“I don’t know. I didn’t get to that part.” He squeezed his eyes
closed for an instant, took a deep breath, opened them again. His voice
shook as he spoke. “She was . . . she was you.”
Very carefully, Tara set the coffeepot down in the coffee maker.
“Your point?”
He crossed the kitchen to stand right in front of her. Looking into
his eyes, she saw, for the first time, unmistakable echoes of Liam. So
she wasn’t all that surprised when he ducked his head and kissed her.
She was more surprised when she kissed him back, and she was
positively astonished when her hands shoved themselves inside his shirt.
His skin was warm and smooth under her fingers, and she let herself
explore higher, clutching the muscles of his back where they dipped
into the groove of his spine. His tongue pressed against hers, hot and
urgent, and she responded. The dreams, she realized, had left her wanting
this. Aching for it. She wrapped a leg around his, and he lifted a
hand, cupping her breast.
Suddenly he broke off, pushing away. “Tara, I’m sorry.”
She pressed her fingers into his back, pulling him against her.
“Why?”
“This is inappropriate.”
“Am I your patient?”
“No.”
“Am I related to any of your patients, as of this evening?”
He smiled ruefully. “No.”
“Do you want me?”
The smile faded. “Yes.”
“Then what’s the problem?”
“The problem is, none of this is real.”
“It feels real to me.” She bumped herself against him, pressing
her breasts into his chest. “I think you’re overanalyzing.”
Gently, he took her by the shoulders and pushed her away, at the
same time taking a backward step. “I can’t act on this. I feel like I’d be
manipulating you because of dreams I don’t even understand.”
“What’s to understand? You know the whole reincarnation drill
thingie. I was her. You were him. We were lovers. We could be that
again.”
“But how can that be true when there are vampires in the dreams?
You and I both know vampires aren’t real.”
“Maybe you know it.”
He stared at her in silence.
She stared back. “I think,” she said slowly, “that I might be falling
in love with you. But I need answers to a few questions before I decide
if I can let you into my life.”
“What questions?”
“Some very, very weird and difficult ones. Do you think you’re up
for it?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well let’s find out.”
She finished brewing the coffee, and then they sat at her small
kitchen table. Tara would have preferred to sit on the couch, but she
was afraid that if she got too comfortable, she would just fall asleep
and accomplish nothing. She let Gray take a few sips of coffee and get
settled before she hit him with the first question.
“In your professional opinion, why was Julian in our dreams?”
Gray shrugged. “Maybe it was a projection of my resentment
about his taking Daniel’s case out of my hands.”
Tara prodded. “But you mentioned him in your regression journal.
The vampire who rescued Liam and Felicity.”
Frowning, Gray seemed to look for enlightenment in the depths of
the coffee cup. “The description in the journal was vague, and I don’t
remember the actual session very well.” He cleared his throat. “Sometimes,
in the dream I had tonight, Felicity looked like you, so, sure,
maybe I was seeing Julian Cavanaugh’s former identity.”
“Closer.”
Gray looked at her, eyebrows lifted in surprise. “I’m sorry. You
have a particular answer in mind, here?”
“I have a particular answer in mind because this is one case where
I know more about what’s going on than you do.”
“You’re sure about that?”
“I’m positive.” She pushed her coffee cup away, no longer interested
in its bitter contents. It had to be the worst coffee she’d ever
made. “If Julian was there, he was there. And he was Julian. The
same Julian you met last night.” She shrugged. “Well, not quite, but
close.”
“Your ex-husband.”
“He’s not my husband, ex or otherwise.” Watching Gray slug
down half of the horrible coffee without a blink, Tara figured he had to
be completely befuddled.
Finally coming up for air, he said, “If Cavanaugh didn’t appear in
the dream as a representation of who he was in a past life—” He
broke off. “You’re saying he was the same person. That he’s a hundred
and fifty, two hundred years old.”
“Actually, he’s quite a bit older than that, but yes.”
“That’s impossible.”
“You dreamed about vampires. Vampires are immortal.”
“You’re trying to tell me Julian is a vampire?”
Never mind trying to explain Julian’s not-quite-vampire status.
She offered Gray a definitive “Yes.”
He came to his feet in a lurch, shoving a hand through his hair.
“You’re insane.”
“Am I? You know what you saw in your dreams, and you know
what those dreams are. You just don’t want to admit it to yourself.”
His face was set into hard lines. “There is absolutely no way I
can possibly believe anything you’re saying. It just can’t be true. There’s
no way.”
“Gray—”
Just then the front door opened and Daniel came in. “Hey, Tara,”
he called, his voice exuberant. “I just talked to Dr. Greene. I’m gonna
do it. Tomorrow. He sent me home with one last celebratory bag o’
blood when I told him how I was afraid I might kill puppies—” He
stopped in the kitchen doorway, one hand raised high, holding a hospital
bag full of garnet liquid.
Tara stared at him, fighting the urge to burst into hysterical laughter.
He stood for a few seconds looking at Gray. Then, slowly, he
lowered his hand. “Ha ha,” he said. “Just kidding.”
Gray turned on Tara, fury filling his face. “You! You did this to
him! How could you pervert a child this way? What kind of monster
are you?”
The words hurt. Tara blinked back tears. “Gray, you don’t understand—”
“Hey, Gray,” said Daniel, and when Gray turned to face him, he
added, “Don’t you talk to my mother like that, you stupid prick.” And
with that, Daniel shot upward and slugged him in the jaw.
Gray dropped like a rock.
Tara put her hands over her face. “Oh, my God.” She looked at
Daniel, who was eyeing Gray’s prone body smugly. “What do we do
now?” she said.
“Can I eat him?”
“No! That’s not funny,” Tara chastised. Thinking quickly, she said,
“We’re taking him to Julian.”
Gray drifted slowly back into consciousness. His jaw hurt. It took
him a moment to remember what had happened, although the memory
only confused him further. How the hell had a ten-year-old boy hit him
hard enough to knock him unconscious?
Then, a
round him, he heard voices. He opened his eyes and tried
to roll toward the sounds, but he couldn’t. He was bound hand and foot,
lying flat on his back, on the floor. He turned his head. Tara, Daniel,
and Julian Cavanaugh stood a few feet away, talking. The room smelled
odd, and the décor reminded him of displays he’d seen at the museum
of ancient African art.
“Where am I?” he said.
The others turned. Cavanaugh looked at Tara, then stepped toward
him.
“You’re awake.” He dropped to the floor, sitting with his legs
crossed. “How do you feel?”
“Confused.” Gray slanted a look at Daniel. “My face hurts.”
“Good,” said the boy.
“Daniel.” Tara gave him a sharp look and shook her head, causing
his grin to fade—but not completely.
“Dr. DeAngelo,” Julian said. “We appear to have a slight problem
here. I need to know if you want to try to solve it.”
“Maybe if you’d untie me I could consider my options a little more
clearly.”
Cavanaugh studied him closely, then loosened the knots binding
his hands. “There. Why don’t you sit up so we can talk?”
“Feet, too, would be nice.”
Cavanaugh looked over his shoulder at Tara, apparently seeking
her opinion.
“No,” she said. “He can’t be running off.”
“He wouldn’t get far,” Daniel put in. “He doesn’t know his way
out. Someone would eat him before he even got close to figuring out
where he was going.”
“Where the hell am I?” Gray demanded. “What are you people
doing to me?”
“We don’t want to hurt you,” said Tara. “We just can’t risk you
hurting us.”
“Could somebody please untie my damned feet?” When their three
faces remained set, he let out a beleaguered sigh. “C’mon. I won’t run.
I really don’t want some nutcase to kill me.”
“We’re not nutcases,” Daniel said. “You just smell like food.”
God, what a creepy little kid. Gray was beginning to think he was
beyond any psychiatrist’s ability to rehabilitate. “Are you in on this, too,
Cavanaugh? Have you been part of whatever horrible thing has been
done to this little boy?”
Julian looked grim. “What was done to Daniel was done a very
long time ago. I had nothing to do with it. What we’re doing now is
attempting to correct that wrong. You were part of the solution. You
still could be.”
“I don’t understand.”
“If you promise not to run and not to try to hurt any of us, we’ll
explain. Then you can decide what you want to do.”
The sincerity in the other man’s face made Gray wonder, just for
a moment, if there might be something going on here that he was simply
incapable of understanding. Then he looked at Tara and realized, if
that were the case and it meant she were innocent, then he wanted to
hear their explanation. “All right. I won’t run. No point in making myself
a meal on the go.”
Daniel’s cold smile made him queasy. He’d seemed like a normal
kid a couple of days ago.
Gray’s attention shifted as Cavanaugh leaned over to untie his
legs, saying, “Come with me. We’ll go to the office. Daniel, you might
want to get going. Sunrise is in about an hour.”
Daniel nodded and headed for the door. “Shoulda let me eat him,”
he said, and grinned. Gray blinked at the long, feral fangs that had
suddenly appeared next to the boy’s oversized permanent teeth. “He
woulda tasted good.”
“Daniel,” said Tara sharply. “Quit acting like a brat. If you’re
hungry go talk to Dr. Greene.”
Daniel looked abashed. “Sorry.” Hanging his head, he left the
room.
Cavanaugh helped Gray to his feet. “My apologies for trussing
you up like a turkey. It seemed necessary at the time.”
Gray had no idea what to say to that. So he asked the question
foremost in his mind. “You’re a vampire, too?”
The other man shook his head. “Technically, no, not anymore. But
I was. And I can still do the fang thing.” He demonstrated. Up close,
the long teeth looked wickedly sharp and brutal.
“God,” said Gray. “This is freakish.”
Cavanaugh grinned, the fangs retreating. “You’re telling me? And
call me Julian.”
Dazed, Gray nodded and followed him and Tara through a doorway
that led to what he assumed must be Julian’s office.
Julian took a seat behind the computer desk and dropped his feet
onto it, next to the monitor. Tara motioned Gray to the small couch, and
he sat. She sat next to him.
“My ex-boyfriend was a vampire,” she said. “That’s how I found
out about this.”
“Not big on preamble, are you?” said Gray. “How the hell do you
end up dating a damned vampire?”
“First off, he wasn’t one of the damned ones, but I guess you
wouldn’t know the distinction since you refuse to open your eyes and
see what’s right the hell in front of you.”
“Sorry. I didn’t mean to cast aspersions on your ex. If he’s so
great, where is he now?”
“He’s dead.”
stared at him a moment, letting him see her pain; then anger flashed
through it, and she looked away. “His name was Dominic. He was a
nighttime deejay at a club where I used to go. We dated nearly two
years before he told me what he was.”
“Two years? There were no clues? Like the blood-drinking, for
instance?”
“He was nearly a hundred years old. He figured out long before I
met him how to blend.”
“We’re really quite good at it, if we try,” Julian put in.
“Anyway, I was floored. I couldn’t believe it. But I really cared
about Dom. He was a good man. So I decided to deal with it. He
introduced me to this place, the Underground, and to the Senior, who
ran things before Julian. It was a scarier place then, but when I saw
the Children I knew I had to do something to help. So the Senior hired
me to teach them.”
“Teach them?”
She nodded. “A lot of them didn’t even speak English. They had
no idea how to blend in with people, and they’d been here for decades,
some of them, never seeing the outside world. I helped.”
“So you were like, uh, the vampire day care lady?” The story was
getting crazier by the second, but at least it had its endearing elements.
“I still am. Except now, with Julian’s help, these kids can become
mortal again. That’s what we were doing with Daniel.”
Julian dropped his feet to the floor, leaning forward into the conversation.
“I wanted him to be absolutely sure before he accepted the
procedure. The Children, as a rule, have very little, if any, memory of
what it was like to be mortal. I wanted him to remember, so he could
decide if he if he wanted to be mortal again.”
“Thus the therapy,” said Tara.
Frowning, Gray said slowly, “Okay. I guess that ma
kes sense.
But why did you pick me?”
“I told you. Nicholas recommended you.”
“And how the hell do you know Nicholas?”
“He’s here. I lied to you. He’s not dead. When his cancer progressed
far enough to leave him with no hope, he chose to be Changed
rather than die. One of the elements in his blood helps catalyze the
process we’re using to cure the Children.”
Gray took a breath to speak, let it out, shook his head. “This is
crazy.”
“But you know it’s true.” Tara’s looked implored him to believe.
“You told me you wrote about it in your past-life regression journal.
And you dreamed about it. You know the vampire part of is as true as . . .
as the rest of it.”
As true as Liam and Felicity, she was saying. As true as their
love. He studied her face, looked into her eyes, her blue eyes that, in
his memory, had once been green. In them he glimpsed possibilities
he’d never seen in another woman. He could love her. She could love
him. They’d done it once before.
“This is part of my life,” Tara went on, her tone desperate. “If you
can’t accept this . . .”
“You mean, if I can’t accept that you’re the vampire day care
lady?” His voice came out bitter. He’d been going for sarcasm.
Her lips thinned in determination. He was relieved to see anger in
her eyes—it was easier to deal with than the big-eyed, near-weepiness
she’d given him a moment ago. “And I will be until all of these children
are taken care of. They need me.”
Gray couldn’t hold back a small smile. In an odd, surreal, freakish,
deranged fantasy sort of way, it was endearing. “So you have a mission.”
“I do.”
“And what happened to this guy, this Dominic?”
“He was murdered. Some self-styled vampire hunters figured out
what he was, and they chased him down and staked him in the heart.”
She blinked hard and no tears came.
Gray didn’t know what to say, but he was saved from having to
respond when Julian chose that moment to enter the conversation.
“The people who murdered Dom were like you were back then,
when you were Liam. Didn’t have half a clue what the hell they were
doing. They just thought, ‘vampire—evil,’ and acted.”
Looking at Julian, Tara said in a small voice, “Dom died three