In Memories We Fear (7 page)

“Okay,” he said patiently to Rose, “I’m going to push harder. You keep my thoughts out.”

Eleisha couldn’t believe how calm he sounded, as though the turmoil inside him weren’t even there. She couldn’t stop thinking about the strength in his hands when he’d pinned her arms, or of him pushing his wrist deeper into her mouth. He was a stranger to her, and yet he was still Wade.

She glanced at Philip. He hadn’t mentioned the memory she’d shared with him last night, and she was beginning to think he might not. That act had taken courage on her part, but he seemed to be pretending it never happened. She had hoped for more from him. She wasn’t certain what . . . just more.

“Norman should kill his mother,” Philip said. “Then he would be free.”

“Well . . . keep watching.”

Something shimmered through the archway of the kitchen. She tensed.

“Eleisha!” Wade called instantly. “You out there?”

She hit the PAUSE button on the remote and jumped to her feet, moving quickly through the arch to see Seamus standing by the table. He looked exhausted, all his bright colors faded and even more transparent than usual.

“Seamus,” Rose said in alarm, “you promised you wouldn’t push yourself this hard.”

“Did you find anything?” Philip asked, coming in after Eleisha.

Seamus nodded, as if trying to gather the strength to speak. “Yes,” he said finally. “Different . . . and I can’t always make a pinpoint, but I can get close.”

“You think it’s a vampire?” Eleisha asked.

He nodded again, floating closer to Rose. “It’s a vampire . . . but he’s wild, like an animal.”

Eleisha just watched him for a few seconds, taking this in. Since returning from Denver, she’d had moments when she wondered if maybe they were all that remained, if they’d already found the few survivors, and what this meant to the future of the underground. But Wade and Seamus had found another, and he needed their help. The world had just shifted.

Her entire focus shifted.

“All right,” she said, nodding back at him. “We need to get ready and buy three plane tickets.”

“Maybe four,” Wade put in.

Eleisha forced herself to look at him. It was the first time she’d looked directly at him since the stairwell. He was wearing a long-sleeved shirt. “What do you mean?”

He didn’t meet her eyes. Instead, he turned to Rose. “I think we’re going to need Seamus
with
us on this one . . . maybe much of the time, and that won’t work unless you’re with us, too.”

“Wade, no,” Eleisha cut in. “You can’t ask her to—”

He held up his right hand, and Eleisha paused, watching him warily. Rose had a phobia of travel, and she’d never been on an airplane. They’d only managed to bring her from San Francisco by barricading themselves into a cabin on a train and closing the shutters on the window. Although for Wade’s sake, Eleisha had been allowing him to take greater charge of things, to feel more essential, she was still in control here, and she’d shut him down in a heartbeat if he tried to make Rose do something she feared.

“I think I can help you,” Wade said, still speaking directly to Rose. “If you let me into your mind, I can take you someplace else, keep you from knowing where you are until we land, even until we reach the hotel if you want me to. Will you try?”

Eleisha’s protective instincts surged up, and she got ready to fight him on this if necessary, but Rose’s expression did not close up. She seemed to be contemplating his words, and she looked over at Eleisha with hope.

“I so want to help you,” she said. “Let me try this.”

“Are you sure?” Eleisha asked, still uncertain.

“We’re going to need Seamus,” Wade stated flatly. “She has to come.”

“Yes,” Rose answered. “I want to try.”

Philip had his arms crossed and was leaning back against the refrigerator, watching Wade with a slightly puzzled expression.

“Good. But we need a few more ground rules,” Wade went on. “For one, nobody turns off their cell phone, and everybody answers when it rings—do you understand?”

“You can’t bring your gun into London,” Philip said quietly, changing the topic.

Eleisha glanced over at the warning tone in his voice, and she didn’t like where this was going. Wade seemed to be attempting to put himself in the position of leader—without anyone casting a vote—and Philip didn’t take orders from anyone, not even Wade.

Wade frowned. “What?”

“You can’t bring a handgun into England. Airport security does random searches of luggage, so if you try to hide it in your suitcase and check it in, someone could still search your bag. You’d be arrested when we hit the ground.”

“What about your machete?”

“I can just pack that in a box and send it through with oversized luggage. Julian travels with a sword all the time. But laws there are different for guns.” Philip paused, as if something had just occurred to him. “Has anyone here ever been to London?”

His question stopped the conversation. Eleisha already knew the answer was no.

She’d grown up in Wales without ever seeing anything outside of the Cliffbracken estate. After turning her, Julian had put her on a ship bound for America in 1839. She’d seen almost nothing of Europe. Wade had never been out of the country. Rose had been born in Scotland, never gotten far outside her home village, and then lived the existence of a shut-in after coming to America.

“Have you?” Eleisha asked Philip.

“Many times.”

Philip was the traveler in their little group, and he’d spent most of his time in Europe. That put him in a unique position here.

But Wade wasn’t ready to give up. “I’ll book the tickets.”

“No, I’ll do it,” Philip said, just an edge of warning in his voice. “I need to account for the time difference so we can take off in the dark and land in the dark.”

Wade opened his mouth, but Eleisha shook her head at him slightly. He closed it.

“We should get packed,” she said. She glanced from Philip to Wade. “The only thing that matters now is that we’ve found another lost one—who needs help.” She hesitated. “That’s all that matters.”

Wade had the good taste to look slightly chagrined, but Philip just walked out of the kitchen. Eleisha’s stomach tightened. They were about to embark on a search that had a chance of success only if they worked together and depended upon one another’s strengths without question. How was this going to play out with so many rifts cracking the connections between them?

She didn’t know.

 

The following night, Julian had just finished saddling his horse when the air shimmered and Mary appeared beside him at the stable.

“They’re in a taxi, on the way to the airport,” she said immediately.

For once he wasn’t annoyed at her sudden appearance and manner of blurting out words.

“Who’s on the mission?”

“All of them.”

He put his large hand on the horse’s shoulder. “All of them?”

“Yup, even Rose.”

Julian digested that information, as he knew Rose suffered from a debilitating phobia of travel, and she always remained behind at the church. Why would they risk bringing her unless they believed they’d found something important . . . an elder?

“What have you learned about the vampire they’re seeking?” he asked.

“Nothing. They had a meeting in the kitchen, but I couldn’t get close enough to listen. Seamus was there.” She frowned. “And if Rose is going to London, he’ll be with them all the time. That’s going to be a bitch for me.”

Julian glanced at her, trying to ignore her crude speech patterns. She was American after all, and allowances must be made. Mary had much greater freedom of movement than other ghosts, as she was not tied to any one person or place; unfortunately, however, Seamus could sense her presence if she got too close, and Julian didn’t want Eleisha to know when or if she was being watched.

However, Seamus’ doing sweeps of London in search of a vampire could be problematic in other ways. Julian would not be able to book a hotel inside the city.

“You want me to teleport to London and see what I can learn on my own?” she asked.

He put his fist to his mouth for a few seconds, thinking. If Eleisha had found an elder, every move he made would be vital. He had to intercept her quickly once she’d made contact and take matters into his own hands. History could never be allowed to repeat itself, so he had to get closer without getting too close.

“No . . . go to San Francisco. Tell Jasper to book a flight and meet me at the Great Fosters hotel on Stroude Road in Surrey. It’s only about nine miles from Heathrow Airport. He should have no trouble.”

She brightened. “Okay.”

He started to turn away and then stopped. “But tell him to calculate the time zones properly. London is eight hours ahead of California, and he has to land in the dark.”

Her transparent forehead wrinkled, and then she said, “Oh . . . yeah, I’ll make sure he’s careful.”

Julian hoped that between the two of them, Mary and Jasper possessed the ability to count to twenty-four. He unsaddled his horse, set it loose in the pasture, and walked back toward the manor.

Jasper Nesland tossed the keys of his BMW to a valet, paid his cover charge, and walked into the Cellar nightclub on Sutter Street. Loud music and purple-red lights washed over him before the door even closed. The place was packed, but he still noticed a girl in a short skirt by the wraparound bar flash a smile at him.

Sometimes, he couldn’t believe how much his life had changed. Six months ago that girl wouldn’t have bothered to spit on him. He walked through the crowd, straight to her.

Jasper wasn’t into playing games when he hunted. He didn’t like to dance; dancing was for losers who didn’t care if they made fools of themselves. And unlike Julian, he never drank red wine or tea, so hanging out at a table with someone seemed equally pointless.

He did, however, get satisfaction from the way flashy girls treated him now that he had money, now that he got his hair cut at L’ShearHair and bought his clothes at Uomo in Union Square.

Money changed everything.

He didn’t bother smiling back and just slid up to the bar beside her. She had layered brown hair with blond highlights, and although she wore too much eye makeup, it was artistically applied. But her eyes held no warmth, no light of their own. She was his favorite type.

“You want to dance?” she asked without asking his name.

She wasn’t shy.

“No. It’s too loud in here. Let’s go somewhere else.”

He turned on his gift ever so slightly, just a hint. When he’d first learned his gift, he’d hated it, been humiliated by the thought of it, and he would have taken anything else. He’d longed for a gift like Philip’s or Julian’s. But in the nights that followed, Jasper had come to understand the benefits of his gift: pity.

There was great power in pity once he learned how to use it.

Right now he was making this girl feel sorry that the music was too loud for him and that he wanted to leave. She grabbed her clutch purse off the bar.

“Sure,” she said.

He took her hand and led her toward the doors. He’d been inside the nightclub less than ten minutes.

A different valet went to get his car, and he stood on the curb, enjoying the night breeze blowing across his face.

“What’s your name?” she asked.

“Jasper.”

“I’m Melanie. You married?”

No girl he’d ever picked up had asked him that before, and he looked at her.

“No. Why?”

She shrugged. “I always seem to end up with married guys.”

The thought passed quickly through his mind, and he didn’t say it out loud. The BMW pulled up, and he watched her face. Her eyes flickered once, but she made no comment. He opened the door for her, tipped the valet, and jogged around to the driver’s side.

“Where should we go?” she asked once he got in.

“How about the waterfront? Take a walk down by the Cannery? Maybe get some coffee?”

This time, she couldn’t stop her face from registering surprise. He’d learned quickly that suggesting things like walks by the waterfront and then having coffee were unexpected to girls who hung out in expensive nightclubs . . . but the suggestion always worked.

“Sure,” she said again.

He pulled out into traffic and headed for Jefferson Street. To his relief, she didn’t talk much on the way. He found a parking place near the wax museum, and got out, jogging around to open her door. Then he headed toward the water and she followed him—even though she was wearing five-inch stiletto heels.

“I like to look at the boats,” he said, moving toward the docks and listening to the sound of the waves. “Sometimes I think about living on one.”

That part was true. He’d thought about living on a boat since long before he was turned.

“Yeah?” she asked, but didn’t seem too interested. “What do you do?”

What did he do? He followed Julian’s orders. That was what he did.

“This way,” he said without answering her question, and led her down Pier 45 toward the Fishermen’s and Seamen’s Chapel. Halfway down, there was a narrow opening between the buildings, and he slipped inside. “Here.”

She paused. “What’s in there?”

“Just come talk to me for a while. I’m lonely.”

He let his gift flow and watched her expression change from one of caution to one of sympathy. She followed him in without another word, and they were alone in the shadows and darkness. In his early hunts, he had sometimes kissed his victims and allowed them to become completely immersed in sympathy for him before he suddenly shut it off and then rejoiced in their fear—rather like revenge for years of rejection. But he didn’t do that anymore. He still tended to choose a certain type of girl, but now he wanted no connection whatsoever and no reminders of the past.