They weren’t joined yet, but she was beside him, giving him the precious gift of color and emotion. She was there, alive and real, a truth he could barely grasp. Corinne. Her name was a light in the terrible darkness of his soul. Shining for him alone. Leading him away from a path down which so many of his kind had disappeared for all eternity. Corinne. He breathed her name and calmed his raging body with the knowledge that she was beside him.
“Let’s not go there,” Corinne said softly, laughter in her voice. “How did these people know about your gifts? And why would they think you were a vampire?” It was much safer to keep the conversation away from the almost bewitched way she felt in his company.
“I think there are many reasons. Our lifestyle, traveling from country to country, seems odd to many. The name of our band may even have contributed to the society’s suspicions. We hand-raised two leopards and they travel with us. We sleep during the day and perform at night. Somehow it all added up to our being vampires. They tried to kill us by spraying the stage where we were performing with bullets.” In the darkness he shrugged. “Cullen used to belong to the society.”
“Cullen?” She echoed the name in alarm, astonished that Dayan could say it so casually. Lisa was alone in the other room with Cullen, asleep and very vulnerable.
Dayan touched her gently, his hand moving over her face. “Be calm, honey. Cullen risked his life to warn us. Those killers want him more than they want us. I’ve stayed with him to help protect him. My family owes him a great debt. Thanks to you, I can feel friendship again, even affection, where before I felt only a debt of honor. You have already given me more than you will ever know.”
“I don’t understand the vampire thing. Why haven’t the police found these men?” Corinne was deliberately ignoring his strange references to her. She didn’t understand her attachment to him, the way she needed to be with him when she had never been a needy person in her life. She felt safe with Dayan, yet at the same time threatened in some elemental and very exciting way.
“This group operates the same way terrorist organizations work. Hit and run, meet in secret. Only those at the top know who belongs. No one trusts anyone else. Some of those on the bottom have no real idea that killing goes on. I know it sounds bizarre, but unfortunately the society is very real. We have to protect ourselves at all times. If these people have targeted you and Lisa, you need protection too. They will not stop hunting you. Somehow we have to find a way to convince Lisa she really is in danger. She is resisting the truth because she does not want anything else in her life to change.”
“Lisa had it much harder than John or me. When we were very young, their father began to date my mother. It was mainly a drinking relationship. We didn’t know it then, but their father when he drank was extremely violent. To make a long story short, their father murdered my mother. Lisa walked in when he was bludgeoning her with a tire iron, and he knocked Lisa down, put a bag over her head, threw her in the trunk of a car with my mother’s body and doused them with gasoline. John knew – he always knew things, and between the two of us, we managed to free Lisa without her father knowing.” Corinne had unlocked the trunk of the car using her unique gift. “Lisa, John and I stayed together. We lived mainly on the streets, sort of fending for ourselves.” She said it hurriedly, in a little rush, not wanting to dwell on the painful details of her childhood. She never talked about that time, never revealed the details of her early life to anyone, yet she couldn’t stop herself from giving Dayan whatever he asked for.
Dayan threaded his fingers through Corinne’s, all too aware of the sorrow beating at her, the horror of those memories. “After the murder, Lisa was so battle-scarred she didn’t talk for days on end. I sat with her for hours and rocked her back and forth, and she would hold me when I broke down and cried. John was our rock; he stole food for us and kept us safe as we grew up. Eventually we all landed jobs in a cafe. Lisa was discovered there by a huge modeling agency. After that we didn’t have to worry about a roof over our heads. I was already making money writing songs, so I pursued music in college. John became very successful at landscaping. We lived together as a family.”