Blood Memories

Everything in Wade wanted to argue, wanted to play this horror by the book. To do otherwise would mean making decisions. But he knew Dominick was right. Captain McNickel wouldn't want to hear this, much less believe it.

"We're on our own," Dom said.

Wade didn't look at the bodies. He stared at a mass of painted wheat-gold hair. "Don't say anything yet. We still need the precinct computers. I saw a red Mazda parked out front."

Dom was aggressive and high-strung and hard to know, but this time he was right. They were on their own.

Chapter 10

Wade pulled away from my mind suddenly and shut me out. For a second I felt disoriented. Who was I?

"Eleisha," he said aloud.

The past few hours came rushing back. Maggie was dead. I glanced at Wade's watch. An hour had passed. An hour, and I knew his life story-or most of it. I braced both hands against the cheap carpet.

"Let me back in. What happened after you found the bodies in Edward's cellar? Did you tell anyone?"

His narrow face glowed softly in the darkness. He didn't say anything.

"What's wrong?" I asked. "Why did you push me out?"

"I always wondered what that must feel like," he breathed. "I've read so many minds, judging sanity by what I see, but no one has ever… What do you think of me now?"

The intensity of his question threw me. I was worried about getting William out of Dominick's reach, and Maggie's death kept flashing by like a real-life horror film. Somehow, Wade wanted me to turn my thoughts to him, to the questions and fears that had haunted him most of his life. No, it wasn't even that. He didn't seem conscious of such a self-centered desire. But in one hour, he had poured his life-his private life-all over the floor for me to see.

How else could he feel? Yet such concern was difficult, almost impossible for me to achieve. I was a survivor.

Was my human life so far behind me that I no longer understood it? Maggie had told me, "I once lived with a professional baseball player for eight months." The concept had stunned me. Could she have comforted Wade? Could she have conjured up pretty words and put his mind at ease?

"What do you want me to say?"

He blinked. "I don't know. Say anything. Now do you understand why I've been following you?"

"No, you shut me out too soon."

"It hurt to relive all that. It started hurting too much, and I couldn't tell what you were feeling." His voice began to grow excited. Pale streetlight from outside the window washed over his hair, making its fine strands turn white. "It was you in the house that day, wasn't it? You felt him die, too, didn't you?"

The words cut like a sharp edge into my eyes. "Yes."

"What was he? What are you?"

"I can't tell you. I came here to kill you so you wouldn't follow us anymore."

"Us?"

"Stay away from me, Wade. I mean it."

"This isn't happening like I'd planned." The pain in his words almost moved me.

"What do you mean, ‘planned'?"

He suddenly turned away and sat half facing the bed. "I took the painting with me when we left the house that day. That's why I shut you out. I didn't want you to see that part of the memory. The painting was physical evidence, and I took it."

"Why?"

"Because I couldn't stop looking at it. I kept asking Dom to touch it and tell me things about you. The girl in the painting had to be the same presence I felt inside the house, even if the painting was a hundred and thirty-six years old."

I stood up suddenly and started backing toward the window. "What do you want?"

He looked at me helplessly, the tiny lines in his forehead crinkling. "Someone to see inside my head… for once."

"Why?"

Maybe he really didn't know, because the helplessness on his face turned to misery. Moving back over slowly, I crouched down next to him. "Dominick knows more than he's telling you. He knows what I am. He knew what Maggie was."

"What do you mean?"

"He knew how to kill her."

"He shot her in the back."

"Yeah, and then he cut her head off."

Wade's expression shifted to confusion, as if he struggled to remember. "She attacked him."

"You were so out of it you don't know what happened." I paused, determined to learn the rest of his story. "What did you do after finding those bodies in Edward's cellar?"

He blinked and then looked down at the floor. "Once all six victims were recovered, we turned in the license-plate numbers on the Mazda and a few other cars, but Dom didn't think we'd get much out of that. So that night, we just started driving around. By then he believed me… that I'd felt someone else at the house, and he wanted me to try and pick up your location psychically. But he was talking crazy… He was so worked up that I just went along." Wade stopped and took a few loud breaths. "We looked in restaurants, bars, alleys, stores…" he said. "We just happened to walk into Mickey's-pure chance. My knees almost buckled. Nobody'd ever pushed into my head before."

"Why do you keep saying that? I didn't push into your mind."

"That's what it feels like."