Blood Memories

"It was 1819. I was twenty-three. Philip had just turned twenty-nine. Some of my friends were planning a birthday party for him." She whispered now, lost in her own past. "He kept coming back late at night, like an animal that's forgotten its home but still remembers its master. For a long time he couldn't talk in complete sentences or hold my hand. Then, about a year later, just as things started getting better, one night he pinned me to the floor and-you know how the story goes."

"Yeah, I know."

"He thought it would bridge the gap between us. And it did for a while. But I never stopped missing the way he'd treated me before."

"Is that why you left?"

"No, he went to Harfleur in the winter of 1825. Said he needed to spend some time with Julian. I was glad to see him happy, to see him visiting. But he never came home again, not to live, only to visit now and then, and he was always nervous after that. Something happened to him that winter."

Her beautiful face seemed on the brink of sorrow, so I dropped my questions, feeling almost guilty. Why did my own past make me so insensitive to the needs of others? Just because blood and pain and violence colored the path of my own memory didn't make me an exclusive victim.

We neared the Seattle Center, where the white steel-boned Space Needle loomed up into the sky. Right outside the Coliseum I spotted a small crowd with a few vaguely familiar faces.

"Hey, Eleisha."

Two girls I'd met a few weeks ago at Neumo's were waving to me from the next block. Neither Maggie nor I had been in the mood to hunt that night, so we'd gone out dancing with a couple of Maggie's friends, Jennifer and Theresa.

"Wait, Jen, we'll be right there." I stepped off the curb.

Everything seemed fine, normal, one second, and then it hit me.

Wade's consciousness pushed its way into mine like a lost bull. He jerked out quickly in surprise, and then his thoughts scattered and began grasping at mine in panic. I couldn't see him.

"Maggie!"

My own screaming voice sounded far away. People stared. Wade's mind locked on to the images of bodies in Edward's cellar, the air-brushed photograph of me over his mantel, and the oil painting from 1872 in the storage room.

"Maggie!"

The sight of her running toward me cut through my terror. I felt her hands on my shoulders and realized I was kneeling on the ground.

"What? Are you hurt?"

"It's him. Run."

Her soft body stood up over me, and she looked around. The hatred in her eyes scared me more than the thought of Wade finding us.

"Don't!" I said. "You've got to get out of here."

I couldn't keep talking much longer. It was like living in the center of two distant worlds. Wade tried to run, but somebody had to help drag him. Glimpses of his sight line kept sliding in and out of mine. A wooden fence. A brick alley wall. The sweating face of his partner, Dominick. His fear of Dominick.

Maggie jerked my arm over her shoulder and bolted. I tried to keep up but kept going blind to what was actually in front of me.

"Hold on," she said in my ear. "I'll get us down to Blue Jack's. Ben will hide us."

Ben. I tried to concentrate on the thought of his broad face and palm-tree tattoo. Wade thought about his home. He'd been born in North Dakota, and his dad was a farmer. He wanted to know what I was. He wanted to know why Edward's death had caused him so much pain.

I became dimly aware that the farther Maggie ran, the more concrete Wade's thought patterns became.

"Wrong way," I tried to get out.

She didn't hear me. I tried focusing all my energy on pushing Wade out. For a few seconds it worked, but then the effort became unbearable, like swimming against a tidal current.

Maggie stopped.

I lifted my head and groaned. We were in some kind of alley, and Dominick stood panting and sweating in front of us. He was stocky and muscular, with dark hair and at least three days' growth on his face. Instead of a uniform, he wore faded jeans and a brown canvas coat-with Wade draped over his shoulder.

He dropped Wade and pulled a gun, a revolver.

"Freeze."

I couldn't talk. I couldn't separate my own past from Wade's. Could Maggie feel him, too?

Wade raised his head off the ground and looked at me. I remembered that he was tall, but the thin quality of his face suddenly struck me as beautiful and eerie at the same time. He was part of me.

"You," he whispered.

Why couldn't Maggie feel him?

"Put the girl down and step back," Dominick's voice echoed, flat and ugly.

No, he'll kill you.

Was that me or Wade? It didn't matter, and it was too late. Maggie whirled around, still holding me, and tried to run back down the alley. An explosion shook the graffiti-covered brick walls. The ground rushed up to my face, but it didn't hurt.

Crawling to all fours, I stared at a bloody, gaping hole in Maggie's back.

This can't be happening.

Was that me or Wade?