Barb Hendee - Hunting Memories

He'd be hunting again soon enough.

Philip was at a loss.

Eleisha was not inside her body, but the shell was still walking around with her face. Even worse, Wade and Rose didn't seem to realize she was gone. They both kept saying pointless things like "give her time."

How was he supposed to give her time when she wasn't even there?

The shell began doing some of the normal things he might expect from Eleisha. She had her broker arrange to purchase the church. She helped Wade to sand and resurface the hardwood floor in the sanctuary. She helped Rose set up a bedroom in the second ground floor office. She murmured some approval when Wade set up the first office with a desk and a computer-although she never used it. She even walked at night in the garden with Rose.

But she did not make a move toward searching for other vampires in hiding. She barely spoke.

Because Eleisha wasn't inside this shell anymore.

Philip paced a good deal. He was sick with fear that she might not come back. He tried talking to Wade several times.

But Wade was useless. "She watched Robert die. Just give her some time."

Eleisha's shell slept alone in her own room with the door closed. She would sometimes smile absently at Philip and even let him take her hunting once. But she did not speak much, and he couldn't see anyone behind her eyes.

In agitation, he went out by himself one night and drained the life from a woman behind the Portland Art Museum-and then he dumped her body into a sewer grate.

It didn't make him feel any better.

After two weeks of this, he waited until shortly before dawn, and he went to Eleisha's room. Walking in without knocking, he found her sitting on her bed, gazing at nothing. Her hair hung loose, and she wore a white lace nightgown, as if she just waited for the sun to rise so she could slip into the oblivion of sleep.

The shell smiled at him absently, and his fear only increased.

He closed the door and locked it.

Walking to the bed, he dropped down to kneel in front of her. He remembered the first time he'd met her, in a hotel room in Seattle, where she was protecting Wade. She'd used her gift that night to try to seduce him, to get him on his knees, and he'd found the action amusing.

He wasn't amused anymore, and now he was on his knees.

"Eleisha," he said, "we are undead, but we live. Robert didn't really live for the last two hundred years… He just got through his nights. You gave him something he could not give himself, no? A few nights of life."

The shell's face twisted into pained surprise, and she tried to stand up. He took hold of her arms.

"Listen to me!" he said. "I know this because I wasn't alive either. I wouldn't trade the past few months for five hundred years of just getting through the nights. If we called Robert's spirit up right now, he would tell you the same thing. He would thank you-and Rose-for those nights when he came to life again, and he'd let nothing wash them away."

Something, just a flicker, passed across her eyes.

"I killed him," she whispered. "He's gone because of me." This was the most she'd said to him in two weeks.

"No! He's dead because Julian is mad," Philip answered. "You gave Robert a gift and that's all." Her jaw was trembling slightly, but he couldn't stop himself. "And there are others out there alone, who would risk anything not to be alone anymore… if they just knew where to go."

He took his hands from her arms, and she didn't try to stand up again.

"I'll help you find them," he said more gently. "We lost Robert, but Rose is here with us. And now that we know Julian is hunting again, I'll know what to do. It will be different next time. I promise. Whoever we find, I'll get them home."

Another flicker passed across her eyes. "You want to? You want to help us start looking?" she asked. "You'd protect whoever we found?"

"Yes."

He would have promised her anything.

"Wade… he bought a computer," she said. "Maybe we could search for news stories when we wake up tonight. Like Rose did, only faster."

It took every ounce of strength for him to keep his face still. He simply nodded. "We could start tonight." But his voice sounded weak and ragged to his own ears. He was so close, so close to reaching her that he didn't want to press this further-for fear she'd slip completely away again.

He stood up.

She touched his leg. "Don't leave. Would you sleep in here today? Like we did at Rose's and on the train?"

He looked down into her face.

Just like that, Eleisha was back inside her body.

He didn't trust himself to speak and pulled his T-shirt over his head, dropping it on a chair and moving around to the other side of the bed. He lay back onto her pillows, and she crawled over to curl up against him with her head on his shoulder.

"Tonight?" she asked again.

He had failed her in some things, and he kept dark secrets she would never understand. But he'd brought her back, and that was all that mattered. If finding lost members of their kind would keep her with him, he'd go wherever she asked.

"Yes," he said. "We'll start searching for the others tonight."