it had suddenly occurred to him that he knew where he might be able to
find answers.
He wasn’t sure why he hadn’t thought of it before. It seemed
obvious, once the idea popped into his head. Maybe he’d been repressing.
He should talk to a professional about that.
At home, he went to his bookshelves and reached for a set of
hardback journals on the top shelf. He wasn’t sure which one he was
after, and the dates weren’t a great deal of help. There wasn’t much
for it but to skim through the books until he found what he was looking
for.
The books were diaries recording his own experiences with regression
hypnosis. He’d gone through several sessions with a trained
hypnotist, exploring his own past, and eventually discovering a sequence
of previous lives. Unfortunately, he didn’t recall the details of the sessions.
He’d been a difficult hypnosis subject, able to remember details
immediately after the sessions but unable to retain them for very long.
The journals had been written mostly by his therapist, but he himself
had scribbled frantically, post-session, in many of them. Between the
therapist’s handwriting and his own hurried scrawls, reading the journals
proved more of a chore than he’d anticipated.
The first two volumes yielded nothing. He moved on to the third.
Daniel was quieter than usual, barely speaking on the way home.
He took the time to get a jacket, then headed out with little more than a
farewell grunt.
Tara sighed, tossing her purse on the couch. Obviously today’s
session had disturbed him. She just wished he would open up to her.
It would be another long night spent with the television, falling
asleep in front of late-night talk shows. Parenting was hard. Especially
parenting a vampire.
Exhausted from dealing with Daniel’s erratic schedule, she’d hoped
to fall asleep quickly, but the buzzing in her brain kept her awake. She
kept thinking about the evening’s session, about Daniel’s strange lapse
into that strange language and the way he’d closed up after the session.
He’d returned to where they’d wanted him to be, to the days
before he’d been made into a vampire. He’d remembered the sun.
Doubtless, Julian would be pleased, but Tara thought it was probably
too much for Daniel to deal with all at once.
Or maybe his moodiness was due to hunger. On reflection, she’d
scheduled his sessions a little too early in the evening. There wasn’t
time for him to get a significant meal before he went to the doctor.
Maybe she should call in the morning and change the appointment.
She flipped channels for a time, finally settling on an infomercial.
She finally drifted off to the over-excited tones of men raving about
spray-on hair.
Gray found volume three of his journals more interesting. Skimming
through the pages, he found the descriptions he’d been looking
for—the green-eyed woman with pale hair, the man who’d been himself
but wasn’t. And, reading on, he remembered why he’d forgotten.
“Hell,” he said to himself. “This can’t be it.”
She was certain the dark, narrow alley would mean their
deaths. Their pursuers had deliberately driven them here. There
was no escape.
Liam set himself in front of her, placing his body between her
and the dark shadows approaching them. She clutched at his coat,
fear bitter in her throat.
“Do we have anything left?” she asked. “Crosses, garlic,
holy water?”
“I have garlic, but it doesn’t seem to do any good.”
“Nothing seems to work. I don’t understand. We’ve followed
the legends—”
“I think the legends are wrong.” He drew his pistol. “This
isn’t supposed to work, but I’m going to try it. If nothing else,
maybe it will slow them down.”
“Trying is better than dying.” She took a moment to appreciate
her own unintentional cleverness, then grabbed the other pistol
from under his coat. “This one’s loaded, as well, I hope?”
“Yes.”
intent, growling, the faint moonlight glinting off long, feral fangs.
Vampires. She hadn’t believed in them until Liam had shown
her. There were times when she’d regretted letting herself be pulled
into his dark world. This was not one of those times. If there was
anyone in the world she was willing to die with, or for, it was Liam.
And the vampires advanced
“‘We’re in the alleyway,’” Gray read aloud to himself. “‘The vampires
are coming closer. Our only defense is two pistols. Everything
that’s supposed to work on vampires doesn’t work. Felicity is behind
me, holding onto my coat. We fire.’” Shaking his head, he turned the
page. “What a bunch of nonsense. ‘I put a bullet between the eyes of
the first one. Felicity fires with equal success. They stagger back,
wounded more than I thought possible. Maybe, just maybe, there’s
enough space to slide by, to get out ’”
He dropped the book and shoved back in his chair, letting his head
bang against the wall behind him. No wonder he’d forgotten this. It
hadn’t been a genuine past-life experience—couldn’t have been, with
vampires crawling through it. As he recalled, he and his therapist had
never quite figured out what this series of visions had represented.
The accounts he was looking for had to be somewhere else, he
thought, eyeing the book he’d let fall on the desk. Volume four, maybe.
But this one, with its convoluted fantasy about vampires, was the
one that felt in sync with the déjà vu memories he’d been having.
Besides, he wanted to see what happened next.
There was enough room, barely, to slide past the staggering
vampires and out of the alley. She took her chance, following Liam,
clinging to his coat. A rush went through her, of excitement more
than fear, making her heart beat hard and her breath come fast.
And they almost made it. Steps before freedom, a hand clamped
onto her skirts, yanking her back.
“Felicity!” Liam’s voice roared in her ears as she was dragged
around to face the snarl of a vampire. A vampire with a bullet hole
right between his eyes.
It bent its head toward her throat
“‘Suddenly there’s another vampire. It’s as if he’s come out of
nowhere. He grabs the vampire who has Felicity and flings him down
the street. ‘Go!’ he shouts to us, and, God help me, I’m too frightened,
too bloody scared, even to think about killing him. We run. We just run.
But I look at him over my shoulder at him, trying to see what he looks
like. He is a vampire and, therefore, a demon, and despite that he
helped us escape, he still must die.’”
Gray vaguely recalled his therapist pausing there, asking him for a
description. He’d done his best to provide one, but the figure in the
dream had been shadowy, vague. A man of medium height and build,
with dark hair. He could have been anyone.
“This is pointless,” Gray muttered, slamming the journal shut.
The teeth were almost at her throat when hands jerked the
vampire away, freeing her. She ran, following Liam, but took one
last look over her shoulder, to see the face of the creature who
had saved her.
Tara jerked awake, sitting straight up on the couch. “Julian.”
Four
There was no getting back to sleep after that. Tara paced the
floor for an hour, looking at her watch and muttering to herself about
Daniel’s continued absence. Sunrise wasn’t that far away, after all.
Yes, he’d done fine for himself for five centuries, but that hadn’t involved
her waiting up for him, worrying that he’d been abducted or
killed by the Dark Children. Was he staying close to home, as she’d
told him to do? Was he even staying in Manhattan, where it was supposed
to be safe?
When he finally did come home, he looked so forlorn that she
couldn’t bring herself to chastise him. Instead she went straight to him
and knelt in front of him, holding out her arms. “Oh, honey, are you all
right?”
A moment after she’d made the move, a moment after the saccharine
words had come out of her mouth, she cringed. Daniel hated
that stuff, the Mommy stuff, the nurturing stuff. But he stepped right
into her arms and let her hold him.
He said nothing for several long seconds, and she didn’t break the
silence. Finally he took a step back, looking sheepishly at the floor.
“I’m sorry.”
“No, it’s okay, Daniel.” Sensing the “Mom” moment had passed,
Tara pushed herself to her feet. But she couldn’t resist a last caress of
his head, an almost-tousle of his hair. “Whatever’s wrong, you can talk
to me about it.”
“Yeah.” He went to the couch and sank into it. For once he didn’t
turn the TV on right away. “How come you’re up?”
She shrugged. “I had a bad dream. It woke me up, and I couldn’t
get back to sleep.”
He peered cautiously up at her. “About me?”
“No. Not about you.” She frowned. “Why would you think I’d
have a bad dream about you?”
“Because I’m a monster.” He stopped, pressed his lips together,
scrubbed angrily at his eyes. “You should be afraid of me. You should
run and run and never stop running.”
She’d heard a lot of strange things come out of Daniel’s mouth,
but never once had she felt threatened by him. And she didn’t then.
She sat next to him on the couch and slipped an arm around his thin
shoulders. “You mean like this?”
He blinked rapidly, then buried his face in her chest and wept.
She let him cry, patting his back and stroking his hair. “There,
there,” she murmured. “It’s okay.”
“No, it’s not okay.” He sniffled, then suddenly gulped and pushed
away from her. “Are you sure I can talk to you? Are you sure you can
handle it?”
She wasn’t sure at all. But she figured, after seeing her boyfriend
staked through the heart, she could handle whatever Daniel had to say.
“Just tell me. I’m a big girl.”
“I’m a vampire,” he said. “Vampires drink human blood.”
Tara nodded. “Yes, for the most part.”
“I go out every night, and I feed. I come home, and you talk to me
like nothing weird is going on, like I went out for a hot dog.”
“I don’t really see how I can do much else. You have to eat, and
Julian told me the plasma drinks make you sick.”
For several minutes, Daniel remained silent, and she could see he
was trying to work up the courage to say what he needed to say.
“Do you know—” He stopped, closed his eyes, swallowed so
hard she could hear it. “Do you know if I kill people when I go out?”
“No. I don’t know.” She paused, wondering if she should ask the
obvious question. “Don’t you know?”
“No. That’s the problem. I go out and feed, and I come home, and
I have no memory of where I’ve been or where I’ve gone. It’s always
been that way. I don’t know what I eat or who I hurt. Or kill.”
“Oh. I see.” She fought the urge to reach for him again.
“I’ve been alive for five hundred years.” His voice had gone thin
and choked again. “How many people have I murdered in all that time?”
Count on the little vampire kid to ask the tough questions. Absently,
Tara stroked his hair again. He was just a little boy. Even his
depiction of himself as a bloodthirsty killer couldn’t change her perception
of him as innocent, unblemished in many ways by his nature.
“If I had to guess,” she ventured, “I’d have to say not very many.”
He brightened a little. “Really? Why?”
“Because in all the time I’ve known you, you’ve gone out every
night and come back apparently having had a satisfactory meal. But I
haven’t heard anything on the news, ever, about any mysterious deaths
in the vicinity.”
His eyes widened. “Oh, my gosh. You’re right. I read the paper
most mornings, and I haven’t seen anything there, either.”
“Right. You’re a small person, Daniel. Even the big vampires can
feed their hunger without killing if they want to, or learn how to.” She
knew that ability varied among vampires, depending on who had Made
them, but she also knew without a doubt that it was possible. “My
guess is you take what you need and go on, without ever actually killing
anyone at all.”
Relief swept over Daniel’s face for a few seconds, then his expression
hardened again. “I need to know. I need to be sure. Do you
think that doctor can help me find out?”
Tara frowned. “I’m not sure that’s such a good idea.” At his
sudden, crestfallen look, she added, “But I’ll talk to Julian about it.”
“Good. Because I need to know what I’ve been before I can
decide what I want to be. I need to know exactly what’s been going on
with me for the past five hundred years.”
“Okay. I’ll talk to Julian. I need to see him, anyway, today. Now,
you get to bed. The sun’s going to be up soon.”
He yawned. “Yeah, I can feel it.” Standing, he headed for his
small, sun-tight bedroom. “Wish I’d gotten home earlier. I missed that
Dragonball Z marathon.”
“Next time let me know, and I’ll tape it for you.”
He gave her a sweet, boyish smile. “Thanks.”
As usual, Julian was awake and in his office. He wasn’t working,
though. Instead, the complex and colorful graphics of a fantasy wargame
filled his computer screen. She wondered why he would be wasting
time with such a thing, then realized the map on his screen echoed the
layout of the Underground. He was using the game’s map generator to
work out battle strategies.
“Tara,” he said as she entered. “How are you?”
“Things have taken an interesting turn.” She sank onto the comfortable
couch. “A couple of interesting turns, actually.”
She told him about her conversation with Daniel, then, more hesitantly,
about th
e dreams. “I don’t really know what to think, much less
what to do. I’ve never run into anything like this.”
Julian smiled. “Not many have.”
“That’s not very reassuring.” Her fingers were trembling; she
folded them together to keep them still. “I almost called him ‘Liam’ last
night. It’s all so—” She broke off as Julian’s eyebrows shot upward.
“What’s wrong?”
He composed himself quickly. A little too quickly. “Nothing.”
“Do you—or did you—know somebody named Liam?”
He shrugged, his expression once again inscrutable. “It’s a pretty
common name. Particularly in Ireland.”
Tara wasn’t about to settle for such a feeble answer. She started
to ask for a definite yes or no, but at that moment, Lorelei wandered in,
tousled and sleepy-eyed.
She kissed Julian warmly and settled onto his lap. “Anything like
what?”
“It sounds as if Tara and I may have encountered each other in a
former life,” Julian said. “Well, a former life for her, anyway. Just my
same old, really long one.”
Lorelei made a face. “Oh. I thought I was the only one who could
claim that distinction.”
Tara perked up. “Really? You knew Julian sometime way back
when?”
“He thinks so. I’m not so sure. I mean, I don’t remember shit
about it.” She stood. “I’m going up for coffee. Anyone want anything?”
“Bring me down some milk, if you could,” said Julian.
“I could use some coffee. Any pastries?”
“You betcha. So, coffee and donuts for the girls—and gross, disgusting,
unpasteurized milk for the ex-bloodsucker. See you in a bit.”
Julian followed her to the door and watched her go, a deep-seated
warmth in his eyes. Tara cleared her throat, then smiled at his obvious
reluctance in closing the door and turning back to look at her.
“So,” he said, settling beside her, on the couch, “do you think Gray
DeAngelo may have some memory of the same past life you remember?”
“Well, he is a past-life regression therapist,” she replied. “I’d say
it’s a safe bet he’s done it himself. And he’s as likely to have remembered
Liam and Felicity as any other past life he might have had.”
Julian sighed. “Then you might need to level with him.”