tickets,” he whispered hoarsely.
At the moment, he didn’t want to know any more.
chapter 2
Julian Ashton had fled to his family estate in Wales like a victim, like a coward—or at least that’s how he viewed it.
His gift was fear, and he was accustomed to inducing the emotion, not to experiencing it himself. The only thing he feared was a telepathic member of his own kind, and he had destroyed the last one a long time ago.
He felt no remorse for this. He had taken simply necessary action and ensured his own survival . . . until now.
For centuries, his kind had existed by four laws, and the most sacred of these was “No vampire shall kill to feed.” They’d retained their secrecy through telepathy, feeding on mortals, altering a memory, and then leaving the victim alive. New vampires required training from their makers to both awaken and hone psychic abilities, but Julian’s telepathy had never surfaced. He had lived by his own laws, and so the elders began quietly turning against him. His maker, Angelo Travare, had tried to hide this news from him, but he knew. He heard the rumblings, and he had acted first, beheading every vampire who’d lived by the laws, including Angelo—who would have turned against him sooner or later. Angelo had hoped that Julian would eventually develop his powers, but this was a false hope, and Julian knew it.
He began to see a new path, a world without laws.
Vampires without telepathy—without any training by a maker—were no threat to him. On some level, he almost viewed them as kindred spirits.
Then . . . a month ago, without reason or warning, Eleisha, once his servant, had suddenly manifested psychic abilities so powerful she had forced her thoughts into his and taken over his mind, his body, his free will.
To make matters worse, she seemed to have won the protection of Philip Branté!
Eleisha had warned Julian off and then let him go, but he knew this was far from over.
Even after a month of hiding out in Cliffbracken, where he had always felt secure, his hands still shook at the memory of her thoughts pushing inside his. He had been completely helpless to stop her.
Of course she knew nothing of the past, of the elders, of the laws, but Julian’s world had shifted, and he was uncertain what to do.
What would happen as her power grew stronger?
Since returning, he’d spent much of his time in the main floor study, but earlier tonight, he had made his way down into the depths of his decaying family manor, and he paced the hard mud floor of what had once been a dungeon, back in the days of his grandfather.
He was in the guard room, surrounded by small cells.
Why had he come down here?
Something had called him, something from the past. Julian was not one to dwell on mistakes or sins, but a small part of him had never quite left this room, never stopped eating away at him for what he’d done here one night in 1839.
He walked over to the nearest cell and looked inside. It was empty. He turned and looked at the floor of the guard room.
Empty.
He was alone, and yet he could still see the shadows, still hear the ghosts.
Closing his eyes, he let his mind drift back until he heard his mother, Lady Katherine, screaming and beseeching him to help his father, Lord William. Julian had cared nothing for his mother. She was a coldhearted, self-centered woman. But watching his father sink deeper and deeper into dementia had proven too much.
He remembered the feeling in the pit of his stomach as he sank his teeth into his own father’s neck and then cut himself, forcing his father to drink, to take all the blood back.
He remembered the horror of realizing what he’d done as Lord William dropped to the floor drooling and gibbering, locked forever in undead madness.
Then he’d locked his father in a cell, in the same dungeon his ancestors had used to make their enemies suffer.
But even down here, Lord William had not been far enough away, not nearly far enough.
The following night, Julian dragged Eleisha down into the same dungeon. He turned her and put them both on a ship bound for New York.
He had stolen her life and condemned her.
And now, after all this time, she had become telepathic, like the vampires of a past era.
What would she do as she dwelled on the memories of what he’d done to