Blood Memories

Chapter 20

Upon waking that night, three different lines of thought pushed to the front of my brain. The first was Jet-not only my regret over her unnecessary death, but the experience of reading her mind. How was it possible? Could she have been special like Wade? If so, why didn't she sense my intrusion?

The second thought, of course, was Wade himself. By now he figured I'd ditched him and run off to save myself. The hurt feelings of one mortal meant nothing-especially in trade for his life-but I wanted to talk to him, explain Philip's unannounced presence. Ridiculous really. And irrational. Wade's good health depended on my absence, not my words.

The third struggling thought was a memory from long ago of a dog named Thorne. One of Lord William's female wolfhounds disappeared during a hunt, and then turned up three weeks later, running with a wild mastiff. Months later, she gave birth to a single puppy. I must have been about ten when he was born. I can still see his broad, swaggering little chest and hear him growling at everything that moved. He grew up useless for anything men consider important. Independent, vicious, refusing to be touched or petted, he received no one's favor but mine. I couldn't scratch behind his ears any more than William could, but that didn't matter. I saved him kitchen meat scraps and cheese and gravy that the cooks threw out. He eventually stopped snarling at me and even met me by the back door in winters when live game grew scarce. I didn't love him but respected his independence.

Two days after my sixteenth birthday, he attacked a small boy-one of the groom's sons-and inflicted permanent scars. The boy admitted to having thrown a stick at the dog, but no one listened. The groom shot Thorne an hour later. I heard his gun from my room. It wasn't as though I'd lost a pet who was dear to me. He just somehow seemed more important than the boy. Why should anything so strong and fierce have to die like that? I'd put my cloak on, left William in Marion's care, found a shovel, and had Mr. Shevonshire lift the dog's dead body into an old wooden cart for me. Pushing the cart into the woods, I buried Thorne by the pond so he could hear flocks of geese coming home in the spring. I shed tears for him. His loss affected me in a way I can't explain. He was not a loss to me personally, simply a needless loss. He'd been magnificent in life, more worthwhile than most people could claim to be.

And why would Thorne push to the front of my brain after so many years? Perhaps I was lying next to his kindred spirit. This Philip. This purist who saw no contrasting shades in the world.

He stirred beside me and pushed up at the boards. "Eleisha, are you awake?"

"Yes."

"Come."

After climbing back up into the barn, we walked outside, night air breezing across cool skin, making me feel alive. Half expecting Philip to start looking for a car, I was surprised when he sat down on the grass.

"Sit," he said. "Answer questions."

I stayed on my feet. "You need a new shirt."

"That doesn't matter. Tell me things."

"What things?"

"You were afraid of being caught by mortals last night, no? Not a game. Not your gift."

His face and hair glowed like a candle in the dark, emanating his gift, but I didn't care.

"Why did Maggie leave you?" I asked.

That caught him off guard, and he stood back up. "She… we were different before. I can't remember how, but we were different. She cried for lost walks through vineyards in the morning, the sun on my face at dusk, the warmth of our hands. None of that mattered to me. Useless, human trappings of a world long past. There is nothing but hunting."

"Did you miss her?"

His jaw twitched. "I thought she had gone to Wales at first, so I searched for Julian. But she wasn't with him. He said that my chasing after an undead whore was insane. He said I must have been mad for turning her in the first place."

"You had a better reason for making her than he had for making me."

Walking over, I stood beside him, my head barely reaching his chest. He gazed down at me uncertainly. "Your voice is soft tonight. You don't hate me anymore."

His amber eyes searched my face when I didn't answer.

"You spat angry words at me," he said. "You called me ‘sick.»

We all have hang-ups. Philip seemed overly concerned about what others thought of him. An unexpected weakness. But that could work to my advantage, give me a little control, keep him from killing unless we found safe conditions to hide bodies.

"You just surprised me," I said. "You're so careless."

"And you've been keeping William safe forever."

"Forever."

That may have been the heart of my fear, of my shock at Philip's inhumanity. The prospect of a future without William meant either death at the hands of Julian or existence in isolation. Which would be worse? Philip presented a third option. But did I want his company? Did the seeds of friendship-or more likely respect-keep me here, or merely reluctance to be alone?

"We could leave the country," I whispered. "Go to Sweden or maybe Finland."

My words struck a chord, and his eyes widened. "Would you do that? Leave with me?" Then he smiled. "Julian will think us insane."

"Probably. We could get on a plane tonight. Be far away before morning."

"Tonight?" He frowned. "No, tonight we go to Maggie's."

"Maggie's?" I stepped back. "We can't go there. Dominick's been watching the house, waiting for me."

"You should have killed him nights ago, ripped his throat and watched him bleed. Maggie cared for you, little coward."

William never spoke to me except in garbled sentences about chess games and rabbits. Philip's use of «coward» sliced like a thin blade. Thinking myself above it all, above him, above pain, the shame made me choke.

Only because he was right.

"He knows what we are," I said. "How to really end us, not like a peasant with stakes. He used a shovel to cut off William's head."

"You and Maggie shared a weakness, having grown too dependent on your gifts. Not lions anymore, but snakes, waiting only for the right time to strike. William was no challenge, old and weak. I am still a lion, and I am not weak."

His words weren't a hollow boast to impress me. Philip wielded the truth like a weapon. But he barely mentioned Maggie's name after leaving the hotel last night. I thought his mourning must either be internal or past. Now he wanted revenge. What good would it do? We couldn't get Maggie back.

"Can't we just go, Philip? Just run? There's nothing left here. Killing Dominick won't change anything."

"Are you coming, or do I go alone?"

The thought of staying here by myself, wondering, waiting, frightened me more than Dominick did. "I'm coming. But promise you won't play with him. He's dangerous. Promise we'll just do it and go."

"Whatever you want." He seemed pleased, like a little boy with a new puppy. He glanced around the old junkyard. "These cars don't work. We have to find others."

"Couldn't we just call a cab?"

A little over an hour later, we pulled up to Maggie's in a 79 Chevy pickup with Styx's "Pieces of Eight" flooding from the speakers-Philip had actually wanted to put in Boston. I was going to have a serious talk with him about music when we had time.

"Didn't you ever watch MTV?"

"What's that?"

"Forget it."

Somebody else must be buying his clothes.

The house looked dark.

Stepping from the car, I cast around with my mind for Wade. He wasn't here. That would be just like him, though, to come back here instead of running for Portland.

Philip walked out the front gate and came back a moment later. "There's a dark-haired man two blocks down the street in a silver Mustang."

"That's him." Fear crawled up the back of my neck.

"Good, then he saw us drive up. Do you have a key?"

"A key?" I tried to smile, but my teeth kept clicking. "Mr. Break-and-Enter wants a key?"

"If I know Maggie, this place will be locked like a fortress."

"Dominick broke in the night he killed William."

"Then somebody got careless-left a window open maybe."

Did we? I didn't think so. But that would be too much to bear. Guilt from William's death weighed heavily enough.

I had a set of keys, but getting past the multiple locks on the front door still took a few minutes. Philip had been right about that. There was also a dead bolt that someone would normally have to slide back from the inside, but Wade and I left in a hurry the night before last, out the back.

"Okay, we're in," I said.

"Leave the door cracked. I want him to waltz right inside."

"He isn't that careless."

"We'll see."

"Do you want another shirt? That one's all stiff."

We went upstairs to Maggie's room. I took my coat off and laid it on the bed, but then I watched Philip's face as he walked in. He disappointed me a little. Instead of gasping in awe at her wondrous creation, he stepped to the window and lifted up yards of satin drapes to expose a blacked-out window laced with steel bars. He stomped his foot once against the floor.

"Good," he said. "Hardwood floors beneath the carpet, Sheetrock walls. We can sleep in here if we have to. What's the door reinforced with?"

I'd never even noticed the bars before. Philip must have known Maggie far better than I had. This room made me happy because of its beauty. But we definitely weren't sleeping here-too high off the ground. So, instead of answering his question, I went to the walk-in closet and found an oversized plaid flannel shirt… maybe from Maggie's baseball player?

"Here, this will fit."

He wrinkled his nose. "I am not wearing that."

Was he serious?

"Philip, no one cares how you're dressed right now. This is soft, and it will fit loose if you don't tuck it in. You'll be able to move." How could anyone with his fashion sense listen to Boston?

With an annoyed look, he began unbuttoning the stiff fabric of his shirt. Curious, I stood watching him undress. I wasn't disappointed, only surprised. The proportions of his arms, chest, and flat stomach were perfect, like his face. However, four ugly burn marks stood out on his left shoulder, marring the image.

"What happened to you?"

"Eh?"

"Your shoulder."

"Oh, that. Old scars from when I lived as a mortal. Since we keep whatever form we were turned with, they didn't heal."

"You were burned? How?"

"My father, I think. With cigars. That is what Julian told me."

My stomach clenched. "Your father did that?"

"I think. Almost everything from before being turned is lost, hard to remember."

"Not for me."

He nodded. "Or for Julian. He remembers everything."

I looked at his burns. It was possible he'd blocked his past out if his father abused him. We all think we're so cool, so above it all. But Edward cashed his own ticket, and Philip existed in a state of self-induced memory loss.

Casting around for Wade again, almost sure he'd come back here, my knees buckled when overwhelming emotions of hate and triumph hit me.

Dominick.

"He's in the house."

Philip whirled without putting the flannel shirt on. "How do you know? I don't hear anything."

"He's here."

"Where?"

Trying to locate him, I met with a mental wall and remembered how completely he could block Wade. "I can't tell. Downstairs somewhere."

Philip's expression stopped me. His eyes were anxious, almost repulsed. "How do you know this?"

"He's psychic," I answered in half-truth. "His presence can be felt, like images when you're feeding."

"Telepathic?"

"Psychometric. I told you that last night."

Partial relief crossed his face. What was he afraid of? Before I could push the matter, he slipped out and called down the stairs.

"Dominick, I know you are there. Come and play with me."

His voice sounded eerie, almost musical. Murdering those teenagers last night had been his idea of a good time. He'd felt no malice, no sense of anger toward them. What would he do to someone he hated? I moved up behind him.

"Are you afraid?" he called. "Used to fighting little girls and old men. Come try your shovel on me."

No one answered.

Philip's strength and speed made him arrogant; at least I thought so. Dominick fought with more than guns and shovels. He knew about us. He had touched and absorbed all the antiques and personal possessions at Edward's, their secrets spilled on the floor like aged wine. What we feared. How we died. He knew these things.

"Philip, come away from the banister," I begged.

Before he could answer me, Dom's first shot rang out. Long and loud, like dynamite. The entire left side of Philip's throat exploded, spraying near-black blood across the hallway. The next shot sounded almost instantaneously. It missed.

"You like games?" a deep voice echoed up. "How was that?"

Philip collapsed on the carpet, awake but stunned, his perfect mouth twisting in surprise. Running footsteps pounded up the stairs. Dominick's shadow grew large on the wall.

I panicked.

More through instinct than intent, I tried pushing my thoughts inside his mind, and I emanated pictures of Culker's death, Maggie drinking from the drifter near Blue Jack's, the tattoo artist sinking into Union Bay. I tried to force every ugly, violent image I could summon straight into Dominick's head, past his wall, past his mental block, into his consciousness. And I got through.

He screamed.

I fired out with memories of ripped throats and dead bodies with staring eyes… and I could feel that my forced invasion hurt him. I tried to hurt him more.

I still couldn't see him, but listened to him scream while I imagined my fingernails clawing, scratching, tearing at his brain… all my attention focused on his sound until it softened to a whimper.

Then I let him go and came back to myself-but only because I was certain he was down, and because I had to help Philip.

Turning quickly, I stumbled at the sight of an empty carpet. Philip had disappeared.

"Philip?"

"Don't move."

Dominick's sweating, gasping form stood at the top of the stairs. I was stunned to see him on his feet after what I'd just done to him. He looked dirty and smelled of stale perspiration. Greasy, outgrown black hair hung around his glazed eyes. He pointed a.357 revolver at me. Without waiting for him to fire, I bolted for the bedroom and paused just inside. He blurred across the threshold, his arm stick-straight, pointing the gun rapidly to the right, then the left. I slammed the door behind us and bolted it.

Focusing hard, I sent my impressions of this room-all the treasures in this small piece of the world-flooding into him. These mental attacks were exhausting me, but this was all I had. Images of lace fans, silver combs, perfume bottles, and cream satin soaked into his brain like water through sand. I was hoping to lose him in the images of Maggie's soft possessions, blinding him to everything else, so even if he gained coherence he might not know what was true or created.

He only had four bullets left in the gun.

"Aren't you tired?" I whispered. "Why don't you sleep?"

He fired twice more, the gun wavering in his hands. Maybe I could overwhelm him enough to make him drop it. His legs trembled.

"Close your eyes, Dom. Look at yourself in the darkness. You're alone. You have no one, not even Wade anymore." I dropped my voice even lower and whispered, "And you're so tired. Just close your eyes."

It was difficult to invade his mind, speak to him, and try to gauge the distance between us at the same time.

With a strength of will greater than my own, he gathered his thoughts and tried to force me out. Rage replaced his confusion, and he pointed the gun right at me. I saw my shoulder explode before hearing the shot or even realizing what had happened. It didn't hurt much, not like real pain, but the floor rushed up anyway.

His hand buried itself in the back of my hair, lifting me. Through the haze I tried to focus psychically again, but he smashed the gun handle into my jaw.

"You do that again and I'll end this right here," he whispered.

Rancid breath drifted into my nostrils. Why didn't he, then? Holding me by the neck with one hand, he opened the door and dragged me back into the hallway, to the banister.

"Call out to your friend," he said.

"No."

"Do it now!"

"I don't care what you do."

Jerking me back, he shoved the gun in his jeans and pulled a machete from a sheath under his jacket.

"Get out here now," he yelled to Philip. "Or her head flies down the stairs by itself."

My gift was useless, as Maggie's had been. Dominick's vision of reality had shifted so far from sanity that he viewed us as all the world's evil. If he could just erase us, everything else would fall neatly into place. Poor thing.

Looking up at his unshaven face, I said, "No matter what you do to me, he's never going to let you out of here."

"Shut up. You're the center of all this."

"I'm nothing."

"That's bullshit. Who's the guy with you?"

"His shirt's lying on Maggie's bed. Why don't you go in and touch it?"

That twisted his mouth into anger, and he let go of my hair long enough to slap me. Fool. I hit the floor, and my foot shot out to crack his kneecap. The pop reminded me of the sound from an overshaken champagne bottle.

He grunted and buckled. My left shoulder didn't work at all, but I kicked out again at his cheekbone and then tried to scramble away.

An iron grip clasped my ankle, and then somehow he was up over the top of me, snarling and using his weight. Steel glinted off ceiling lights. The blade was coming down.

Just like Maggie.

But it never connected. As though he could fly, his body floated upward. For a moment I thought I was already dead or hallucinating. Then Philip's bare arms shifted into view as he finished raising Dominick and threw him against the hallway wall.

Relief flooded my brain until I got a good look at Philip. The recently opened veins of his throat had closed off, but his chest and shoulders were covered in blood. Our regenerative powers work quickly, but how much life force had he lost first?

Dominick bounced off the wall and landed with a gasp. Dropping the machete, he grabbed the gun again.

"Shoot me," Philip hissed.

The dark ex-cop aimed for his neck and fired again, but Philip jumped up to catch the bullet square in the chest. "You're empty. I've been counting."

Anybody-anybody but Dom-would have slobbered and groveled and begged. Maybe he knew we possessed no mercy. Maybe he was just more like us than I cared to admit. But he grasped the machete again and said, "Then come and get me."

His right leg wouldn't hold him. I must have shattered his kneecap. The whole scene reminded me of this T-shirt Edward once gave me, depicting a hawk swooping down on a cartoon mouse with its tiny middle finger up. The caption read, "Last Great Act of Defiance."

Dominick wasn't a mouse-far from it. But he was already dead, and I'm sure he knew it.

Philip moved so fast nobody even got cut. He slapped the machete out of Dominick's hand and then grabbed him, lifting him into the air. Stepping forward, Philip threw his heavy burden over the banister.

"Just kill him," I whispered. "You promised you wouldn't do this."

A dull thud sounded from below as Dominick hit the floor. Philip hopped over the banister himself, and I moved up to see him land in a comfortable crouch. Dominick tried crawling on one elbow toward the front door.

Something in my voice must have gotten through to Philip. He could have kept this horror show going another hour, but he didn't. After breaking a leg off one of the living room chairs, he walked over and rammed it through Dominick's broad back, into his heart, as a peasant would stake a wounded vampire. The broken, crawling form on the floor didn't even cry out. It just stopped moving.

I turned away from the railing and went downstairs, feeling no relief now, no sense of triumph, only a dim ache that hadn't quite registered yet. My handsome, blood-covered friend stumbled about the room, staring at his mangled victim. Maybe no mortal had ever fought back like that before.

"I did try to warn you, Philip, to tell you."

He looked up at me with liquid eyes-no pleasure, no triumph either. For some reason that pleased me. Perhaps Philip might have wept over Thorne's grave, too. Perhaps he was beginning to understand the sorrow of needless waste.

Instead of answering me, he just kept weaving back and forth like a jack-in-the-box.

"What's wrong?"

Then I noticed patches of flesh peeking through the blood on his chest. It wasn't just pale anymore, but nearly white. Reaching out, I caught him before he fell.

"Try to get your arm around my neck," I said.

The basement bedroom wasn't far, but I couldn't carry him. He shouldn't have jumped off the banister. It was a waste of energy. It seemed to take hours to drag him downstairs through the cellar, his head bobbing up and down with weakness. Would this ever be over? Would we ever get on a plane and just leave this nightmare behind? Was he dying?

No, I pushed that thought away while finally laying him on the mattress in Maggie's basement. He couldn't die. We weren't destroyed by mere wounds.

"Can you talk? Tell me what to do?"

"Blood," he mumbled.

Long ago Edward told me that vampires who refused or were unable to hunt fell into agonized paralysis, forever immortal, forever starving. Half of Philip's throat had been blown away. That he could speak at all amazed me. Maybe he'd simply lost too much life force.

"What do I do?"

"Like Edward."

My own shoulder wound had sealed itself and was regenerating slowly. But I'd been bleeding, too. "Don't go to sleep. Keep your eyes open."

I ran up the stairs and down the hall. Dominick's body was in the same broken position as before-like a filthy G. I. Joe. After pulling the stake from his back, I turned him over. Dead eyes stared up into nothing.

Would this even work? I'd never fed on a corpse, but he'd only been dead a few moments. Maybe I could still draw residual life force.

I drove my teeth into his neck. No pictures or visions or scenes from his life touched me. Nothing. But I felt something, some strength flowing from his blood… though it was fading fast.

After a few minutes I couldn't take any more and left him lying there.

His empty gun was still upstairs, and his ID was in his pocket. I didn't bother taking either one. Maggie was missing, and he'd recently gone rogue. It could be a while before anyone even found him, and then the police would be lost attempting to unravel what happened. Philip and I would be long gone by then.

Even in death, Dominic had lost. And who would mourn him? Would Wade?

Hurrying back to the cellar took only seconds this time. Philip's eyelids fluttered. He looked so pale lying there. I moved to the mattress and crawled over beside him. Opening my wrist savagely, I put it in his mouth.

"Bite down."

Having long since put aside the feeling of Julian's lips burning and crisping my neck, pain stunned me blind when Philip drew down. It hurt far worse than being shot. After about thirty seconds, he suddenly lashed out with his right hand and grabbed the back of my head, pulling me down beside him, still sucking hard on my wrist. His amber eyes were wide… wild. I didn't struggle. I knew he was just hungry and desperate. Then slowly, the fire evened out and grew bearable. Had my body still been human, I might have stroked his cheek and comforted him. Those memories lingered, but not the ability to enact them.

Instead, I whispered in his ear, "Like Edward."