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

Wounded Hearts

There is no sound more bittersweet than 'Amazing Grace' played on the bagpipes. The song always makes me think of Baltimore and the man I loved there. Why had Kendall chosen to play that particular sound at the opening of his nightclub?

I stared off into the crowd and tried to ignore the tingle at the base of my spine telling me that there were too many vampires too close to me. I knew they were there, hell Kendall was a vamp, not to mention the thirty or so others in the room. I tried not to think back to when I would sooner slay a vamp than stand in the same room with one, but the music took me there.

I guess part of my problem was that I'd seen someone the night before who had reminded me so much of my lover that for a moment I'd thought it was him. I'd almost chased the car down to see, but then I reminded myself that I was supposed to be out hunting changelings, not chasing down ghosts from my past.

The final notes of the song faded away into the dark corners of the room and I was surprised to find tears on my face. I turned away from the crowd and wiped them away, pissed at myself. Did I really want to share my pain with fifty damn vamps?

Wait a minute, fifty?

I looked around the room, my hand already reaching for one of the stakes at my back. There were at least fifty vamps in the room, maybe more. I was born with the ability to feel vampires around me, but now there were so many of them I couldn't really tell who was human and who wasn't.

I backed away from the ring in the center of the room toward the entrance and Ford Radek. Somebody else could protect the prince, I'd protect the vamp that more or less signed my paycheck. If Ford were destroyed, Corrine would be in danger and there was no way I'd ever let that happen. Besides, I owed him for letting me come to Salem after I'd killed the Tremere Regent in Burlington a few months ago.

Suddenly a tall vamp in a suit called out near the center ring. I didn't listen to what he said, I was more concerned with identifying exactly who was Kindred and which ones weren't supposed to be there.

Halfway to Ford's table I felt a vamp behind me and a hand fell on my shoulder. I turned, barely stopping myself from lashing out with the stake in my hand. It was Radek himself, and he looked very worried.

"Follow me," he said quietly.

Without a word, I did. We moved slowly through the crowd to the center ring and stood silently waiting for an opportunity to do something. It was easier for me to tell who was friend and who was foe there because I knew who usually hung out with the prince.

At a signal from Ford, I attacked the nearest bad guy, and I wasn't the only one. The room rang out with gunshots and the sound of fighting. Since coming to Salem I hadn't had much of a chance to kill Kindred, mostly because the prince was Tremere and she frowned on indiscriminate killing of other clans. Tonight more than made up for it.

After a quarter of a century of fighting and killing vamps, it's kind of instinctual for me now. In a battle like this I'm like a fighting machine, spinning and kicking and striking out with whatever I can get my hands on. When I'm fighting, it's like the whole world goes away and I'm only left with one thing: knowing I'm gonna win and they're gonna lose. I like the way that feels.

At one point I was midway through an attack with a stake when I pulled back before just short of the target's chest. Sarah Hamilton, the prince's grandchilde, looked back at me with startled eyes, but when I didn't stake her, she nodded and moved away. I threw my last stake at the back of the vamp that went after her and he fell to the ground, frozen.

It's not like what the stories say, staking a vampire doesn't destroy it, but it does put it out of action. Stake a Kindred through the heart and it can't move so much as a muscle. It's pretty handy if you think about it, peg a vamp and set it out to see the sunrise, then sit back for the fire show. Even better if its awake when you stake it, then it gets to watch the sun come up and feel every painful moment as it burns alive.

Large hands grabbed me from behind, but I spun quickly and backhanded the fiend across the face. I kicked him in the stomach and he fell back a little, but when I reached for a stake to pin him with, I came up empty.

"Harrow!" I heard from my left, and turned just in time to catch a stake that Micky George had tossed to me. Micky was the prince's childe, and Sarah's sire.

I spun and plunged the stake into the vamp's heart before he could block the blow. He fell to my feet and I knew he wouldn't get up again unless someone pulled the wood from his heart. I bent to cut off its head with the large knife I always carried. When I was done, I wiped the blade on the remains of its clothing.

A part of my mind was disappointed that the fight had ended so quickly with so few Kindred dead. That's what the vamps call themselves, Kindred. It's ironic really; I've never seen a bigger bunch of back-stabbers in all my life. I hated that I had to deal with them, but the advantages far outweighed the consequences of disobedience.

Yeah, I said disobedience. Ford had a blood contract that he and I had signed which made me agree me to spy for them within the Society of Leopold. That's just a fancy name for the Inquisition, they kill anything preternatural they can get their hands on. The Tremere used me to get intel about the Society's movements and information. They paid good for it, not that I ever saw any of the money.

I'd always hated vamps, hated every second of working for them, but every once in a while I got to dust a few of them, and that almost made it worth it. The real reason I stuck to the contract was working elsewhere in the city.

The main room of the club was pretty much ruined by the bad guys. They were Sabbat, the black hats of Kindred society. They'd attacked Guilty Pleasures as part of their effort to kill the prince and take over the city, but lucky for us we'd been able to fend them off. As much as I hated vamps I had to admit that Elvira, the prince, was good at protecting humans from her kind. The Sabbat don't protect people, they swallow them whole.

I had gotten a job at the club to scout it out for the Society. 'Oh what a tangled web' and all that jazz. I had to pick and choose what I told my superiors, but better me working here than some poor slob that really believed vamps are agents of the devil himself. I just knew they were evil, and I'd been killing them for a long time.

Clean up began and I found myself carrying bodies, human and otherwise, to a pile near the stairs. Vamp bodies usually break down pretty quickly, and a few other guys were pulling out mops to clean that mess up.

"Excuse me," I heard a deep voice say behind me.

I turned from my study of the ruined room, a little startled that the dark haired man had approached me without notice. Not many beings could do that, but then again maybe I'd been distracted by the feel of so many vamps in one room. "Yeah?"

The man wore a priest's outfit complete with a large cross that hung low on his chest. I didn't recognize him, but something about him seemed kinda familiar. I knew in that first instant he was a werewolf, and I had to wonder if I'd killed one of his pack mates since I'd come to Salem. I didn't like hunting werewolves, but it was part of my job at the Society. Sometimes it really is kill or be killed, no matter what you want to believe.

"I'm sorry to intrude," he said politely with a heavy Irish brogue that seemed familiar. "I am Brother Stephen Brennan, and I believe you know my uncle, Cormac Brennan."

At the very mention of Mac's name, the room spun around me. For an instant, I was thrown back into the past to a happy time in my life. Mac had talked with that same accent, but not as heavy as the one the werewolf used. Mac had come to Baltimore from Ireland, looking for a new life. He'd found me, then death had found him.

"I knew him," I replied, forcing myself to focus on the present. I held the grief that burned in my chest close to my heart. It had been almost twenty years since the vamps of Baltimore had come for Mac and me, nearly that long since I had resigned myself to his death.

"I believe he would be interested in seeing you again," he told me softly.

"That would be kinda hard," I stated softly, hiding the pain that his words caused me. "You know he's been dead for years."

"I believe you are mistaken," he told me. "I spoke with him only last night."

I shook my head, wondering if this priest was a figment of my tormented imagination. Had I spent too many years longing for my late fiancé? "Mac Brennan is dead," I told him flatly. "He's been dead for a long time."

The priest gave me a strange look. "I spoke with him," he repeated firmly. "He is not dead."

"That's impossible," I said stubbornly. Hell, I'd watched him die and not been able to stop it.

"Excuse me," one of the Tremere servants I recognized as Sam said to Stephen, "Elvira says you are needed downstairs, they're back. The fastest way down is probably through the pit."

The priest turned to me. "Will you be around?"

I didn't answer, I was still stunned by the memories of my dead lover and Stephen's insistence that he was still alive. I had to be imagining the priest, you know? Either that or he was insane. Mac couldn't possibly be alive, he couldn't. He would have met me on the mountain almost twenty years ago if he'd lived through the attack.

When I didn't say anything, Brother Stephen smiled a strange smile. "Wait here."

"Right here?" I raised an eyebrow at him and pointed toward the floor. "I don't plan on going anywhere, I am working," I reminded him wryly. "But I won't be right here."

Still smiling oddly he turned to follow the guard and I went back to cleaning up.

A little while later, I knelt carefully to pick up large pieces of glass from the floor and lay them on a tray. The room was a disaster, and I knew it would take a few days to get it back into shape before the owner could reopen the place. The black hats had definitely put a damper on his grand opening when they'd attacked.

As I worked, I felt the shift of Kindred in and around the room. I wasn't too worried about them being close by, but I tried to keep tabs on the number of them in the room. I didn't expect the Sabbat to come back, but then again you never know.

I had just finished cleaning up the glass within reach of me when I heard someone call my name. I glanced up and saw that the monk had returned.

"Brother Stephen," I said as I lifted the tray and rose to my feet. "Did you—"

My voice broke suddenly when I saw the man who stood next to the priest. My body lost all feeling and I dropped the tray and its burden to the floor, not even feeling the small slivers of glass that dug into my skin. Was I dreaming? Hallucinating?

"Eliza," the man said in greeting, his voice bringing long buried feelings to the surface of my mind.

He was tall and very handsome in a form-fitting tuxedo, the shirt and vest of which looked hastily buttoned over his muscular chest. His dark hair and handsome face were familiar to me, as familiar as my own. I'd missed that face every day for years with a longing that even now was hard for me to put aside.

I felt my lips move around his name but I couldn't make a sound. Standing before me was Mac Brennan, the man I'd once agreed to marry, the man I'd thought dead for so many years, and he looked exactly the same as he had the last time I'd seen him. Or he would have if it weren't for the cold expression on his once beloved face.

Abruptly I realized why he looked so much the same; he was dead, or rather, he was a vampire. There were so many Kindred in the room that at first I hadn't noticed the vamp vibes coming off of him. This wasn't a dream, it was a freaking nightmare. I staggered back and fell into one of the chairs behind me. I could only stare at him in amazement, remembering Dougal Galloway's teeth in his throat.

The vamp that had once been the man I loved glanced at the werewolf beside him. "Has Stephen told you of my current condition?"

"No," I whispered, then cleared my throat and said louder, "but I can guess."

He nodded, watching me closely. "As a side condition I have amnesia."

"That explains why you didn't meet me in West Virginia." I doubt anything else short of death would have kept him away, even if he had been embraced. We'd made a pact to meet there if anything happened to separate us, and I knew he would have held to it at all costs if he could have. Still, somehow I almost envied the peace he must have felt the last twenty years not knowing what we'd lost.

"On the mountain top," he added.

Suspicion rose inside me but I tried to keep my face blank. "Didn't you just say that you had amnesia?"

"I have had a few dreams of you. My memory has started returning somewhat," he explained calmly. "It has been jogged in the past few days."

Stephen stepped back to give us privacy as I asked, "So you didn't remember me at all?" That hurt a lot more than I expected it to; I'd like to think there was no way I'd forget him, no matter what happened. I'd sure tried hard enough, hadn't I?

"Not who or what you were to me," he told me, stepping a little closer.

I'd have pulled a stake on him if I'd had one. I normally didn't let vamps get close to me, too many of them had tried to bite me. Unfortunately, I'd used all my stakes in the big fight.

"I was recently involved in a ritual which took me to an alternate dimension, and caused the memory jogging. I met the alternate Eliza," he said quietly. "The Eliza of the other world. It appears that their reality was not much different than ours. Cormac and Eliza were married. She is a hunter."

He stood there looking at me expectantly, as if he thought I should admit to him that I was a hunter. For all that I had loved him years ago, he was a damned vamp now, one of the things I hated most in this world. How had that happened? I'd seen him die, hadn't I?

"She is," I murmured, nodding that I understood. I really had been a hunter, a long time ago. Now I was a Kindred mole just pretending to be a hunter. Funny how much things change. "And what are you in that other world?"

"He was a mage."

Of course, some things didn't change. "So you're saying that you never died," I stated calmly, even though my heart was pounding. "They got married as planned, had the two point five kids, white picket fence…?"

"No children," he said sadly, "no white picket fence, but married, yes."

I looked away from him to hide the bitterness of my thoughts while I slid from the chair to pick up the tray I'd dropped and the glass that once again littered the floor. I could feel the tiny cuts on my ankles but I didn't let them bother me. That minor pain was nothing compared to seeing Mac and knowing what he'd turned into. Cormac now, I corrected myself. He wasn't the Mac I'd loved anymore. He hadn't been Mac for a long time.

As I reached for the first large piece of glass, I realized that Cormac had also bent down and was helping me. Vamps don't help ghouls, and that's what most of them thought I was. I watched him for a moment, still unable to really believe that he was here and, in some ways, alive. The irony of the situation nearly overwhelmed me; when he was human we'd hunted the undead together, now he was one of the monsters.

I wondered if I really had seen him the night before in a car full of vamps. At the time I'd thought it was a figment of my imagination, but now I wasn't so sure. After a moment I gave myself a mental shake and went back to cleaning up my mess.

Within minutes we had the glass piled back on the tray. I stood with the tray in my hands and sat it down on a nearby table. I tucked my hair behind my ear and looked out over the room, unsure what to say to what had once been the man I'd loved.

"Why did you never come looking for me?" he asked. I thought I saw pain in his eyes, pain that matched the agony in my soul as I remembered the awful night I learned he was dead.

"I thought you were dead," I told him painfully. "They came in the night and…." I couldn't go on, even after all this time the hurt was too fresh. Most of the time I did my best not to live in the 'might have been,' but it was hard not to think about it with him standing in front of me.

"They?"

"They."

"They who?" he prompted. I could tell by the tone of his voice that my evasions were irritating him.

"The vamps in Baltimore," I said flatly. I couldn't bring myself to tell him exactly what happened, the pain still cut too deep. "Kate got me out, but she told me you were dead. We were supposed to meet in West Virginia if we were ever separated like that but you never showed."

"What were we doing in Baltimore?" He seemed genuinely interested, and I couldn't help but wonder why. He didn't remember the past and maybe that was for the best. He was a vamp, you know? We could never have what we'd lost, ever.

"Things we apparently weren't supposed to be doing." What good would it do either of us for me to tell him about it now? Why bring all that pain up again?

"Could you be any more vague?"

I tried not to smile; his impatience was exactly as I remembered. Then my humor faded. He was very different; damn, he was a monster now. "We were trying to get info on them and they didn't like it. They wanted us out of the city's Kindred politics, and they got it. They got us out of it."

"What do you know of Dougal Galloway?"

I closed my eyes briefly, pushing aside a vision of the Kindred feeding from my lover. "He… was involved. What to you know of him?"

"He is my sire," Cormac told me slowly. "Or, was my sire."

"He's dead?"

"He is now."

I wanted to say something about the justice of his sire's death, but decided against it. Who knew what twisting Dougal had done to Cormac's mind and attitude? Still, I was happy he'd been destroyed; it saved me from doing a bit of hunting to find and kill him myself.

"Who was Dougal to us?" Cormac asked.

"The Enemy." My voice was cold, harsh even.

"What was I?"

For the first time I thought about what a lack of identity would have been like for him. Living for years not knowing what he had been, who he had loved, what he had lost. Maybe it wouldn't have been such a good thing.

I sighed. "You were a mage," I told him, my voice and face devoid of expression. "We were trying to work with others of your kind to get the vamps out of Baltimore. We didn't get very far."

"What others?"

To pacify him, I gave him the names of a few people who had been killed in the raid. He fell silent for a few minutes then shifted so he could see where Stephen stood talking to three of the local werewolves.

"That is my nephew," he told me.

I nodded. "Brother Stephen." Now I remembered Mac telling me about his brother's son, a Metis werewolf that he had been very close to when he'd lived in Ireland.

"Yes," he murmured, "Brother Stephen-Seeks-the-Truth."

Once again he watched me for a reaction. Did he wonder if I knew what Stephen was? Like I couldn't read it as if it were tattooed on his forehead? I just smiled coolly and said nothing.

"Would you like to, ah…."

Whatever he'd been about to say was interrupted by Elvira, the Kindred prince of Salem.

"Let's go, people," she said loudly. "The pack is at Mother Abigail's down on Park Street."

My mind froze. "Mother Abigail's?" I repeated in a breathless voice that bordered on hysteria. Corrine was at Mother Abigail's, she volunteered there on Friday nights. Corrine was my sole reason for living, the only motivation I had to work for the Kindred.

My mind went numb and my only thought was for my daughter's safety. "Corrine is there," I told Cormac urgently. "We can't let anything happen to her."

"Who is Corrine?" he asked, his voice level.

This was something I hadn't had time to think about. Should I tell him about our child? If I did, maybe he would help me protect her. "She's my daughter, Cormac," I told him simply. "Our daughter."

He looked stunned.

"We have to go, now," I said urgently.

We had turned for the exit when Elvira's voice rang out again.

"Just one thing," she said firmly, "I want Roger Campbell, Akari, and Michael Moorecock's body alive. I don't care how, just do it and kill the rest of the pack. Bring me their ghouls in chains. And bring me the teeth of the Brujah," she added as an afterthought.

I didn't know what the hell she was talking about and I didn't care. As long as my daughter was safe she could do whatever she wanted with the Sabbat pack. If Corrine died, I would kill every vamp I could before they took me down.