Seamus also liked the city, but even so, as the years passed, he was given at times to melancholy about the state of his existence: endless, unchanging, no one for company but Rose. She could hardly blame him but had no idea how to help.
She and Edward maintained a polite silence.
Remembering their home in Scotland, she took up some of her old interests, such as herb gardening, and she tried to create some semblance of a home for Seamus.
Then in 1913, a letter arrived.
Rose,
She has left me. She has gone to Oregon.
To my disgust, I am lost. I am alone. I don't know what to do.
Help me.
To Rose's shock, she was hit in the face by blatant pity.
How strange, how unexpected to feel pity for Edward. But she did. If there was one thing Rose understood, it was loss, especially the loss of someone she loved. She wrote back, and she offered him comfort.
She told him that he would heal in time.
But he did not. He only grew worse. Later, she counseled him to move to Portland-where Eleisha had settled.
He took her advice.
Then his letters stopped.
Over the years that followed, sometimes Rose wondered about Eleisha and William and this «contact» that Edward mentioned in France, and she wondered how many of their kind still existed. But she knew all their survival depended on living quietly away from Julian, on not gaining his attention, and in her case, on living in secret… or at least this was what Edward had convinced her.
She and Seamus continued to make it through the nights, with little changing besides the city exploding around them in population and development. The building they lived in grew old, but she could not bring herself to move, not again. It was both a kind of prison and a home at the same time.
In the early spring of 2008, as morning arrived, she was just falling dormant in her bed when something happened.
Her mind exploded in pain, and images of Edward burst inside her brain, along with the memories of everyone he had ever fed upon. In between his victims, she saw the same image over and over of a lovely dark-blond girl in her teens, with a serious face and hazel eyes. The pain was searing, and it went on and on…
"Rose!" Seamus was beside her bed. "What's wrong? Stop screaming. Someone will break the door down."
The pain faded and then vanished.
"What's wrong?"
"I think Edward may be dead," she answered flatly. "I think I felt him die."
His transparent mouth fell partway open. "Did Julian find him? Kill him?"
"I don't know."
Rose waited. She waited in fear, and a part of her mourned for Edward. Nothing happened for six weeks, and then although the sensation was much weaker, she was hit with the memories of another vampire, an exotic woman with dark hair who also passed images of the blond girl with hazel eyes, and of many victims, and of a bright city with its own carnival… and the Space Needle. Seattle.
To Rose, it felt as if the vampire was dying.
Back in Scotland, when Julian was still killing vampires in Europe after she'd been turned, she had never felt this, seen anything like this. Perhaps she had been too young in her undead state?
A few nights later, she felt another death, an old man, and she saw almost nothing in his memories but the girl with hazel eyes-and of feeding on rabbits.
Someone was killing vampires.
"Seamus, can you go to Seattle? Try to find out what's happening?"
"Without you?" he asked. He never strayed too far from her side. He said he felt tied to her.
"It isn't safe for me to go anywhere now. I should not leave the apartment."
He nodded. This was true.
And so he tried. He found out that once he'd reached a general vicinity, he could sense the undead. He found Eleisha and Philip in Seattle. He was outside the Red Lion Hotel when Philip kicked Julian out the window. He learned where Eleisha was staying and read the address on the house. But the longer he was away from Rose, the weaker he grew.
He focused upon her and rematerialized in the apartment and told her what he had seen, what he learned.
Once again, she knew something in their world had shifted.
Instead of hiding, instead of living alone, somebody was fighting back against Julian. If Eleisha and Philip could defend themselves, they could defend others. But could she trust them? She did not know. She did not even want to give them her name. She remembered an account she'd read of a Hungarian countess dubbed a «vampire» for her practices. This story was well known and should offer enough of a hint. But she wanted to offer more… a hint of her goals, the whispers in the back of her mind of others like herself who might be trapped in hiding.
Rose opened up a post office box.
Then she went home and sat down at the antique desk while Seamus stood anxiously behind her, and she wrote:
You are not alone. There are others like you. Respond to the Elizabeth Bathory Underground. P.O. Box 27750, San Francisco, CA 94973.
Chapter 6
"No…nomore!" Eleisha cried, pulling out of Rose's mind.
Eleisha had fallen forward onto the floor, supporting herself on her forearms.
All she could see was Edward's face, and she was having trouble separating Rose's memories from her own. She was Rose. She felt everything Rose had gone through.
And to see Edward again, larger than life, his smile, his green eyes, to hear his laugh… She managed to partially disentangle her thoughts.
He had used her to try to heal himself.
She tried to push herself up.
"Eleisha!" Philip's voice cut through the haze.
She felt his hands latch onto her, one on her arm and the other around her waist, as he pulled her up against his chest-which was hard and cold. He held her tightly. She tensed for a moment and then pressed her face into his shoulder, gripping his shirt with her fingers.
Rose was making choking sounds from the shock of having relived her own life. Eleisha wondered why Rose had ever given her even an ounce of kindness.
She should hate me.
"What's wrong?" Seamus was asking in alarm. "What happened?"
Only Wade kept his head.
Eleisha could hear his feet on the carpet, and she shifted her face slightly to see him hurrying toward Rose.
"It's all right," he said. His voice was shaky, as he had relived all the same events, and coming out of these deep journeys was never easy. But Wade had been reading minds his whole life. He knelt beside Rose. "It's over."
"What was that?" she said in a choked voice. "How did you do that?"
He didn't answer. This was not the time to try to explain his ability to help others channel linear memories. Eleisha could manage as a guide up to a point, but not as well as he could.
"Put both palms against the floor," he said. "You're back in the apartment, in the present."
The sight of his calm efforts made Eleisha ashamed for hiding in Philip's chest, and she tried to pull back, but he tightened his arm.
"Let go," she said.
"That was too much," he said. "Too much for you."
For her? What about Rose?
"I'm all right."
He relaxed his hold and she sat up, looking at Rose, who stared back. Rose had known about her all this time.
"He never told me," Eleisha said.
Rose was becoming more composed, but Seamus kept looking back and forth between all of them in confusion.
"I know," Rose answered.
All of Edward's sins came crashing down on Eleisha: what he had done to Rose, to Seamus, and then his abandonment, and his heartless letter of how he was trying to make up for this tragedy by caring for her. How could he? And how could he not tell her? She had been his companion for nearly one hundred and seventy years. If only she had known.