like a banker than someone with a specialty in hypnosis. Her knee-length navy blue skirt and jacket would have been right at home at a Wall Street brokerage firm. She parked her matching navy blue Lexus in the two-car garage next to the Jeep.

  Xandra sincerely hoped she wasn’t putting an innocent civilian in terrible danger. But Clarice was already there. And irrevocably linked to them if Jeremy had already been able to trace their whereabouts.

  Dante was talking softly to Clarice in the kitchen. “You understand that this is a top secret police investigation, and that anything you hear tonight is strictly classified.”

  “I understand,” Clarice said with confidence, as if this wasn’t the first time she’d been asked to keep whatever she learned under hypnosis a secret. But she cast a nervous look at Alix, who made a valiant attempt to smile bravely.

  “I can’t stress the importance of that more strongly.” An undercurrent of threat entered Dante’s tone.

  “Anything I hear tonight will remain our secret,” Clarice assured him.

  “Okay then.” Dante cast a questioning glance at Xandra. She nodded her readiness to begin.

  Clarice led her to the couch in the living room. Once she was settled comfortably, the parapsychologist pulled up one of the dining room chairs and sat down.

  “All right, Xandra,” she said in a soothing and calming voice, “you’re feeling very comfortable and a little bit drowsy.” She waited a few seconds for Xandra to accept the suggestion. “But you’re in a very safe place. Nothing can happen to you here.”

  “Nothing can happen,” Xandra repeated.

  “I want you to pretend that we’re watching a movie of your life. It’s only a movie, not reality, and nothing you see or hear can harm you. Do you understand?”

  “Yes.” Despite her nervousness and her fears, Xandra felt herself relaxing. She sank deeper into the cushions on the couch. Warmth cocooned her.

  “Now we’re going to go back to a time in your life when you were a little girl.” Clarice’s voice seemed to come from far away.

  Instantly, it felt like she was back there in the small apartment, hiding beneath the covers of her bed. She could hear the rain spattering in fat drops against her bedroom window, smell the dampness that permeated everything. Thunder rumbled ominously. She whimpered.

  “It’s all right, Xandra,” Clarice said. “Nothing can hurt you. You’re only watching a movie. Nothing on the movie screen can harm you in any way.”

  Distantly, Xandra heard Clarice’s calm reassurances, but she was sucked into the memory, like walking suddenly into quicksand.

  The apartment door opened and her mother’s footsteps wandered down the narrow hall. She wanted desperately to run to her mother, but she was forbidden to enter the living room in the evenings. So she waited, her head buried beneath the heavy quilt, waiting for signs that her mother was alone.

  A soft knock at the door. Two quick taps and one long. She recognized that signature. Xandra sighed. She wouldn’t be seeing her mother tonight. That knock belonged to a man. She reached for the flashlight beside her bed and grabbed a book off the bedside table.

  She heard the front door open and then close again.

  “What are you doing here?” Her mother’s voice. She sounded angry.

  “We haven’t finished discussing this!”

  Xandra gasped. That voice sounded extremely familiar. But she couldn’t place it.

  “I’ve said everything I have to say,” her mother countered. “You won’t change my mind.”

  “Lyla, don’t be a fool.”

  Lyla, Xandra remembered. The name men called her mother when they did things to her mother in the living room. Things she wasn’t allowed to witness.

  “Call me whatever you want,” her mother snarled. “You can’t have my daughter!”

  “Your daughter? Since when is she just your daughter?”

  “She’s just a little girl,” her mother pleaded. “I won’t allow you to turn her into a monster.” She heard the tears in her mother’s voice. “Not like you did to—”

  The sound of a fist meeting flesh reverberated through the apartment. Xandra heard the heavy thud of a body colliding with the wall.

  Another meaty punch. The man grunted. It seemed her mother was determined to fight back. Xandra hadn’t remembered that part of it before. She moaned in sympathy.

  “It’s okay, Xandra.” Clarice’s voice penetrated the fog of memory. “You’re only watching a movie. Nothing can hurt you in any way, you’re safe. But there’s something more here, another scene in the movie. All you need to do is to watch, and then you’ll know what it is. Your nightmares will go away.”

  “Go away,” Xandra repeated. “Forever.”

  “That’s right,” Clarice said. “Forever.”

  Xandra felt the rough polyester material of the couch cushions. She didn’t really want to venture back to that disconcerting memory, but Clarice had promised her things would be better if she tried. So she allowed the parapsychologist to ease her back into the murky depths of her memory.

  Abruptly, she could feel the dampness caused by the persistent humidity and the rain. She heard her mother’s pleas again, then the meaty thud as her mother’s body hit the wall.

  And then her memory, spiked by Clarice’s reassurances, revealed the one thing it had kept hidden out of a child’s guilt all these years.

  She hadn’t stayed in the bedroom.

  The knowledge was so shocking, she almost dragged herself back to full consciousness, but Clarice’s calm voice reassured her.

  Within her fragmented memory, her mother fought for her life in the living room. Xandra hovered by the bedroom door, her tiny hand clenched about the doorknob, torn by indecision. Her knuckles were white from the effort of trying not to wrench it open and run to her mother’s aid. But she’d promised her mother she’d stay hidden.

  The dilemma gnawed at her guts. Tears streamed down her face. Something really bad was happening. She just knew it. She chewed her lip until it bled, trying to decide what to do.

  Something scratched against the outside of the window. Her mother’s pleas had subsided. She no longer heard punches being thrown in the outer room. The living room window scraped open. Something moved heavily across the floor.

  Beneath the patter of the rain, she heard a terrible sucking sound. The sound went on and on, echoing through her mind and etching itself forever in her memory.

  It was too much for a child to bear. She wrenched the door open.

  “Mommy!” she screamed, racing down the hall.

  The first thing she saw were the curtains blowing in the rain-laden breeze. Moisture hung heavily in the air. The room reeked of rain and blood.

  At the sound of her high-pitched voice, the occupants of the living room whirled to face her. But her attention went to her mother’s body slumped lifelessly on the beige rug. Blood pooled sluggishly around her head. Tiny drips crisscrossed the rug.

  Something in black hovered above her mother’s body. She screamed. It glared at her with red-rimmed eyes. Slowly, it straightened from its crouch and took a step toward her. It loomed above her, smelling like garbage and carrion. Blood dripped from its fangs onto its filthy clothes. They weren’t black, she realized with an odd fascination. In fact its clothes were variations of dark brown and green, but dirt blackened them until the colors were nearly unrecognizable. It moved toward her, claws extended. She shrieked in horror.

  “No!” said a voice from behind the creature. Her eyes were drawn to this other person, the one whose voice she’d recognized.

  He stepped out from behind the creature. “Don’t touch her.” Piercing blue eyes glared at her from beneath a full head of dark hair.

  His hair was a surprise—she’d never known him with an
ything but gray hair. But there was no mistaking those eyes.

  With a gasp, Xandra sat up. “Jeremy!”

  Quickly, Clarice led her through the wake-up procedure. Dante hovered at her elbow with a glass of water. She drank it greedily, surprised at how dry and raw her throat felt.

  “Jeremy was there the night my mother was killed,” she rasped. “I remember now.”

  For a moment she stared at the beige carpet, shockingly like the one in her mother’s living room. “I disobeyed her. I went out in the living room. My mom had obviously been in a fight. With Jeremy. And…” her voice cracked.

  “It’s okay.” Alix gripped her shoulder “You don’t have to remember it all this minute.”

  “Yes, I do. I can’t let it get buried again.”

  “Take a deep breath and calm yourself,” Clarice urged. “Tell us what you remember.”

  “My mother fought with Jeremy, but it was a vampire who killed her. A vampire under Jeremy’s control. A feral vampire like ones from the alley.”

  At her revelation, Dante straightened. “Are you certain?”

  “Yes, and it would have killed me too. But Jeremy stopped it.” She stared at the carpet again as if it held the secrets to her past. “And now I remember what happened after that: Jeremy tried to catch me, but I raced down the hall to my bedroom and threw the lock on the door. My mom had had a lock installed. I always wondered why she did that. He would have broken the lock, but our neighbor had been alerted by the noise and she hammered on the door. Jeremy disappeared through the living room window and took the feral vamp with him.”

  She stopped talking then and looked up at the trio of expectant faces around her. “I know it sounds crazy, but I know now that’s what happened. What do you think it means?”

  “Whatever it means,” Dante said carefully. “I’m connected to it too.”

  Of all the revelations she’d had that night, that surprised her most. “You? Why?”

  Dante glanced at Clarice. “I think for their own safety, it might be time for our guests to leave.

  “I’m already involved,” Alix insisted. “I’m staying.”

  “All right,” Dante said. “But the longer Clarice stays, the more dangerous it is for her.”