Vampire Memories #5 - Ghosts of Memories (24 page)

But the reality of what he’d just witnessed began to take hold.

“Oh, Ivory,” he said. “Is that how you’ve spent the last two hundred years?” He shook his head in disbelief. “You’re coming home with me. You have to get away from him.”

She choked again, just one more time, and then whispered, “I can’t.”

With little else to do, Julian was stuck in his hotel room, just waiting for a report from Mary, waiting for something, anything, to happen.

The problem was that he had no idea what that might be, and he most feared that Eleisha and Philip would just take Christian, put him in the backseat of a rental car, and drive him home to Portland…which would leave Julian with the only option of attacking Christian at or around the church.

To date, he’d managed to create the illusion for Eleisha that the church was a safe zone. This belief had kept her going, kept her searching, even after he’d sliced the heads off a few vampires she’d so painstakingly located.

But he’d never attacked anyone near the church.

The last thing he wanted was for her to lose heart and give up. Losing someone she’d brought safely all the way home might be a final straw. He paced across the floor, wondering what he could do from here to make them leave the manor but not leave immediately for home.

The air beside the couch shimmered and Mary materialized.

The sight filled him with hope. “Has something happened?”

Her mouth was in a tight line, as if she was considering something. “Not the best,” she said finally, “but something. Wade and Ivory left the mansion and drove to the Seattle Center by themselves. I don’t know why. But they’re both there now. Do you want to do anything?”

He put his fist to his mouth. That still left Eleisha and Philip guarding Christian, and everything Mary had reported so far left him with the impression that Ivory was one of the newer breed—and not much of a threat.

“Does Ivory seem important to Christian?” he asked.

Mary frowned. “They don’t talk to each other, but I think he needs her for the séances.”

“Did Wade have his cell phone?”

“I don’t know, but I’ve never known him to leave it behind, especially not when they’re away from Portland like this.”

That was good enough. If he could pin Wade and Ivory down someplace, make them afraid to leave the center on their own, and frighten them enough, he might be able to get Wade to call for help. One way or another, that would leave Christian vulnerable.

He grabbed his sword. “Meet me there.”

“They parked in a lot on First Avenue. I’d start around that area,” she said.

Without answering, he headed for the door.

Christian finished climbing the stairs again, and he walked quickly toward Eleisha and Philip’s room.

His inspection of the garage had resulted in finding a little white BMW missing. Although he was more than surprised by Ivory’s actions, he couldn’t have cared less where she’d gone.

In his vision of the future, he’d already replaced her with Eleisha, who would require so much less effort and energy to control. Indeed, although he chastised himself for not having paid enough attention to the control of Ivory these past few nights, this may not have worked out too badly. If he could convince Eleisha and Philip to join him in a search for Wade and Ivory, there might be opportunities to get Eleisha off by herself in the night, and this time, she would not be reading his memories or using any of her abilities.

He was going to use his.

While knocking on the guest-room door, he began going over the best way to sound convincingly accusatory… to sound like Wade had somehow taken advantage of his trust and “stolen” Ivory.

But when Eleisha answered and peered out at him, all such thoughts fled. She was wearing jeans and a red T-shirt. The jeweled clip in her hair was gone, and her hair was a mess, as if she’d been lying down or rolling on the pillows. What was left of her lip gloss was smeared on the right side of her face.

Inside, Philip was sitting on the bed.

Christian didn’t like this.

He didn’t like it all.

Although she’d just started to feel much better, as she peered out the half-open door, something in Christian’s expression brought Eleisha crashing down again toward the idea that she was doing something wrong.

First Philip, and now him.

He was staring her mouth, and she reached up to touch it, realizing the remnants of her lip gloss had smeared. She wiped it away.

“What do you want?” Philip asked Christian, standing up.

That sounded rude, but Eleisha decided not to interfere or correct him.

Something in Christian’s face shifted, and suddenly he looked angry. “Your friend has taken Ivory. They’re both gone.”

“What?” All traces of veiled hostility vanished from Philip’s voice as he crossed the room in a few strides. “Wade’s gone?”

“He wouldn’t do that,” Eleisha said. “He’d never leave without telling us.”

“Well, they’re not in the house, and a missing little BMW in the garage tells me something different,” Christian said dryly.

Eleisha backed away and let him inside. What was going on? “Give me a minute.”

Grabbing her cell phone from her bag, she hit the button to call Wade. His phone rang six times, and then she was sent to voice mail. It was a polite message from Wade himself, telling her to leave a message.

“Call me,” she said. “Right now.”

She lowered her phone and looked at Christian. “Wade would never ‘take’ anyone,” she said. “Was Ivory hungry? Would she have asked him to take her hunting?”

“Ivory is perfectly capable of hunting by herself,” he said.

“Not with Julian out there,” she answered.

Philip was growing agitated. “We have to find him.”

She agreed but wasn’t sure where to start. He’d taken a car? What was he thinking?

“Maybe we should call Rose and have her send Seamus,” she suggested. “He could track Ivory for us.”

She thought Philip would jump at the idea, but his face was thoughtful as he strapped on his machete. “Not just yet. When we all decide to leave here…whatever we decide to do at that point, we’re going to need Seamus at full strength. If Wade took Ivory hunting, I think I know where they went.”

She blinked. “You do?”

“Back when we lived here, he always said the Seattle Center would be a good place to hunt. I never thought so, but he did.”

Her mouth fell open slightly. “You talked about that?”

Philip nodded. “He liked to go there. I think that’s where he’d take her…if they’re hunting. I say we try, and if I’m wrong, we’ll have to risk weakening Seamus.”

Eleisha had no memory of Wade going to the Seattle Center—as she had reasons for disliking the place—but Wade and Philip had sometimes gone out by themselves back then. It was certainly possible that Philip knew things she did not.

Christian had listened to this exchange without speaking, but he’d watched Philip strap on his blade and button his coat.

“I’m coming,” he said, and his tone brooked no refusal. “I’ll drive.” He pointed to Philip’s waist. “Just let me get my own.”

Somehow, Eleisha wasn’t surprised that he had his own sword.

As he sat in the car, with Ivory beside him, Wade’s mind had gone into overdrive, turning over everything he’d seen in Ivory’s memories.

“What’s his gift? Fear?” he asked.

She shook her head. “No. I didn’t figure it out for years. He plants emotional suggestions into people’s thoughts, anything he wants them to feel.”

“So he’s made you terrified to leave him?” He turned to fully face her. “But if that’s the case, if you do leave, get far enough away from him, won’t the fear eventually go away?”

“I don’t know,” she whispered. “It hasn’t been nearly as strong since you arrived. He’s been…distracted and hardly even noticed me. It’s been a relief. A few nights ago, I never would have slipped away like this without telling him.”

“Well then, that just proves my—”

His cell phone rang, and he swore under his breath before pulling it from his jacket pocket to see who was calling.

Eleisha.

“Don’t answer it,” Ivory said, “at least not yet. Christian just wants to know where I am.”

He looked over at her and saw the pleading expression on her face.

Knowing full well that he should answer it, he shoved the phone back in his pocket and let the call go to voice mail. Eleisha and Philip would never leave the mansion and abandon Christian, so they were safe for now, and he was in the middle of something important as far as the mission was concerned. If he answered, he’d just spend the next ten minutes listening to Eleisha lecture him, and then he’d end up making his excuses, and he didn’t want to break what little connection he’d made with Ivory. Was she beginning to trust him?

But then he thought about everything he’d seen in her mind, and he realized Eleisha and Philip were at the mansion with a vampire who could influence their drives and emotions. He needed to get back and get one of them off alone. This situation was shifting almost faster than he could keep up.

Hopefully, Ivory would keep talking to him. He started the car.

“I do think we need to get back,” he said.

She seemed sad. “All right.”

chapter thirteen

E
leisha sat in the backseat of the Mercedes, growing more and more unsettled the closer Christian got to the Seattle Center. Following Philip’s instructions, he headed down the east side and took Fifth Avenue, turning into a large parking garage.

She hated this place.

The first night she’d met Philip, he’d stolen a car and forced her to come here with him. Closing her eyes briefly, she couldn’t help seeing what he’d looked like back then, in his designer clothes, with his thick, red-brown hair hanging all the way down his back, his eyes devoid of almost anything besides boredom and hunger.

He used his gift to talk four teenagers into bringing him home. He’d murdered three of them and forced a situation where Eleisha had had to kill the last one. Then he’d tried to make her drink from his wrist, and she’d kneed him in the stomach hard enough to make him spit blood.

That whole night was one of the ugliest memories of her existence, and this place brought it all back.

She’d felt so off-kilter…so “not herself” since arriving here, and she didn’t want to be reminded of what a savage killer Philip had once been. She didn’t want to have to get out of the car and walk around in this place and see all the same places she’d seen that night.

But Christian pulled into an open space and shut off the ignition.

Philip turned in the passenger seat and looked back at her. “You ready?”

“Wait just a minute,” she said. Maybe she wouldn’t have to get out.

Focusing all her inner strength, she closed her eyes and reached out with her mind.

Wade? Wade, are you here? Please answer me.

She felt nothing. No one answered. They’d have to get out and go looking. She reached for the door handle.

“I’m ready.” No matter what else was surfacing in her thoughts, she couldn’t stand the idea of Wade out there trying to guard Ivory by himself—with just that gun for protection. “We have to find him.”

Mary materialized back inside the First Avenue parking garage, and she got a surprise.

The white BMW was gone.

She wanted to curse, and she looked around wildly, hoping to see its taillights—or anything that might help her. But the car was gone. Quickly, she focused her senses and felt a jolt. Somewhere…not too far away, she sensed three distinct holes in the fabric of life.

Julian’s rental car came rolling around the corner, and she blinked out, rematerializing in his passenger seat.

He started slightly, not having expected her to just appear like that.

“Game’s changed,” she blurted out. “Wade’s car is gone, but I’m getting three clear signatures. Maybe the others came looking for him.”

Julian’s jaw twitched, and he pulled into an open spot. Then he got out of the car and looked around. “Get me an exact location.”

She nodded in relief. Christian might be right here on the center’s grounds. “I will. Maybe we can finish this tonight and you can send me back.”