Blood Memories vm-1 Page 5

  Now she leaned on the pier railing in her black Lycra tank dress and fishnet stockings, her hot-chocolate hair wisping across her cheek. She looked like a cartoon cutout from some teenage boy's fantasy magazine. That should have tipped me off. Maggie never did anything by accident.

  She didn't look excited or anticipatory, not as I had expected. Edward hadn't exactly enjoyed breaking somebody's neck, but the actual prospect of hunting had sometimes filled him with glittering energy that made me turn away in disgust.

  Don't get me wrong. I knew the game and the score, but simply having the facts didn't fill me with bloodlust. I took no pleasure in the fact that some mortal had to die so I could go on living. Still, I obeyed the cardinal rule we all followed: never leave a witness. Our existence depended on absolute silence. Blackness. Anyone who knew our secret had to die. The body dumped. The life erased.

  No one knew the score better than me.

  But Maggie viewed the entire twisted cycle as commonplace. We needed life force, so we hunted. Cut and dried. It isn't that she was aware of having no regrets. She just didn't think about it at all. Enviable.

  "What now?" I asked.

  Before us lay the dark water, behind us a rusted train track stretching into the city. Beyond the tracks were faded nondescript buildings too old to be of much interest.

  "We wait," she answered. "Someone always turns up."

  "How often do you come here?"

  "A few times a year. Something told me you'd like this place."

  "I do."

  Wind from the sound whipped up again, blowing my hair into slightly damp tangles. I heard voices. They came from the left. Masculine laughter. Maggie turned to look.

  A party of three walked down the railed sidewalk, about seventeen years old, all wearing torn jeans and T-shirts. One wore a leather coat. No earrings. No shaved heads. No makeup. They weren't skinheads or part of a gang, probably just some guys trying to get out of the house.

  Maggie stepped out in front of them when they got close enough, but she didn't smile. "Lookin' for a date?"

  The classy-lady-down-on-her-luck routine had vanished. She was just playing a hooker-except that her face and form were too perfect to be working the pier.

  All three of the boys froze. I leaned back against the rail and let her take over.

  "Yeah, but I'm broke," the one in front said. He was the tallest.

  "How about some blow?"

  That sounded stupid to me. She didn't look remotely like a cocaine addict. But then, some people hide it well, and it might explain why someone like Maggie would be willing to sell herself.

  A blond in the leather jacket said, "I can take care of that. What about your friend?"

  "She goes where I go."

  "Good."

  The blond had hard eyes, like empty glass. The tall guy in front seemed uncomfortable but was staring so intensely at Maggie I thought his tongue might break off. The third guy was smaller, built slight, with a white scar below his right eye and a nervous air about him-probably been kicked around since he was three years old.

  The tall one had halfway decent manners and introduced himself as Travis. The blond was Jeff, and they called the little scar-face Dodger.

  "Where to?" Maggie asked.

  "A friend's place," Jeff answered.

  I stepped up and slipped my hand into his, hoping Maggie caught the gesture and wouldn't peg Travis to feed on. Jeff glanced down at me without a flicker or hint of surprise. Cold and hollow, he would have made a good vampire.

  When we started walking, Dodger fell in behind without a word. Maggie and Travis paired off, speaking in low voices, but that didn't mean anything. She'd probably follow my lead when the time came.

  "You don't talk much," Jeff said.

  "Do you want me to?"

  "Not really."

  I didn't know whether to respect his honesty or despise him for being such a bastard-in-training. Would my gift work? That was the trick. Men like Travis or Derek back in Portland had such soft hearts they were easy to manipulate. But I could never bring myself to hurt people like them-except in a few cases of emergency. It bothered me a little less to feed on hard cases like Jeff, but he was more difficult to reach, to seduce into cavalier mode.

  We crossed the tracks, and I tripped on purpose, emanating uncertainty and helplessness. As though it would never occur to him to do otherwise, he turned and caught my arm. There was still a bit of human in him somewhere. Good.

  His highly uncharacteristic action brought stunned expressions from both Travis and Dodger, but he didn't seem to notice and kept walking. I turned off the power for a while, knowing it worked if necessary.

  "Listen," I said, "when we get to your friend's place, can you go in by yourself?"

  "Why?"

  "Deals scare me. Maggie went in to get some stuff with a couple of guys last month and almost got busted. I don't like cops."

  "Yeah, okay. But you ditch me, and I'll kick your teeth in. Me and Travis gotta trade a few free runs to pay for this shit, and I don't use it myself."

  Charming.

  "You're crack runners?"

  He shrugged. "Sometimes. Depends on cash-flow problems. I don't like cops either."

  We stopped by a run-down apartment building. "This is it," he said. "Be right back."

  He disappeared inside.

  Maggie kept up small talk with Travis but glanced at her watch a few times. After three minutes she said, "I need to find a ladies' room." She pointed up the street toward a dimly lit gas station. "You meet us up there when Jeff comes out."

  Travis wavered for a second, not quite sure if he should let her leave, and then nodded. "Yeah, sure." Why would she take off when he was getting her what she wanted?

  I followed her at a normal pace until we were out of sight. Moving around the nearest shack, we doubled back down an alley, entering the apartment building from the other side. As far as Dodger and Travis knew, we'd gone down the street to a gas station, and Jeff was on his own making a deal. People disappear all the time over money, coke, or crack. He might never come back out of the apartment, but no one would suspect a couple of hookers who'd gone to pee at the local Exxon. His friends would be confused and angry and scared, and in an hour they wouldn't know what to think.

  Inside, the staircase smelled like rotting vegetables. Since we didn't know what room number Jeff had gone to, we just leaned inside the stairwell of the second-floor landing and kept watch.

  Footsteps sounded a few minutes later as Jeff came down from an upper floor. Surprise crossed his features briefly. "I thought you'd wait outside."

  "Got cold," Maggie answered. "Your friends are in the lobby."

  He didn't seem to find that unusual and nodded. "Got the stuff. We can go to my place."

  Of course, when we reached the lobby it was empty. "Where are they?" Jeff looked around.

  "I don't know," Maggie said. "We should wait, though."

  Stepping into the darkness under the bottom stairwell, I motioned to him with my hand. "Come in here."

  He smiled slightly for the first time and walked over, ducking his head to move inside the shadows. He pushed me up against the back wall. I couldn't see anything, but smelled spearmint gum on his breath. This was Maggie's usual trip, not mine, so I let him lead for a few seconds. His mouth moving up my neck felt alien. I didn't like it.

  Too fast, I struck under his chin, catching the top layers of his throat but missing a solid hold. He actually screamed and rammed my backbone against the wall.

  Careless on my part. Too fast.

  Releasing my bite just long enough to get a better grip, I clung to him desperately, but he felt my teeth withdraw and pitched me off. He bolted back out into the lobby. I ducked after him in time to see Maggie grab his short blond hair.

  She didn't try for a grip, but just jerked him back, bit down once at the full extension of her mouth, and ripped. Dark blood sprayed her dress. His face was horrible, not some sleepy, half-conscious swe
et dreamer like Gunner had been last week. Twisting panic and disbelief contorted Jeff's mouth, and he lost consciousness while still kicking and gasping.

  When he stopped moving, Maggie dragged him back under the stairs. We took turns feeding. I tried not to think or feel anything as I saw flickering images of his life pass through my mind while drinking his blood… comic books, beer bottles, an angry mother who hated herself.

  I pulled away from his throat and closed my eyes.

  Using a knife she always carried in her handbag, Maggie cut jagged slashes in the torn flesh of his throat, making it look like someone had done a poor job murdering him. I took his wallet, and we walked out the back, leaving him for the janitor to find-if this dive had a janitor.

  "There's a pint of blood on my dress," she hissed.

  "I'm sorry."

  Staying in the shadows, we made our way back down to the pier. Once we reached it, she climbed over the rail down to the rocky beach and knelt to try and rinse herself with salt water.

  My knees buckled slowly down beside her. "I'm really sorry."

  "What exactly happened back there?" she snapped.

  "He was touching me. I don't know. His neck felt close enough… I just missed. That's never happened before."

  "Well, it's a good thing you weren't alone. This is a safe city for me. I'm careful. One screwup, even one close call like that, could end everything. Do you understand?"

  "Don't give me a safety lecture. I hunted in Portland on my own for over ninety years, just different from you."

  "Like how?"

  "Different. You play a lot more games. Take more time. I used to just stand outside an alley somewhere looking scared and someone always stopped to either help or hurt me."

  Turning away, she splashed more water on her dress. She wasn't angry at me, just shaken. "You're so strange, Leisha. Not like one of us at all."

  "Then why do you keep me? Why do you let me stay?"

  "I don't know."

  We sat on the rocks like that for an hour, neither one of us saying a word.

  Chapter 7

  Five weeks later I sat by the fire in Maggie's living room watching her play chess with William. He often forgot the rules, and she patiently but firmly reminded him that his bishop could move only diagonally on the same color.

  "No, William," she said. "That's your rook. It moves ahead or backward or to the side."

  The stimulation of someone new had made William more interested in his surroundings. Maggie was good for him. She had changed a great deal since our arrival as well. Every time I brought up the subject of leaving, she'd say something like, "Don't worry about it yet."

  I thought about the hate-filled look on her face the night after we arrived, when she had told me to keep William out of her sight. Maybe she feared being forced to remember. William was such a stark image of the link between our own dead era and the present. We were all tied to the same dark secret: Maggie, Philip, Julian, myself, and Edward. William was the keystone, a blinding, undeniable example of what could be.

  But Maggie surprised herself by discovering what I had always known. There was joy in William. He wasn't an abomination. He was our history. It was okay to look him in the face and smile… and remember.

  "Checkmate. I win." She laughed.

  "Eleisha lets me win."

  "Eleisha lets you cheat, and that's why you win."

  He looked to me for support, his long, wispy hair hanging at odd angles around a narrow, once-handsome face. I did let him cheat. For some reason, Maggie found it very important that he play everything by the rules. I had little concern for most rules.

  "Cheating helps him. It makes him think," I said in my own defense.

  "Yes, but he'll never learn anything that way. You've spoiled him for anyone's company but yours."

  Oh, that was rich, as if people were beating the door down to spend time with William. Maggie must have realized how stupid her last statement sounded because she dropped it.

  "One more game?" she asked him.

  "I'm tired. I'll stoke up the fire."

  He didn't know how to stoke or build a fire, but it was something he liked to talk about. A few minutes later he was sleeping in his chair.

  "We're going to have to call Julian pretty soon," I said. "We've been here six weeks. He'll need to know what's going on."

  "He already does."

  "What?"

  "I called Philip last week and told him what happened. He said he'd take care of it. Julian won't care who you're staying with as long as he doesn't have to see William."

  I sat stunned for a moment, and then said, "You should have told me."

  "Why?"

  "Because you don't know Julian like I do."

  "Oh, spare me the martyr syndrome. He wants you out of sight and out of mind. That's all."

  "No, I didn't mean that. You just shouldn't… You're putting yourself at risk for us. What if you get hurt?"

  The hard lines of her face softened. "Don't worry. I can take care of myself."

  Guilt was a new emotion for me. I hated it.

  "Maggie, there's something else. Something I didn't tell you."

  "What?"

  "Do you remember me telling you about that cop who felt Edward die? The one who fell on the lawn?"

  "I told you that's impossible."

  "No, he felt it. I know because… I felt him."

  Her expression sharpened again. "What do you mean, you felt him?"

  "He was inside my head. I didn't want to tell you earlier because you might make us leave. He tracked me into a bar in Portland. That's why I sounded so scared the night we came here. I was just sitting at a table in a bar, and pictures from his thoughts flashed into my head."

  "What did you see?" Her voice was tight.

  "Half-decomposed bodies in Edward's cellar, the photograph of me over his mantel, and the oil painting of me from his storage room. The police have all those things. He thought in scattered waves about his partner, Dominick, too. They both were chasing me."

  "How close was he before you felt him?"

  "Inside the room."

  She sat back in her chair, thinking, staring at William's sleeping form. She didn't seem angry or anxious. Now that we were openly discussing this, I had a lot of questions. Except for Edward, I'd never had a chance to talk like this before-and he didn't know much more than I did.

  "Maggie, why do we see images when we're feeding… I mean of our victim's thoughts and life?"

  Her head jerked at the word "thoughts."

  "I don't know," she answered.

  "And why are there so few of us? I used to read accounts of mortals dealing with our kind all over Europe. Now there are six-five, with Edward gone." I paused, remembering a painful talk I'd had with Edward a hundred years ago. "What happened to the rest? Edward told me… he thought Julian killed some of us, but he didn't know why."

  "Stop it, Leisha." She closed her eyes.

  "Don't you ever wonder why we all came from the same generation? That we were all made within thirty years of each other?"

  "It doesn't matter!"

  "How can you say that?" I was angry. It seemed so foolish to fear discussing our own state of existence. "You think you're some woman of the world and I'm this ignorant little girl who doesn't know anything beyond caring for an old man. But you follow Julian's and Philip's laws. You don't ask any questions, and you've been rotting in this house by yourself because they said you should!"

  My outburst disturbed her, but I realized that even if she did know more, she wasn't going to tell me. Opening her eyes again, she stared at me-as if she was frightened.

  I got up and moved to her. "You're glad we're here, aren't you? Otherwise you never would have called Philip."

  "What do you want me to say?" Her low, breathy voice shook slightly. "That I didn't expect things to turn out like this? Okay, I didn't. That I'm scared you might take William and leave? Okay, I am. Is that what you want?"

  I got down
on my knees and laid my head in her lap. "We're not going anywhere if you want us to stay. But those cops are still looking for me."

  "I don't care," she said. "Could that man who's tracking you be one of us?"

  "No, I'd have picked that up. He's confused."

  "I don't think he'll find you here, then. Not if he has to be in the same room."

  She reached out and began stroking my hair. I stopped talking and enjoyed her attention. Her emotions toward me were difficult to read, but I seemed to fit in a niche somewhere between sister and daughter. William had become father or grandfather. We were forming a family. I thought it natural. She thought it strange.

  "Let's get dressed and go hunting," I said suddenly. "We need to get out for a while."

  "Should we wake William and feed him first?"

  Her concern for the old man touched me. Last week, she and I had set up rabbit hutches in the backyard. Her willingness to help with something so menial surprised me. But she had simply said, "It's been a long time since I built anything."

  "No," I said to her question about feeding William. "Let him sleep. I'll feed him when we get back."

  Maggie called for a cab. Twenty minutes later, we were both made-up, miniskirted, and out the door. We decided to head back for Madison.

  The streets downtown were busy. I didn't feel like sitting in a bar, so we just walked around talking to people we knew. Maggie was still a bit shaky about our earlier conversation. I didn't want to hurt or confuse her, but she could be such a sheep sometimes.

  The streetlights felt good.

  "Why did you leave Philip?" I asked suddenly. I'm sure she was sick of my questions, but now that the floodgates were open, I couldn't seem to stop.

  She didn't brush me off. Instead, she kept walking, looking for words. "You had to know him before he was turned. We had one of those stupid, storybook romances where he was willing to give up his title and his family home just to marry me." She smiled cynically. "It was all quite romantic unless you knew the whole truth. His father was a bastard, beat him with a riding crop from the day he learned to walk… even burned him once with a lit cigar. His mother was no help, too spineless to do anything besides needlepoint. Philip needed an escape."