Note: Please see Prologue for warning, copyright and disclaimer information.

Explanations and Evasions

After getting into the crappy van the Society had assigned to me, I drove toward Corrine's apartment. I dreaded being alone with Cormac because I knew he'd ask me about the life he'd forgotten. I wasn't sure I was ready to walk down memory lane with him just yet.

"I noticed that you spoke with the prince," he commented. He always had noticed things I didn't want him to.

"Yeah."

"It is unusual for one," he paused, searching for the right words, "not of the blood to know the prince so well."

Not that I knew her, really. "Is it?"

"Are you of the blood, Eliza?" he asked pointedly.

I shot him a look that by all rights should have set him on fire where he sat. What he was really asking was if I was a ghoul. I was happy enough to be mistaken for a puppy when it suited my purposes, but I didn't like the thought of really being one. I'd grown up seeing what a vamp's blood did to someone's mind and I sure as hell didn't want that happening to me.

"I will never be 'of the blood' Cormac," I all but growled, "and if you remembered me at all, you would know that."

"As I said earlier, the alternate Eliza is a hunter," he said thoughtfully, his eyes never leaving my face. When I didn't answer, he added, "With as close as this reality is to that one, I find it hard to believe you are not, nor ever were involved in those type of activities."

I closed my eyes for a moment wondering why it was so important for him to know this. "What do you want me to do?" I demanded harshly. "Admit to being a hunter?"

"Yes," he replied in the same tone. "Are you a freelance hunter or do you work for one of the groups?"

Hell, he was Tremere. All he had to do was ask any vamp in town and he'd find out anyway. "I live at St. Stephen's," I reluctantly admitted.

He seemed familiar enough with it. "It is good to see that the Tremere have another mole," he said softly.

I glanced at him, remembering the female vamp I'd almost staked tonight, the prince's grandchilde. She'd been a hunter once, before her embrace. Hell, I was even staying in her old room at St. Stephen's. Is that what they call 'dramatic irony'?

"What brought you to do work for the Kindred?" he asked me.

"I have an… agreement with the Tremere in the city," I admitted.

"Only the Tremere?"

I knew he was looking at me, but I just kept staring out the windshield. "Let's just say a few Tremere."

"Which ones?" He hadn't changed a bit. He still wanted to know everything about everything, no matter who was hurt by it.

I thought about lying to him, but I just couldn't do it. I had loved him once, no matter what he now was. I owed him the truth, or at least some of it. "My mother."

"She is in the city?"

"I think so," I told him. "I'm not sure. I haven't seen her in a while."

"What is your mother's name?" Again with the questions.

"I'm not sure what she goes by, but I know her as Kate."

"You're mother was embraced after your birth?" he asked.

For real now, that was enough truth for one night. "That's generally the way it happens," I reminded him as I pulled into the parking lot of Corrine's apartment building. Vamps don't have babies, not normally, anyway.

"And your mother was embraced after your birth?"

"It would be hard for her to have me after her embrace," I said carefully. I knew better than to tell him the truth, but I still didn't want to lie to him.

"I have heard rumors of day-walkers having children," he said softly.

Mac had once known the truth about my mother, but unless he was lying about his memory, Cormac had long forgotten. Actually I was surprised he'd heard of vamps having babies, it was pretty rare.

"Higher generation Kindred," I finally agreed. I'm damned for the blood Kate gave me at birth and I know it, I've always known it. I can't make any excuses for what I am, but I certainly don't go around admitting it to just any vamp that asks, not even Cormac Brennan. Hell, it had taken me over a year to tell Mac, way back when.

"Is that the case?" He was coming too close to the truth and I knew I had to put him off of the topic or put Corrine in danger. If the Tremere knew what I really was, I'd be studied like a rat in a cage and Corrine would be left unprotected. I couldn't, wouldn't let that happen.

"How do I know I can trust you?" I demanded harshly. "I'm sure you spent a lot of time with Dougal, and I can't forget that he was the one who took you away from me. How do I know he didn't recreate you in his image? How do I know you won't hurt Corrine? Or me? When you were human you never killed so easily." Tears filled my eyes and my voice fell to a whisper, but I didn't break his gaze. "Maybe it would be best if we pretend we'd never seen each other tonight."

"If I hadn't killed so easily," Cormac shot back softly, "our daughter would now be Akari's childe. I did what I had to do in order to protect her. Give me an opportunity to prove that I am not so different from what you remember."

I studied his face for a long time, searching for the man who had once loved me. Somewhere in the lines of his face I thought I saw him, the Mac Brennan I'd once trusted with my life and more.

I dropped my eyes and looked away. A part of me still trusted him despite my rational mind's insistence that I kill him where he sat. Regardless of how I felt toward him personally, and the offense the prince would be sure to take if I destroyed him, I knew that Corrine would never understand if I killed her father. But I wasn't sure I would forgive myself if I didn't; at one time we had each had sworn to put the other down if we were embraced.

Finally I motioned toward the building and got out of the van to walk toward the door. I'd have to save the decision for another time, when just seeing him didn't make my heart swell with feelings I'd never really forgotten.

We spent about a half-hour with Corrine. She hugged us both when we came in, happy to see us and grateful for our help at Mother Abigail's. We sat down and Cormac stayed mostly quiet, listening to our conversation and looking around her apartment.

Corrine talked about the intruders as if they'd been human, and was sad about the girls who had died. She told us she didn't intend on missing any school because of the incident; she felt it was important to get on with her life.

I glanced around the room, seeing things as if for the first time. Many of her college books were lying on a low table in front of the couch. Most of them had to do with psychology, her major. She liked Celtic things, but nothing pointed to magic or the occult. Not for the first time I wondered if she had inherited her father's mage powers, or any of my own abilities.

When I noticed that Corrine was getting tired, I suggested that we leave so that she could get some sleep. She walked us to the door and gave me another hug before turning to Cormac.

After hugging him, she asked about the priest who had followed Cormac and I into the house.

"That is my nephew," he told her.

"You must have a much older brother or sister," she commented.

"Yes," he said. "I do."

"Look, if you ever come back into town again, I'd like you to stop by," she told him. "I owe you, I'd like to try and repay the debt somehow if I could."

"I will do that, Corrine," he said quietly.

I gave our daughter one last hug and told her to lock the door behind us. We went down to the van and got inside but we sat for a long time in awkward silence before he broke it.

"It seems I have much to remember," Cormac murmured.

I closed my eyes and turned away. "Some times it's better to forget," I told him softly. Not that I'd been able to, I'd spent years living in the past. You'd think by now I'd know better.

"And just how long did it take you to forget me, Eliza?" he surprised me by asking.

How dare he? I shot him an angry look. "It took me a long time to get over losing you," I told him fiercely. "We were supposed to get married. I waited for you but you never came. I thought you were dead." I'd never forgotten him, not even for a moment.

I took a slow breath to calm down before I made myself explain. "Kate found me on the mountain in West Virginia where I was waiting for you. She took me to Maine and left me with a couple she trusted. I had Corrine, and the couple adopted her." I deliberately glossed over the messy details, I didn't want to admit how hard his death had been on me.

"Why did you never look for me?" he asked in a voice that made my stomach clench in sympathy. "Why didn't you ever hunt down Dougal if you thought he killed me?" The last was more of an accusation.

How could I explain my life to him when he didn't even remember who I was? "You don't know what it was like for me," I told him softly, almost pleadingly. I didn't want pity from a vampire, but I had to make him understand. "I had no money, no resources, and I was alone and pregnant. I couldn't even get to Portland, let alone Baltimore. For years I did my best for our daughter's sake to keep the vamps out of Bar Harbor. I only stopped hunting when Kate and I came to terms."

He surprised me again with his next question. "Do you still have your engagement ring?"

I put my hand over where the ring fell on its chain beneath my shirt and closed my eyes for a moment. Was I ready to share this part of our past with him? Would I ever be?

"May I see it?" His voice was low and soft, almost as if he were afraid I'd say no. I very nearly did.

I told myself that he had a right to know about what had happened in Baltimore, and that I was the only one who could tell him about it. I pulled the chain out of my shirt and took it off, the first time I had done so in nearly fifteen years.

Cormac took it carefully, and sat looking down at the ring for a moment. Then he closed his eyes and fell into some kind of meditative state.

I took the opportunity to compare his features with what I remembered from the past. It was hard for me to see him exactly as he had been when Dougal had drained him in our apartment. While I knew I looked roughly the same age as I'd been nineteen years ago, I had undergone a few physical changes, scars and such that made me different than the girl I had been. I could see no such changes in Cormac.

"Fuck," he whispered softly.

I broke from my study of his mouth. "What?"

He didn't reply, but kept looking down at the ring as if he'd lost his best friend. With dismay, I saw a blood tear fall from his eye and streak down his cheek.

"What is it?" I demanded softly, laying a hand on his arm. It was the first time I had touched him, and it made my heart race remembering how things used to be with us.

"Are you familiar with psycometry?" he asked.

"Visions from touching an object?"

"Yes," he replied, placing his hand over mine. I could see anger on his face although he tried to hide it. "I have that ability. I saw the rings that I bought for us. Dougal had the wedding rings that matched this one."

I knew telling me that must have hurt him. How close had he been to the bastard that had killed him? Did knowing he'd once hated his sire destroy whatever good times he'd shared with Dougal? He gave me back the ring and I pulled away from his cold hand to put the necklace back on.

"I have in mind hunting for Dougal," he surprised me by saying.

"I thought you said he was dead," I answered slowly. Mac had never lied to me, but Cormac seemed to contradict himself more often than not.

"He is, as far as I know," he replied, "but I would like to find his belongings. Dougal told me once that he had taken my memory because of something horrible in my past that I didn't want to remember."

I couldn't help but sigh at that; I was probably the 'something horrible' that Dougal had been talking about.

"He also told me that he could give me back my memory if I decided I wanted it some day," Cormac continued. "He kept a spell book that I believe might hold the key to returning my memory."

"Why are you so interested in your past after all this time?" I asked. He'd been happy in his existence until now, why put himself through the heartbreak I'd been living with for years?

"It wasn't until recently that my past came looking for me," he reminded me.

"I didn't come looking," I muttered resentfully under my breath. I wasn't sure I was glad to see him after all those years; Cormac's return to my life brought back a lot of pain and confusion I could just as well have done without.

"But Stephen did," he answered. "He is the key to what my life was like in younger years, but you can help me with what happened as an adult."

I turned away from his probing eyes and started the van. We drove silently to the Tremere Chantry, each lost in our own thoughts. When I parked in the drive, he didn't get out right away. We sat quietly, neither of us willing to put an end to our reunion.

Long minutes later we both jumped at an unexpected tapping on the window. It was one of the house ghouls. "Is everything okay, sir?" he asked.

"Yes," Cormac replied. "I'll be coming in shortly." He watched the man walk back to his post at the steps before he turned back to me. "I would like you to accompany me in looking for Dougal."

I thought about that for a long time before I answered. What he asked was hard if not impossible. He'd said it himself; I was the Tremere mole at St. Stephen's. As much as I liked to pretend I answered to no one, that wasn't the reality. The truth was that I couldn't just leave St. Stephen's without permission from the clan.

Then came the hard question; did I want to go with him? I'd spent the last nineteen years trying to get on with my life. Hell, I knew I could never have a normal life, but I wanted one, craved it the way some people crave money or drugs. What I really wanted was a little house in the suburbs complete with the white picket fence, the two point five kids, a station wagon and a dog.

On the other hand, deep down I knew it was too late for me. It was too late the moment Kate conceived me nearly fifty years ago. I was born into a world of darkness and nothing I do will ever change who or what I am. My only option is to live my life the best I can and try to have as few regrets as possible. And I knew I would regret not helping Cormac find himself again.

At last, I looked at him. "I would have to get in touch with Kate."

"I thought you didn't know if she was in town?" he asked suspiciously.

"I don't," I replied, "at least I didn't see her tonight, but I do know how to contact her. They've got me set up in a good place, I'm not sure if they'll let me leave."

"Call me if you have any problems," he said quietly, then gave me his cell phone number. He also gave me another number for a girl he called Nina. I tried not to be curious about her; Cormac hadn't been my lover in almost twenty years. He was a big boy, and I had no right to think that he'd have remained faithful to someone he couldn't even remember. It didn't matter to me that I'd never looked at another man twice.

I pulled out a card that had only a seven-digit number printed on it. "If you need to reach me, leave a message on this answering machine."

"I will be in touch, Eliza," he said firmly.

I watched him get out and waited until he had climbed the steps and turned to look at me before I put the van into gear. I drove around town for a while to try and clear my head.

Knowing that Mac had been embraced the night I'd thought he'd died was almost too much for me to deal with. I needed time to adjust to the idea, but I wasn't sure if there was enough time in the world for me to get used to it.

We'd been happy in Baltimore, Mac and I. He'd asked me to marry him and of course I'd said yes. We had moved in together a week before the vamps had raided our apartment. If they'd waited just a few more days, we would have been in Ireland visiting Mac's family and they would have missed us. We would have been happy, raised Corrine together. Life would have been good, I just know it would have.

A long time later I found myself back at the apartment near the industrial district of Salem. I carefully climbed the rickety stairs and let myself inside. I must have been zoning because when I closed the door of the apartment, Kate surprised me.

"I could have been anyone, Eliza," she said low and dangerously. "What were you thinking?"

I looked at her for a moment, a hot reply on my lips that somehow never made it out. I leaned back against the door and slid downward until I was sitting on the floor, my knees clutched to my chest. Between the attack at Mother Abigail's and Cormac's return, I'd had quite enough surprises tonight to last a lifetime.

Before I could blink, Kate was kneeling beside me. "What is it?" she demanded softly without touching me.

"Why didn't you tell me?" I hissed.

"Tell you about what?" She pretended ignorance, but I saw right through her.

"Mac." His name echoed in the air around us.

After a long moment, she looked away and sat down on the floor beside me. "What would you have done if you had known that he was Kindred?" she asked me softly.

"I would have hunted him down and destroyed him," I said without blinking.

"Do you think he would have gone quietly to that death?" she continued. "Or that Dougal would have allowed you to destroy him?"

"It wouldn't have been easy," I admitted grudgingly.

"For that matter, you would have had every Tremere in Baltimore after you," she told me. "Do you think you could have survived it?"

"I might have," I said defensively. "I've beaten more than one vamp at a time."

"Nearly a dozen Tremere?" she asked. "At their own chantry? Even Johnson wasn't stupid enough to try that."

Glenn Johnson, Mac's best friend and the leader of the hunters in Baltimore. I hadn't spoken to him since shortly after the raids. He'd wanted me to go back to Baltimore, said he'd taken care of the vamps there, but I couldn't bring myself to go back to the city I'd lost Mac in.

I shot a glance at Kate's face, knowing she was right. "I would have died," I admitted.

"And Corrine with you," she reminded me. "Sometimes not knowing is better. I knew that Dougal erased his memory, just as I knew some day he would remember you and come looking."

"He didn't come looking," I told her bitterly. "He doesn't remember me, or us, or anything." I bit back a sob. "He's a vamp."

Kate put her hand on my leg and I couldn't stop myself from shrinking away. "So am I," she reminded me, withdrawing her hand. "Not all Kindred are evil. You should know that by now."

I didn't agree but it was easier to let her think I did, so I nodded reluctantly. "It's just a shock, seeing him exactly as I remember him. We were so happy, Kate. Why didn't I know he was still alive? I loved him so much!"

She reached out as if to smooth my hair back from my face, but pulled away just short of touching me. I couldn't stand to have a vamp touch me anymore and Kate knew that. "He's not, Eliza. He's dead. There was no way you could have known. What happened was for the best," she whispered softly. "You learned to stand on your own, and you have a beautiful, healthy daughter. You didn't need him."

"You have no idea what I need, Kate," I said harshly.

"I've always known what's best for you, dear," she told me.

I laughed wryly remembering Linda, the woman who'd beat me for years before Kate put a stop to it. How had I forgotten just what I was talking to? "Get out, Kate."

"Eliza, love—"

Her use of Mac's endearment for me snapped the hold I had on my temper. "Get out before I stake you, Kate," I told her in a hard voice. "I'm not in the mood for this tonight."

She stood and backed away, looking uneasy as I rose to my feet.

"Cormac wants me to go with him to find Dougal's things," I told her before I let her leave, trying to keep my voice calm. "I need permission to go."

"I can't give you that," she said quickly.

If she could, would she? Somehow I seriously doubted it. "Who can?"

"The prince."

"Have her call me," I said softly, moving into the living room. I didn't want to talk to another vamp tonight, but I'd do what I had to. "Goodbye, Kate."

I felt her moving away from me and heard the door close behind her. I sat in the dark apartment next to the phone and waited. It finally rang near dawn.

"Hello?"

"Eliza." The prince's voice was calm and cool, as always. I knew she didn't like to talk to me, but then again I didn't much like talking to her either.

"Thanks for calling, madam," I replied.

"What was so important that you couldn't pass it along through your contact?" she asked.

"I have a request to make, madam," I told her, "on a personal matter."

"A personal matter," she murmured. "Does it involve the item you are so fond of?"

Corrine was the only thing I ever asked anything for, and I had rarely done that. "No, madam," I replied. "This is about something else."

"I wasn't aware your contract allowed any other personal matters," she stated simply.

I would have been pissed if I hadn't known she was right. For ten years I had lived for the Tremere clan. "It's something I thought over with a long time ago," I told her respectfully. "I wouldn't ask this now, but I feel I have to."

"Would this have anything to do with Cormac?" she asked me. "I understand you spent a good deal of time with him this evening."

It figures that she knew about that. "Yes, madam. As I said earlier, I knew Cormac a long time ago."

"Your contract does not leave room for private… affairs, my dear," she reminded me coolly. "I don't think it would suit our purposes for you to rekindle an old flame."

"That's not—" I began, but she spoke over my words.

"I don't care what you want to call it, girl," she said harshly. "I feel it best that you remain here, for now."

"As you wish, madam," I forced myself to say through clenched teeth. Cormac wouldn't be happy to hear that I couldn't go with him, but I had no choice. As much as I hated it, I was bound by the contract to obey her.

"That's a good girl," she drawled smugly.

I hid a sigh, knowing that this was the life I had chosen to save my child. "One more thing, madam," I added. "Cormac Brennan will be spending time with the 'item.' This will not affect the contract."

"I see," she said thoughtfully. I really hoped she didn't see, but I didn't want Cormac killed for endangering Elvira's sire, Ford's life guaranteed the blood contract I'd signed.

When I hung up the phone a few minutes later, I looked out the bedroom window and remembered how the contract had completely changed my life. Kate had convinced me that signing my life over to the Tremere was the only way I could save my daughter's life, and after Corrine was almost killed, I had to believe her.

I watched the sun come up through the cracked glass and waited until I knew my daughter would be awake before I showed up on her doorstep. She smiled when she let me into the apartment.

"You look like you haven't slept all night," she chastised me. "What have you been doing?"

"I've been busy," I told her. "I'm going home when I leave here and crashing. How are you doing?"

She tucked her hair behind her ear and motioned for me to sit on the couch. "I just got up a little while ago," she replied as she sat down beside me. "I was having this really weird dream."

"Oh?" I asked, hoping it wasn't about last night. "Want to tell me about it?"

She looked like she wasn't sure she wanted to tell me, but she did. "This goddess Rhiannon said that I could do whatever I want in my dreams," she said softly. "I brought dad into it."

"Gene?"

"Well, yeah." She seemed a little confused I'd asked that. Hell, she had no idea about Cormac, she'd been told her birth father was dead.

"What do you mean you 'brought' him?" I asked.

She shrugged. "I just visualized that he was there and he was. It was really weird."

Sounded like it. "What did Rhiannon say?"

"That I had the power to do whatever I wanted," she told me. "That I could send dad back when I wanted and I thought about it and he disappeared. Then I said I wanted to wake up and I did." She seemed uncomfortable about the dream, almost as if she didn't want to believe it was true.

I looked away so that she wouldn't see the tears that filled my eyes. Did this mean she was a mage like Mac? Had she Awakened?

"Have you ever had a dream like that, Eliza?" she asked me.

I blinked away my tears and smiled sadly at her. What I was made it impossible for me to Awaken, just another reason I know I'm damned for Kate's blood in my veins.

"Never," I told her honestly, "but I know that other people have, you're not alone."

We talked about her dreams for a little while, and most of them sounded like things I'd heard Mac and our friends in Baltimore talking about. I was glad that she'd inherited his traits and not mine; his were a lot less likely to get her locked in a little room somewhere.

"Have you talked to that guy again?"

I knew exactly who she was talking about. "A little," I reluctantly replied. "I gave him a ride back to where he was staying."

"You used to know him?"

Damn, she was as bad as Cormac when it came to butting her nose in where it didn't belong. "I used to."

"Does he live in Salem?" she asked. "Are you planning on seeing him again?"

I studied her face carefully, wondering exactly where she was trying to go with this line of questioning. "I'm sure I'll talk to him some time, why?"

"Well, I'd like to see him again," she said softly. "He seemed really nice, I like him. Do you?"

"Yeah," I murmured sadly. Once upon a time I'd more than liked him, I'd loved him.

"You really look tired, Eliza," she told me abruptly. "You should go home and go to bed."

I nodded and stood up. "I'll try."

"You need to do more than try," she said firmly as she walked me to the door, "you've been up all night."

"Take care of yourself," I warned her. She meant more to me than anything else in the world.

She smiled at my familiar words. "I will."