years ago. You weren’t around then.”
“I heard the stories,” Julian said. “I knew Dom, if only in passing.
He was a decent guy.”
“He was a vampire,” said Gray, feeling something of Liam creeping
into him—the driving hatred, the anger. “Vampires slaughtered my
family.”
“Liam’s family,” said Tara softly.
“He wanted justice. Vengeance.” Gray’s brows compressed. “He
never quite got it, though, because . . .” Suddenly, shock flooded him,
and his head jerked up, his gaze locking with Julian’s. “I just remembered
how he died.”
Julian said softly, “That’s right.”
“What?” said Tara.
Eyes still focused on Julian, Gray said, “You killed him.”
Seven
Tara couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “Julian? You killed
Liam?” But even as she said it, she remembered, because Felicity had
been there. She had seen Liam die. “You didn’t feed on him.”
“No. I broke his neck.”
“Why?”
“Because I figured it would be quick and relatively painless.”
Julian shrugged, still looking at Gray. “Anything I tell you won’t mean
squat unless you can remember for yourself.”
“I don’t see how it matters, in any case. I know what you are.
You’re a murderer.”
“Am I going to have to kill you again?” Julian’s question was
matter-of-fact.
Tara couldn’t believe the turn the conversation had taken. She
had a horrible feeling Gray wasn’t going to walk out of this room alive,
and she knew she wouldn’t be able to deal with that. “Julian, please.”
“You knew the risk when you brought him down here. He has to
decide what he’s going to do. If he chooses to be a threat, I’ll eliminate
that threat.”
“Julian—” She stopped, her voice choked by tears. But Julian
wasn’t even looking at her, wasn’t listening. His attention was focused
totally on Gray, waiting.
Gray smiled grimly. “Your point’s taken.”
“Julian, don’t do this.” Tara couldn’t hold back the tears any longer.
Finally, Julian swung toward her, his eyes flashing. “I’ll say it
again—you knew what you were doing when you brought him down
here. If he’s a threat, then he’s a threat not only to me and you and
Daniel, but to Lorelei, and guess what I am perfectly willing and capable
of doing if my woman and unborn children are threatened?”
Tara swallowed. She’d made a mistake. She never should have
brought Gray here. Perhaps she never should have taken Daniel to him
in the first place. “I’m sorry, Gray.”
“Don’t be. How could you have known?”
“Yeah,” said Julian. “Past-life regression can be a tricky, tricky
business. I thought it might help us in this case, but maybe I was wrong.”
He leaned forward in his chair, looking right at Gray. His expression
was placid, almost friendly, but Tara could feel the danger oozing from
him. “What are you going to do?”
Tara watched Gray’s face, holding her breath. Nothing in his expression
told her what he was thinking.
Finally he said, “You knew.” He said it bluntly, holding Julian’s
intense gaze.
“Not really. Not at first,” said Julian. “When Nick told me about
you, I had a feeling. I can’t explain it, but it was there. So I spied on you
for a while, and the feeling got stronger. Although I can’t say it was
anything as definite as my knowing I’d met you in one of your past
lives. I wasn’t sure of that until Tara told me about the dreams she’s
been having, and about the journal you kept of your past-life regression
sessions, where you and Tara—Liam and Felicity in those days—were
vampire hunters.”
Gray was silent for a moment, studying Julian skeptically. Then—
“You spied on me.” His tone was accusatory.
Julian threw up his hands. “Hey, it got you the job. Think of it as
an audition, rather than me stalking you. And you passed.” Quirking an
eyebrow, he added, “I wouldn’t trust just anybody with Daniel, you
know.”
Gray fell silent again, eyes narrowed. Then he said, much to Tara’s
relief, “I think maybe I should try to remember. Tara seems to trust
you—maybe you had a good reason for putting me down like a dog.”
cautious. “Fair enough. Let’s get to it.”
Gray hated the idea of being hypnotized in the middle of Vampire
Central, but it seemed prudent to go along with Julian’s suggestion. At
least Julian hadn’t objected when he’d asked to keep Tara with them.
Right now, she was the only one he had any trust in at all, and even that
was wearing thin.
Julian took them to a small room not far from his office. At least,
Gray thought it wasn’t far. Once he got there, he wasn’t sure how long
they’d walked, how far they’d gone, or in what direction. Certainly
there was no way he’d ever find his way out of this labyrinth. They had
him well and truly under their control.
“What do you want me to do?” Tara asked.
Gray looked around the room. It looked as if it, too, might have
been someone’s office, but no one had used it in a long time. He drew
a line in the dust on the desk top with his finger. “Take notes.” He
looked at Julian. “You said there was someone here who could hypnotize
me?”
“He’s on his way.”
“Is he a vampire?”
“No.”
They fell into silence for a time, waiting. Tara stood near the desk,
staring at the line he’d drawn in the dust. She looked tense and worried,
rubbing the back of her neck and frowning down at the desk—or
at the air molecules between it and her eyes, for all he knew. He had
no clue what she was thinking.
Finally the door opened and a man entered. In his mid-thirties,
with a slightly receding hairline, he was wearing glasses and carrying a
briefcase. He looked human enough, but then, so did Julian when he
wasn’t flaunting his fangs.
“Hi,” he said. “I’m Dr. Greene.” He held out his hand.
Gray took it reluctantly, remembering the name “Greene” from
Daniel’s file. “How did he tell you he needed you?” he asked the doctor
“Is he telepathic or something? Because I read somewhere that
vampires are.”
Dr. Greene looked at Julian, who shrugged. “Actually, I hate to
disappoint, but he sent me an email before he led you over here.”
Remembering the computer in Julian’s office, Gray gave a soft
“Hmph.”
“Just like Liam,” Julian said. “Don’t know what the hell you’re
dealing with.”
Dr. Greene smiled. “No offense, Julian, but this might go better
without you.”
“Okay. Whatever.” With no further protest, Julian left.
Gray took a long breath of relief and turned to the doctor. “I saw
your name in Daniel’s file and did an Internet search for it. You’re a
hematologist, correct? Do you h
ave any experience in hypnosis?”
“A little,” the doctor replied. “When you work with vampires you
have to learn to be flexible.”
“If I write you a script, do you think you can take me through it?”
“I’ll do my best. I’m guessing you’ve been hypnotized quite a few
times, so it should be fairly simple to get you where you need to go.”
Gray gestured toward the briefcase. “You got paper in there?”
Dr. Greene laid the briefcase on the table. “You bet.”
Gray spent a few minutes writing out a script, then handed it to
the doctor. “This should do it.”
“All right.” Dr. Greene looked over the sheet. “Tell me when
you’re ready.”
The chair in the small office wasn’t comfortable, but it would
have to do. Gray had been under hypnosis so many times he could
practically do it himself, so comfort wasn’t as big a factor as it might
have been. And Dr. Greene seemed to know what he was doing, more
or less, as he read through the script in a gentle, even voice.
And Gray let himself go
“I have a lead,” he told Felicity. “Patrick, down at the docks,
told me there’s been a great deal of activity at one of the old tenement
houses, one that was abandoned a few years ago after most
of it burned down.”
Felicity, sitting behind him on the bed, put her arms around
him, setting her chin against his shoulder. “Vampires?”
“A nest. He said there’ve been reports of as many as twenty.”
“Liam, how can you handle twenty vampires?” Her tone was
“In daylight.”
“Oh, of course.” She slid off the bed, coming around to face
him. “They’ll just lie there unconscious while you stake them. Do
you really think you can bring yourself to do that? Kill defenseless
creatures, in cold blood?”
He set his jaw. “They’re vampires. Vicious, merciless killers.
Demons. Yes, I can do it.”
Then it was several hours later, and he was coming back into
their room. He fell into a chair and dropped his face into his hands.
“I couldn’t do it.”
Felicity’s forehead crinkled in concern. “They’re demons, you
said. Merciless killers. What stopped you?”
“They were children.”
She slipped into his lap, curling against him, her breath warm
against the side of his neck. “If they were trying to kill you, do you
think you could do it?”
“Yes. But there were so many.”
“They’re only children.”
“But still demons.” He nodded resolutely. “We go back at
sunset.”
And then it was later, and the sun was dropping below the city
skyline, and they were setting out together. He had a horrible sense
of doom but pushed it aside. He’d been hunting vampires for a
long time—he knew what he was doing. As distasteful as the task
seemed, these children had to die. All of them.
Still, he swallowed bile as they neared the burned-out tenement
house. Children. Six, eight, ten years old some of them. How
could these innocents have become demons? Who would do such
a thing to a child?
Another demon, of course. One who held no compunctions
about feeding on the living, beating blood of a human being. These
children would have no more mercy than the ones who had Made
them. They were just as capable of taking life as the vampires who
had the appearance of adults.
He readied his weapons. “Felicity, wait for me here. I don’t
want you involved.”
“I won’t let you go alone.” Her jaw was set with stubbornness.
“I’ve killed vampires before.”
“Not like this. You would kill one of these, and because it
looked like a child you would hurt with the deed for the rest of
your life. I won’t let you. You wait for me.”
The truth of his words must have reached her, because she
only kissed him and said, “Be careful.”
“Always.”
He slipped down the narrow alleyway, the smell of soot heavy
in his nostrils. He had a sickening feeling he was going to die
here, overcome by a swarm of demon-children.
“Hello again.”
The voice made him jump, coming as it had from what he had
been certain was an unoccupied shadow. He spun to see the vampire
who had saved them in the alleyway, the strange one who’d
smoked cigarettes that smelled like cloves. The one called Julian.
He was smoking now, the orange glow of the cigarette eerie in the
near-darkness.
Clenching the wooden stake he held, he glared at the vampire
and said, “What do you want?”
Julian drew hard on the cigarette before lifting it away from
his lips. “I want to talk to you.”
“About what?”
“About what you’re planning to do.”
“I’m about to rid the world of a nest of demon-children.”
“You have no idea what’s going on here.”
His gaze never wavering from the vampire, he set his jaw and
prepared himself. He would charge this creature if he had to, bring
him down and stake him right here. “You’re harboring demons.”
“I am a demon.” The vampire gave a menacing smile. “Or I
was. Do you know I haven’t tasted human blood in nearly a hundred
years?”
“Am I supposed to be impressed?”
Julian shrugged. “I don’t know. I am. I believe I have demonstrated
a great deal of restraint and courage.” He sucked hard on
his cigarette, as if it were a lifeline to his very existence. “Especially
with regard to you, right now, at this moment.”
“Why is that?”
“These Children are under my protection. I’m teaching them
to feed without taking human life. If you kill them . . . well, it would
interrupt my lessons, now, wouldn’t it?”
“I don’t believe you.”
“Then believe this. If you come into this place with the intent
to kill, I will kill you. I might even decide to be mean about it and
torture you a little first.”
Liam could feel sweat breaking out on his face. He outweighed
the vampire, and he had no doubt what the outcome of a fight
between them would be, if the creature were human. But vampires
were strong, quick, and without mercy. He should turn around and
go, now. But he could think only of the vampires he’d seen earlier
that day, piled around the inside of the building in small, comatose
bundles. He should have killed them then. He should have steeled
himself to the apparent horror of slaughtering children and just
done it.
“How can I believe you?” he said.
Julian smiled. “I’m an honorable homicidal demon. I wouldn’t
lie to you.”
“I—” He broke off. A figure had appeared behind Julian, a
boy of about ten.
Without turning, Julian said, “Daniel, go.”
The boy took a few steps forward. “What’s going on?”
Julian lit another cigarette from the butt of the one he was
smoking, stubbed out the old one and put the butt in his coat pocke
t.
“This is Liam. He wants to kill us all.”
“Bastard,” said the young demon, and suddenly flung him
self forward.
He saw the attack coming but stood unmoving while the boy
grabbed at his coat, small white fangs gleaming. Then, regaining
his composure, he wrapped his arms around Daniel, turned, and
ran with him.
“Daniel!”
He heard Julian’s shout behind him as he raced full-tilt down
the alleyway, the boy pounding him with his fists, sinking teeth
into his chest, ripping. Ignoring the pain, he ran, then suddenly
stopped, tore the boy from his chest and slammed him to the ground.
Daniel looked up at him with hatred on his face, his fangs and
face bloody.
Just a demon. Not a child at all. A merciless, sadistic killer.
He raised the stake over his head, ready to bring it down into
Daniel’s chest.
And hands closed on his head . . . and wrenched
Gray jolted back to the present, gagging, hands at his throat. Dr.
Greene reached out to catch him as he collapsed out of the chair.
“Are you all right?” the doctor asked.
Gray couldn’t gather enough breath to speak. He sat there on the
floor for a minute, an echo of Liam’s pain still flashing through his
throat. Finally he managed to look up at Tara, who sat on the floor in
the corner, a notebook balanced on her drawn-up knees, her eyes wide.
“Felicity saw you die,” she said.
“I know.”
“You would have killed him. Daniel.”
“I know.”
She just looked at him, her face stricken, as if he were someone
she didn’t know and didn’t want to know. But she had never really
known him, had she? The man she’d known was that self-righteous,
would-be child killer. He couldn’t bear it.
“I’d like to go,” Tara said. “Would it be possible for me to just
go?”
Dr. Greene gave her a sympathetic look. “Can you find your way
out?”
She nodded. Her lips were pressed firmly together, her eyes brimming.
“I’ll be fine. Gray—”
He shook his head. He couldn’t say anything to her. Not with her
looking at him with such condemnation, as if she were holding him
responsible for the actions of his former self. But then, how far was he,
really, from Liam’s self-righteous, comprehensive denunciation of vampires?