Alek caught a glance of the paper in Robin's hand. There was something there...a man in black with black hair, drawn in a childish scribble but still clearly recognizable. Alek might have dismissed it then and there, except the man was holding a long stick in his right hand.

A stick or a sword.

"Danny," Robin said to the boy as she broke eye contact with Alek, "This is a friend. He's going to stay with us tonight."

I am?

You are? Debra.

Alek opened his mouth to say...what? He closed it again and only looked at the boy, this little carbon copy of Robin, but with dark glistening eyes and black tousled, too-long hair.

Robin said, "This is Danny...my son."

Alek tried on a wan smile, then thought about what he must look like--a man in a long black coat holding a sword like some kind of jonin Samurai about to go into battle--and he put the katana away as discreetly as possible. Somehow he still didn't think he looked harmless, but it would have to do. The boy looked at him as if expecting something. s.h.i.t. He never knew what to say or how to act around children, having never had any of his own.

He crossed his arms and tried to smile. "Hi, Danny."

Danny smiled at him. A wondrous, brilliant smile. "You're the dream man," he said. "Hi."

10.

"Does Danny have those dreams often?" Alek asked as he finished bandaging Robin's ankle. The swelling was still bad and, frankly, he had no idea how she would cope in the next few days without some kind of medical attention, but she would not listen to him about seeing a doctor.

"What dreams would that be?" Robin asked innocently as she grimaced from the tightness of the bandage. She glanced briefly at the kitchenette where Danny sat busily scrawling on whatever he could find-old fliers, fallen bits of wallpaper. Anything, it seemed.

He reminded Alek of himself as a child.

"The prophetic kind," he said.

"He's only four. He has all kinds of dreams," Robin answered, but the strain in her voice said much more. Please don't ask me about Danny's dreams. Please let's change the subject.

"You should get this looked at," Alek said as he fixed the bandage. "I don't see how you'll be able to work tomorrow night."

At least his attempt at hitting her with that logic worked. Robin suddenly looked worried. "I'll manage."

"I really wish you'd see a doctor."

"Doctors ask questions." "I know one who won't. He works out of St Vincent's. We grew up together."

Robin bit her lip. "We'll talk about it tomorrow."

Alek gently moved her ankle out of his lap and onto the sofa cushion.

"I really can't stay, Robin."

Suddenly the look of pain in her eyes was replaced by the daunting look of complete panic. Had she not been injured, Alek was afraid she might have sprung right into his lap. A thousand thoughts seem to flit across her eyes, as if she were desperately seeking something that would hold him, something...anything that would make him stay, anything at all. Then she settled down and lowered her eyes. "Look...I'm asking you to stay for Danny's sake, not mine. I can take care of myself. It's just...I can't protect him from Kage. I can't fight something like that, you know?"

"And you think I can."

Her watery eyes opened. "You're a slayer." She seemed to gather her courage. Then she said, "I don't have very much...but I'll give you anything you want as payment. Anything you need. Whatever it is..."

He knew what she meant.

"I'm not like Kage," he said.

"Charlie called you a banpaia. A vampire."

"I'm not a vampire."

For a moment she frowned, and then her face softened and a look of surprising relief filled it up. "But you are a slayer."

"Yes. Not all vampire slayers are vampires."

Robin smiled. "Please stay? Just for tonight?"

Alek watched her face a moment. Then he got up off the sofa and wandered to the window. It looked out over a dead end alley. Secluded.

Fire escape several floors below. Cornices here. Even gargoyles, which were perfect for purchase. It was like welcoming Kage right into her apartment. After hesitating a moment more, he said, "Just for tonight."

11.

It was the shuffling sound that woke him. He sat up in the antique rocking chair-seemingly the only decent piece of furniture in the whole seedy flat--and blinked at the bright blue light of the silent television. He looked toward the door of the bedroom where Robin and Danny slept. It was sensibly closed as it had been when Robin went to bed. A few hours earlier she had put Danny to bed, then stood in the living room as if expecting Alek to pounce on her the moment Danny was out of sight.

When he wished her a good night and sat down in the rocker and turned the archaic television on to an old movie channel, she almost seemed relieved. Relieved and maybe a touch disappointed.

No...he didn't believe that. The sound again. From outside the window.

The fire escape, Beloved.

I hear it.

He drew his sword and moved silently to the window. He stayed to one side and discreetly lifted the tattered curtain. Someone was indeed standing on the fire escape. He could see their shadow reflected against the bricks. Then the someone seemed to sense his presence. A moment later the shadow escaped under the eaves.

Alek climbed out onto the rusted grill of the fire escape. He sc.r.a.ped the blade of his sword shrilly against the iron and saw the shadow shiver in response. It took his eyes a moment to adjust to the quag-like darkness under the overhanging eaves, but very shortly thereafter he realized what it was. Not a slayer, thank G.o.d.

Instead, a very slight--and very unthreatening--little figure crouched against the bricks.

"Danny..."

"You gonna tell Mom?" the boy asked.

Alek climbed out over the cornice of the building and under the eaves and crouched down, resting the sword on his thigh. "Not if you come back inside."

Danny looked at him with his big boyish tear-stained eyes but didn't make any move. That left Alek at a loss for what to do. A part of him wanted to fetch Robin and let her deal with the boy--but she was sound asleep. And anyway, he could handle this. It was just a boy, after all, not some bloodthirsty night warrior he was facing.

A scared little boy.

"You shouldn't cry," Alek said. "Your mother needs you strong."

"You sound like Dad. I miss him. He says warriors don't cry. Ever."

Alek thought about that, then pointed to his chest. "They do. But only here."

Danny smiled and sniffed, the tears suddenly vanishing. "You're cool.

But your face is weird. Like a mask."

Alek smiled in return. And then Danny touched his face as if to confirm that it was indeed real and not a mask. He watched the boy's face, the odd contentment there, and wondered about him. What he saw. What could he possible think "cool" about his wan white face?

But then he saw the fear return...the hard, undying fear...the child- fear of monsters and the dark. And his heart jumped in his chest a moment before he felt the vampiric presence wrapped him in panic and the shadow fell swiftly over them both. Danger! He jerked backward off the ledge of the building in a swan dive. Wind hit him like knives, tearing through his clothes and hair until he managed to somehow grab the ledge of the fire escape in mid-fall. Metal ripped into his hands. The jar of his body arrested in free fall was nearly enough to make him lose his lunch. His shoulder muscles tore and instantly mended themselves, making his arms and chest feel as if they were constructed of overstretched taffy. His entire body felt as though it were on fire. He bit his lip to keep from crying out.

A black ninja sword cracked the cornice where he had been standing only moments before, its ebony single edge wickedly sharp--sharp enough to chop loose a chunk of the stonework and flick chips of it into Alek's face. The fact that it had so narrowly missed Alek's head only made his heart clock that much faster in his chest. His blood drummed in tangent with his runaway heart so that he was sure his ribs should burst from it all "Danny!" he rasped through a wind-scorched throat.

"Danny...run!

He was too late. He saw his a.s.sailant standing on the edge of the fire escape. He was a small man, dressed all in black silk like a kengo a.s.sa.s.sin, his face hidden by a chain mail mask. He held Danny with practically no effort at all. And then, with one deft motion of his free hand, he tore away the mask. His face was Kabuki white and devoid of human life, his eyes burning black slits as they opened wide like collapsed stars and began to devour Alek one piece at a time. The vampire was perfect and inhuman and the moment Alek saw those eyes he felt such a despair it was as if he were falling already. All of his strength suddenly wanted to leave his body. All of his life seemed a waste. He closed his eyes against the vampire's power but the haunted, hopeless, completely fated look was imbedded in his memory for all time.

And then it spoke. It. Because it could be nothing else. "The Slayer,"

it said. "What a find."

Alek grunted as he rea.s.sured his grip on the fire escape. As much as he tried, he could not find a toehold anywhere on the building. He was dangling and in danger and he did not want to see those tragic eyes again, but he was more afraid of not seeing what the vampire had planned next, so he looked. This time the shock of those alien eyes burning against his more mundane ones was lessened because Alek knew what to expect, but the horror of them was still there. And the horror still ate at him like a cancer. "Kage," he managed.

Kage smiled but it was not an evil smile. Evil one could talk to, even reason with to some extent. This was something else. Something worse.

Something too old and broken to ever be called Evil. "I'm glad we've been introduced. Now you can die," he suggested.

"No."

"Let go," Kage said conversationally.

For a split second Kage's suggestion made perfect sense to Alek and he nearly did so. He nearly let go, because letting go was what had to be done. Letting go was what knocked on his brain like something important he had forgotten to do. Then he remembered the fall would most likely kill him and he chose to hang on instead.

"Fall." Kage's voice was like a hammer.

"No," Alek whimpered.

Kage stepped on Alek's hands where they gripped the ledge like a pair of vices. Alek grimaced as he felt his finger bones grate under Kage's heel.

Agony zagged in random patterns up his arms and made the sweat break out all over his skin. He was going to fall now for sure, whether he did it himself or not. He was going to fall...unless he could distract Kage long enough to escape. And that meant going straight for the heart.

"Like Takara, Kage," Alek whispered, "...all tricks and no skill..."

Rage turned Kage's eyes blood red. He kicked Alek in the chin.

Alek's head snapped back and he nearly lost his hold on the fire escape. But the kick had the advantage that it cleared his mind as well and it was sheer stubborn will alone that kept his hands from spasming and letting go of the edge. He wish he knew how far down was; he wished he knew what was done there so he wasn't liable to land on anything that would permanently damage him...

Kage, frustrated beyond words, beyond all control, threw the boy down so he could grip the black ninja sword in both hands. He roared as he prepared to swing the sword.

Of course he wanted Alek to hang on now. Hang on...so he would lose his head.

Alek let go instead. A scream of wind rushed up around him as he dropped the ten or more stories to the alley floor below. He heard and felt Debra cry out inside his head. She didn't like what she saw down there--and now, neither did he, and he regretted every letting go of the fire escape in the first place, until...

...until his coat caught on the head of a gargoyle waterspout. The leather held only a moment before shredding but it did its job nonetheless: his momentum was temporarily halted and he twisted like a cat in midair and tumble down onto his hands and knees just to the lee side of a wrought iron spoke fence at the base of the building.

Iron. One foot in the wrong direction and he would have had nothing to worry about. Ever again.

But there wasn't time to contemplate that. Kage was still on the ledge.

And Kage still had Danny.

Drawing his sword, Alek threw it like a javelin at the dark figure standing at the top of the fire escape. Vampires and their kin had no special strength that he had ever known about or experienced. But one did not need strength where this sword was concerned. The Double Serpent Katana did as he wanted it to: impaling Kage through the middle and pinning him to the outside wall of the building like a bug on a board.

Kage roared and released his hold on Danny. For a moment Danny looked bewildered by it all, but in mere seconds his good city-wrought survival instincts kicked in and he bolted for the open window into the apartment. Kage continued to struggle like an impaled insect, but his cries had fallen into low animal-like whimpers by then. His rage and pain were almost palpable on the dirty city wind. He gripped the sword in both hands, trying to pull it from the wall and from himself, but the sword was anch.o.r.ed solid by a force far greater than his own. It would not let him go until Alek willed it.

It took painfully long time for Alek to climb the face of the building-- by now he was getting very tired of all this endless excitement--but climb it he did, until he was over the ledge of the fire escape and facing Kage eye to eye.

"You haven't won," Kage said, panted, strings of blood frothing from his mouth.

Alek took the hilt of the sword in his hand. "If I let you go, you'll go away?"

Kage's black eyes narrowed, bleeding. He knew he was defeated for the moment. Even a creature such as he was, with his terrible strength, would not be able to continue fighting with a sword wound as great as this through his belly. He would need to feed. He would need to recover.

He said, "You have no idea what you have become involved in. You had better finish me off now because next time we meet, Slayer, I shall tear you apart for what you have done."

Alek eyed the vampire. "What I've done to Ashikawa...or what I've done to you?"

For a moment Kage held Alek's eyes. Despite what had happened two years ago, despite the bitter blood between them, he really did not want to kill Kage. And he knew why. Kage's power, his influence, was legendary even among the masters. But it was more than that. Alek had accidentally started this conflict.

This was not like fighting Samson or the hordes of other glory- seekers. He did not want Kage dead and Kage knew it, which was why he used his influence so sparingly. Vampires didn't lie and manipulate.

That was a fallacy. They did not make you do anything you didn't already want to do--or anything you did not.

Alek sighed. "Go home, Kage. I'm protecting Robin from your master."

And with that, he wrenched the sword free. Kage dropped forward onto his knees, doubled over in pain, perhaps waiting--maybe hoping?-- for the coup de grace to fall upon him. Alek slipped back inside the apartment instead and locked the window. They would have their inevitable conflict but it would not be here and it would not be now.