"You're feckin' beautiful and don't ever allow anyone to make you think otherwise."

Ronan's touch drifted down her hip and stayed there, an intimate reminder of what might occur. Staring into his luminous eyes brought trails of fire flickering over her nerve endings.

He's so patient with me.

"Why does it surprise you when I'm patient?" he asked.

She sighed, so used to him reading her mind at various intervals that she couldn't find it intrusive anymore. "Because ever since I met you I sensed incredible power. There's something violent in you. Something so fierce."

"You know I'd never hurt you."

She did understand that, but his energy influenced her, creating havoc in her otherwise calm personality. "You do something to me I can't explain. Whenever I'm with you it feels like everything is clearer. As if my life's purpose came when I walked back into Pine Forest. Yet my nerves are on fire when I'm with you."

"Are you saying being with me causes you pain?" The rasp in his voice spelled deep concern.

She touched his forearm and squeezed briefly. "No. No. I don't know if the attraction I feel for you is real or some weird chemical reaction caused by the fact you're a vampire."

"We talked about this before."

She smiled. "Forgive me for being a little skeptical."

"There's nothing to forgive."

"Good. Then you can answer some more questions."

"Then we'd better start at the beginning."

"The very beginning of time?" Clarissa asked.

Ronan propped up on one elbow and looked down on her. "Back so far the only evidence that the civilization ever existed lay buried beneath sand for eons. So you'll understand how vampires came to be."

Even with his eyes calm deep pools, she sensed his internal heat, his vampire core filled with energy and potential. Lightning fueled him and centuries of stored memories and actions.

He passed his index finger over her cheek in a gentle caress. "The vampire legend is clouded with mystery and who knows if all of it is true. Like any history things are distorted with the passage of time." His eyes darkened, as if recalling the details caused him to enter a state of meditation. "This story starts around three thousand years B. C., even before Egypt was a great civilization." His words sounded ancient, like they touched the dusty past and they'd both stepped into another world. "Close your eyes and you'll see the story unfold."

Chapter Twelve

Clarissa closed her eyes as he requested. Then, as time seemed to slide backward with feathery fingers, she realized his words became images. Night became day, and sun- baked terrain, hilly and unforgiving came to her vision as unmistakably as if she'd stepped into the past.

His voice went deeper. "The story concerns the Sumerians."

Visions unfolded in front of her and she wondered if he planted them in her mind. She saw a growing city made up of flat-topped huts with walls of reed matting stretched between wooden uprights and waterproofed with plaster made of thick mud. The huts had wooden doors and the hearths were holes in the beaten mud floor. Newer buildings arose on the outer reaches of the city, this time of mud-brick and several rooms each. As she gazed out at the spreading city, she noticed this place was a gleaming production of temples and a royal palace.

"Erech," Ronan said. "It was resurrected by Utuhegal after hordes ofGutians rushed down from the mountains and destroyed it. After a hundred years of oppression, they are free. Their new ruler is Ur-Nammu."

"You're seeing what I'm seeing," she said.

"Yes. But I wouldn't be able to visualize it if it wasn't for your ability to see and feel the past. You have a power more formidable than mine."

Cows, oxen, pigs and other animals populated the village. People ground barley in rough querns to make porridge. A man flint napped arrowheads from obsidian. She saw painted pots and vessels with incised decorations. Villagers moved in the narrow marshes in canoe-type boats.

Then Clarissa saw a beautiful, very young woman of perhaps sixteen who wore a homespun cloth dress. Bone studs pierced her ears, and a heavy necklace of beads made from carnelian, shell, and crystal hung around her neck.

"Her name is Shub-ad," Ronan said.

"What time frame is it?"

"Around two thousand one hundred years B.C., about one hundred years before the Elamites will destroy Ur. The histories have perished, but some information survives from excerpts in Babylonian chronicles." He went on, "The woman was the daughter of an influential merchant and he wished great things for her. She wanted to marry a wealthy man, a retainer of the king. But her father wanted her to be a bride of the deity at Ur-Nammu's temple, a wonderful ziggurat dedicated to the moon-god Nanna. So her father didn't allow her to marry her love."

Clarissa gazed into the distance, entranced by Ronan's words and pictured what the young woman could see. The ziggurat rose high in the distance, a massive structure with three terraced stages rising at least seventy feet above the city. The vision slowly dissolved and Clarissa opened her eyes.

"Attached to every temple there were women who formed the god's household," he said.

"Let me guess," Clarissa said. "She had to take a vow of chastity."

"No. In fact, the temple women were all prostitutes. As it happened she didn't become the entu, a first wife of the god. Instead she was a Sal-Me, a priestess of the second caste.

During this time she fell in love with a man who visited the priestesses for services."

"She couldn't marry him?"

"She could but she wasn't allowed to have children by him. Because of that he was allowed to take a concubine and the concubine had six children. Shub-ad was jealous of the concubine and concocted a plot to murder the concubine and blame it on the bride of the deity, a far more powerful woman."

Rubbing her forehead as an ache centered in her temples, Clarissa said, "This is complicated."

"So it seems. When Shub-ad murdered the concubine, she discovered her husband had fallen out of love with her and in love with the concubine. The law required that Shub-ad be drowned. Shub-ad's husband couldn't bear her being put to death, even though she had murdered his beloved concubine. So to help Shub-ad he framed another one of the concubines. The attempt backfired and they were found out. Before Shub-ad and her husband were put to death, she cursed any descendents of the concubine's children. Many years later each of those children had one child of their own and those offspring were born with a deformity no one had witnessed before. Everyone knew it was because of the curse and because Shub-ad and the children's father were evil. The defect was in the blood. Each child could become invisible at will and teleport. They could move faster than any other human. They craved human blood and could feast on mortals daily."

"Vampires."

Ronan nodded.

"What happened then?" she asked, caught up in his story.

His concentration pinpointed an area above her head, as if he could see more of the story unfolding, but this time wouldn't share it with her in a vision. "Whenever their anger was aroused, the children would roam the streets and kill and maim those people no one would miss. But as they grew to adulthood, they fanned out over the region and spawned a wider veil of death and destruction."

"Did they create vampires with their bite?"

"They did. This made the plague, as the people called it, a far worse thing. Now there were hundreds of vampires where there'd once been only six."

"Did these villagers fight back?"

Ronan eased up and sat cross-legged. "A team of assassins was sent out to kill the original six vampires. One was set on fire. Another was strangled. Yet another was shot in the heart with an arrow. They resurrected and left Sumer. No one knows exactly where they went."

A question hit her. "Wait a minute. These were the first vampires?"

"Supposedly."