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

Memories of Love

For most of the day I tried to get some sleep but I'd only actually gotten about four hours rest before I finally gave up. Mac and that night nearly twenty years ago haunted my dreams. I kept waking up wanting to scream but I couldn't.

When I was awake, I found myself wondering what life would have been like if Mac and I had been able to kill the vamps that had attacked our apartment. I'd told myself years ago not to live in the might-have-beens, but now I couldn't seem to stop.

I took a long hot shower before the sun went down to try and erase those thoughts from my mind but it didn't help. I strung the ring on the new chain I'd bought the day before and fastened it on my neck. I'd made sure the chain was a long one; the necklines of the clothes Corrine had picked out tended to be a lot lower than anything I'd worn in years. The ring fell low between my breasts.

I dressed in a tank top and jeans, careful not to pull on the stitches in my shoulder. A quick look at those stitches showed that they were nearly healed. I knew that I could take them out soon and not worry about the wound reopening. I'm a fast healer; it's one of the few perks of being half-vampire.

I sat down on the couch in the main cabin and started to brush out my hair as the sun went down. I'd hoped to be completely ready by the time Cormac got up, but things hadn't worked out that way.

Suddenly I heard the door to the back cabin bang open and instinctively I reached for the stake at my back. Cormac walked quickly out of the bedroom wearing only the dress slacks he'd had on the night before and a white tank top. As he crossed the room, I could see the blood on his face. I stood, looking for the enemy, but then to my amazement I realized that he was crying. Legend is right in this instance; vamps really do cry blood tears.

"What's the matter?" I demanded.

He kept coming toward me, and I stepped back into the corner. He followed me, and fell to his knees at my feet. He threw his arms around my legs and held on as if his life depended on it. His face was pressed against my right side and I could feel the coolness of his tears soak through my shirt. I stood there, shocked, still holding the brush in my left hand and a stake in my right.

"Oh, Eliza," he whispered brokenly.

"Cormac?" I looked down at the top of his head. He didn't seem to be hurt in any way. "What's the problem?"

"I-I've—" he stuttered, then said in a shaking voice, "Oh Eliza, I've missed you so." He was still crying.

"Cormac," I said patiently, trying to make some kind of sense out of his behavior, "you've had amnesia."

"Notwithstanding," he replied with his face still pressed against my side, "I've missed you so."

"You wanna tell me what's going on here?" I asked him, still very confused. It felt good to be this close to him, but damn it, he was a vamp! Having him this close was setting off alarms in every part of my brain. "This is too weird."

"I've had another dream," he told me, finally starting to calm. "A memory."

"Okay." I still didn't understand, but at least he wasn't crying any more. I'd never seen Mac cry, and the blood was a little too much for me.

"Of the night," he told me.

I took a deep breath and tossed the stake to the couch beside me. The events of that night were still fresh in my mind, I'd been thinking or dreaming about it all day long. Maybe my explanation the night before had triggered his dream. I didn't want to believe that he'd actually remembered everything that had happened, it would be too cruel after everything that had happened to us.

"Of how my heart ached when I thought you were dead," he continued, sorrow filling his voice.

"You had a dream," I whispered, trying to keep him calm. It had to have only been a dream, but I know better than most people that dreams sometimes had the power to do more damage than the memories themselves.

"A memory," he insisted.

I slowly put my hand on the top of his head, hesitant to touch him, but unable to stop myself. Just then his being a vamp didn't seem that important to me. As he lifted his head from my side, I noticed a burn scar on his right upper arm, a scar that had quite obviously destroyed a tattoo that had once been there. The brush fell from my hand to the floor.

I remembered the first time I'd seen the tribal tattoo on his arm. We hadn't been dating for very long, only a few weeks, and had gone to the beach with Glenn and his girlfriend Jane. From beneath my lashes, I'd watched him strip off his shirt and seen his tattoos. He had been proud of the tribal Dreamspeaker tattoo, and now it was gone, destroyed like our lives.

I ran my fingers lightly down the rippled skin, remembering how I'd once touched that tattoo in our warm apartment in Baltimore. His skin was so cold.

"I saw the entire night," he told me. "The wine, the pasta, the… sappy music."

I refused to give in to the tears that filled my eyes. The deep breath I took shook from the strain of holding them back. Unconsciously, I bit at my lip.

"Making love in front of the fire," he continued.

I couldn't stop the sob that escaped. I could only stare at the scar on his arm and remember that night with him. In a tight whisper, I asked, "What happened to your arm?"

"Dougal erased my tattoo," he said softly.

"Why?" Why had his sire been so cruel? The Dougal who'd written that letter to Gomi didn't fit the image of someone who would brutally and deliberately burn away a tattoo that Mac had once been so proud of.

"I thought you were dead, Eliza," he admitted sadly. "I wanted nothing more than to forget everything, and I did."

I started crying, I couldn't help it. "So easy, was it?" I tried to make my voice hard, but it shook. He'd wanted to forget what we had shared, what we had meant to each other. I'd spent twenty years fighting my memories, but he'd decided to forget me then done it in a single irreversible moment.

"It was the hardest decision of my life," he professed. "I knew I couldn't live without you."

The strength ran out of my legs and I collapsed onto the edge of the couch. Cormac came with me, balancing me so that I didn't fall to the floor. He knelt between my knees, his hands on my waist and mine on his shoulders. I stared at him, speechless, wounded to the core.

I almost envied the ease with which he'd been able to forget me, regardless of what it had cost him. If I'd had the choice to live the life I've lived for the last twenty years or forget the pain of losing him—I knew that for Corrine's sake I wouldn't have changed anything. The embrace would have killed her.

Cormac leaned in closer and rested his head on my chest. I looked down at him for a long time, torn by my emotions. Regardless of what he now was, I had loved him once, maybe I still did. My hands slid from his shoulders around his back, embracing him for the first time in nearly twenty years. His skin was chilled, but if I tried really hard, I could pretend that he'd just come inside from a cold winter's day.

I took a deep shaky breath and rested my cheek on his hair. We had been so close once, closer than two people had a right to be. I shut my eyes tight and relished the feel of him near me again; at least I did until I realized that he wasn't breathing. It was almost surreal to know that he still functioned so much like a human, but he did it without his heart pumping, without drawing life-giving oxygen into his lungs.

He pulled back to look up at me, bringing our faces very close together. He reached up to wipe the tears from my face with his thumb, but as soon as he'd cleaned off my cheek, more tears fell. I looked back at him, wanting so badly to pretend that nothing mattered except that we were together, but the traces of blood tears still around his eyes made me realize that I just couldn't do it.

I found myself biting my lip, a habit I thought I'd given up years ago. Cormac saw it and smiled slightly. "What?" I asked softly, feeling very self-conscious.

He shook his head but didn't answer. Finally the tears stopped falling from my eyes and I reached up to wipe them away, sniffling. I knew I probably looked very human to him then, with eyes red and swollen from crying, my face flushed with embarrassment.

One of Cormac's hands slid from my waist to my thigh while the other reached up to tuck my hair behind my ear. He did it so slowly, lingeringly, as if he was relishing the feel of my skin beneath his fingertips, that I couldn't stop myself from blushing and I had to look away.

He ran his finger down my cheek and beneath my chin, where he lifted my face back to his. It occurred to me suddenly that I hadn't voluntarily been this close to a man since the night the Kindred had destroyed our lives, and here he was kneeling between my thighs. I pushed the memory of Luther's ghouls out of my mind; Mac would never hurt me like that, would he?

My hands were shaking on his upper arms, and I could feel the rough scar that was a blatant reminder to me of just how many things had changed. I couldn't keep pretending that his cool skin meant nothing. He was a vamp, pure and simple. Other than Kate, I'd never been this close to a vamp that wasn't hurting me or that I wasn't trying to kill.

He must have read something of the unease I felt on my face because he dropped his hands and fell back to sit cross-legged on the floor at my feet. He cupped his hands in his lap in a familiar fashion and seemed to fall into almost a meditative state, one I'd often seen him use when he was human to calm himself.

I watched him for several minutes, unable to look away. It was so strange to see him like this. He acted and behaved so much like the Mac I remembered, but he was a monster, wasn't he? A monster with the memories of our life together.

"So," I asked haltingly, "you remember everything about that night?"

"I believe so," he replied, not looking up.

I sighed. This had been so much easier before he started to remember what we had shared. That he remembered our last night together made me sad and uncomfortable at the same time.

Abruptly he pulled the bottom of his shirt from his pants and raised it to wipe the blood from his face. The movement bared his chest, and unwillingly my eyes were drawn to the tattoo on his upper chest. I remembered when he'd gotten that tattoo. We'd gone together with Glenn and Jane and all of us had walked out of the tattoo parlor marked in one way or another.

He mumbled something about dry-cleaning and rubber clothes that made me chuckle.

"Well, you're not real good for my wardrobe, either," I reminded him, looking down at the blood on my shirt. I had to stop myself from biting my lip again, and added, "Corrine will be upset that I'm ruining the new clothes so soon."

"I believe Corrine was happy that you even bought the new clothes," he told me.

"Like I bought them," I muttered under my breath.

He heard. "Allowed her to buy them for you."

I shrugged. "I didn't have a choice, the girl is stubborn," I told him, then I frowned and pretended to think about that statement for a moment. "Gee, I wonder where she got that from."

He looked at the ceiling trying to look all innocent and started whistling. I was reaching down for the brush I'd dropped earlier when I recognized the song. I stopped in mid motion; it was an Irish lullaby that Cormac had once told me his mother used to sing to him, one I'd sung to Corrine when she was little.

I shook off the memories and picked up the brush. I stood and walked toward my suitcase to put some distance between us. I quickly finished brushing out my hair and reached into the case for a white tank top. I could feel his eyes on me, and it made me feel awkward.

I turned to look in his direction. "I'm, ah, I'm gonna go change." My hands made a useless gesture and I willed them to still as I walked toward the rear of the plane to change in the bathroom. He watched me leave the cabin in silence.

In the bathroom I splashed cold water on my face to try and clear my head. I looked into the mirror and saw the need in my eyes, the need to be with Mac again, to feel once more what it had been like when we made love.

I closed my eyes and rested my forehead on the mirror. I'd known the dangers of being with him like this; in my heart I'd known exactly how being with him would make me feel. Things hadn't changed for me; the lights still dimmed when he walked in the room. We hadn't even been together twenty-four hours, what would it be like at the end of the two weeks?

The most I could hope for was a broken heart. There was no future for us, not now. I kept reminding myself that he was a vampire, a monster. His heart no longer beat, how could he ever love me again? And we were searching for his memories, although they seemed to be finding him at an astounding pace considering that he hadn't remembered a thing in nineteen years.

And close on the heels of that was the knowledge that when he did remember everything he'd realize exactly how much I'd changed. Could he forgive me for giving up all we'd once believed in to save our daughter? Or would he hate me for it?

There was nothing I could do to avoid it now. I'd committed myself to being with him for these two weeks and I would do what I promised, come hell or high water, regardless of the cost to my sanity or my life. In thirteen days we would be back in Salem and I'd just walk away, let the past fall dead again. If something happened to me, he'd sworn to make sure Corrine remained human. There was nothing more I could expect from him, was there?