Page 78 of Obsessed in Blood
“Prepare yourself.”
Several seconds later, Lyra appeared in the chair I’d vacated. I had a perfect line of sight of the two of them as they laid eyes on each other for the first time in a hundred years.
Lyra’s eyes brimmed with tears. “Hamilton.” She reached out a hand.
Hamilton jumped up and stumbled back, knocking into the chair. “No. It can’t be. You’re dead.”
She shook her head. “I was pulled from the wreckage before the fire spread. My arm had been broken, and I was in shock. I passed out and woke in my room with vague memories of that night.”
He studied her for several minutes, perhaps comparing her to the vampire he remembered from decades earlier. I was beginning to feel like a voyeur.
He took a tentative step forward, then another. Before I knew it, he was on his knees in front of her. “It’s really you?”
The tears broke through the dam, but through it all, Lyra smiled. “It’s me.” She sniffled and ran a hand under her nose.
“I thought you were dead.”
She laughed. “And I thought the same of you. Even so, I had no idea you could live this long, and you don’t look any older.” Her eyes dropped before they locked on Colantha’s. “Did you change his appearance?”
“You see him as he is today, though a bit cleaner. It’s the only image Cressa has of him.”
“Other than my paintings.”
“This is the man I saw when he called to me while I was on the island.” There wasn’t much more I could say. “At first, I didn’t recognize him with his beard, which Colantha has removed from this construct. But it was his eyes that convinced me he was Hamilton.”
She stood, grabbing his hands and forcing him to stand as well. For a moment, all she did was stare at him, as if confirming each feature of his face was as she remembered it, then she wrapped her arms around his waist. He laid his head on top of hers and closed his eyes. It was so easy to see—he was home. There was no doubt this man held a deep connection with Lyra.
I glanced to my left, surprised to see Devon standing in the shadows. His gaze was locked on the tableau in front of us. I couldn’t read his expression. He’d locked them down, and I was dying to see beyond his facade.
A long time passed before Hamilton stepped back, his hands still gripping Lyra’s. “What do we have to do to make this real?”
Lyra released his hands and, somewhat reluctantly, they returned to their seats. Once they were both sitting, she leaned toward him. “You need to tell us what you can about where you’re being held.”
He shook his head. “I don’t know much.”
“You’d be surprised how much you might remember,” Colantha said as she rejoined the conversation. “Start with a basic image, and then we’ll help you fill in the blanks. But you both need to be aware that this effort will require a great deal of time and energy. We won’t accomplish everything in one visit. You need to let me know the minute you begin to feel tired. Don’t try to hold on. It only makes it worse. Then you’ll require more rest between attempts rather than if we stop the moment you feel a slip in energy.”
She gave each a mother-superior stare, and they glanced at each other before nodding.
“Alright. Let’s start at the beginning. Tell us about the room where you’re being held.”
I glanced down and found a pen and pad of paper on the side table next to me. I began writing. My written notes wouldn’t return with me, but writing everything down would make it easier to remember once we left the construct.
When I glanced at Devon, he was sitting, his own pen gliding over paper as he listened to Hamilton describe his prison.
“In the beginning, I woke in a room with cement walls. The only window was the grated one in the door. I was injured with a broken tibia, and they left me like that for several days as Venizi hounded me with questions. He asked about the medallion and what I knew of Guildford’s defenses. Once he got what he could out of me—” He looked at Lyra, his gaze beseeching. “I only gave him information that with a small bit of effort on his part, he could discover on his own. I knew little of the security, always depending on Yun’s ability to keep us safe. Fortunately, Venizi was satisfied for the moment, and I was given vampire blood to heal my leg. I was kept in that room for the first few years with little food and water. The beatings were daily, except for the days when Venizi would visit, and those days I don’t remember.”
Lyra’s gaze became fixed as she listened to Hamilton, and then she began to sway. She’d told me once of the horrible nightmares she’d had her first years after the accident. Now we knew what those nightmares were.
I glanced at Devon, barely able to listen as Hamilton described the torture. His gaze had been on Hamilton at first, but now it was on his sister, and before anyone would admit to being tired, he signaled Colantha to end the session.
We’d heard enough.
ChapterTwenty-Seven
I satunder the sycamore tree with Lyra, our backs against the trunk as we gazed out to sea. The remains of a picnic lunch scattered around us, and we sipped the last of a bottle of merlot Cook had sent with the basket. We needed it after our last session with Hamilton.
He’d been shaky in the session where he began to describe the room he’d eventually been moved to—the one he’d been in for the last ninety years. Colantha modified the construct as he gave us more information. As details began to fill in, he settled into a pattern of providing a description, waiting for the construct to change, then providing the next one.
