Shades of Gray

Antoinette regained consciousness slowly. For a long time, she stared at the man holding her, and then she smiled.

It was an expression he had thought never to see again, an expression of such love and devotion it would have broken his heart, if he'd still had one.

She lifted one hand to his ruined cheek. "What happened?"

"A burn. It's nothing."

"Does it hurt very much?"

"Not when you touch it."

She smiled at him again, then frowned. "Grigori, I had the most horrible dream."

"Did you, cara mia?"

She nodded. "You've been crying."

He didn't deny it, only held her closer, as if he would never let her go.

"What's wrong?" She glanced around. "Where am I? Where are the..." Her voice trailed away. Her eyes filled with confusion, and then she screamed. "He killed them! Alexi killed them!" She struggled in his embrace. "Let me go! I'll kill him! I'll kill him!"

"Antoinette, stop it."

At the sound of his voice, she stilled immediately. She was his creature now. She would do whatever he commanded.

He gazed deep into her eyes, the power of his mind calming hers.

"Listen to me, cara. You will never remember our children again, or anything else that happened that night. Do you understand?"

"Yes."

"You will do whatever I ask, tell me whatever I wish to know, won't you?"

"Yes."

"Where have you been staying?"

"I live in a small house off Hartdale Avenue."

"Does Alexi live there also?"

"No. I stay there alone, waiting for his bidding."

"Where does Alexi spend the daylight hours?"

"He told me never to tell anyone."

"But I am your master now. You must tell me."

"He sleeps in the wine cellar at our house."

"Our house?" Grigori frowned. The only house they had ever shared had been in Italy. He had gone back to his old hometown about thirty years before. All the houses in the vicinity, including his own and his Uncle Pietro's, had been torn down and replaced by a winery and acres of vineyards. "That's not possible."

She nodded. "He owns it now."

"Alexi owns the winery?"

She looked at him oddly. "We don't have a winery, Grigori."

"What is it like now, our house?"

"It is the same as it was when first you took me there."

He shook his head, trying to make sense of it.

"When were you there last?"

She thought a moment. "Five days ago."

"What month was it?"

"November."

"And the year, do you remember the year?"

"Seventeen ninety-eight. Alexi woke me and said we were going to find you." A faint smile pulled at the corners of her mouth. "He said we were going through time to the year nineteen hundred and ninety-eight, but I did not believe him. It's not possible, is it?" She paused and glanced around the room, her gaze troubled as she saw the TV set, the stereo, the lamps. "And yet, everything is so strange here."

Grigori sat back, stunned. Alexi had traveled through time. How? He remembered asking Alexi where Antoinette was, and Alexi's reply: Where you cannot find her.

No wonder they couldn't find Kristov's resting place! He wasn't sleeping in the same city where he hunted. He wasn't even sleeping in the same century!

"Where is he now?"

She stared past him, her brow furrowed in thought, her expression blank. "He's gone back."

"Alone?"

"No. He has the woman with him."

"Is he planning to come back for you?"

"No. After I destroyed you, I was to destroy myself, as well." She spoke the words without feeling, as if they meant nothing to her.

Grigori swore under his breath, and then he stood up, drawing her with him. "How do you feel?"

"I don't know." She looked up at him, her eyes filled with confusion. "Am I dead?"

"No." He wasn't sure what she was now. In taking her blood and giving her his, he had broken Alexi's hold over her. She was bound to him now, until he died. Unless he brought her across and made her as he was. And that, he thought, was the only real answer, the only way she would ever be in control of her own destiny again. But not now... not when he needed her help. "Sit down, Antoinette. Relax."

"What are we going to do?" she asked.

"Do you know where Ramsey is?"

"Ramsey?" She thought a moment, then shook her head.

"Was Alexi going to kill him?"

"I don't know."

With a sigh, he went to the window and stared out into the night. He stood there, unmoving, still as only one who is Vampyre can be still, his thoughts churning. Alexi had Marisa. Antoinette was still alive. Ramsey was missing. Alexi had Marisa....

Marisa. When had she become so important to him? She was a mortal woman, cut off from him by centuries of blood and death. And yet she had cradled him in her arms, made him feel things he had not felt in two hundred years.

He heard the rustle of Antoinette's skirts as she shifted on the sofa and felt a sudden stab of guilt. She was his wife, but she was no longer the woman he had loved. She would never be that woman again. And he was no longer the man she had married... no longer a man at all.

But she was still his wife, and he was responsible for her.

He stood there for an hour, staring into the night, his thoughts turned inward. Antoinette was safe for now, but Marisa...

He turned slowly as the front door opened and Edward Ramsey burst inside.

"Is she here?" Ramsey asked breathlessly. "Tell me she's here."

"Alexi has her," Grigori replied quietly, and it took all his self-control to keep from reaching for the other man, to keep from ripping him to shreds. "What happened?"

Ramsey sneezed and blew his nose. "I fell asleep. When I woke up, I got the car and started downtown. Alexi was in the backseat. That's all I remember."

Grigori took a step forward and Edward scrambled backward, his hand clutching the cross. He yelped as Antoinette came up behind him, her arms wrapping around him, pinning his arms to his sides. He struggled to free himself, but she was too strong for him.

Grigori approached Edward. Holding Ramsey's jaw between his thumb and forefinger, he turned the man's head from side to side, checking his neck for bite marks.

"I already looked," Edward said.

Eyes narrowed, Grigori stared at Ramsey, listening to the thunderous beat of his heart. There were no bite marks on the man's neck, but that didn't mean anything.

Ramsey glared at him, a kitten spitting in the face of a tiger.

"Go on, bloodsucker, do it!" Edward taunted. "You're no better than he is."

Grigori grinned at Ramsey's bravado. "I cannot help admiring your courage, Ramsey." He nodded at Antoinette. "Let him go."

As soon as Antoinette released him, Ramsey bolted across the room. "What have you done to her?"

"She's mine, now."

"You did that to her? To your own wife?"

"Would you rather she was still Alexi's creature?"

"What do we do now?"

"I've spent the last hour trying to decide. Nothing Antoinette says makes sense."

"What do you mean?"

"She says the reason we haven't been able to find Alexi is because he takes his rest in the wine cellar of our old house."

"What old house? Where?" Edward's eyes widened. "You don't mean in Italy?"

Grigori nodded. "But that's not possible. The house no longer exists. And yet..."

Edward held the cross in both hands, sliding it back and forth between his palms. "What? What are you thinking?"

"Time-travel," Grigori suggested.

"That's impossible!"

"Is it?" Grigori stared out into the dark of the night again. Khira had mentioned it once, saying that sometimes, when she grew sad or lonely, she went back to her old home. When he had asked her how she accomplished such a thing, she had shrugged and said she thought herself there. He frowned, remembering.... But you can only go back so far, she had warned, only back to the time you were made. Beyond that you cannot go. Nor can you venture into the future.

Was it possible? Could he do it? Could he go back in time? And if he could, what would be the point? Kristov had possessed the Dark Gift far longer than he. If what Khira had said was true, Alexi could go back in time over a thousand years, while Grigori could go back but two hundred years.

And yet what Antoinette said must be true, for he had built their house himself, built it the year they were married. Alexi must have taken perverse pleasure in taking his rest there, in keeping Antoinette imprisoned there all these years.

"You're not really considering it, are you?" Ramsey asked.

Grigori nodded. For Marisa's sake, he had to try.

"I'm going with you."

"Indeed?"

Edward stuck his chin out. "We're in this together, remember? If you're thinking of zapping yourself into the past, I'm going with you."

Grigori lifted one brow. "Are you? I don't even know if I can get myself there."

Ramsey grinned. "I've got faith in you, Chiavari. Hatred is a powerful motivator, and between us, we've got enough hate to accomplish a miracle."

"Perhaps." Grigori held out his hand. "Antoinette, come to me."

Like a sleepwalker, she went to his side and placed her hand in his.

"Ramsey, take her hand." Grigori smiled faintly. "If you know any prayers, this might be a good time to say them."

Edward held Antoinette's hand in one of his, his free hand clutching his cross.

"Scared, vampire hunter?" Grigori asked.

"Damn right."

Grigori laughed softly and then, taking a deep breath, he closed his eyes.

He thought of Alexi.

He thought of Marisa.

And then he focused all his thoughts, all his energy, on his home in Italy as it had been two hundred years ago in November of seventeen ninety-eight.

Blackness swirled around him, drawing him down, down, into an abyss deeper than the darkness that shrouded him while he slept. He had no sense of movement, yet he knew he was moving through time and space.

And then, inexplicably, he had a sense of time slowing.

He opened his eyes, knowing, even before he saw the house, that he had been transported into the past.

"Damn! It worked!" Ramsey was grinning like a fool as he glanced around.

Grigori swore under his breath. "He's not here."

"We'll find him."

"Will we? We don't even know if he came here." But he wasn't thinking of Alexi now. He was staring at the house, remembering. Memories rushed toward him, memories of his parents, of the day he had married Antoinette, of the laughter they had shared in the quiet of the night. He remembered how her body had changed, her belly swelling with the new life she carried beneath her heart, the wonder of holding his tiny newborn daughter in his arms, and then, a year later, his son. In his mind, he saw their smiles, heard the sound of their youthful voices calling, "Papa, Papa," and his heart, long dead within him, ached with renewed pain and grief.

"Chiavari, you okay?"

He swallowed the lump in his throat as he turned to face Ramsey. "Fine."

"So, where do we start?"

Grigori took a deep breath, inhaling the familiar scents of home  -  garlic and olive oil and oregano, the smell of sheep and goats and manure, the fresh, clean scent of the earth itself.

"Let's go inside," he said. "Maybe we can tell if he's been here tonight."

The house was as he remembered it: four small rooms sparsely filled with furniture, most of which he had made with his own hands.

He walked into the bedroom he had once shared with Antoinette. There was no sign of Alexi.

Turning on his heel, he left the room and went outside. The wine cellar was located behind the house. Lifting the wooden door, he descended the stairs. The cellar reeked of dust and stale air, of cork and grapes and old wine.

Of Alexi.

The vampyre had been there. He could see the outline of Kristov's resting place in the dirt. Grigori grunted softly. Alexi was an old-world vampyre, one who took his rest within a coffin.

But the coffin was gone. And so was Kristov.

"Find anything?" Ramsey asked when Grigori returned to the house.

"He's been here, but he's gone. I doubt he'll be back."

"He must have known we were coming."

Grigori glanced at Antoinette, who was standing in the middle of the parlor, her expression blank. How pretty she was, dressed in a red blouse and white ruffled skirt. Red. It had always been her favorite color.

"So how do we find him?"

Grigori glanced at Ramsey. "He will find us."

"I don't think I like the sound of that."

"You didn't have to come."

"Yes, I did. I just wish I knew what he was up to."

"He's playing the same game as before."

"Hide-and-seek, you mean."

"Something like that."

"So what do we do now?"

"We wait," Grigori replied. "Wait for him to come to us."