Alek closed his eyes and concentrated on his grip overhead. "Danny?" he said. His voice sounded hoa.r.s.e. "How are you?"

Danny whined like a pained, frightened little animal. "I want Kage."

"I know." Slowly, methodically, Alek pulled against his grip, feeling himself and Danny raise a few inches, then a few more. The muscles of his arm and shoulder began to scream from the effort of pulling them both up by one arm, but he grit his teeth and tried to ignore the burn and the unyielding fatigue and concentrated instead on the work of their survival. Robyn was crying his name, nearly hysterical with terror, and he concentrated on that as well, how very pretty she was and how much he didn't want to see her in tears, all that pretty ruined. The upper portion of his body was over the edge of the line now. Alek sagged against the side, letting his weight anchor him and swinging Danny over the top. When Danny was secure, he then scrabbled like one of the rats over the edge. When he had made it he crouched against the ledge under the broken Exit sign, the boy cradled in his arms.

He was exhausted. He felt beaten, inside and out.

"You made it!" Robyn shouted.

Alek nodded and sagged against the wall. As he recovered his strength, he examined Danny for injuries. The boy looked shaken and pale but not really harmed. He lifted Danny's head with two fingers and looked for wounds, just to make certain Kage had not been indulging himself in any way. But just as he had suspected, there wasn't a single mark on Danny anywhere.

"How you holding up?" he asked the child.

"Okay." Danny gave Alek a bit of smile. "Your sword is way cool."

He really was something. A tough little thing. The boy touched Alek's face, brushed his fingers over Alek's cheeks and traced his mouth as if he were the most interesting thing in the world to him. "You're like Kage, aren't you?"

"Shh," Alek whispered and Danny smile grew. "Don't tell anyone."

Danny nodded solemnly. "Promise."

"Alek!" Robyn called.

Alek set Danny down and climbed to his feet. "We're all right," he called. "Danny is fine."

Robyn smiled; she looked relieved.

But not a moment later she lost her smile as a mountain of debris began to move under her feet. It shifted sideways, making Robyn scream and roll off the platform and slam into a wall.

Alek watched helplessly as loose rocks and I-beams were thrust up and away like a child throwing stones and sticks. And then something, no child but a monster of frightening physical strength, emerged from its grave of debris, coated in blood and dust and darkness. For a moment it looked around as if disoriented; then its eyes fixed on Alek and Danny and its entire being seemed to grow darker and heavier and full of clacking claws and saber teeth. Kage looked ready to leap the chasm to their side, something he could probably have done easily in his present state, but as blinded by rage as he was, he wasn't paying attention to his surroundings.

And when Robyn came up behind him with an iron railroad spike in her hand and brought it down with both hands, sinking the metal deep into the sucking cavity between his shoulder blades, driving it in, screaming it in the way she did, Kage never so much as even looked around. The vampire simply stiffened where it crouched at the edge of the chasm, let out a gurgling, blood-clotted sound, and rocked forward into the track, its arms outstretched and useless as it smashed through the debris and its weight caused it to punch through the stakes of steel and bone at the bottom. Rats scattered like a skreeking tidal wave of silky black fur as the body lodged itself at the bottom of the line. But no sooner than it landed, the rats swarmed together again like a sewn seam, blocking the body from view.

Robyn dropped the spike and covered her face with her blood- blackened hands. She swayed, and then collapsed into a lotus on the floor, her hands over her mouth to stifle the illness and the shock and the waning terror.

The voices of the feasting rats filled the tunnel with their rank triumph.

Alek kept Danny's face averted as he peered down into the chasm.

What little he could see of Kage's body looked pulpy and broken, like doll parts. The rats continued to swarm, a warm living ma.s.s of them, furry vultures with only one prerogative in life.

Alek felt sick.

There was another platform on this side of the rail a little ways further down. After checking one last time to make certain nothing down there moved but rats, Alek picked Danny up and shambled down the walk until he reached it. The sub station it led to took a roundabout route through a series of interconnecting corridors, but eventually he found his way to Robyn's side of the line.

Robyn wept and clung to Danny when she finally had him back in her arms, but Danny was oddly calm, even emotionless. He simply stood there like a rag doll as his mother rubbed his shoulders and checked him all over for sc.r.a.pes and bruises. "How is my big tiger?" she asked over and over again like a litany. In time Danny nodded and that seemed to put Robyn at ease. Taking his little hand in hers, she turned to Alek. "Can we get out of here now?"

"I can't think of a better idea," Alek told her as he started up the stairs of the sub platform. "There's an exit up here. Come on."

Robyn followed him, but Danny slowed her progress. The boy didn't seem motivated to move at all. By the time they reached the Exit door Robyn was fighting to make him walk, pulling at his hand, fighting to get him every inch of the way. Alek put his hand on her arm. "You want me to take him?"

"I don't understand..."

Danny detached himself from Robyn's hand and jumped into Alek's arms.

Robyn looked surprised by it but didn't say very much as Alek settled Danny's slight weight into the crook of his arm.

He was tired and aching and he felt like an entire building had fallen on him, but at least it was over. The boy played with Alek's hair for a few moments, but very quickly his grim adventure caught up with him and he put his head down on Alek's shoulder. He was fast asleep in minutes, and so he missed all the festival. They emerged in Chinatown, one of his favorite places in the whole city, but this time the familiarity of the colorful Hunan restaurants and antique emporiums and herbal remedy shoppes and the vendors with their carts full of jade and bells and the parade pa.s.sing by with its lighted paper lanterns and dancing dragon brought no amus.e.m.e.nt to Alek as it had so often in the past.

25.

It had taken some persuasion on his part to convince her that he was not seriously injured. He was touched. She seemed genuinely concerned for him. But Alek told her he was perfectly fine. After a while, Robyn seemed to believe him.

She went to Danny, running her hands through his hair, and glanced around the foyer of the big antique house. She looked lost. Alek hung his coat on the rack by the door, and then looked around the house himself.

It was cool, dim and silent, as always. No one had been here that he wasn't aware of--vampire, dhampir or otherwise. He would know. The Covenhouse was as much a part of him now as the coat he wore was or the sword he carried. He just wasn't much of a homebody. Somehow or other he always seemed to have business to attend to, and the living s.p.a.ce reflected that fact. It wasn't unkempt or anything like that; it just looked un-inhabited. The s.p.a.ces were too large, the furniture too spa.r.s.e, the motif a bit too old-fashioned. It looked like a museum, or the cover of a Victorian-style magazine. He didn't have much to offer Robyn and Danny, just this big creaky house full of shadows, but what he had was theirs and he told her so.

At least they were safe here. Protected. "You can have whatever you find in the kitchen," he told them at length. "The bathroom is upstairs and down the hall." They could have the run of the house. The only places they were forbidden to go were downstairs to the Great Abbey, and the dojo with its collection of razor-sharp weapons. But he didn't say that outwardly. In fact, he didn't say it at all. Those places were locked electronically against invasion and he had no fears of strangers wandering into them. "The master bedroom is yours too, if you like," he said.

"Where will you sleep?" Robyn asked.

He shrugged. "I don't sleep much, and I won't sleep at all until this is over."

Robyn dropped her eyes. She was wondering the same thing he was: When and how would all this end--if indeed, it ended at all? On the way home she had made mention of an aunt in Milwaukee that she hadn't seen in ten years. Alek's mind had already turned over the idea that if he could somehow convince Edward Ashikawa that enough blood had been spilt in his insane crusade, he might be willing to let the girl and her boy go. Robyn could go to Wisconsin. That seemed far enough away from this city. And if that failed...well, he still had connections with the Coven, as tenacious as they were, and he knew the Vatican would not be pleased to learn Edward Ashikawa had been stabling vampires among his cotillion of soldiers. Somehow or other he doubted even the Yakuza was willing to take the Papal bull by the horns.

Robyn took Danny by the hand and started to lead him up the narrow Victorian stairs. Halfway up, she turned around and seemed to take in the wainscoting and the old tintypes on the walls and the glistening antique wallpaper all at once. "Is this house yours?" she asked with some wonder.

Alek said, "I inherited it from my father."

"Oh. He must have been something."

"He was." Then without waiting for an answer from her he went into the kitchen to make a pot of strong coffee. It did little to quench his remaining need, but it took the edge off some. He was so tired. He listened to the sound of activity from upstairs and felt very old and lost.

I should not live in this tomb, he thought for the hundredth time since buying the Covenhouse. He didn't understand why he had done that, only that the fear of the Coven taking his home, living in it, desecrating it further with their b.l.o.o.d.y purpose, was more than he could bear. He had to protect the house. And he had. And now the house protected him. Jean Paul said it was his hive; in affect, his personal lair.

None that entered it could escape his influence. In fact, no one he called enemy could enter it at all. It was all part of the mythology of the vampire, some of it truth, some lies, some half-truths.

He, having lived more than half a century as a dhampir, was still learning the ins and outs, so to speak. In fact, he had begun to keep a journal about it, wondering if anyone else ever had. He wasn't undead, nor was any vampire. He had never died. Garlic, running water, silver, wooden stakes and religious paraphernalia could do nothing to harm him. Only profoundly strong and long direct exposure to sunlight could do him damage. Only the severance of his head or a stake or shard of iron--or indeed, any instrument of iron stuck in a vital organ-could kill him. As far as he could tell, he was immortal. At least, he looked half his age, which was pushing fifty-five these days. He had a hunger, but it wasn't usually bad, except on the full moon--what the vampires called the Hunter's Moon. Like Debra, and like all vampires, his power as well as his need was redoubled on those nights. Nights like tonight.

I'm a vampire living in a crypt, he thought and almost laughed aloud.

He hated this house and he loved it. It was his pa.s.sion and his sin. What else could he do with it?

He changed into his lay-around clothes--black silk slacks, silk slippers and a kimono--and went to the library and stood in it, feeling the house close about him. The years and books and learning and blood. All his.

Every sc.r.a.p. Every memory. He was so tired. Tired and in need. Not for the first time he wondered if visiting Jean Paul's private pleasure club would help. If it wouldn't at least ease the discomfort.

No. All he needed to do was fall once, and he would keep falling.

Instead, he lay down on the divan, setting aside Edith Wharton's The Age of Innocence, and slept. The toll on his body was so great he did not dream and he did not awaken until almost nightfall. The Hunter's Moon had risen. He got up and went to the window and watched it laze across the sky like a weapon. But the sight of it made him anxious and in time he returned to the divan and picked up the Wharton book and read a page, not really seeing the words. After a few moments he became aware of a presence in the room with him, subtle, like perfume. He looked up and glimpsed a familiar figure in the gilt oval mirror on the wall between two bookcases.

"Thank you," he said.

Debra smiled and the tie of his kimono loosened.

He secured it. "Stop it...I can't play with you tonight," he said patiently.

"Why? Because of her?" she asked in her plaintive little girl's voice.

He tried to find something to say, some wisdom or reason, but Debra pouted and simply faded from the gla.s.s. He was just wondering what that meant when he heard light footfalls from the hallway. He turned and found himself staring at the subject of their controversy. Robyn-- her face was pale and makeupless, her eyes big and demure. She must have misinterpreted his interest because she plucked at the oversized robe she wore and said, "Do you mind? I didn't have any clothes..."

"No," he said. "I don't mind."

"Danny's asleep," she said. Then she stepped into the study, looking around. "I didn't have a chance to thank you for what you did." She watched him for some moments from beneath her long blonde lashes.

"You wear gla.s.ses?"

He closed the book and took off the wire rims.

"I'm sorry," she said. "I just didn't expect...someone like you would."

"Someone like me?"

She toyed with the ties of the robe, eyes downcast. "Edward told me what you are. He said you're just like Kage."

"Not exactly."

She looked up at that and something alighted in her eyes. Something suspiciously like hope. When she approached the divan and picked up his gla.s.ses, he was mystified. Then she placed them back on his face.

"They become you," she said as she sat down beside him.

He had never examined her this closely before. Her skin had a particular scent to it. He had noticed that about all the women in his life; every one had her own individual scent. Debra had the subtle, cloying scent of a carnivore. Kat had always reminded him of lavender and rain. Robyn was different from all that. She made him think of vanilla, something soft and fragile and infinitely feminine.

He touched her face, fascinated, almost expecting her flesh to give like silk beneath his touch. Soft. When her lips sought his, he did not immediately kiss back. Instead, he put out his tongue and licked the petal-soft pinkness there. Ah yes, here too was the scent. He licked some more. He heard a barely audible moan rise up in Robyn's throat. Then he accepted the gift of her mouth. To his senses she tasted like cream, but because it was not in his nature to kiss with the lips alone, he soon found himself dipping his tongue into all that honeyed sweetness, running it along the rim of the silken lips and then the chin and throat, all of it as delicious as if she had been daubed with the sweetest nectar known to mankind.

She whispered something in his ear, something sweet and obscene, and touched his bare chest with her fingertips. His whole being responded to her invitation. After a moment she slid her hands across his ribs and used her weight to pull him over her on the divan, the book caught between them. She kissed him again, b.u.mping her nose on the gla.s.ses that had fallen to the end of his nose. Instead of removing them, she turned her head, slanting her mouth against his, her hands in his hair, on him, everywhere suddenly, her ministrations so aggressive and complete he felt compelled to return the tasks one for another. It was like a dance or a war. A delicious confrontation.

Finally, emboldened by his response, she touched his teeth with her tongue and kissed and explored his mouth, exciting him all the more.

He was afraid he tasted of blood, but if he did so, it no longer frightened her. Good. The heart-pounding desire within was almost more than he could bear. Almost more than he could control. Almost more than he wanted to control. As the moon came out in all its powerful white brilliance and touched off his black hair with a spell of silver-blue light, he lowered his head and nipped playfully at her chin, then wetted a path from her throat to the cleave in the robe and nuzzled against the comforting clocking of her heartbeat. She was so sweet...as sweet as tea or coffee...her soft, warm woman flesh so intoxicating he was scarcely aware of the change in his face until it was almost too late.

He stopped. With his face down he could hide it at least, until it pa.s.sed.

"Alek?"

He hid his face in her lap, his reams of long hair falling like a curtain between them. "I'm sorry. I can't do this."

"It's all right." She tried to hold him and smooth his hair but now there was little comfort to be had in the feel of a woman's touch. She was so human, so alien to what he knew. She wasn't Debra. There would be no blood sport. He couldn't do the things he wanted to do. The things he dreamt of. "I'm not afraid of you," she said.

"I am like Kage," he whispered.

"No, you're not," she insisted. "Kage was a killer."

A killer. A slayer.

"Jesus."

"What? What is it?" Robyn asked.

He shook his head. The burn in his face had pa.s.sed so he chanced looking up at her. She didn't flinch so he took that as a good sign that he was over the craving. She touched his cheek with the palm of her hand and tried to kiss him but he drew back away from her and stood up, moving discreetly away from the divan.

"What's the matter?"

He went to the empty mirror, trying to decide what to do. He wanted to think about something other than the craving. Needed to. "Why did you lie to me?" he asked.

The reflected Robyn looked surprised. "I didn't lie to you."

"Edward Ashikawa is your husband, not your pimp. Danny is his son."

Robyn closed her eyes. For a moment he almost thought she would continue in the lie. Then she said, "How long have you known?"

"A while. There are no tapes. It's Danny he wants, just Danny."

"Edward told you...?"

"Danny's dreams. He has premonitions because Edward Ashikawa and Kage shared each others' blood." Alek looked aside. "Vampire blood sometimes creates such bonds...and such abilities."

Robyn stood up. "What I told you about my past was true, most of it.

I did run away. And my father...my mother died when I was born and that son of a b.i.t.c.h held me responsible." There was a terrible lilt in her voice. The sound of raw anguish. Then it was gone, just like that, replaced by raw anger. "But there are no tapes, no." She looked away. "I just wanted you to help me get free of Edward. You looked like someone who would help me."

Alek turned around and considered the girl. "Ask him for a divorce."

Robyn made a short, derisive laugh. "The Ryuujin of the Yakuza? Do you honestly think he'll give me one? And even so, I would still lose Danny."

"Stealing Danny away from his father isn't the way--"

"He's my son!" she spat vehemently. "I don't want him growing up to be some criminal like Edward! You've seen what he does...what he nearly did to you!" She stopped short, looking about the library as if she were not quite sure where she was or how she had gotten here. Her eyes flickered everywhere, and then seemed to travel to other places, other times. She folded her arms about herself like a coc.o.o.n and said, her eyes downcast, "My daddy hurt me, Alek."

He was numb. "So did mine. You live past it."

"You son of a b.i.t.c.h." She looked up. There were tears in her eyes but he would not be moved by them.