Kage felt that worry burrow a smoldering hole through his heart. He loved the great Dragon Lord, loved him in too many ways to count, in ways scarcely explored by most mortals--and even fewer immortals. It was a love of common blood, love of self-preservation and survival, and yet love of something else, something greater, vaster, and more perfect than himself. The love one had, perhaps, of a G.o.d. "You look unwell, my Ryuujin. Perhaps I could persuade you to partake of my life?"

The Ryuujin swirled his gla.s.s of scotch but did not drink of it. "Too many years, Kage," he said. He looked up. "Kage, tell me, what does time mean to you?"

As always, Kage was tempted to lie if it meant comforting his Ryuujin. As always, he chose to be truthful instead. "Very little, I'm afraid." After a moment's hesitation, he chose to take the initiative and approach the great Ryuujin without invite. When they stood with only the gla.s.s to separate them, Kage unsheathed his katana. The Ryuujin made no move to discipline him in any way for his actions, so Kage offered his master his sword.

After a moment, the Ryuujin took it.

Kage knelt down and turned his head aside. A moment later his master discreetly nicked the underside of Kage's chin with the painlessly sharp edge of the katana. When the black blood began to well up--it did not take long--Kage felt his master's hand on his chin, felt his master's mouth on the wound, taking. In most cases such exchanges caused a particularly powerful and sometimes dangerous s.e.xual throb in one of Kage's kind, except that Kage had learned the discipline to curb such awry emotions. He had done so for years. He was not an animal because he chose not to be.

He waited until the Ryuujin had taken what he wanted, what he felt he needed, and then, when his master's mouth was gone, Kage rubbed a bit of his own saliva into the wound to speed along the healing. The Ryuujin told him to stand up. He did so. The Ryuujin gave him back the katana and Kage sheathed it under his long leather greatcoat.

"This dhampir disturbs me," the Ryuujin said.

Kage had seen his master fight in Seoul. He had seen Edward Ashikawa tear the face off of another man with a fistful of ground gla.s.s.

He had seen Edward Ashikawa break the necks of two of his own hired men when they had sold out to Tong in Chinatown. Once, when he was younger and working for his father, he opened fire on a church to show a group of black g.a.n.g.b.a.n.gers that had taken refuge in it that there was no part of this city that he did not own. He was a savage. He was a warrior. He feared nothing, outwardly. He only spoke so openly now about his fears because he knew he would not be able to disguise his worry from Kage. And he was correct. "I should not have sent the boys for the girl," he said.

"They were the only ones capable of finding her in this city. You did what you had to. In any event, the more experienced men would have had no better luck with the Slayer than they. If anything, the Slayer might have killed them all."

The Ryuujin frowned. "Doesn't matter anymore. I want you on the job now."

"I will do it," said Kage.

"But you don't want to. I can feel it."

Kage hesitated. And then, with head bowed: "I would prefer not to."

"I sense no fear from you, yet you are reluctant. Should I ask why?"

"You know I will answer any question of yours put to me, my Ryuujin."

There was a moment of indecision on the Ryuujin's part. Then he said, "Find the girl and get from her what I need. When you have it, kill her. If the Slayer intervenes, kill him as well. If he gives her up willingly, then you and he can work out whatever arrangement makes you both happy, according to the rules of engagement of your kind."

"Your will is, as always, my own," Kage answered.

The Ryuujin narrowed his eyes. Again he sensed the untruth in Kage's response, but this time he said nothing more about it.

8.

Her name was Robin Wright and she was a nineteen-year-old runaway from Lodi, New Jersey. She had arrived in the city five years ago, but it seemed much longer, somehow. As if she had always been here, doing this. The streets had a way of educating you in a hurry, and Robin took a crash course. She came to escape a religiously fanatical father and the undying memories of a dead mother. Like most young runaways, Robin found herself at a dead end, penniless, homeless, hopeless, with nothing to offer the city for barter for her survival but her body. She slept in a churchyard the first night and sold herself the second night in order to get up enough money for a loaf of bread, a bottle of whiskey to stay warm, and a room in a dilapidated motel.

She wasn't stupid or oblivious to what she was doing. Her father had taught her all about the wages of sin and all that. But how could she go home after what she had done? Her father had locked her in a closet once for two whole days after she used a spew of profanity on him. She was afraid. He would know she had ruined herself. He would check. And he would probably kill her. All she had left was to tough things out, try to make a life for herself, so all this was a dark memory one day. Anyway, she was used to her father's hands on her. This was no different. She would simply lie back on a bed somewhere and pretend she was elsewhere until it was over. It wasn't so hard. Not really. It was survival. Survival of the fittest. The only difference between the slag of degradation her endless stream of faceless men inflicted on her body and her father was that she wasn't judged and punished as a sinner afterward.

Well, most of the time she wasn't.

Some did try to punish her. Some got downright nasty and slapped her around or pulled out a knife and threatened to cut her apart like the deserving wh.o.r.e she was. After one such encounter too many--she still had the scars on her arms to prove it--she decided to get protection.

By then she had worked the streets long enough to become familiar with some of the other girls. They told her she was crazy to work freelance, that it was too dangerous, that sooner or later she would wind up dead. Not even the tough young transvest.i.tes on Tenth Avenue worked by themselves. They told her she'd be wise to choose her own pimp, that something so sweet and young as herself wouldn't go unnoticed for long and she could end up the slave of some s.a.d.i.s.tic freak.

Not that all pimps weren't sons-of-b.i.t.c.hes who treated their women like s.h.i.t, but some were decidedly worse than others. A girl needed protection. Sure, she'd be another man's property, but the upside to that was that your owner protected you. One of the older girls, a veteran of the streets at eighteen, generously offered to set her up with the "master" as she jokingly called her pimp.

Alek sipped the over strong college-coffeehouse espresso and linked his hands together atop the Formica table separating him from the blonde. Robin had dreamy eyes for a prost.i.tute. Eyes like the kids sitting in this coffee house and chatting on emphatically about what college they would attend, what guy they would marry. Robin should have been with this crowd, he thought, not out on the streets.

Robin lit a cigarette. "That's how I came to know Edward Ashikawa."

Alek bowed his head, looked up at the girl from under his tangle of undone hair. "Edward Ashikawa...the head of the Yakuza here in the city?"

Robin nodded. "Actually, it was a small bit pimp working for him that took me in, but I caught Edward's eye and things just...happened.

He brought me into his inner circle and I met his people." For a moment her storm-blue eyes seemed to darken. "Some were nice."

"Nice people like those boys who attacked you," he said.

"And people like Kage."

Alek jerked his head up, surprised to hear the sound of the name of a master vampire on such an innocent little mortal's lips. More, to hear the name at all...which he had prayed would never, ever, happen.

Robin read his reaction incorrectly as fatherly concern instead of the deep-hearted terror it had invoked. "Kage's okay," she said. "He'll give you want you want. He watchdogs us at night." Alek felt his lips chap under his tongue. His stomach churned with the bittersweet coffee. "Kage."

"Yeah. He makes people. He also unmakes them."

Cryptic words. Did he want to pursue this? No. But now, having done what he did, having involved himself with Edward Ashikawa's property this way, he realized he had little choice in the matter. "Why does Ashikawa want you? Did you take something from him?"

Robin's eyes crept sideways across the cafe over all the students in their army surplus jackets and French berets and Doc Martens as if she expected the Grand Dragon of the Yakuza--or maybe Kage himself--to materialize any moment and d.a.m.n her for her sins, whatever they were.

"One morning a few weeks ago I woke up and realized I was done with this city. I only wanted to go home," she said. "About that time someone approached me...a narc, I think. He wanted to get wires on Ashikawa but he couldn't get into his home office. He said he would get me out, keep me safe, if I planted them. So I did. Kage found out about them and traced them back to the narc." She took a long sip of coffee and pulled her shawl closer about her shoulders. "The guy called me...said someone was closing in on him and told me where he'd hidden the tapes he'd made. A few days later I came home and found a body on the kitchen table, all messed up..." She closed her eyes and her face froze like a stature. "I didn't know what to do, so I ran."

"Your agent must have had backup...someone you can go to...?"

Robin shook her head. "He never told me their names. And I can't go to the police; Ashikawa owns them. He owns everyone. Everyone is just a thrall to him."

Again Alek started. You didn't hear the word 'thrall' too often unless you were dealing with a hive of vampires. He wondered where she had come across the terminology. Then again, if the rumors were true, Ashikawa, though not one himself, had several vampire heavies on his payroll.

Vampires like Kage, Debra whispered.

I know.

Ashikawa's immortal warrior army was one of the reasons he was such a force to be reckoned with in this city. But Alek didn't want to think about that right now. Didn't want to think about Kage. Instead he said, "What do you know about his...thralls?"

Robin dropped her eyes. She knew...something. She snubbed out the cigarette and stared at the murky depths of her coffee cup. She ran a hand through her short, mussy hair. "They're not...normal. The ones like Kage...I can't explain it to you."

Silence pushed in between them. Suddenly the outside sounds of clattering dishes and chatting teenagers that he had nearly forgotten about began to intercede on their private world. And he welcomed them. "Fair enough," he said.

"You're a cop, aren't you?" Robin said.

Alek shook his head no. Robin studied him a long, hard moment, an unlit cigarette dangling from between her first and second fingers. "You fight like one...or something."

"Do you know what Kage is?"

Robin nodded. "Banpaia. A vampire."

"I hunt them."

The slightest surprise fluttered across Robin's face. "You're a slayer?"

"Sometimes."

"That's why you want to know about Kage. You want to kill him?"

She sounded hopeful.

"I don't want to kill anyone. But since he's servant to Edward Ashikawa, that means he's made me his enemy for interfering with Ashikawa's boys."

You made an enemy of him a long time ago, Debra began.

Hush...

Robin looked glum. "That was my fault."

"Don't worry about it," he said.

Oh please, Debra huffed. Don't be such a crusader.

Robin looked around. "I shouldn't f.u.c.king be here."

"How's your ankle?"

The one boy, Ponytail, had done a good job on her as she struggled.

She had a minor fracture in her left ankle. He could tell by the swelling and by the pain in her face.

"I'll live." She got up, balancing against the table as if to prove it.

"You won't get very far on that ankle," he said.

She looked up from beneath her heavy bangs. "I don't suppose you're a slayer for hire, then?"

9.

He carried her up the last flight of steps to her apartment. It might not have been necessary--she seemed capable of walking on her own, albeit very slowly--but the sooner she got off that swollen ankle the better. He set her down on the landing outside the door and waited for her to unlock the half dozen deadbolts on the door.

The building was your usual run-of-the-mill firetrap. The halls were trash-littered, the walls septic, the doors lining the halls up and down covered in layers of graffiti that pa.s.sed in some slum lord's opinion for paint. A typical Lower East Side dream palace. Ever since Alek had bought the Covenhouse and made it his home he had forgotten what some of the really wonderful places in New York looked like.

Like where we grew up, Debra said.

"Yes." "What's that?" Robin asked as she turned the last bolt.

"Sorry," Alek said. "Just thinking aloud."

Robin smiled. A pretty smile. "I do that too. Ever notice how people look at you odd when you do that, even though they do it themselves?"

"Human beings are odd," he whispered.

"Yeah. We are."

He wondered what they meant, but he hadn't the courage to ask.

So this was home. A three room flat in a nearly derelict project.

Exposed copper pipes a hundred years old. Brick interior walls. Naked light bulbs. Threadbare carpet. More threadbare sofa--it didn't look safe, but he was about to ask Robin to sit down on it anyway so he could take a look at her ankle when he was distracted by the shuffle of a sneakered foot from the opposite side of the bedroom door.

He drew his katana--there was no point in hiding it from Robin; she'd been privy to it in the alley earlier--and moved on silent feet to the door.

Robin said, "Wait...no..."

He ignored her. All he cared about right now was who was lurking in the bedroom.

The light peeking out from under the badly hung door was obliterated momentarily as the person moved back a step. Oh no you don't, he thought. You aren't getting away that easily. Taking the doork.n.o.b in one hand, he pulled open the door while moving deftly to one side. He expected someone at any moment to come barreling out-- and he wasn't disappointed.

But what came out did surprise him.

"Mom!" cried the boy as he charged out of the bedroom and threw himself into Robin's arms, almost toppling her over where she stood.

She caught her balance at the last moment and then returned the child's strangle-like hug. Robin was so small she didn't seem capable of lifting the child's full weight into her arms, but lift him she did--and, in fact, swung him around once before setting him down on his feet.

"Hey...how's my big tiger today?

"Made this for you," the boy said emphatically, holding up a crumpled piece of construction paper with a splattering of watercolors on it.

"A red sun?" Robin said, looking at it as if observing a grand piece of treasured art.

The boy nodded. "Had the dream again."

Something flitted across Robin's face, but it came and went too quickly for Alek to determine what it was. Then she looked again at the boy and smiled.

The boy was not looking at her, however. He was staring at Alek standing in the corner of the room, his hands folded across his sword.