In Memories We Fear (18 page)

He moved closer, holding the candle aside. “I wanted to wait a few a more years, but there are . . . things happening among my family that have convinced me that we will have to leave this place soon and hide ourselves. I cannot tell you more or take you with me unless you have joined us.”

His family? Was Adalrik offering to adopt him?

“You will be like me,” Adalrik went on. “You won’t eat food, and you’ll be forced to take cover during daylight hours. But you won’t age another day, and you will wear that face forever. Is this not a fair exchange?”

Maxim found his mentor’s words to be some kind of heated fantasy, like Goethe’s
Faust
—probably brought on by the death of his family member.

“Sir . . . ,” he began. He had no idea how to comfort anyone in mourning.

“Look at me,” Adalrik said harshly. “I am in earnest, but we do not have much time, and I need your consent.”

Then Maxim remembered something Brandon told him the year before:
He made me an offer I could not accept, and it has weighed on me.

Maxim looked back in the mirror. Could he really keep this face forever? Could he study and travel with Adalrik, growing more educated, more cultured each year, and yet keep this beauty?

“Is it true?” he asked.

“Yes, but you must consent,” Adalrik repeated.

“I do,” he answered.

Relief passed over Adalrik’s face in a messy display of emotion, and Maxim glanced away.

“Come back to the library,” Adalrik said.

Maxim followed him back, and they both sat on a low couch. What was about to happen? Did Adalrik possess some potion gleaned from an ancient Latin text?

He could not have been more stunned when Adalrik’s right hand suddenly shot out and gripped the back of his head. In all their time together, they had never once touched each other. The hand was incredibly strong, and Maxim couldn’t move, and his former fear of men came rushing back.

“Don’t be afraid,” Adalrik said. “This is the only way.”

The room grew hazy, and an unfamiliar feeling began washing over Maxim . . . of complete trust. He trusted Adalrik absolutely with his body and his soul, and he relaxed in his mentor’s grip.

Then Adalrik pulled him close and bit down hard on his throat. The pain was blinding, and Maxim cried out. But the feeling of trust passed through him in stronger waves, and he ceased struggling, even while aware on some level that Adalrik was drinking his blood, swallowing it by the mouthful.

This went on and on until he could hear his heart slowing, and the library seemed far away.

Adalrik pulled his teeth from Maxim’s throat and used them to tear open his own wrist, which he pressed into Maxim’s mouth.

“Drink,” he ordered. “Now.”

With blood smeared all over his face, he neither looked nor sounded like the calm German scholar of Maxim’s nights. He was hard and savage. Maxim began swallowing, and the intense pain in his throat began to fade. He drank and drank, and then the world went dark.

 

He woke up lying on the same couch and opened his eyes to see Adalrik packing some of the smaller volumes.

“Maxim,” Adalrik said instantly, dropping the books and moving to his side. “How do you feel?”

The memory of what had occurred between them should have driven Maxim to shout in rage and horror. But it did not.

How did he feel?

The candle’s light looked brighter. He could hear a spider crawling up the wall.

“Your throat is almost healed,” Adalrik said, “but not so much as I expected. You’ll need to feed tonight.”

He looked like himself again, his eyes calm and concerned, his face clean. What did he mean by “feed”?

“This should all be so different,” Adalrik said, his voice heavy with regret. “But I need to teach you quickly, and we must leave this place as soon as possible. It is too well-known to others like us.”

“Like us?”

“Just come with me. I’ll get the horses saddled.”

When they stepped outside, Maxim realized it was early evening, so it could not be the same night. Had he slept so long? He did not even remember which direction they traveled. He remembered only riding into a village and seeing other people for the first time in a year—besides the charwoman and the deliveryman.

They dismounted, climbing down onto a cobbled street.

“When I tell you,” Adalrik said, “I want you to reach into my mind with your thoughts and follow everything I do.... No, no, don’t look at me like that. Just do as I say.” He looked around quickly and then led Maxim to the mouth of an alley. “Move farther inside and sit on the ground near that stack of crates. Pretend to be unconscious.”

Maxim just stood there. He missed the library. He missed their books and quiet evenings. The man before him didn’t seem like Adalrik at all.

“Do it!” Adalrik ordered quietly.

Maxim moved into the alley and sat against the wall. Looking out, he saw a portly man wearing an apron emerge from an inn across the street.

“Can you help me, friend?” Adalrik called. “My son can’t hold his ale, and I cannot lift him by myself.”

Once again, Maxim was overwhelmed by the strong sense of trust. Adalrik could be trusted absolutely. The portly man hurried over and smiled as he peered inside the alley.

“Oh, look at that,” he said, shaking his head. “I’ll help you.”

As he moved close to Maxim, Adalrik suddenly said, “Better stop there, friend. You are tired. You need to sleep.”

The man collapsed, but Adalrik somehow caught him, lowering him to the ground. “Now,” he said to Maxim, “come inside my head.”

This seemed like madness to Maxim, but he reached out with his mind.

The words appeared in his mind as if Adalrik had spoken them. The thought of biting the portly man’s wrist was repugnant, and Maxim feared that at any moment, someone might walk into the alley and see them.

Hurry
.

An ache inside him, beyond hunger, drove him to pick up the man’s wrist and bite down, and then warm fluid flowing down his throat was the sweetest thing he’d ever tasted. He began gulping. As he did, images flowed through his mind of the man serving meals and sweeping floors with laughing patrons all around him. He saw a memory of the man throwing a loud drunk out a door. He saw a small wriggling spaniel name Sheba who slept at the foot of the man’s bed....

Again, Adalrik spoke inside his head. Maxim jerked his head away from the man’s wrist, even though he didn’t want to stop. But he felt strong, whole again. Then he could feel Adalrik inside the man’s mind, taking him back a few moments to when he’d emerged from the inn. He had seen no one at the mouth of the alley, but he’d heard two dogs fighting and come to stop them. Once inside the alley, he’d slipped, tripping against the crates, cutting his wrist on a loose nail, bleeding, and falling unconscious.

Adalrik cut the connection between both the man and Maxim.

“That is how it’s done,” he said aloud.

Fear filled Maxim’s stomach. “We can’t leave him alive. He will tell someone. They will come after us.”

Adalrik flinched. “He will not remember us, and you cannot kill to feed. Do you understand? You can never kill to feed. That is the first law.”

Maxim stared at the unconscious innkeeper. He did not understand, and although he’d never committed an act of violence in his life, every instinct inside him screamed that this man must be forever silenced.

Adalrik’s voice echoed in his ears.

That is the first law
.

chapter nine

A
gurgling sound broke Eleisha’s concentration, and something on the edge of her awareness caused her to open her eyes. Suddenly, she was back in the small, abandoned building, lying on the floor and looking into Maxim’s contorted features.

He was in agony, with dark blood flowing from his eyes down into the dirt.

“Maxim!” Forgetting how unpredictable and dangerous he could be, she sat up and grabbed his hands. “Come out of it!”

She’d pushed him too far; she had kept the memories inside too long. He’d forgotten all these events long ago, and she’d forced him to remember at much too fast a pace. He was in shock.

And yet she longed to keep going. What could have possibly happened to turn a young scholar into . . . into this creature on the ground before her?

His filthy face was close to hers, and she wanted to clean his tears away—if that was what they were? Tears? Was he crying blood?

“Maxim,” she whispered, “you’re back here again. Come out of it.”

His black eyes focused on hers, and then moved down to her hands holding his. Without warning, he snarled and reared up, pinning her to the floor. He didn’t try to bite her, but he snarled again, directly in her face.

“Stop!” a voice with a Scottish accent roared.

Maxim and Eleisha both looked over to see Seamus standing beside them. How long had he been there? Maxim let go of her and darted toward the tiny escape hole, but Eleisha somehow scrambled up and moved faster, blocking his way.

Wait. He won’t hurt you. He can’t hurt you
.

She did not fire the first word as a command—hoping she could move beyond force by this point—but simply as telepathic communication.

Maxim stopped, watching her, and something in his expression was different. He seemed to actually see her now, to distinguish her from the mass of threats he constantly saw and felt from all around. He just crouched there on all fours.

“It’s all right,” she said aloud, crouching down herself, but holding both hands up. “No one will hurt you.” Her words did not seem to register or cause a reaction, and she wondered whether she’d need to lean entirely upon telepathy for a while.

No, he’d have to start using language soon. He’d known how to speak once, and she’d just made those memories resurface for him in glorious living color. She simply needed to keep speaking to him and try to make him trust her.

Her gift was useless here, as he was not remotely susceptible to feeling protective, but her mind still reeled from the memories she’d seen. What a strange young man he’d been. What an unusual life he’d led before being turned. What had happened after?

How could she gain his trust?

A thought occurred to her. Perhaps someone else—someone with a different gift—might have better luck?

“Seamus, are you still there?” she asked without taking her eyes off Maxim.

“Yes.”

“I can’t do this alone. I need Rose. I want you to help her get away from Philip and Wade and bring her here.” He didn’t answer, and this time she glanced away from Maxim. “Seamus, can you do this?”

He seemed locked in indecision. Finally, he nodded. “I’ll try. But I’ll not risk her angering Philip. You’re the only one safe from him.”

Eleisha rocked backward. Trying not to let her awareness stray from Maxim, she said, “Philip would never hurt Rose.”

How could Seamus even think that? But from the doubtful look on his transparent face, clearly he did. “I’ll get her,” he said.

“If you can, have her pick up a toothbrush and a hand mirror.”

Seamus vanished, leaving Eleisha alone with Maxim, who watched her with his glittering eyes while tears of blood began to dry on his white cheeks.

“I’m sorry I did that to you,” Eleisha said. “Can you understand me? Do you understand what you saw? That was you. That was your life.”

He just kept on staring at her. Then his thin lips began moving, and hope began to grow inside Eleisha. She didn’t press him.

“Braaaaa,” he gurgled, as if trying to form a word. “Braaaaaan.”

Slipping inside his mind, she saw a round face with kind blue eyes.

“Brandon,” she said for him.

His expression melted into sorrow. “Braaaaan-deen.”

Somehow she was not surprised that Adalrik’s name did not come first. Maxim was much more affected by the memory of Brandon. Perhaps in the end, it was better to be loved than to be valued after all.

 

Rose sat alone in her room at the suite, with the door closed, laboring over the consequences of her actions and wondering whether she’d done the right thing. She couldn’t push away the sight of Eleisha’s torn throat . . . and the knowledge that she’d helped Eleisha slip off on her own to locate the same vampire who’d injured her in the first place.

Had she done the right thing?

If only Philip weren’t so determined to destroy this lost soul they’d found. If only he’d give Eleisha a chance. If that had been the case, Rose would never have even considered letting Eleisha go off alone—much less helping her to do it.

The air shimmered, and Seamus materialized.

“Oh, thank God . . . ,” she began, but he put his finger to his lips.

“Quietly,” he whispered. “Don’t let Wade hear.”

“Have you found the vampire?”

“Yes, Eleisha’s with him. No, don’t worry. She’s safe. But she needs you.” He glanced at the door. “Listen to me carefully, and do exactly as I say.”

 

Philip stormed back into the hotel suite, ready to explode. He’d searched the streets of London for hours in vain, using his own telepathy to try to pick up any hint of the feral vampire, and then finally realized he was getting nowhere.

He needed Seamus.

The very thought of needing anyone else’s help was enough to drive him toward the edge, but to need someone’s help this badly pushed him near madness.

“Is he here?” Philip asked loudly as he walked into the sitting room, not caring if other hotel guests could hear him. “Has he come back yet?”

Rose was not in sight, but Wade sat on the couch, going over some city maps. He looked up. “No.”

“Has Eleisha called?”