Hunting Memories (32 page)
Authors: Barb Hendee
His mind was churning with decisions over the best possible place to take her and hide, when she walked past a mulberry tree, and the darkness beside her seemed to move on its own. A glint arced through the air, and her head flew off her body before his eyes could absorb what was happening. Her body fell forward with a slight thud.
Before he could even scream her name, a wave of memories hit him.
It was nothing like what he had experienced back in England. He was only a few feet away from her, and he buckled from the impact, rolling on the ground. And what he saw . . . He saw her dressed as an English lady in the fifteenth century in a velvet gown and headpiece with her hair pinned beneath. He saw a vampire with a wizened face lecturing over a small pile of books, hitting her hand with a wooden pointer, and going on with the lecture. But her name was not Jessenia back then. It was Jane.
The memories went on as if Jessenia was speaking to him.
The wizened vampire had wanted a daughter with imagination, and he’d chosen her. He seduced her agreement through promises of travel and learning. But he was coldhearted and cared nothing for her well-being.
Yet only when he allowed her to begin meeting other vampires, such as Cristina and Demetrio, did she understand the loneliness of her existence. She wanted a different life.
She ran away.
She was alone and lost and frightened—even of some mortals, once she learned her gift did not work well on those with little imagination.
While traveling with a group of gypsies, she changed her way of dress, her hair, her name. She learned the power of her gift. She began looking for a companion, and she could see him in her mind. She would never break the laws or make someone too soon, but still . . . she searched.
And then she found Robert.
He saw image after image of himself, the way she saw him. She thought him handsome, with his lean face and broken nose. She loved the way his presence changed the way brutal mortals treated her. Harsh men would only need glance at Robert and then look away. None of them came near her. Robert was the real thing. A hardened soldier. He protected her, saw to her needs, loved her, and he asked almost nothing in return. All he wanted was for her to plan their next journey, their next delight, their next exploration, and to share in her enjoyment. He washed away the pain of the past and took everything upon himself. Every night, she looked at him and wondered if he was real. . . .
Robert was choking from unbearable physical and emotional pain when his vision cleared enough to see the blade arcing down at him, and on instinct he rolled to one side.
The sword sliced through the front half of his throat, sending a spray of black blood into the air. He finished his roll, bleeding onto the ground, and looked up to see a dark-haired man standing over him, raising the sword again.
Julian.
It had to be.
Robert flashed out telepathically, rage and hatred giving him strength. The sword stopped in midair as Robert held him there. He wanted this creature to suffer for hours! But the blood kept flowing into the dirt beneath him, and he was growing weaker by the second. The world grew hazy before his eyes. He couldn’t get up. He couldn’t fight. Soon, he was going to lose the mental connection.
Then he would die.
Had he allowed himself to think, he would have chosen death, but the survivor embedded so deeply inside him took over, and he used a simple telepathic glamour, the same kind he might use on a feeding victim, to alter what Julian saw.
Still standing above him, Julian stepped back, looking down.
Robert managed to stay inside his mind, and Julian saw a headless body on the ground, slowly turning to dust. He looked around, seeing Jessenia’s body turning to dust as well.
His work was complete.
After a few moments, he turned and walked away.
Robert lay there, bleeding into the dirt, unable to move, realizing that when the sun rose, he would burn anyway.
He didn’t care.
Jessenia was dead.
Her memories tortured him. Why had she never told him of her past? He would have comforted her. He writhed in pain just thinking about the way she saw
him
. She saw herself as the taker and him as the giver, when he saw it the other way around. Why had they never spoken of such things?
him
. She saw herself as the taker and him as the giver, when he saw it the other way around. Why had they never spoken of such things?
He wanted the sun to rise.
Just before dawn, a gardener came up the path and gasped loudly, running to Robert’s side.
“Oh,” he cried, kneeling down and leaning over. “Can you move?”
Robert couldn’t get up, but he could move his arms. Again, the survivor, the soldier of Norfolk, took over, pushing everything else away. Robert grabbed the gardener and jerked him down, driving his teeth into the man’s throat and draining him. He drank until the man’s heart stopped.
It was the only time he ever killed to feed.
The wound in his throat closed slightly, and he dragged himself into the house.
In the early years after Jessenia’s death, Robert sometimes burned with enough hatred to attempt tracking Julian, to take revenge.
But that fire faded after a while. He was sometimes hit by the distant, much weaker onslaught of the memories of dying vampires—he now knew what they were—and in the dullness of his nightly existence, he lost interest in revenge.
It wouldn’t change anything.
It wouldn’t bring Jessenia back.
As a mortal, he had often been told that time heals all wounds, but this proved untrue. Each night, he woke up reaching for Jessenia, and each night, the absence of her body, her laugh, the way she always turned to lie facing him in the bed, came crashing down as he saw the empty space and felt the same agony.
It never went away. . . .
chapter 13
“No!”Robert gasped, summoning all his strength to wrench himself away.
He grabbed Eleisha’s shoulder and pushed her. She struck the bathroom door and fell. Her expression was wild and confused.
He wanted to kill her.
She had invaded him and seen everything, all his private thoughts and his past. He had relived it all. He could still taste Jessenia in his mouth.
“I’m so sorry . . . ,” Eleisha choked out. “Robert, I’m so sorry.”
He crawled toward her, wanting to get his sword and take her head.
“If you were sorry, you wouldn’t have done it!” he spat.
“Jessenia,” she whispered, her eyes still lost. “I’m so sorry.”
He stopped.
She covered her face with her hands. “Why did you show me all that? You said
one
memory.”
one
memory.”
“Show you? You took it!”
Then he wondered how. How could she make his life pass by to the degree of reliving it?
“No, you went all the way back. . . . Robert, you loved her so much. I wish you hadn’t shown me. . . .” She faltered and lowered her hands. “Angelo caused all this. Philip doesn’t even know.”
Robert’s rage began to fade. She was as distraught as him. Her blond hair covered part of her face, but he could still see her pained expression.
“Oh, God . . . and Philip,” she went on. “That’s why you didn’t know him at first.”
Crawling closer, Robert felt a strange release in talking of these things. He had never spoken about the past, but she knew it all anyway. Nothing would change that now.
“At first, I didn’t even recognize him in the park,” he whispered.
“But he looked more familiar when he walked into the kitchen with his hair a mess and his shirt off?”
“Yes, and then I saw
him
again, and it all came back. I think he remembered, too.”
him
again, and it all came back. I think he remembered, too.”
Her face was only a few inches from his, and he could see how rapidly her mind was working.
“The laws,” she said softly. Then she pushed herself to sit up. “None of us know anything. None of us were taught anything.”
“It’s not your fault.”
Her voice was beginning to calm, and he still couldn’t comprehend what she’d just done to him, but if she hadn’t forced those memories, if she hadn’t
tried
to invade his past, then she was taking in a great deal of unwanted information about a past that had spawned her existence.
tried
to invade his past, then she was taking in a great deal of unwanted information about a past that had spawned her existence.
“Only the first one applies,” she whispered.
“What do you mean?”
“That we don’t kill to feed.” She huddled against the bathroom door with her arms crossed. “I can see now . . . understand everything you’ve been saying since you found us. I swear, Robert, that I would help you teach those laws and live by them. But I won’t ever make another vampire. Neither would Philip now, and Rose wouldn’t even think it. Only the first law applies, and I’ve taught Philip how to hunt without killing.” She paused. “I haven’t talked to Rose about that, taught her anything. Have you?”
“Yes, the first night I arrived.”
“Then we’ll be okay, Robert. . . . We will.” Her face twisted in sorrow again. “I’m so sorry about Jessenia.”
Her sympathy was so raw. It didn’t help. Nothing would help, but she mourned for his loss as if it happened yesterday.
And yet she knew far too much about him. She even knew he’d killed the gardener to survive. He was not certain how he could come to terms with how much she knew.
“That book on Angelo’s table,” she said. “Philip told me that Angelo taught him about you from a book, one that Angelo had written himself, called
The Makers and Their Children
.”
The Makers and Their Children
.”
Robert tensed. “What?”
“Yes, he told me that Angelo believed he and Julian should know about other vampires sharing their existence.”
A knock sounded on the other side of the inner door.
“Eleisha,” Philip called. “The sun will be coming up. Let me in.”
Philip had done exactly as Wade asked, and he left Eleisha to talk to Robert, but they’d been in the other cabin for a long time, and he didn’t like it. He understood that Eleisha should be the one to tell Robert to stop ordering everyone around.
He knew the others sometimes thought he was simple, but he understood.
It’s just that he’d expected a short conversation, and they’d been in there for hours. What could they possibly be saying all this time?
Finally he knocked on the door.
“Eleisha, the sun will be coming up. Let me in.”
Wade had already prepared the lower bunk for Rose, and he was in the process of pulling out the top bunk for himself.
Eleisha slid the door open.
She looked different. Paler than usual. Shaken.
He didn’t like this.
He stepped forward into the cabin so she’d have to move back. “The sun is coming up,” he repeated.
“Okay,” she answered. “We should get these bunks down.” She sounded tired.
“Philip,” Robert said, “Eleisha told me Angelo was teaching you about the elders from a book he’d written.”
Philip glared at him. Is that what they’d been talking of? Hadn’t Eleisha already been through enough tonight seeing Rose’s throat cut and Wade having to feed her? Now Robert was bringing up ugly dust from a distant past that didn’t matter anymore?
“Why?” he asked, not bothering to keep the anger from his voice.
“What was in it?” Robert asked. “Were there details?”
Eleisha was looking at him, too, so Philip finally nodded. “Yes, places they lived, their makers, children, loves, hates, anything Angelo knew. But I didn’t pay attention then. I was different.”
“Could Julian have taken that book?” Robert asked.
“He could have taken anything. He cut off Angelo’s head and told me to run. The house was empty.”
Eleisha looked down at the floor, and Philip had had enough of this.
“None of that matters anymore,” he said, folding the couch into a bunk. “We need to sleep.”
Whatever Robert was fishing for, he must have gotten it because he stopped asking questions. But something was still different—something between him and Eleisha. Philip could feel it.
“Eleisha, I’ll sleep on the floor,” Robert said.
There. It was in his voice. He spoke like he knew her. He’d never done that before.
“No need,” Philip answered shortly. He took his boots off and climbed into the lower bed, lying down, waiting to see what would happen. Eleisha knelt beside the bunk, looking so small and sad that he wanted to grab her, or maybe kick Robert in the face, or both.
“Can I sleep with my back to your chest today?” she asked.
And then everything was all right.
He rolled and moved over so she could press her back up against him and he could hold her with his right arm.
Robert watched this without a word. Then he pulled out the top bunk.
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