Cunningham, Pat - Legacy [Sequel to Belonging] (Siren Publishing Ménage Amour) (18 page)

In spite of her best efforts the weakened wall collapsed, and everything came together.

Her fist crammed into her mouth as if all by itself. “Oh God,” she moaned around it. “The daddies. The men. They were vampires. They were all vampires.”

Chapter 10

Once again, Colleen found herself the center of attention, just like when she was a child. The only difference this time was these people were alive. Most of them, at least. Jeremy held tight to her as if he would never let her go. Annie had crowded onto the couch next to them with her maternal arms around them both. Gus stood by the armrest with his hand on Colleen’s shoulder. Wallace stood apart. Colleen felt him watching her, his mind shut off from hers, his face unreadable.

“Are you sure?” Gus asked gently. “You were just a little girl, and it was a long time ago. We’ve all got vampires on the brain right now. We don’t want to promote any false memories here.”

“It’s not false memories or suggestion. I blocked it out, but I remember now. The men only came at night. Their voices made my skin crawl. Their touch was so cold. They moved—” She looked up at Wallace. “They moved like you.”

And like Jeremy, she realized. He possessed that same inhuman grace but at human speed, a vampire in slow motion. No wonder she’d been attracted to him, to both of them. They embodied the image of the men she’d grown up with and what her child self had imprinted on. Men who weren’t human, or even truly alive.

Whatever showed on her face caused Wallace to move away and begin pacing again. Gus returned to his easy chair and his stack of files, leaving Colleen to Annie and Jeremy’s desperate attempts at comfort.

“You knew this already, didn’t you?” Colleen accused Wallace.

“He didn’t,” Gus said, “but I had a good idea. Not seeing your name on the roster is what threw me off. You know who those folks were who burned out your commune?”

“I always figured it was some kind of law enforcement agency. They thought we were a cult or survivalists and that we had weapons or something.”

Gus shook his head. “It wasn’t any government strike force or police action. It was slayers. They went to kill the vampires and rescue the women, but things got out of hand.”

“Slayers?” All of a sudden, Annie’s arms around her didn’t feel so maternal any more.

Annie must have felt her stiffen, because she hastened to reassure her. “We weren’t part of it, hon. Gus and I were out of the biz by then.”

“We heard about it, though,” Gus said. “Allen was still alive back then, and he kept us all up-to-date. Mostly we followed slayer activity because of Wally there. You weren’t in that mob scene, were you?”

“You kidding me? It happened after I got too close to my work. They wouldn’t have been too thrilled to have me along. I probably heard about it but didn’t pay much attention. LA was my turf in those days.”

“Same thing here, sort of,” Jeremy said. “I knew I’d heard the name Woods and Waters somewhere before. It was at home. Vampires like to trade horror stories about slayer attacks. It’s like telling ghost stories around a campfire. I know they talked about it, even years after it happened, but I didn’t really listen.” He drew Colleen closer against him. “I wish now I had. I wish I could have warned you about all this somehow.”

“You didn’t know.” Vampires. How could anyone, child or adult, prepare themselves for that? She squirmed even tighter against him. Annie gave her back a final pat, got up, and returned to her rocking chair.

“We weren’t really a commune, were we?” Colleen said. Her eyes pleaded with Jeremy for any answer other than the truth. “The vampires were holding us prisoner.”

“It looks that way,” he said. “From your description, I don’t think your mom and the others were actual servants. It sounds more like a blood bank.”

“What’s—” she started, then stopped herself. The term was pretty self-explanatory.

Wallace took it upon himself to elaborate anyway. “Just what it sounds like. The vampires keep a herd of humans so they always have a meal on hand. Beats having to hunt all the time.” He stopped pacing and stared at her hard. “Any of them ever bite you?”

“I don’t remember.” Her hand crept to her throat. She recalled the men fussing over her. Never pain of any kind or the touch of teeth. “No. I don’t think they did.”

“Too little,” Wallace snarled. His eyes flashed crimson. “They don’t bite kids. Not enough blood to make it worth it.”

“A blood bank explains the girls-only rule,” Gus added. “As long as vamps can dodge stakes and sunlight, they can live forever. We poor humans are more finite. Girls grow up to be women, and women reproduce.”

“Like cattle.” Colleen shuddered. “They bred our moms for blood. To who? There weren’t any men there. Living men, I mean.”

“Guys in bars. That’d be my guess,” Wallace said. “The bats would’ve had the women under control. Send a chick into town whenever she was ripe, with orders to be fruitful and multiply. Kick-start the next generation.”

“What if she had a boy?” That popped out before Colleen realized that answer, too, was obvious. Wallace’s crimson eyes flared up, and he snarled at her so viciously, she cowered against Jeremy. Jeremy shifted his body slightly, as if to shield her from his lover’s rage.

“Wallace, c’mon,” he said. “This is all new to her.” His voice deepened in warning. “Let it go.”

“Oh-kay,” Gus said to Wallace’s rigid back. “The only names we’ve got are female. Hence, the living occupants. Colleen, hon, any idea how many vampires there were? I’ll take a guesstimate. Whatever you can give me.”

“Does it matter? They burned the place down.” That awful memory had persisted through decades of denial, though she’d managed to blot out the terror and the screams. “Maybe it was a prison, but I didn’t know that then. They didn’t have to burn it. They could have just used their stakes or whatever.”

“Fire’s extra insurance,” Jeremy said with a curious hitch in his voice. “It’s one of the few things that can kill a vampire. They would have burned the buildings just to be thorough. Make sure they caught the whole flock. It’s how they are.” That last came out clipped and angry. He started slightly, shocked at himself, and shot apologetic looks at Annie, Gus, and Wallace. “No offense.”

“None taken,” Gus said mildly. “In this case, though, it looks like they caught more than their targets. At least five of the women and three of the children died. I’m sorry, Colleen. It wasn’t intentional, like that’s any consolation.”

Colleen eyed the notes in his hand. “It didn’t even work, did it? They didn’t get all of the vampires. Some of them escaped, and now they’re after the kids. Me and those other girls. That’s what’s happening, isn’t it?”

“That’s what we figure,” Annie said gently. “I’m really sorry, sweetie.” Jeremy gave her a squeeze.

“Okay,” Gus said. “We know it’s vampires. We know they’re after you and your playmates. We’ll assume they’re trying to recreate their blood bank, so they’ll want to keep the girls alive. They’ll have to hole up somewhere. Where would they take them?”

“Back to the commune?” Jeremy suggested.

“Not likely,” Wallace said. “Bats won’t go back to a place a slayer’s hit. Even if it was twenty years ago, they’ll stay clear.” Annie and Gus nodded agreement. “It’ll have to be a remote location, with room for a flock along with the captives.”

He paced while he talked. Colleen found she couldn’t stop watching him. When she glanced at Jeremy, she discovered he was also following Wallace’s jungle-cat stalk from one side of the room to the other. He reminded her of a sunflower, his face forever turned toward the brightest star in his sky.

“How many possible victims are we talking here?” Wallace said.

“At least fifteen of the girls survived.” Gus held up a sheaf of paper marked with meticulous printing. “Good thing we’ve got a list. And a participant.”

Jeremy bristled. “You’re not using Colleen as bait.”

“Yes, they are,” Colleen said. “If that’s what it takes. I won’t live looking over my shoulder or fighting off voices in my head. I want this done.”

Wallace showed off his fangs. “Atta girl. Let’s see the list.”

They all left their seats to cluster around Gus and the sheet of paper he held. Colleen surprised herself with how many she recognized. Her heart clenched at the stark-black Xs beside eight of them.
Deceased
. Tsubomi Mori’s name carried an X. Kitsune’s mom. Colleen pressed her hip against Jeremy’s. He pressed back.

“What about the moms?” she asked. “Will the vampires go after them, too?”

“I’m guessing no,” Gus said. “If any of those women are still around, they’d be in their forties or fifties by now. Near the end of their breeding cycles.”

Colleen’s mouth tightened. She didn’t say anything.

“Here,” Wallace said at her shoulder. “Colleen Forrester. That you?”

“It used to be,” she murmured. She tapped the name above it—
Abby Forrester
—with a shaking finger. “You might as well mark an X next to Mom’s. She died three years ago.” In a state institution, raving about monsters that came in the night and a child who wasn’t her daughter. Colleen squeezed her eyes shut against the sting of tears.

“Could I see that a moment?” Jeremy asked.

Gus passed the list to him. Wallace continued to study it over Jeremy’s arm. After a minute Jeremy said, “There’s a pattern here.”

“There is?” Colleen took his other arm and squinted at the names.
Reese Lake
.
Kit Mori
.
Carrie Oaks
.
Terry Woods
.
Bobbi Waters
.
Jean Waterson
. Her hand left Jeremy’s arm and went to her mouth. “Oh my God. You’re right.”

“Don’t keep it to yourselves, kiddies,” Gus said. “Share with the class.”

Jeremy showed him the paper. “The names. Look at the names. They’re all variations of water or woods. The Woods and the Waters wasn’t just the name of the commune. It was the names of the women.”

Annie said a word ill-suited to a fiftyish pediatrician. “Anybody else think that’s two sizes too weird for comfort?”

“It’s definitely too cutesy for a blood bank,” Gus agreed. “Vampires don’t do cutesy.” He looked to Wallace for backup.

Except Wallace wasn’t listening. He yanked the paper out of Jeremy’s hand, nearly ripping it. “Lemme see that.”

“Manners, Wally,” Annie warned.

Wallace ignored her, too. He stared at the list. His face got even paler, and Colleen hadn’t thought that possible.

Jeremy touched his shoulder. “Wallace? What is it?”

“Elisa.” The paper trembled in his hand. “Elisa Rios. She’s on here. She was at the commune.” He looked up at Jeremy with anguish in his eyes. His raw, naked thoughts scraped against Colleen’s mind. “I knew her.”

Colleen ducked around Jeremy to look at the paper. The name had a black X beside it.

“I was your age, maybe a couple years younger,” Wallace continued to Jeremy. His bleak, shocked stare gathered in Annie and Gus. Somehow it passed over Colleen. “I was living down around Malibu back then. I was in one of my I-like-chicks-now phases. We were together for maybe three years. We—”

He said something else aloud, but Colleen heard his real words like a shout in her ear.
We had a son together.
She had to concentrate to separate his mental words and feelings from the audible reality. Wallace’s despair and underlying rage seared her senses like fire.

She glanced at the others. Annie and Gus seemed unaware of any unspoken hitches. However, Jeremy’s eyes reflected the concern she felt in her heart. Had he heard that agonized mental cry as well?

“Rios,” Gus said. “Rivers.”

“Yeah. I’d seen this guy hanging around her. He was a vampire, but I didn’t know it then. He must have used his powers on her. She let him into the house. I went for him, but he—”