Hunting Memories (8 page)
Authors: Barb Hendee
“They’re in Portland,” she rushed on, “staying in some old church.”
She seemed about to say more when she saw the blood on his face and shirt, and she stopped.
Julian could feel some of his uncertainty draining away. Eleisha was still on another continent.
Philip led the way off the public Streetcar and stepped down onto Eleventh and Couch. He made sure Eleisha was following, and then he started walking toward Twelfth Street, as earlier this evening, Eleisha had mentioned going to the Whole Foods store parking lot.
He was sick of hunting in parking lots.
He was sick of feeding in cars.
He was sick of drinking from wrists and leaving victims alive. He used to revel in hunting. Now the whole ordeal felt foreign and unnatural and unsatisfying.
But he could not speak such thoughts to Eleisha.
If he did, she might not forgive him.
And he would rather feed from wrists and alter petty mortal memories for eternity than lose Eleisha.
That was the reason he’d come here, following her on this foolish quest to buy a “safe house,” after which she would locate this coiled serpent who’d been writing to her, seducing her with lies. Julian was behind this. He had to be. Who else knew Maggie’s home address? Who else knew Eleisha’s name and could connect those elements? No, Julian was leading Eleisha into a trap, and since Philip couldn’t stop her from rushing down this path, he was forced to follow and protect her.
Five nights had passed since she’d written to Rose from Portland, and now they were stuck in a waiting period, uncertain what the next step would be.
Eleisha fell into step beside him. Tonight, her hair hung loose, and she wore a white tank top over a chocolate brown broom-stick skirt. He sometimes teased her and called the latter a “hippie skirt,” but he liked the way it flowed when she walked.
“This is my favorite part of the city,” she said. “I watched it develop over the years.”
Apparently—and he still found this hard to believe—she had lived in the same house here with doddering, decrepit William from 1912 to 2008. How was that possible? He would never have submitted to such an existence. To make matters worse, she seemed to miss her old life. He did not understand her.
But that didn’t matter. She made him feel things he’d never experienced, things he couldn’t name. She fed him something he never even knew he was hungry for.
And tonight, he had more reason to be pleased with her.
He liked his new hair.
True to her word, Eleisha had found a stylist named Ricardo, so flaming he might have set off the ceiling sprinklers. He tutted and tutted over Philip’s “magnificent” hair and swore he wouldn’t touch it with a pair of scissors. But in the end, he’d charged three hundred dollars for the haircut, and Philip now looked much more modern . . . like the photo of Viggo Mortensen. He was very pleased.
“Do you like my hair?” he asked.
Eleisha tilted her head back and rolled her eyes. “Yes, Philip. I’ve told you over and over: I like your hair. Women will swoon at your feet. Now focus on hunting. You need to control the situation better this time.”
She was heading for the parking garage.
He stopped.
“Can we not try something different?” he asked. “Are you not bored with cars?”
For nearly two hundred years, his only entertainment had been hunting in every possible variety of ways, and as powerful as his feelings were for Eleisha, she had managed to make it a tedious chore.
She turned around and frowned in confusion. “Well, we can’t leave an unconscious person in the street. They might get robbed . . . or worse.”
How could she possibly be such a sheep?
An idea struck him, something to make this more fun. Why hadn’t he thought of it before? “You want me to try harder . . . to do this without your help, no? Then we make it a game.”
“A game?”
“Yes, I will think of someplace clever—difficult—to lure a mortal. I drink and alter memories to give a reasonable explanation, no matter where the mortal will wake up. Then you must think of someplace more clever.”
“Philip, we just need to feed. I don’t think it is such a good—”
“Then I won’t learn!” he argued. “I will be too bored to try.”
She stepped toward him. “You’ll make sure the place is safe?”
He almost always got his way with her in the end. The situation with this mysterious letter writer was the only time she hadn’t given in.
“Of course,” he said. “Follow me. I have an idea, and you will never top it. My gift is better for this game.”
He led the way to Fifth Avenue and walked into Macy’s.
Reluctantly, Eleisha followed him through the menswear section, through the cosmetics department, and over into lingerie.
“What are you going to do?” she asked quietly, already alarmed.
“Go over there,” he answered, pointing to the nightgowns and slippers, “and pretend you don’t know me. I have to look like I’m alone.”
For the first time in a month, he was interested in hunting again. Maybe this would work. Maybe if Eleisha played this game with him, he could take some pleasure.
Within moments, he spotted a pretty redhead wearing a pink dress and tan sandals. Pink was a bad color on her, but otherwise, she appealed to him. She was looking at bras.
He took a black lace bra off the rack and moved up behind her.
“Pardon me,” he said, and he let his gift begin to flow.
She stiffened and then turned around, staring at him. Up close, she was quite lovely, with ivory skin and a few tiny freckles.
“I am buying a present for my sister,” he said. “Can you help me decide?”
She glanced at the bra in his hand. “You’re buying that for your sister?”
He smiled and let the power of his gift increase. “Maybe not. But I am buying a present.”
Her eyes were getting bigger as she focused on his face, as if she couldn’t believe he was real.
He picked up a cream lace bra by Vanity Fair. “This one is good too. Come with me to the dressing room,” he whispered. “We can see them in a better light.”
She followed him without a word, without a question, as if it was the most natural thing in the world to follow a complete stranger into the dressing room in the Macy’s lingerie department. He checked inside first, to make sure the corridor between the stalls was empty. To his glee, he could hear several women trying on clothes behind the doors, but no one could see him. Their veiled presence gave this part of the game more spice. Looking down at the red-haired girl, he put a finger to his lips, urging her to silence, and led her inside a stall. He closed the door.
Let Eleisha try to top this!
The girl was breathing hard and watching his face expectantly, and then suddenly Philip’s sense of fun drained away. Alone with her, he was overwhelmed by a desire to hunt in the same fashion he always had. To put one hand over her mouth, bite down savagely, and drain her until she stopped moving. He wanted to feel her fear, to feel her struggle, to see all her memories, and feel her despair in the moment she realized she could not stop him and that she was going to die.
But he could not do this.
Eleisha might come in and find the mess.
So, instead, he reached out with his thoughts and entered the girl’s mind.
“You are so tired,” he whispered. “Sleep.”
He caught her as she dropped, and he positioned her carefully on a small bench attached to the wall. He fed from her wrist this time, focusing on keeping her asleep, taking no joy in feeding at all. The blood tasted like memories of bland water to him, almost like nothing. He saw a few flickering images of a dirty kitchen, a mother smoking a cigarette, a dented Honda Civic . . . a boyfriend named Ricky.
Philip took only what he needed, and then he used his teeth to connect the holes—as Eleisha had taught him. Looking around the dressing room stall, he saw some decorative square boards painted purple and nailed at equal intervals up and down the door. Quietly, he reached out and jerked one loose, exposing the nail.
Then he reached into the girl’s mind again, erasing her memory of meeting him and replacing it with one where she entered the stall, cut herself on the nail, and fainted from the blood and pain.
Then he slipped out, left the dressing room, and went to find Eleisha—still standing among the nightgowns and slippers.
“Everything okay?” Her tone suggested worry.
“Yes, go and look. She’s still alive and not lying alone in the street.”
“I don’t need to look. Did you alter her memory?”
“Of course!”
She reached out and touched his arm. “What’s wrong then?”
“Nothing.”
She tried to smile. “So it’s my turn?”
He tried to smile back. “Yes, your turn.”
Rather than make the hunt more fun, his game had only made him hungrier for what he’d lost.
As they walked back onto the dark street outside, he knew he would need to go hunting alone—and soon.
Wade sat on the floor of the empty sanctuary, looking at the open letter in his hand. Eleisha and Philip had gone hunting, and for the first time in five nights, she’d been too preoccupied to check the mailbox.
But after she left, Wade checked it.
The first thing he’d seen was a DVD he’d ordered for Philip, and then he saw the letter lying there beneath it. He recognized the handwriting.
He’d stuffed it inside his shirt and then gone back inside with no intention of opening it, and he found ways to keep himself busy. The new television had finally arrived, so he hooked everything up, noting how homey the sitting room in the downstairs apartment was becoming. He much preferred Eleisha’s taste in furniture to Maggie’s, as Eleisha tended to choose pieces that were functional and comfortable as opposed to impressive. She’d ordered a sage green couch with a lot of pillows. She also liked little tables and lamps to read by.
But no matter how hard he tried, he could not stop thinking about the letter.
He went back upstairs, through the sanctuary and then outside, through the gate to the street, looking up and down. Eleisha was nowhere in sight. If only she would come home, he’d hand the letter over, and then he was certain she’d let him read it. But to open her mail? Something addressed to her? That felt wrong.
He walked slowly back to the sanctuary, closed the doors behind himself, and sank down onto the floor.
He felt torn between Eleisha and Philip. He didn’t have to read their minds to see where they stood. Eleisha trusted Rose completely. Philip clearly believed this whole arrangement was a trap.
The problem was, Wade had no idea which of them was right, and he wasn’t used to leaning upon his own instincts. All his life, Wade could read minds. Other people could not feel him doing this, so they couldn’t stop him. He was never invasive without a reason, but he’d been a police psychologist, with tough calls to make every day. Knowing what was going on inside somebody’s head was a unique advantage in offering diagnoses.
However, Eleisha and Philip could feel him inside their thoughts, and if they chose, they could keep him out . . . and the three of them had set up some ground rules anyway.
No, if he was going to protect Eleisha, and himself, from a trap, he was going to have to rely on his own judgment. What if he didn’t read the letter, didn’t know what was in it before giving it to her, and his caution resulted in her being hurt?
Reaching inside his shirt, he took the letter out and opened it. Even while doing this, a part of him felt it was wrong, and another part felt that it was the only right thing to do.
He read.
Eleisha,I cannot tell you what your letter meant to me. The church . . . the underground, sounds like a haven and a fortress.There are so many things I long to say that cannot be written down on paper. You keep promising the danger is over, that you brought Julian to his knees and sent him away. But you speak of things you do not understand . . . could not understand.I still tremble on the nights I must leave my apartment.You have shown trust in me, and it is my turn to show trust in you. Because of you, I believe that we do not have to exist alone anymore. I reside at:2743 Jones Street Apt. 2-A, San Francisco, CAI will expect you soon.With hope,
Rose
Wade sat staring at the page, and a feeling he could not explain washed over him: that Rose was the wisest of people, that she could be absolutely trusted, that her words rang true.
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