Eliza: Coming Out of the Dark

by slaysvamps

Eliza never expected to see Mac Brennan again, but now he's a hated vampire. She knows she has to help him regain the memories he lost, even if it means falling in love with him all over again.

36. Consequences

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

Consequences

It took almost an hour but I finally found the place Kate was holed up in. The security on the building was pretty good, but I'd seen better. I walked up to the door just as one of the tenants were coming out.

"Have you seen Kate Hepburn tonight?" I asked, flashing him a smile and hoping he didn't notice the crossbow case in my hand.

"Not tonight," he replied confirming that she'd gone back to using the name I knew her best by.

I grabbed the door before it could close and lock behind him. "Thanks," I said as he walked away. I went inside and looked around the lobby. There were several apartments right on the main floor, but my contact had told me she was up a few levels. I walked to the stairs like I belonged there and hoped no one stopped me.

Half way to the stairs I got the feeling that someone was watching me, but when I glanced around, I didn't see anyone. I shrugged the feeling off and went upstairs to the third floor. By the time I was half way there, the itch at the base of my spine told me that there was a vamp nearby. I slowed down and concentrated on moving silently; it was after dark, and she did have Auspex.

Following my spider sense, it was easy to figure out what apartment she was in. Very quietly I took the crossbow out of the case and stood looking at the door. Let me think, should I knock…?

I raised my foot and kicked the door near the knob. It flew open and banged against the wall. Entering the apartment quickly, I trained the crossbow on the woman standing in the middle of the room staring at me. I reached behind me to close the door, but my kick had bent the hinges. I settled for pushing it to and leaned against it, still pointing the crossbow at Kate.

"I can't say I'm surprised to see you," she said pleasantly enough.

"I warned you, Kate," I said calmly. Actually I was surprised at how calm I actually felt. If you had asked me, I would have sworn that I'd frenzy just looking at the bitch who'd tried to get her hands on my daughter.

"Come to destroy me?" she asked, acting all unconcerned. "After all I've done for you?"

I smiled and stepped closer to her. Something in my eyes must have frightened her because she backed away.

"Don't go too far, Kate," I told her. "I have a nice piece of wood here with your name on it."

"You wouldn't hurt me, would you dear? After all, I did save your life in Baltimore." Her voice was still pleasant, but her eyes started to look worried.

"It wasn't hard to save me when you were the one who planned the whole thing, Kate," I drawled. "Did you really think I'd never find out?"

"Actually, I thought someone would take care of Cormac for me," she admitted. "He is rather annoying, it seemed likely that one of the clan elders would order him destroyed."

"Imagine your surprise when he turned up in Salem," I said dryly.

"Yes, imagine." She smiled and it sent chills up my spine. "I really wonder why you haven't killed him, Eliza. You hate Kindred, remember?"

"I love him," I told her simply. "Not that you know what love is. If it weren't for you, we would have been married a long time ago. We would have been able to raise Corrine, maybe had other children. You took my life."

"I can find you a man if you want children, Eliza," she offered. "Any number of men would do. All you had to do was ask."

"There will be no more children." Mac was the only man I'd want them from and it was way too late for that now. "Are you ready, Kate?"

"Do you really think you can do this?" she asked. Obviously she thought I couldn't.

I smiled a predator's smile, one I'd learned from her a long time ago. "I really know I can," I told her. I raised the crossbow a little, aiming for her heart.

She finally figured out that I was serious. "Eliza, I'm your mother," she reminded me, holding her hands up as if that would protect her from the quarrel.

I shrugged. "It means less to me than it ever did to you." My finger tightened on the trigger.

"Don't you want to know about your father?" she asked pleadingly, trying to buy time.

Too bad, I wasn't selling any. "Whatever you tell me would just be a lie anyway," I told her. "I just want you to know that you were the worst mother I could imagine, Kate."

Before she could say anything more I squeezed the trigger. An expression of sheer surprise flashed across her face before the wooden quarrel pierced her heart and she fell back onto the couch.

Of course, that was only half the battle. Now I just had to remove her head to make sure she was completely destroyed forever. For a moment I stood looking down at her, remembering how the little girl I'd once been had once looked up to this woman.

I shook those thoughts away and smiled grimly. Kate had never been a real mother to me. I only had two things to be grateful for from her: teaching me how to use my abilities and not letting me die when I was a teenager. The fact that she caused Mac's death and had gone after Corrine cancelled out both of those debts as far as I was concerned.

Abruptly I realized that I could feel a vamp near the door of the apartment. I could hear someone with the Kindred, but it wasn't a vamp. I was pretty sure it was Mac, but I quickly loaded the crossbow, aimed it at the door and waited just in case.

Then I heard a familiar voice. "Eliza?"

I breathed a sigh of relief. "Mac?"

"I'm coming in." The door swung open slowly, and I let the crossbow fall to my side as he entered the room.

"That was pretty quick," I murmured. I was going to call him, but he'd shown up before I could. When Glenn walked in behind him holding the crossbow case, I realized how he'd found me so fast.

"I couldn't wait," I told Mac as he moved into the room toward the couch.

"You can't kill her," he said sternly, coming to a stop between Kate and me.

I couldn't? "Are you trying to tell me what to do again?" I asked harshly.

"If you value your life and Corrine's and mine," he told me, looking deadly serious, "you can't kill her."

"What's going on?" I demanded. Something bad must have happened or he would never have interfered.

"The clan wants her," he said. "It's not every day they get a fifteenth generation Kindred."

How the hell had they found that out? If they knew that, they probably knew everything, including what I was. "And what are they going to do with her?"

"Study her." He sighed. "They know everything, Eliza."

There was no way this could be good. "How'd they find out?"

"It wasn't that hard," he said.

I was really confused. "Doesn't that violate the contract?" No one was supposed to check into my background, that was part of the contract.

He sighed. "Given the phone conversation I had recently with Ford," he said, "the contract is probably already ash."

The contract burned? It hardly seemed likely that the clan would let me go that way, unless they had an ulterior motive. "I don't know if that's a good thing or not," I breathed softly.

"No, it's not," he assured me. "You can't kill her."

Like he could stop me. "How do I know that they're not going to mess with us anyway if the contract is ash?" I demanded.

"If you kill her the contract will definitely be ash," he warned. "It may or may not be now. It wasn't a very pleasant phone conversation. Or the most intelligent," he added wryly.

"On your part or his?" Glenn asked. I'd forgotten he was even in the room. "And who are we talking about, anyway?"

"Ford Radek, Duke of Wales," Mac replied.

Glenn seemed surprised. "Like to mess with the big guys, do ya?"

"Only when they threaten me," Mac told him, still looking at me.

"What are we supposed to do with her if we can't kill her?" I asked. I wasn't about to let her go. If I did she'd run and I'd probably never be able to find her again. I couldn't live with that, not with the danger she would be to Corrine.

"Turn her over to the clan."

"And what if they've already burned the contract?" I demanded. "Then we just walk right into the spider's web." Without the contract they could do whatever they wanted to me, and to my daughter. Not that I wanted anything to happen to Mac either, but the contract didn't mention him.

"You needn't be here," he told me. "Corrine is someplace safe, Glenn can take you to her and you'll be safe as well."

My safety wasn't the only thing I was concerned about. I didn't think I could survive if I lost Mac again. "What about you?"

He smiled at me sadly. "I need to face the clan."

The Tremere, the most tightly knit of all the Kindred clans. "How do we know we can trust them?" What was I thinking? "Wait, I know we can't trust them."

"We really don't have much choice, Eliza," he reminded me. He was right and I knew it; if he turned away his clan he'd be hunted down and killed. I didn't like it, but I understood.

Behind Mac I saw a shadow of a movement. I hadn't felt any vamps besides Mac, but with him there I was more concerned about hunters so I pointed the crossbow in that direction. In a fluid motion, Mac pulled both of his guns and half turned to point one at me and the other behind him. I might have been offended if he hadn't been looking the other way.

Mac was fast, but I was faster. I fired the crossbow before he could bring his guns up all the way. The quarrel sped across the room and into the chest of the man who had been trying to climb through the window. It went through his body and impaled him against the window frame.

As Mac lowered his guns, I walked around him toward the body. As a crossbow fell from his hand, I realized that it was Gerome, from St. Stephen's. I cursed under my breath.

"Isn't that Gerome?" Mac asked softly.

"It was," I replied, checking for a pulse. There wasn't one and I cursed again. Gerome had been annoying, but he'd been a friend, in a strange and twisted way. He'd counted on me to cover his back and he'd covered mine more than once. Hell, I'd saved him from that damned werewolf a week ago and now I'd just killed him myself.

Instead of mourning the loss of a friend, I found myself hoping he hadn't called St. Stephen's before he'd tried to come in the window. I'd told Mac that he couldn't endanger my standing at St. Stephen's, and here I'd done it myself. There was nothing I could do about it now but close his eyes, take care of the body and hope I didn't get busted.

I turned to Mac. "So what are we doing?"

"I'm calling the clan," he told me. He put one of his guns away and took out his cell phone, calling what I assumed was the chantry and asking for Ford. When the ghoul put him on hold, Mac looked at Glenn. "Get her out of here," he said roughly.

I rolled my eyes. "Didn't we have this conversation?" I asked impatiently. I was damned tired of him treating me like I didn't have any free will. I went over to where Glenn had sat down the crossbow case and put it away.

"You don't want to be here when the clan arrives," he told me.

What about him? "I don't want you here alone either."

"I'm not," he said with a wry smile. "I have—"

"Kate to keep you company," I finished with him. Very funny.

"Cormac," I heard Ford say through the receiver at Mac's ear.

Mac turned his attention to the phone. "I have Kate," he said bluntly.

"Where are you?" Ford demanded. When Mac gave him the name of the street he repeated it and said something to someone else.

While he was waiting for Ford to finish talking to the other person, Mac looked pointedly from Glenn to me, then at the door. I ignored him and turned away. I wasn't ready to leave. Hell, he didn't own me.

I walked over and sat down on the arm of the couch to look down at Kate. She'd been the start of every bad thing in my life, but somehow I pitied what her life would be like from now on. The Tremere like to study things.

"I trust that Prudence is in satisfactory condition," Ford drawled a moment later. Yes, I was still listening. I wanted to make sure Mac didn't paint himself into a corner.

"Aside from the stake sticking out of her heart," Mac replied, "she appears unscathed."

Technically it was a crossbow bolt, but who was I to correct him?

"Very good. Someone is on the way, I trust you'll be staying on site until someone gets there." That sounded more like an order than a question.

"Of course."

"And how is the mole?"

For real now, I was surprised he'd asked about me, but Mac didn't seem to be. "Unharmed."

I stared down at my impaled mother and wondered if that was really true.

"Ah," Ford replied, "it is fortunate given that the contract is still in effect. So far."

So I was still a slave to the clan. Well, better that than a bug under a microscope somewhere.

"Yes," Mac murmured.

"Will you be returning with Prudence," Ford asked, "or gallivanting off somewhere?"

"Jax is on his way to Boston with the plane to meet us," Mac told him. "The mission I set out on is completed. There are a few other personal matters I would like to attend to if it is allowable."

"What kind of personal matters?"

"I would like to visit or at least look in on my parents," he said, surprising me. He'd never mentioned doing that to me.

"Your parents are still alive?" Sounded like he'd surprised Ford too. "Where?"

"Galway, Ireland."

"You're asking permission to go there?"

"Yes."

"Found your manners, haven't you?" Ford drawled, sounding quite smug.

"I apologize, Lord Radek," Mac said respectfully. "It was a rather stressful situation."

"Yes it was," he agreed coolly, "but it does not give you leave to speak to your superior in that manner."

"I beg your forgiveness, my lord."

If I wasn't so worried about his safety, I might have been amused by his begging. As it was, I didn't find it the least bit funny.

"We will have to see if your behavior continues during your stay in Salem," Ford told him sternly. "If it does, we'll have to take steps to correct that behavior. As I said, someone is on the way. Will the mole be accompanying you or returning to her duties at the Cenaculum?"

"She was given another week off both from the Inquisition house and from the prince," Mac reminded him. "I will not be forcing her to do either."

"Has she been of assistance to you in returning your memory?"

"Quite."

"Do you believe that she will continue to be of assistance?"

"Yes."

"Then I suppose there is no harm in her accompanying you, for now," he replied. I wondered why Ford cared so much about Mac's memory.

"Thank you."

"If that is all?" Ford's voice sounded bored now, as if he had more important things to do and wanted to be off doing them.

"Of course," Mac said politely.

"Good evening, young Cormac," Ford said before breaking the connection.

Mac hung up the phone and turned to me. "Will you be waiting for the clan or meeting me later?" he asked, then looked at Glenn. "Or going elsewhere?"

I looked pointedly at Glenn. "Well, it'd be really nice to know where Corrine is." He wasn't hiding behind a ward now, I could get to him and I would hurt him if he didn't tell me where she was.

He threw up his hands in defeat. "Okay, okay," he said, half-laughing. He didn't seem to notice that Mac and I were so not amused. "You don't have to hurt me. You want to go now, or later?"

I stood up and walked toward Mac. "Now would be really good," I told Glenn. "Actually, about noon would have been better."

He grinned. "I told you there was a big 'no vampires' sign above the door," he reminded me. "I forgot to mention the whole 'no ghouls' thing underneath it."

Once again I was not amused, my hand still hurt from the shock of touching the doorbell. I reached Mac's side as Glenn pulled out a small drum and began chanting. For the first time I noticed that Mac was still wearing the burned pants he'd been wearing last night and that his leg still looked raw.

"Aren't you gonna heal that?" I asked softly, gesturing toward his leg.

"I'm trying to," he said irritably. "I don't heal that quickly." He had his gun in one hand and his phone in the other, making it impossible for me to get the hug I so desperately needed from him.

"Are you expecting trouble?" I asked.

He seemed distracted. "Hmm?"

"Are you expecting trouble?" I repeated. "The trouble is staked, in two locations." I didn't think anyone else would be bursting in on our little party.

"You never know what might happen," he replied. "Has anyone accounted for Simon?"

Kate's ghoul. "I have no idea." I hadn't thought to ask, but if he were around, you'd think he would have stopped me from shooting his mistress.

At that moment, Mac's phone rang; it was Christina.

"You're keeping me busy," she told him. "I'm on my way down. You know, I was occupied," she added.

"I didn't ask for you to come," he reminded her.

"Yeah well, you know," she murmured. "When they say jump, we say how high."

"After a fashion."

"Yeah, whatever." She sounded like she thought he was joking with her.

"Oh, you didn't hear?" he asked.

"Not really," she replied. "I heard a few minor things, but nothing real. Why?"

"Ah, long story."

"Have you heard our long story?"

"No," he replied. "I haven't talked to anyone long enough to."

"Well, you got Prudence, and last night Rafe got Simon," she told him. "There was a real pretty pattern on the wall afterwards."

"Head shot?"

"Point blank," she confirmed.

"Mmm, good puppy," he murmured as he put his gun away.

"Yeah, he took care of that matter, so it looks like everything is wrapping up."

"As it were," he agreed.

"I'd still like to know why they're so hot for Prudence," she murmured, "but I'm sure I'll find out if they want me to. Any ideas?"

He smiled. "You'll find out if they want you to."

"Uh-huh. Well I'm on my way as we speak," she told him. "I just wanted to let you know so you knew who to expect."

"I will be here," he assured her. After they'd said their good-byes, he looked pointedly at me. "I said goodbye."

"Yeah, well you didn't say goodbye to me last night," I reminded him, "or this morning, or whatever." Days kind of get confused when you live at night.

Mac just looked at me innocently as he put his phone away, but I wasn't buying it.

"You did not," I told him firmly. "Don't give me that look." I shook my head and walked into his arms with a sigh. It felt good to be able to lean on his strength again. "This has not been a good day," I sighed.

"Tell me about it," he murmured against my hair.

"Yeah, well, you slept through most of it." I was the one who'd been running around all day looking for Corrine.

"For all the good it did me," he muttered.

"It didn't do me much good either." I closed my eyes and finally let go of the urgency I'd been feeling since I woke up and found Corrine gone.

A few minutes later I saw the gateway open from the corner of my eye and I looked up at Mac. "That's my cue," I said sadly. I wanted to make sure Corrine was all right, but I didn't want to leave him.

"That's my home town," he told me, looking through the gateway.

"Oh, yay," I breathed. "Siofra's there, isn't she?"

"Yes."

"Well, I guess I'll go before more vampires show up," I said wryly.

"It's just Christina," he replied as if that made a difference.

I shook my head. "I've had my fill of Kindred tonight, thank you."

"I take offense to that," he said playfully.

"Well I haven't staked you," I answered smiling.

"Yet," he added. "There's always tomorrow night."

"We have a week." Seven nights until we had to part ways.

He nodded toward the gateway. "I'll be there in a day or two."

That would be a day or two too long. "You're just going to leave me there with your sister?"

"And Glenn and Bobby and Jared," he added, looking to Glenn for confirmation. When Glenn nodded, he continued, "and Corrine, and Cora and my parents."

I wasn't sure about meeting them, what if they didn't like me? I'd have to deal with that when it came up. "Well, I guess I'll see ya when I see ya."

"I'll be there," he promised.

I hugged him one last time and he kissed the top of my head. I turned and looked at Glenn warningly. "Behave," I told him as I picked up the crossbow case.

He tried to look innocent, but I wasn't buying it. I just had to trust that he wouldn't hurt Mac. It was hard for me to walk through the gateway and leave the two of them like that, but if I wanted to make sure Corrine was safe I had to do it.

I walked through the portal without looking back.