by Barb Hendee
No… it started even before that, in France, in 1825, when Eleisha's maker, Julian, had realized that unlike most vampires, he was incapable of developing psychic powers, and he fell into an obsession of fear and began killing his own kind. He'd spared any vampires who had not expressed telepathic abilities-and this included Eleisha and Philip.
But Wade had changed all that. He'd woken Eleisha's and Philip's latent abilities and, in doing so, turned them into targets.
And then Julian had come hunting them.
Somehow-and Wade still didn't know exactly how-on the night Julian found them, Eleisha had forced her thoughts inside Julian's mind and shown him something terrifying that caused him to freeze up… after which Philip kicked him out a twelfth-story window. Eleisha firmly believed that she had permanently driven him away, and they were all safe from him.
Philip didn't seem so sure.
But four weeks had passed since that night, and Julian had not come after them, and now the three of them seemed to be existing in a state of limbo, waiting for something, but none of them knew what. Eleisha had suggested that Wade find a new job here in Seattle. He agreed. She had suggested he might feel better if he found an apartment of his own. He partially agreed. She had suggested that they might clear out all of Maggie's things, buy new furniture, and make the house their own. He agreed.
But he'd taken no action to accomplish any of these things.
How long could he continue like this?
Voices coming from outside caught his attention. The front door swung inward as Eleisha walked inside with Philip on her heels.
"Wade, tomorrow will you see the new Rambo movie with me?" Philip asked before the door closed behind him. "Eleisha won't go."
Wade blinked. "There's a new Rambo movie? Who's playing Rambo?"
"Stallone."
"Stallone? That can't be right. The guy's sixty years old."
Philip turned to Eleisha. "Tell him I'm right. You saw the preview with me last week."
"What?" Eleisha was pulling off her jacket with a distracted expression, as if she hadn't been listening. "Oh, yes, Philip's right."
Looking at her face, Wade forgot all about Rambo. He could tell when something was bothering her.
The three of them had been together such a short time, but they knew each better than most people who'd coexisted for a lifetime. They had looked into each other's minds and down the paths of time and personal experiences, seen fears and loves and private corners.
"What's wrong?" he asked.
Glancing back at him, she dropped her jacket on a chair, opened her mouth halfway, and then closed it again. For once, Philip seemed to forget about his own desire for entertainment, and he walked closer to her, his head towering over hers.
"Eleisha?" he asked.
Just when Wade thought he'd grown accustomed to their physical appearance, he'd look at them together like this and feel surprised all over again. Their pale, softly glowing skin made them both seem timeless, yet there the resemblance stopped. Eleisha was probably not what a typical American would consider beautiful. But she was alarmingly… pretty. Born in a different era, she was small and slender with a mass of wispy, wheat gold hair that reached the top of her jeans. Sometimes, just the sight of her left Wade speechless.
Philip, on the other hand, looked like someone on the cover of GQ posing for Calvin Klein's fall fashion line, and without meaning to, he tended to make Wade feel diminished. They were both tall, but where Philip's tight muscles showed through his shirt, Wade's build leaned toward thin. Wade's white-blond hair stuck out in different directions, as he wore it fairly short, but he often forgot to see a stylist for months.
His feelings about Philip were conflicted. He didn't always exactly like Philip, but they were deeply connected by circumstance, and they knew each other far too well.
Eleisha glanced up over at Wade, almost as if she was nervous. "I need to show you both something, and I don't know what you'll say."
She walked halfway over to the staircase, lifted the top of one of the steps, and took out an ivory envelope. Wade had no idea that step lifted up to create a hiding space. When had Eleisha discovered that? What had she hidden there?
She hesitated a moment longer, and then said to Wade, "Do you remember a few nights after… after Julian found us and we drove him off, that night when I tried to get you to start looking for a job here?"
He winced. "Of course I remember."
"This came that same night."
She handed him the envelope, and he opened it, reading the brief handwritten letter inside.
You are not alone. There are others like you. Respond to the Elizabeth Bathory Underground. P.O. Box 27750, San Francisco, CA 94973.
He was confused, having no idea what this meant, but before he could speak, Philip walked over and ripped both the letter and envelope from his hand.
"What is that?" Philip asked. He scanned the note and then raised his eyes from the paper to Eleisha's face. "A month ago? This came a month ago and you didn't show me?" His voice had lost its normal light, amusement-seeking tone. He sounded angry.
"Philip-" Eleisha began.
"It's a trap!" he nearly shouted, his accent growing thicker. "Sent by Julian." He looked at the envelope. "This is addressed to you. Here! By hiding this, you put yourself in danger! You put Wade in danger."
Philip often behaved as if he needed to protect Wade-which was neither flattering nor comforting.
"It's not Julian," Eleisha said. "Look at the handwriting."
"You aren't to answer this," Philip ordered. "You leave it with me, and you don't go hunting alone until I say so."
"I already answered it," Eleisha said quietly. "And then she wrote back, and then I wrote back… and then she wrote back. We've been corresponding every week."
Philip's expression darkened into rage, but before he could explode, Wade asked, "She?"
"Yes, just look at her letters." Eleisha hurried back to the staircase and drew out a small stack of ivory envelopes. Wade could barely believe she had been keeping this a secret. He thought he knew all Eleisha's secrets. She gripped the letters in one hand and held her palm up toward Philip. "Wait. Just hear me out. Her name is Rose, and she is like us. She lives somewhere in San Francisco, but she won't tell me where. She's frightened, too."
Digging through the envelopes, she pulled out a letter. "Here, Philip, come look at this one. She says that Julian could not have killed every vampire in Europe. She believes there must be others, only they are hiding… like she's been hiding. She thinks they're afraid of him, and she's been waiting, just waiting, for someone to fight back. When she learned we'd survived an attack and driven him off, she knew the world had shifted. She needs our help!"
Philip listened to this outburst without a word, but then he walked slowly over to Eleisha, staring down at her with eyes so hard that Wade would have backed up-but Eleisha didn't.
She stood her ground. "Look at the letter, Philip."
"And how did she know where we are?" Philip asked, ignoring the letter. His tone dropped low. "How did she know we drove off Julian?"
Eleisha's voice wavered. "She hasn't told me that. But this isn't a trap."
She turned to Wade, stretching out her hand. "Just read this one."
He was still reeling that she'd kept all of this from himself and Philip, but he took the letter and, scanning a middle paragraph, he could almost hear the polite, desperate voice behind the words. Without even asking, he flashed what he read into Philip's thoughts.
… but the house you stay in now is not suitable. You must find someplace larger, someplace to fortify where you can protect yourselves and me and anyone else we might find. I wait to hear from you. I have waited so long, even before I knew your name.
He looked up, thinking on the initial note. "The Elizabeth Bathory Underground?"
"That's what she calls it… or hopes to call it. It's an underground we'll create so we can look for others and help bring them in,
keep them safe from Julian. Rose thinks the name is subtle enough to escape obvious notice but still offers a clue. Elizabeth Bathory was a countess from the sixteenth century who-"
"I know who she was," Wade cut in, frustrated by this sudden shift. "She murdered young girls to bathe in their blood, and she became linked into the history of vampires. That isn't what I meant. How could you get so involved in this without warning us?"
Eleisha looked at the floor. "I don't know. I liked writing to Rose, and I was afraid you'd ask me to stop… and I want to find her, Wade. I need to find her."
His frustration faded. He shared an empathy with both of his companions. He knew Philip reveled in having company after existing alone for so long-because of Julian. Philip's greatest fear was being alone again.
But Eleisha was more complicated. In 1839, Julian had realized his father, William, was dying of Alzheimer's disease-which had no name yet, but Wade recognized the symptoms while reading Eleisha's memories. In desperation, Julian turned his father, only to condemn the old man to eternal dementia. To cover his mistake, Julian turned Eleisha in order to create a permanent care-taker for William, and he'd put them both on a ship bound for America. Eleisha had spent nearly one hundred and seventy years caring for William, but like Maggie, William was gone now, too, turned to dust.
Eleisha missed caring for him. She possessed a need to be needed-which might explain her affection for Philip.
Now she wanted to look for lost vampires?
"You are not going anywhere," Philip snapped. "And you will stop sending these letters." He paced halfway across the room, muttering, "I have to think. I have to think what to do now."
"I don't need your permission," Eleisha said.
He stopped pacing and looked at her in surprise.
"I am going find Rose and offer her a safe place," she went on. "I want your help, and Wade's, but I'll do it alone if I have to."
Wade had never seen the two of them like this, and the look on Philip's face was beginning to worry him. Stepping toward Eleisha, Philip drew his lips up over his teeth in a snarl.
"You don't think I can stop you?"
"No." She shook her head. "Because if you do, I won't forgive you."
She might as well have slapped him. Releasing a sound between rage and anguish, he turned toward the door. "Then go by yourself! Walk into a trap by yourself!"
"It's not a trap! Just look at her letters!"
"This woman is terrified of Julian," Wade managed to put in.
Philip ignored both of them and stormed out the door.
Predictably, he got as far as the front porch before he stopped and turned halfway around, his pale face gone white.
"Whatever happens, if someone else knows we are here, we have to find a new place." He paused as if the next words pained him. "She spoke of finding a place we could fortify. If we do this… if we do this thing for you, we'll have to begin there."
For a few seconds, no one spoke. Then Eleisha said quietly, "I think I've already found one. I haven't seen it myself yet, just photos."
Wade's mouth fell open. More secrets? "What? Where?"
"Back home," she said. "In Portland. Let me book plane tickets, and I'll show you."
Wade stared at her as if she were a stranger, but then he realized this was the first time he'd heard her use the word «home» in over a month.
"Book the tickets," he whispered hoarsely.
At the moment, he didn't want to know any more.
Chapter 2
Julian Ashton had fled to his family estate in Wales like a victim, like a coward-or at least that's how he viewed it.
His gift was fear, and he was accustomed to inducing the emotion, not to experiencing it himself. The only thing he feared was a telepathic member of his own kind, and he had destroyed the last one a long time ago.
He felt no remorse for this. He had taken simply necessary action and ensured his own survival… until now.
For centuries, his kind had existed by four laws, and the most sacred of these was "No vampire shall kill to feed." They'd retained their secrecy through telepathy, feeding on mortals, altering a memory, and then leaving the victim alive. New vampires required training from their makers to both awaken and hone psychic abilities, but Julian's telepathy had never surfaced. He had lived by his own laws, and so the elders began quietly turning against him. His maker, Angelo Travare, had tried to hide this news from him, but he knew. He heard the rumblings, and he had acted first, beheading every vampire who'd lived by the laws, including Angelo-who would have turned against him sooner or later. Angelo had hoped that Julian would eventually develop his powers, but this was a false hope, and Julian knew it.
He began to see a new path, a world without laws.
Vampires without telepathy-without any training by a maker-were no threat to him. On some level, he almost viewed them as kindred spirits.
Then… a month ago, without reason or warning, Eleisha, once his servant, had suddenly manifested psychic abilities so powerful she had forced her thoughts into his and taken over his mind, his body, his free will.
To make matters worse, she seemed to have won the protection of Philip Brantй!
Eleisha had warned Julian off and then let him go, but he knew this was far from over.
Even after a month of hiding out in Cliffbracken, where he had always felt secure, his hands still shook at the memory of her thoughts pushing inside his. He had been completely helpless to stop her.
Of course she knew nothing of the past, of the elders, of the laws, but Julian's world had shifted, and he was uncertain what to do.
What would happen as her power grew stronger?
Since returning, he'd spent much of his time in the main floor study, but earlier tonight, he had made his way down into the depths of his decaying family manor, and he paced the hard mud floor of what had once been a dungeon, back in the days of his grandfather.
He was in the guard room, surrounded by small cells.
Why had he come down here?
Something had called him, something from the past. Julian was not one to dwell on mistakes or sins, but a small part of him had never quite left this room, never stopped eating away at him for what he'd done here one night in 1839.
He walked over to the nearest cell and looked inside. It was empty. He turned and looked at the floor of the guard room.
Empty.
He was alone, and yet he could still see the shadows, still hear the ghosts.
Closing his eyes, he let his mind drift back until he heard his mother, Lady Katherine, screaming and beseeching him to help his father, Lord William. Julian had cared nothing for his mother. She was a coldhearted, self-centered woman. But watching his father sink deeper and deeper into dementia had proven too much.
He remembered the feeling in the pit of his stomach as he sank his teeth into his own father's neck and then cut himself, forcing his father to drink, to take all the blood back.
He remembered the horror of realizing what he'd done as Lord William dropped to the floor drooling and gibbering, locked forever in undead madness.
Then he'd locked his father in a cell, in the same dungeon his ancestors had used to make their enemies suffer.
But even down here, Lord William had not been far enough away, not nearly far enough.
The following night, Julian dragged Eleisha down into the same dungeon. He turned her and put them both on a ship bound for New York.
He had stolen her life and condemned her.
And now, after all this time, she had become telepathic, like the vampires of a past era.
What would she do as she dwelled on the memories of what he'd done to her? And how was he to know when she finally came after him?
He grew sick with fear, his own gift turning in upon itself.
He had to take some kind of action.
Pulling his gaze from the cell, he walked back through the guard room and down a short corridor to a secret passage that led to the stairwell goi
ng up.
Unable to rest his mind, he had been poring over one idea after the next regarding how to keep track of Eleisha's location. As he could not yet bring himself to leave Cliffbracken, he had few options, and none of them appealed to him.
But the same one continued to resurface in his mind. He'd flatly refused to even entertain the idea the first time it occurred to him, and he pushed it away. But every time it came back, he considered it a few moments longer… until one night, two weeks after returning here, he had used his cell phone and Visa card to order several newspapers from America.
Moving up the enclosed stairwell, he stopped on the first landing and then emerged onto the main floor of the manor, stepping out into the study.
The furniture, books, and shelves were covered in dust.
He still engaged a few servants to care for the place, but he'd ordered them to stay out of this room.
He'd gone too far into preparations for any prying eyes.
Reluctantly, he walked over to the round oak table, where his father had once consumed afternoon tea while dealing with the house accounts.
But at night, his mother had used this same table for different purposes.
Julian tightened his lips in distaste.
She and a few of her bored female acquaintances had become fascinated with magical arts and contact with the dead. In the span of a few years, they spent a small fortune on books and charlatans who claimed to be mediums.
However, as with most things, his mother lost interest in this pursuit, and her number of sйances grew fewer and fewer. When Lord William began to lose his memory, Lady Katherine stopped inviting guests altogether.
But the occult books still remained here in the study.
A few that had provided him with general guidance were stacked upon the table.
Lives of the Necromancers: Or, an Account of the Most Eminent Persons in Successive Ages, Who Have Claimed for Themselves, or to Whom Has Been Imputed by Others, the Exercise of Magical Power by William Godwin.
