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.Lisa was alone in the other room with Cullen, asleep and very vulnerable.Dayan touched her gently, his hand moving over her face.“Be calm, honey.Cullen risked his life to warn us.Those killers want him more than they want us.I’ve stayed with him to help protect him.My family owes him a great debt.Thanks to you, I can feel friendship again, even affection, where before I felt only a debt of honor.You have already given me more than you will ever know.”“I don’t understand the vampire thing.Why haven’t the police found these men?” Corinne was deliberately ignoring his strange references to her.She didn’t understand her attachment to him, the way she needed to be with him when she had never been a needy person in her life.She felt safe with Dayan, yet at the same time threatened in some elemental and very exciting way.“This group operates the same way terrorist organizations work.Hit and run, meet in secret.Only those at the top know who belongs.No one trusts anyone else.Some of those on the bottom have no real idea that killing goes on.I know it sounds bizarre, but unfortunately the society is very real.We have to protect ourselves at all times.If these people have targeted you and Lisa, you need protection too.They will not stop hunting you.Somehow we have to find a way to convince Lisa she really is in danger.She is resisting the truth because she does not want anything else in her life to change.”“Lisa had it much harder than John or me.When we were very young, their father began to date my mother.It was mainly a drinking relationship.We didn’t know it then, but their father when he drank was extremely violent.To make a long story short, their father murdered my mother.Lisa walked in when he was bludgeoning her with a tire iron, and he knocked Lisa down, put a bag over her head, threw her in the trunk of a car with my mother’s body and doused them with gasoline.John knew—he always knew things, and between the two of us, we managed to free Lisa without her father knowing.” Corinne had unlocked the trunk of the car using her unique gift.“Lisa, John and I stayed together.We lived mainly on the streets, sort of fending for ourselves.” She said it hurriedly, in a little rush, not wanting to dwell on the painful details of her childhood.She never talked about that time, never revealed the details of her early life to anyone, yet she couldn’t stop herself from giving Dayan whatever he asked for.Dayan threaded his fingers through Corinne’s, all too aware of the sorrow beating at her, the horror of those memories.“After the murder, Lisa was so battle-scarred she didn’t talk for days on end.I sat with her for hours and rocked her back and forth, and she would hold me when I broke down and cried.John was our rock; he stole food for us and kept us safe as we grew up.Eventually we all landed jobs in a café.Lisa was discovered there by a huge modeling agency.After that we didn’t have to worry about a roof over our heads.I was already making money writing songs, so I pursued music in college.John became very successful at landscaping.We lived together as a family.”He touched her mind very gently, not wanting to be intrusive when she was reliving painful memories, but he wanted to “see” the details.Her life had been difficult, and he could clearly see her loyalty and love for John and Lisa.They had formed a family together and kept one another safe in a world gone insane.They had virtually raised themselves in a harsh environment and managed to remain loving and sensitive despite the odds against them.“Lisa is not different in the way you are.” He made it a statement, his hand tangling in her heavy mass of hair.“We were terrified of Lisa’s father.God only knows what he would do if he ever saw my gift, or found out about John.Lisa still is frightened and prefers not to talk about our differences.” Without thinking, Corinne burrowed closer to his warmth.“Why would these people target Lisa? It isn’t as if she does anything strange.No one could possibly think she’s evil.”“It does not matter what their reasoning is, we will have to protect her.I have searched long for you, Corinne.I know you have accepted your death as inevitable because the human doctors have convinced you there is no hope, but it is not going to be that way.You are going to get well and spend your life with me.” His thumb was rubbing the inside of her wrist, a caress that she felt all the way to her bones.“You said human doctors.Is there any other kind?” She was trying to tease him because he sounded so intense.“I want to try something.I am not a real healer, but I can help you, at least for a short time if you will allow me to do so,” Dayan said tentatively.He was in new territory, feeling his way carefully.But her health was so fragile, he wanted to help in any way he could.“What do you mean? Like faith healing?” She tried not to sound skeptical, but they were talking about vampires and religious fanatics and other highly impossible things
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