in her ear. “How do you think he’d feel tomorrow if I let Julian take your head? How do you think he’d feel the night after? And the night after that? We have to survive by moving between one moment and the next. Do you understand?”
She stopped hitting him and just stood there, letting him grip her too hard.
“They’re all alone now,” she whispered. “They can’t fight Julian. I don’t think Wade would know what to do.”
“He won’t follow them. He’ll come after me first.”
He released his arm slightly, and she moved back to look up at him. He wouldn’t look down at her, and his face was taut.
“You don’t know that!” she hissed quietly. “If he thinks Rose or Philip have turned telepathic, he could just as easily go after them.”
“It isn’t just telepathy,” he whispered back. “That’s what Philip thinks because it’s all Julian told him . . . all Angelo told him.”
Eleisha tensed and let his words sink in. No, it wasn’t just telepathy. She had seen that in Robert’s memories. Julian feared a resurgence of the laws. He feared vampires making connections with each other again, teaching the laws, practicing telepathy, and learning to feed without killing.
He would come after Robert.
“Where do we go now?” she asked.
When he didn’t answer, she fished their tickets from the pocket of her jeans, looking at the cabin numbers she had reserved.
“That porter was bribed to lie to us,” she said. “I think if we go to these cabins, we’ll find them empty.”
He nodded once, but he still didn’t look at her.
Julian pushed the Mustang’s speed past eighty. Glancing at the wheel, he saw his left hand trembling and he fought to control it.
He had missed his swing.
The setup was flawless, Robert had walked right past him, and he’d missed.
In all his years hunting, he’d never missed his first swing, not once. What was wrong with him? What happened?
Was Eleisha able to sense him? Feel him as the others couldn’t? No, if that was true, she could have zeroed in on him afterward.
But she’d been inside his head during the fight! Just for a split second before he kicked her. He could not risk that again, and he could not—would not—kill her yet.
What was he going to do?
Robert knew he was there, knew he was hunting again.
Julian forced himself to calm, thinking back over the few seconds just before chaos erupted in the train yard. He’d timed it perfectly, and the porter was bringing Robert directly past him. Robert was out in front of Eleisha. . . . Julian had waited, as always, until the right second . . . and then Eleisha called a warning and pushed Robert.
Had she seen a light reflect off the sword?
In the past, rumors of the way he hunted eventually spread to a point, but the vampires of the distant past were fairly scattered, mainly communicating through letters to anyone besides a direct child—or the child to the maker. Most had no idea how he was locating them or taking their heads.
Robert knew.
This thought made him wonder how Robert had escaped him back in the past, as he clearly remembered cutting off Robert’s head . . . but then he remembered that he’d killed Jessenia first. Afterward, he’d taken his swing at Robert, seen the dark blood spraying out, and the world had grown slightly hazy. Had Robert made him see something which wasn’t there?
If so, that would not happen again. He had to kill Robert on a first swing.
Only now Robert and Eleisha would be looking into the shadows.
Julian glanced down at the Amtrak schedule on the seat beside him, trying to decide what they would try next. They were on an express train with only one brief stop in Salem—but the end stop was Portland, so Robert would reason that Julian believed they were running to Portland, and his built-in protective instincts would never allow him to lead an enemy from the final train station straight to the church.
They didn’t even realize Julian knew about the church.
No, Robert would want to get off in Salem and rent or steal a car for that last hour home, trying to throw Julian off the trail.
Or at least Julian fervently hoped he would.
But no matter what happened, Julian had to finish this before they got home. He had to make Eleisha believe the church was safe. He could not attack anywhere near that place or she might not continue trying to seek out the others