In Memories We Fear (25 page)

No, that would only buy him time. Sooner or later, Julian would know. The fear grew stronger amid his hunger.

He slipped away from the window, running back into the forest in despair. How could he feed? How could he survive if he could never expose himself to mortals? The hunger and sorrow and terror caused him to stumble and fall. When he looked up, he saw a rabbit staring back at him from under the brush. The creature was frozen still, as if it could hide itself by virtue of not moving. Maxim didn’t blame it. He’d subscribed to that philosophy for the past six nights.

But he could smell the blood, the life force in the small creature, and he imagined himself biting through its fur.

“Have I ever told you the story of Chanticleer?” he asked, and then he laughed, hearing madness in his own voice. The rabbit darted, but Maxim reached out for its thoughts, as he had for Adalrik’s that night in the alley.

The rabbit stopped.

Come
.

It turned and hopped toward him. As soon as it was in reach, Maxim grabbed it with one hand, bit down, and began feeding. He’d fed on a mortal only once, but he was aware that the taste and the entire experience were different. He did see some flashes of memories, but they were simple . . . mating, eating clover, sleeping in a deep den. However, the blood quelled his hunger, and he felt better afterward, not as strong or as sharp as when he’d fed on the man, but he wasn’t starving anymore.

And rabbits could not speak.

None of the animals in the forest could speak.

He’d found a way to survive.

 

Here, Eleisha became aware of herself again as she almost lost the connection, and she fought to keep his memories flowing forward. But his nights began passing in a blur, one after another, almost always the same, of Maxim using his telepathic ability to call upon animals, of him feeding, and running in the trees, and burying himself before dawn.

Decades slipped by, and he never left the forest.

Eleisha realized the difficulty in channeling his memories came from his mental processes breaking down between a combination of his twisted fear, feeding only on the life force of animals, and his complete separation from humans. She had no way of accurately knowing how much time was passing, and his clothes appeared to almost rot off his body overnight. He didn’t like being completely naked, and so when his clothes were beyond tatters, he would sometimes creep up to an isolated house and steal what he could. He didn’t care about shoes after a while.

He forgot how to speak. He forgot his gift. He forgot his name. He even forgot about Julian—except for the shadow of absolute belief that he must remain in the forest.

Still aware of herself, aware she was reading memories, Eleisha began to gauge time better as the number of dwellings he stumbled upon grew more numerous and more modern. The forests began to feel smaller and smaller. The population of England was growing, and the forested areas were vanishing at a rapid pace.

Without warning, Maxim hit upon a more cohesive memory, and Eleisha was lost inside him again.

 

He was hungry and knew he could call a rabbit, but he smelled something good—something better. Crouched on all fours, he listened as the good thing came toward him.

She walked on two legs like him, making strange sounds like the birds as she came through the trees while moving her mouth. Something in the back of his mind told him to stay hidden, but he was hungry, and she smelled so good.

A bright light flashed from her hands. He blinked and looked away as it hurt his eyes.

He tried to call her with his thoughts, as he would a deer or a rabbit. She didn’t hear him. But when she walked right past the place where he hid, he couldn’t hold himself back. Launching at her, he was surprised by how easy it was to knock her down, to hold her down even while she fought him and made much louder noises—which did not sound like the birds.

He bit down on her throat, gulping and drinking as fast as he could. The taste was unbelievable, so different, so much better than a deer or a rabbit. He drank and drank, feeling his body grow stronger, more alert, more aware. Unwanted thoughts tickled the back of his brain—thoughts that he should not be doing this—but he pushed them away and drank until he could take no more. When he finished, she stared up at the night sky with dead eyes.

He felt different.

He knew he’d done something wrong, but the taste of her blood was still in his mouth, and he already wanted more.

Over the following nights, he tried to feed on rabbits and squirrels and deer again, but they tasted like sand in his mouth. He knew where many of the two-legged things lived, and he began to seek them out, to try to catch one alone.

This proved more difficult than he’d expected.

Sometimes he succeeded and sometimes he had to settle for the animals of the forest. They were so easy to call. They always heard him. The two-legged things did not.

After he’d drained a few more of them, the voice in the back of his mind grew stronger, telling him he was doing something wrong and he should flee once he was finished feeding. He moved south, farther and farther, leaving the forests behind. He learned to hide among the dwellings of the two-legged things. He learned he could call the creatures that lived to serve them. The animals always came to him when he called. They would always do as he asked with his desires. They heard him.

The bright lights and rushing squares of metal frightened him at first, but he used every bit of knowledge from the forest to find places to hide, to lie in wait, to try to feed.

One night he found himself in a place bursting with light and rushing metal squares and countless numbers of the two-legged things. He was starving that night, and he smelled someone alone.

He moved between two solid walls to a dark place where he saw her walking. He rushed her, trying to pin her against a wall, but her clothes were slippery, so he lost his grip for an instant and she made a very loud, high-pitched noise. He dived in again, snapping for her throat, biting her hard, but more of the two-legged things came running toward him, including two big ones with large animals held by some kind of thin rope around their throats.

He panicked, the fear of discovery driving him forward.

Using his mind, he cried out to the four-legged beasts to protect him. They did. He heard the snarling and the tearing teeth as he ran away, disappearing into the darkness.

He was still hungry.

chapter twelve

T
his time, Eleisha pulled away because she had to. She couldn’t stand to see any more—and she didn’t need to. He’d taken her right up to the point where he’d attacked the woman outside of King’s Cross Station and then turned the police dogs on their human partners.

Maxim was choking on the ground beside her, and his black eyes were open, staring out in horror. She’d brought him out of the fog-filled stupor last night by making him remember the distant past, and now she’d made him see himself as he’d been in the recent past . . . made him aware of it.

“Maxim,” she whispered as the reality of the situation began to truly sink in.

His gift was useless. He could barely speak, and even if he learned to function well enough to pass among contemporary society, he was never going to be able to spout Shakespeare, Milton, or Chaucer.

He was a different person now.

After well over a century of feeding on animals and connecting only to animals, he also seemed to have bypassed developing any ability to telepathically influence humans. What was she going to do? How could she possibly teach him to feed?

“Leisha,” he said.

She tried to understand his self-imposed degeneration.

No, that was unfair. He’d been sent into madness by Julian’s gift. Maxim had already suffered from a pathological fear of men, and Julian had just driven him over the edge.

“I’m sorry I did that to you,” she said, “but I had to know.”

He lay there, looking at her. Wanting to offer him some comfort, some method for him to stop reliving what she’d just put him through, she reached out and touched his arm, flashing images into his mind of the church, of the sanctuary she and Rose had turned into a library, of the kitchen and the bedrooms.

“That is my home,” she said. “I want to take you there, to live with us.”

His head tilted to one side. “Home,” he said as if contemplating the word. Then his eyes grew sad again. “Where . . . where Brandon?”

Again, he was asking for Brandon. Eleisha suspected that after spending nearly two centuries of near-identical nights in the forest, Maxim had no idea how much time had passed.

“Dead,” she answered. “Long ago.” He sat back stiffly, and she knew he’d understood her. “But I’ll look out for you,” she said. “I want you to come home with me.”

“Home,” he said.

 

When they got back to the shack, Eleisha was not surprised to find that Rose had cleaned and straightened and was attempting to make the place livable. She’d found a broom in the closet and begun sweeping.

Maxim seemed fascinated by the process and moved closer to watch.

In spite of all the progress they’d made, Eleisha could no longer push down the guilt over leaving Wade and Philip behind. Sometimes the end justified the means, but that still didn’t make it all right.

She dug through her backpack and pulled out the cell phone. “Rose, I’m going . . . to step outside.”

Rose stopped sweeping. “Are you sure?”

“Yes”—she nodded—“but I won’t be long.”

Heading back outside, she crouched beside a tree, flipped open the phone, and dialed Wade, knowing his caller ID would let him see it was she. He deserved more than one brief warning about a ghost.

He picked up on the second ring, and she braced herself.

“Where are you?” he asked without saying hello. His tone was cold.

She didn’t speak for a moment, not having had much of an idea how he would react.

“Eleisha?” he asked.

“I’m here.” Then she focused on the only reason she’d called him. “I just wanted to let you know that we’re safe, and we’re making progress. I didn’t want you to worry.”

“You didn’t want us to worry?” He sounded incredulous now. “I watched him rip your throat out.”

Her first impulse was to start apologizing, but he and Philip had forced her into this position, and she had nothing to be sorry for.

“He’s getting better. I’ve got him talking,” she said, “but I think he’s lost his gift.”

The line was silent for a little while, and then he said, “He’s talking? What do you mean he’s lost his gift?”

She didn’t know where to begin, and she couldn’t bring herself to start telling him everything over the phone. “You’ll understand all this better than I do. He’s been through a lot, Wade. I’m going to need you so much once I’ve gotten him a little further along—far enough that Philip won’t just kill him.”

“Far enough that . . . Eleisha, you tell me where you are, right now!” His voice exploded into the phone. “I’m not sitting this one out! Not again. Tell me where you are, and I can help you tonight.”

The offer was so very tempting. Wade had a doctorate degree in psychology. He understood phobias. He understood mental illness, and he would certainly know how to proceed with Maxim far, far better than Eleisha ever could. Should she just tell him where they were? Get him on a train?

Seamus suddenly materialized in front of her, looking down at the phone and slowly shaking his head.

He was right.

If Wade came, Philip would come, too. As much as Eleisha missed Philip, Maxim was not ready for him yet.

“I can’t,” she whispered. “Please, Wade, just give me a few more nights. Just stay there in London, and I promise I’ll bring you here as soon as I can.”

“Stay
there
in London? Are you not even inside the—?”

She heard a door open on the other end of the line, and then Philip’s French accent.

“Is that her? Give me the phone!”

She could hear his angry footsteps on the floor, and she clicked her phone shut with a stab of guilt and loneliness. But talking to him right now wouldn’t help.

 

Eleisha spent the following two nights in and around the quiet shack, helping Rose improve Maxim’s vocabulary. She’d briefed Rose on his unusual past—even showing her several memories—and they both spent some time communicating with him telepathically.

He could hear their thoughts when they linked with him, and he could project scattered thoughts himself, but as of yet, he’d not been able to reach into either of their minds on his own.

At first, he’d flinched or started every time Seamus appeared, but that soon improved, and he grew accustomed to Seamus’ blinking in and out.

Maxim seemed fond of the shack, perhaps too fond, and Eleisha could feel how much he liked the combination of a safe shelter nestled among the forest. She worried it might be difficult to get him to leave when the time came.

Linked with his thoughts, she was not surprised by how much time he spent going over and over the memories she had forced him to bring to the surface. He focused a good deal on Brandon, which was understandable, but he also could not seem to reconcile that the young man in those memories was himself.

This was a difficult dichotomy, and she thought if he could just accept who he had once been, he might become more of himself again.

However, a part of her wasn’t sure that would be an entirely good thing. The Maxim of the past may have been brilliant, but he was also a self-centered coward willing to say or do anything to get past an uncomfortable moment.

The present Maxim was capable of reciprocation. He was capable of gratitude. She liked him.