"No, you went all the way back… Robert, you loved her so much. I wish you hadn't shown me…" She faltered and lowered her hands. "Angelo caused all this. Philip doesn't even know."
Robert's rage began to fade. She was as distraught as him. Her blond hair covered part of her face, but he could still see her pained expression.
"Oh, God… and Philip," she went on. "That's why you didn't know him at first."
Crawling closer, Robert felt a strange release in talking of these things. He had never spoken about the past, but she knew it all anyway. Nothing would change that now.
"At first, I didn't even recognize him in the park," he whispered.
"But he looked more familiar when he walked into the kitchen with his hair a mess and his shirt off?"
"Yes, and then I saw him again, and it all came back. I think he remembered, too."
Her face was only a few inches from his, and he could see how rapidly her mind was working.
"The laws," she said softly. Then she pushed herself to sit up. "None of us know anything. None of us were taught anything."
"It's not your fault."
Her voice was beginning to calm, and he still couldn't comprehend what she'd just done to him, but if she hadn't forced those memories, if she hadn't tried to invade his past, then she was taking in a great deal of unwanted information about a past that had spawned her existence.
"Only the first one applies," she whispered.
"What do you mean?"
"That we don't kill to feed." She huddled against the bathroom door with her arms crossed. "I can see now… understand everything you've been saying since you found us. I swear, Robert, that I would help you teach those laws and live by them. But I won't ever make another vampire. Neither would Philip now, and Rose wouldn't even think it. Only the first law applies, and I've taught Philip how to hunt without killing." She paused. "I haven't talked to Rose about that, taught her anything. Have you?"
"Yes, the first night I arrived."
"Then we'll be okay, Robert… We will." Her face twisted in sorrow again. "I'm so sorry about Jessenia."
Her sympathy was so raw. It didn't help. Nothing would help, but she mourned for his loss as if it happened yesterday.
And yet she knew far too much about him. She even knew he'd killed the gardener to survive. He was not certain how he could come to terms with how much she knew.
"That book on Angelo's table," she said. "Philip told me that Angelo taught him about you from a book, one that Angelo had written himself, called The Makers and Their Children."
Robert tensed. "What?"
"Yes, he told me that Angelo believed he and Julian should know about other vampires sharing their existence."
A knock sounded on the other side of the inner door.
"Eleisha," Philip called. "The sun will be coming up. Let me in."
Philip had done exactly as Wade asked, and he left Eleisha to talk to Robert, but they'd been in the other cabin for a long time, and he didn't like it. He understood that Eleisha should be the one to tell Robert to stop ordering everyone around.
He knew the others sometimes thought he was simple, but he understood.
It's just that he'd expected a short conversation, and they'd been in there for hours. What could they possibly be saying all this time?
Finally he knocked on the door.
"Eleisha, the sun will be coming up. Let me in."
Wade had already prepared the lower bunk for Rose, and he was in the process of pulling out the top bunk for himself.
Eleisha slid the door open.
She looked different. Paler than usual. Shaken.
He didn't like this.
He stepped forward into the cabin so she'd have to move back. "The sun is coming up," he repeated.
"Okay," she answered. "We should get these bunks down." She sounded tired.
"Philip," Robert said, "Eleisha told me Angelo was teaching you about the elders from a book he'd written."
Philip glared at him. Is that what they'd been talking of? Hadn't Eleisha already been through enough tonight seeing Rose's throat cut and Wade having to feed her? Now Robert was bringing up ugly dust from a distant past that didn't matter anymore?
"Why?" he asked, not bothering to keep the anger from his voice.
"What was in it?" Robert asked. "Were there details?"
Eleisha was looking at him, too, so Philip finally nodded. "Yes, places they lived, their makers, children, loves, hates, anything Angelo knew. But I didn't pay attention then. I was different."
"Could Julian have taken that book?" Robert asked.
"He could have taken anything. He cut off Angelo's head and told me to run. The house was empty."
Eleisha looked down at the floor, and Philip had had enough of this.
"None of that matters anymore," he said, folding the couch into a bunk. "We need to sleep."
Whatever Robert was fishing for, he must have gotten it because he stopped asking questions. But something was still different-something between him and Eleisha. Philip could feel it.
"Eleisha, I'll sleep on the floor," Robert said.
There. It was in his voice. He spoke like he knew her. He'd never done that before.
"No need," Philip answered shortly. He took his boots off and climbed into the lower bed, lying down, waiting to see what would happen. Eleisha knelt beside the bunk, looking so small and sad that he wanted to grab her, or maybe kick Robert in the face, or both.
"Can I sleep with my back to your chest today?" she asked.
And then everything was all right.
He rolled and moved over so she could press her back up against him and he could hold her with his right arm.
Robert watched this without a word. Then he pulled out the top bunk.
Normally dormant the instant the sun came up, Robert lay awake longer than usual. Maybe Philip was right.
Even if Angelo had a kept a book with details of places and habits and histories of all the vampires in existence nearly two hundred years ago, and Julian had used that book to find and destroy the ones like Demetrio and Cristina… did it matter anymore?
Julian might even have used such a book to lie in wait at the villa for Jessenia, believing she would come to check on her friends. This thought made his chest hurt.
But did it really matter now?
Jessenia was gone, and decade upon decade had crawled past him.
He was traveling in the company of vampires with either no training or a bizarre training from Wade that had given Eleisha abilities he'd never even heard of-and that she couldn't control. They were foreign to him, these vampires. A new breed.
But Eleisha had given him a gift he'd never expected… a second life with Jessenia. He could still smell Jessenia's hair, feel her soft skin on the tips of his fingers, hear her laughter. His eyes drooped from exhaustion, but he feared going to sleep in case he could not still feel her when he woke up.
With effort, he looked over the side of the bunk down at Eleisha, sleeping with her head pressed into the curve of Philip's throat below his chin.
What am I doing here?
But this small alien group stirred something inside him that he hadn't felt in a long time. He wanted to get them home safely.
That meant some part of him must still be alive.
Shortly after Eleisha woke up that night, everything seemed a little better.
They'd left the door between the cabins open, and she looked inside the second cabin to find Rose and Wade already up. Rose's throat looked about the same, but Wade was moving around more easily and seemed to have some of his strength back.
Eleisha moved in to join them while Robert and Philip were busy turning the lower bed in their cabin back into a couch and then securing the upper bunk into the wall.