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

Stakes and Agony

I climbed the rickety stairs to my apartment carefully. I locked the door behind me and ripped off my ruined shirt, flinging it onto the counter near the sink. Grabbing a kitchen towel that was so worn that it was nearly a rag I pressed it against the wound on my shoulder. It wasn't bleeding very much anymore, but I wanted to stop it before I tried sewing the cut up.

Feeling that I needed some music to match my black mood, I paused at the radio on my way into the bathroom to put on something with depressing lyrics. I pulled the alcohol, needle and thread from the nearly empty medicine cabinet above the sink and cleaned out the wound. Gritting my teeth, I pulled the edged of the wound together and started to sew. I left the water running so that I could wash the blood away from the gash as I went.

After only two stitches, I sensed a change in the apartment. I cocked my head to listen and reached for the knife at my hip. Not turning off the faucet, I stepped behind the door and waited for some sign of the intruder's identity. The tingling at the base of my spine told me that it was a vamp, but the only stake in the room was on the other side of the open door. All I had was a silver knife; I had to be very careful if I wanted to live through the next few minutes.

A few minutes later the radio fell silent. I heard a footstep, and tried to slow my breathing. The intruder approached the door and pushed slowly open. I lifted my leg and kicked the door hard. It slammed against the vamp and drove him back into the bedroom.

Before I could go for the stake, I heard Cormac call my name.

"Son of a bitch," I murmured angrily, but all of the tension ran out of me. Cormac may be a blood-sucking fiend, but I didn't think he was there to kill me. I stepped back to the sink and sat the knife down on its edge. I turned the water off and wiped my sweaty hands on a clean corner of the blood soaked towel lying there.

"Are you all right?" Cormac asked from the bedroom.

"What do you care?" I asked harshly, pissed that he'd found my apartment and invaded the one place I'd thought safe from intrusion. "I'm a half-breed hunter, remember? I'm just you're ticket to getting your memory back, and don't think I don't know that."

I heard him step toward the door of the bathroom. "May I help you?"

"Can you sew?" I barked harshly. My body was prepped with adrenaline for a fight, and I was having a difficult time calming down from the scare he'd given me.

"Yes." His voice was still calm and it irritated the hell out of me.

I didn't know if I could handle him touching me with his cold Kindred hands. "I've got it."

The door behind me swung open and I could see him behind me in the mirror. I glanced at my reflection and had to stop myself from wincing. My hair was pulled back carelessly at the nape of my neck, and there were dark circles under my eyes. I looked like I hadn't been eating or sleeping, probably because I wasn't doing much of either one. I was too pissed at the time to be worried about being half-naked in front of him.

I turned to look at him. "What do you want?" I demanded.

"To help you," he replied.

I didn't like the sincerity I saw in his eyes. Did he really care what happened to me? Monsters don't care about half-breeds or hunters and he'd said it himself, I was both.

I turned back to the sink and picked up the needle and thread that still hung from my skin. I pulled the sides of the wound together but when I tried to insert the needle in my flesh, I found that my hand was shaking too badly for me to continue. I dropped the needle and put my hands on both sides of the sink, bowing my head in an effort to control myself. If the bastard had hit me with a knife instead of his claws, I could have healed it, but this kind of wound had to heal the hard way.

"May I try?" Cormac asked.

I stiffened and looked at him in the mirror. He was standing right behind me. "I guess," I said reluctantly, knowing that the wound had to be taken care of soon but not sure if I'd be able to do it myself. Picking the needle back up, I turned around and handed it to him. He took it in silence and proceeded to gently and carefully stitch the wound closed.

The needle burned where it pierced my skin, feeling a lot like fangs sinking into my flesh. The coldness of his fingers reminded me of the dungeon in Burlington and it took every ounce of will I had to stand still until he was finished and had snipped the loose thread. By the time he was done I had thirteen stitches in my shoulder.

I grabbed the bloody towel and wiped futilely at the blood on my chest as I walked past him into the bedroom. Somehow I hoped the towel would wipe away the memory of his hands on me too, but it didn't. I went to the closet and took out a clean, worn towel, then returned to the bathroom. Cormac shadowed my steps.

"Did you know the Garou?" he asked as I rinsed out the bloody kitchen towel.

"No," I said, impressed by the calmness of my voice, "he just interrupted my date." I didn't ask how he knew a werewolf had caused my wound; Tremere are famous for their blood magic, and he'd certainly touched my blood while he was sewing me up.

I didn't expect him to chuckle at my comment, but he did. "So a strange werewolf just attacked you?"

I glanced at him in the mirror. "I wouldn't put it that way."

"What way would you put it?"

"Gerome did start it," I admitted as I began cleaning the blood from my upper body.

Cormac stood to one side and watched me. "And Gerome is?"

"He works at St. Stephen's."

"A hunter," he said softly.

"Isn't that what I said?" I tried to be careful around the wound, but no matter how careful I was, it hurt.

"The werewolf," Cormac asked, "how did Gerome start this?"

I winced. "I believe when you walk up to someone and say 'You fucking dog, die,' it tends to piss most Garou off," I told him wryly.

"And how many pieces is Gerome in now?" he asked with a small smile.

"Oh, he's fine," I said, although he wouldn't be when I got my hands on him again. Taunting a Garou was one of the two most stupid things I could think of. Being alone and half-naked with my undead ex-lover was the other. I threw the bloody towel in the sink and reached for the clean one.

"Not for long," Cormac murmured.

I stopped and turned to him, giving him a warning look. "Gerome is fine," I told him firmly, "and will continue to be fine. You will not in any way jeopardize my standing at St. Stephen's." I turned back to the sink and carefully dried my skin. "The Garou is not fine, but he kinda wrecked my shirt, I had to do something," I added quietly. I didn't mention the broken necklace or the fact that it had taken me nearly an hour to find the ring.

"What happened to the Garou?"

"You didn't ask how many pieces he was in," I told him seriously.

I turned and went back into the bedroom, noticing for the first time how my apartment must look to him. The mattress that was my bed lay on the floor by the wall, covered only by a sheet and an old blanket. The pillow didn't entirely hide the large knife I kept beneath it. A loaded crossbow sat propped against the wall within easy reach of the mattress.

The only other items in the room were my radio and the torn poster of Janice Joplin that Kate had somehow salvaged from the ruins of our apartment in Baltimore. I shrugged off the shame I was surprised to feel at my surroundings; what did it matter to him how I lived? I was just a half-breed hunter, wasn't I?

I stopped abruptly on my way to the closet when Cormac took out his jacket and held it out to me. The gesture touched me, but I refused to let myself warm to him. I told myself that he was a monster, that he was only being nice to me to get his memory back.

"I was just going to grab a shirt," I told him.

"Very well," he said as I reached for a gray tee shirt in the closet. "So how many pieces is the Garou in?"

"Three or four, I think," I replied with a shrug. It had taken that much just to kill him.

"Was he one of the city's Garou?" he asked as I pulled the shirt carefully over my head.

I was irritated at his questions, until I remembered that he knew some of Salem's Garou. "No," I assured him. "I'd never seen him before. If he were one of the city's, I wouldn't have hacked him to pieces. Of course, he wouldn't have gotten me, either."

"What tribe?"

"I didn't ask," I replied coolly as I finally got the shirt pulled down. I looked at him. "What do you want?"

"I was checking on you," he told me.

I was surprised. "Checking on me?"

"Some of us are concerned as to your well being," he added.

I had noticed that the straps holding his weapons in his figure-eight holster were undone. "Why would that be?"

"Have you checked your answering machine lately?"

Vaguely I remembered seeing the message light blinking earlier, but I hadn't stopped to listen to them. "Well, I was in a hurry when I came in," I reminded him. "I thought that taking care of a bleeding wound was a little more important."

"For the last five days, Eliza?" He was irritated with me, but I'd been that with him since I'd felt the vamp in my apartment.

"I haven't been here," I said abruptly. I walked into the living room and over to the rusted TV tray that held my phone and answering machine. I forced myself not to look around at the room's other furnishings: the low table that I'd been sharpening stakes at a few days ago, the taped beanbag chair that was the only other piece of furniture in the room, or the padded pole I used to work out on.

The machine showed that I had thirteen messages. The first one was from Cormac.

"I will be leaving town tonight," his voice rang out in the bare room. "I will call you when I arrive in Los Angeles. Have fun at dinner tomorrow night." How had he known about that?

"I was just checking in on you to make sure everything's okay, dear," Kate's message told me. "Give me a call."

"Hi. I just wanted to make sure that you'd be at dinner tonight, I haven't heard from you. Give me a call." Corrine's voice made me smile.

Another message from Cormac. "I am in Los Angeles and hope to be returning to Salem in three or four nights. Did you enjoy your dinner?"

There were two messages in succession from Kate, more or less ordering me to call her. I ignored them.

"Eliza," Corrine's voice pleaded jokingly. "Please give me a call, I want to make sure you're eating." I winced at that one; I knew I should have made more of an effort to eat on Sunday.

"I have just spoken with your mother," Cormac said on his third message. "Please call me as soon as possible."

"Eliza, it's very important that you call me. I know you're angry with me, but it's about Cormac. Call me right away." Kate sounded very upset, she must have called right after Cormac.

The tenth message was another from Corrine. "Eliza, is there something wrong? Please call me."

When I heard Cormac's voice on the eleventh message, I glanced at him. "I'm at Corrine's and I need to talk to you. Call me."

The last two messages were from Kate, alternately ordering and begging me to call her. When the messages were done playing, I hit the erase button.

"Have you talked to Kate in the last few nights?" Cormac asked softly.

"Why?" I retorted.

"Have you?" His took on a harder tone, but I didn't heed the warning.

"Why do you want to know?"

"Yes or no, please," he said firmly, his eyes hard.

I looked away. "I talked to her last night very briefly."

"And?"

"And what?" I asked hotly. "You want a verbatim on the conversation?"

"It would be nice," he told me.

"You're not getting it, sorry," I replied. I turned and walked across the room toward the low table and away from him.

"I suppose I was the main subject," he commented.

"Do you think the world revolves around you?" I scoffed.

"No, but it seems Prudence's world does," he said carefully, watching me for my reaction.

I turned to look at him, confused; if he didn't remember me, how did he know that name? "Prudence's world?"

"Yes," he replied. "That is the name your mother is using."

"Oh, is she using that one?" I pretended unconcern, but in reality I was surprised. What was she doing using my middle name?

"Yes. She has been for at least the past two years," he continued. I could tell from his stance that he even talking about Kate bothered him. "I know this, because I've met her since I was embraced."

I refused to meet his gaze and almost unconsciously bent to pick up one of the stakes that littered the table's surface. I sat down in the beanbag only because I wasn't sure I could keep my feet. Kate hadn't told me that she'd seen him, only that she'd known he was Kindred.

"Your mother knew I was embraced," he told me.

"I know that," I said softly, turning the stake slowly in my hands. A part of me wanted to attack Cormac, to kill him as we'd promised each other so long ago. But for whatever reason, I couldn't bring myself to do it, and I hated myself for that weakness.

"And she told you when?"

"Friday night."

"I believe your mother also knew what was to happen to me," he added.

My eyes shot to his face and my hands stilled on the stake. "Why do you say that?" If Kate had known what they had planned to do to us and not stopped them I would cut her head from her body and never lose a minute of sleep over it.

"In my dream which I saw your mother," he said slowly. "I saw us and the first time I met your mother."

I remembered the morning very clearly. "Could you stop calling her that?"

"Who," he asked, "your mother?"

I closed my eyes. "Please," I whispered. I hated to beg, but I hated hearing Kate called my mother even more.

"Do you remember the conversation when she came to you in the café?" he asked me. "The one I interrupted?"

"In Baltimore," I clarified, remembering. "A few weeks before you died."

"What was she begging you for that you would not listen to?" he inquired.

"What she always begs me for," I told him in a hard voice. "Time. Courtesy she calls it. As if. I still don't know how she tracked me down." I couldn't stop my hands from twirling the stake I held. "Why, what did you see in your dream?"

"I saw that day," he told me. "Why were you afraid for me?"

Abruptly I threw the stake across the room where it embedded in the wall a foot from his head. I hated that this monster remembered our life together. I'd wanted to throw the stake at him, to strike at his heart, but my hand had ignored my will. I comforted myself by knowing that if he really remembered the day he was talking about, he'd know why I'd been afraid.

"Does it matter?" I demanded angrily, standing in a single fluid movement. "That was a long time ago."

"You knew something was going to happen to me," he accused.

"No," I told him, angry and hurt that he would even think that. "I did not know something was going to happen to you." Didn't he know how much I'd loved him? How much it had killed me to watch him die? But then again I guess there was no way he could have known.

"Why were you afraid for me?"

To my relief, it was clear that he didn't remember the entire events of that day, and I wasn't about to fill him in. "Because I didn't want something to happen to you and every time she's around there's trouble."

"And this time when you told me to meet you at your apartment, two weeks later I was abducted," he said coldly. "She knew where I would be."

I shook my head. "We had moved into a new apartment a week before that night," I told him. The apartment we had been attacked in, that he'd died in.

"Prudence has known nearly my every move since she met me two years ago," he growled. "She's watching me now, who is to say she wasn't watching me then? As I'm sure you've gleaned from her, she has no good thoughts toward me. She wishes me dead now, who is to say she did not wish me dead then?"

I crossed my arms and looked at him calmly, almost amused at his words. "Are you trying to make me hate her?" I asked in an even voice.

"She never approved of our relationship, Eliza," he reminded me.

"'Cause if you're trying for that," I continued, my voice growing hard as granite, "you're years too late."

"I'm trying to open your eyes," he replied coolly.

"I know exactly what that woman is," I bit out.

"Then why do you put up with her?"

I could see that he really didn't understand. I sighed heavily and turned away from the accusation in his gaze. "I don't have a choice," I told him in a tired voice. "It's part of the agreement."

"And that agreement is?"

His question lit the fire of my anger yet again. "None of your damn business," I shot back. "What do you want?"

I watched something in his eyes die. "Nothing," he said simply. Without another word, he turned and walked toward the now empty doorway of the apartment. The door was lying on top of the broken table on the floor.

"You want to pick up the door on the way out?" I yelled after him, unwilling to admit the pain I felt at the look on his face. He didn't reply, just continued out of the apartment and down the steps.

I stalked to the bedroom and turned the music back on before I allowed myself to think about what had just happened. Why hadn't I staked him? Why hadn't I fulfilled the vow we'd made to each other twenty years ago?

Despite myself, I walked to the window and looked down into the parking lot. Cormac stood next to a dark sedan talking on a cell phone and looking up at me. I moved away quickly only to pace the room restlessly.

I knew I should go after him, kill him for the monster he was. But even more compelling than that was the need I felt to call him back, to beg him for another chance. I didn't understand how I could feel that way toward him when he was a vamp now. Yes, I had loved him once, but didn't that love now require that I put him out of his misery? Or did I simply want to make things easier for myself by getting him out of my life before I found out how much I still loved him?

That last thought made me stop and think. As much as I hated to admit it, it was wicked obvious that I still cared for him. I guess it didn't matter that he was a monster, I could see enough of the Mac I'd loved in him to stop me from killing him.

I went back to the window and stood staring down at him, thinking about what my life had been like since I had watched him die. Suddenly I remembered some of the things that Kate had returned to me on our trip to Richmond, the drum and the shirt that had once been Mac's. When I saw Cormac put away his phone, I turned the radio off and opened the window.

"Before you go running off into the sunrise," I called down to him, "I've got a couple of things up here of yours if you want them."

"Like?" he replied coldly.

"Things Kate pulled out of the apartment," I replied. "Either you want them or you don't."

"What are they?" he asked.

I shrugged. "Just a couple things, a drum, a shirt." He was already making me regret the offer. "Look, do you want them or not?"

When he started walking slowly toward the steps, I closed the window and went to the closet, quickly pulling out the box and taking it to the table in the living room. I sat it down and took the lid off and tossed it carelessly on the table. I lifted out the small pile of construction paper pictures that Corrine had given me over the years and sat it beside the box, along with the small bowl of rose petals I had saved from Corrine's childhood.

I turned away from the memories these things washed over me and walked to the window, where I watched him in the reflection as he entered the apartment and went over to the box. He looked down at it for a moment, then picked up the shirt and flung it over his shoulder. Carefully, he picked up the broken drum.

"Are these mine as well?" he asked, his voice cold and hard.

I turned and looked at the other things I'd put on the table. "No," I said softly. "Those are from Corrine. You can look at them if you want," I offered past the lump in my throat.

He ignored the offer. "Is this all?"

"Well, there was a book," I told him, "but I gave it to Corrine."

"Yes, I know," he said, his voice finally softening. "She is a mage."

I nodded. "I suspected."

He turned and walked toward the kitchen, leaving me there, aching and alone.

"You might be interested in looking at the photo album as well," I called after him, "before you walk."

"Why?"

"Pictures of Corrine," I said simply. I knew she affected him deeply and hoped that he would stay for his daughter, if nothing else.

"The memories I have are painful enough," he told me. "Goodbye, Eliza."

I couldn't watch him walk out of my life like that; it was almost more horrible than watching him die. I turned toward the wall and leaned against it, covering my mouth with my hand to try and stop the sob that shook me. I didn't want him to hear me; I didn't want him to stay only out of pity. I wished I could kill him, but I knew deep down that I would never be able to.

"Why do you hide your feelings?" I heard him ask from the doorway.

I straightened and slammed my fist against the window frame. It rocked from the impact and I used the pain I felt to control my tears. "It's never done me any good to express myself," I told him in a wavering voice. It was the best I could manage. "The one person I could talk to…." I didn't have to say that he was lost to me.

"I'm sorry you feel that way," he replied softly.

When he didn't say anything more, I turned my head but refused to look directly at the doorway. I didn't want to know if he'd left. I felt a tear burn a course down my cheek but didn't care if he saw it. "I'm sorry," I whispered softly, torn between hoping he would hear me and praying to a God I'd never believed in that he would not.

"For what?" he asked.

I wanted to say, 'For hurting you.' I tried to say, 'Because I can't kill you like I know I should.' Instead, I whispered, "It's just really hard for me having you come back like this."

"Would you prefer I left?" I couldn't tell what he was thinking, I'd never been able to read his voice. Only by looking at his face could I read him, and I didn't want to turn and watch him walk out on me.

I closed my eyes at the thought of never seeing him again. "I don't know," I admitted painfully.

"I'm flying out tomorrow night," he reminded me. "I'll be at the chantry. You have my cell phone number, Corrine has my number, and Brenda knows how to get a hold of me."

"Of course, Prudence knows where you are," I said bitterly.

"Unfortunately, yes," he replied.

I spun to look at him but he was already turning to leave. My heart broke when he walked out of the apartment, and I had to bite my lips together to stop myself from calling him back. I stared after him for what seemed like a long time before I ran into the bedroom to stand at the window looking over the parking lot. I pressed a hand to the glass when I saw him opening the car door.

He looked up at the window just before he got into the car and saw me gazing down at him. He raised two fingers to his lips and I couldn't stop the pain that ripped through me at the once familiar gesture. He got into the car and drove away, never looking back.