He was alone. He was dressed in a flowing black kimono embroidered with gold lotus. He had a razor-sharp katana long sword tucked into his red sash. She remembered he always wore the katana, even around the house. He looked ready for battle, as always. Yet he was sitting very quietly on the window seat, his attention fixed on the courtyard beyond.

He had a gla.s.s of scotch in one hand but it looked untouched. For a moment Robyn looked around, certain she would see Kage here somewhere, lurking in some corner--Kage had surely been the one to pour his master the scotch, after all--yet he was conspicuously absent.

"Where's Danny?" Robyn whispered. She was so scared, yet so tired too.

Edward never looked away from the window. "Safe. Kage is looking after him."

"I want to see my son, Edward."

Edward sighed. "Do you honestly think I would harm Danny?"

Tears welled up in Robyn's eyes, yet they were not tears of worry. No, she seriously doubted Edward would harm Danny. Nevertheless, she was helpless, as helpless as Danny was. The fatigue was suddenly too much.

The horror. There was no escape from Edward Ashikawa. No escape from this f.u.c.king city at all. "G.o.dd.a.m.n you," she said, hoa.r.s.e. "I don't know what you're capable of anymore. I don't know who you are. You're as alien to me as Kage."

Edward turned to her, stunned. "How dare you d.a.m.n me after what you have done," he whispered. "After how you betrayed me."

She almost laughed. She wanted to dash that Waterford crystal out of Edward's hand, wanted to grind the gla.s.s to shards and stab it through that empty place in his chest that pa.s.sed for a heart. The place where once a heart had beat, a very long time ago. She sank bonelessly into a chair and lit a cigarette to keep from shaking. Funny, but Edward had never smoked until she came into his life. They had shared so much of themselves with each other. It had beat for her once in that same long ago time, his heart. It had. But that was what the men told you, she reminded herself. They said I love you just before they hurt you. That was their way. That was the way of the world.

And she had been a fool to forget that.

The cigarette would not light. The pack had been too dampened by her tears.

"I only want to be free of you, you b.a.s.t.a.r.d!" she wept suddenly, almost hysterical. She dashed the cigarettes and lighter to the floor.

"How dare you hold me against my will!"

Edward's eyes halved and his gla.s.s seemed to sing with some unspent power. "You love him."

Robyn ran her hands through her hair. "Who?" she spat.

"Your beautiful lover, your knight in shining armor," Edward whispered savagely. "I mean your dhampir."

Robyn shook her head, mystified.

"You don't know."

"Know what?" she demanded, standing up.

Edward flashed his cold eyes at her, and then turned back to the window. After a moment, he signaled her to join him. Robyn was completely reluctant. It was a trick. It had to be. Men were good at that, tricking. Tricking and hurting. But after a few pa.s.sing minutes she realized there really was something out there, something going on in the courtyard interesting enough to capture his attention. No small feat where Edward Ashikawa was concerned. He had seen it all. There was little that interested him anymore.

The curiosity and the silence pressed in and forced her forward.

Robyn crossed the room until she was a safe distance from Edward-- what distance would that be? her cynical mind chided--but was still able to peer through the grand bay window. Down there was Edward's magnificent courtyard, the trees and fountains she knew so well. The peahens. But there was also a powerful mist blanketing the earth. As Robyn watched it twist and flow, she thought she saw creatures moving at the edges of it, flickering like lightning, yet she could only see them clearly out of the corners of her eyes.

So it was no normal mist.

It was Kurayami, the Floating Dragon.

And she had a victim tonight. Two to be exact.

The one victim was human. Robyn could tell by the ghastly site of him, how his emaciated figure hung like a coat on a rack within the mist, his face white and lifeless, his limbs mere sticks, his skin as brittle as old leather as the gaki sucked the life and juices slowly and painfully from his once-young body. Soon it would drop to the ground, a body no longer, a mere crispy husk, his life, his very soul, stolen to feed Edward's ravenous mist vampire. Robyn did not know the man personally who had become Kurayami's latest victim, but she thought she recognized him from one of Edward's offices as someone who had worked for him.

Someone who had done some menial tasks for him or something.

Someone who had betrayed him, she supposed.

But the other one...the leather greatcoat, the long lacy-black hair, the face and hands so perfect like rare white jade...

"Jesus," Robyn whispered. "Let him go, Edward," she said. "Let him f.u.c.king go, G.o.dd.a.m.n you!" She nearly grabbed Edward's arm, then changed her mind at the last moment and grabbed a hold of the window seat instead. There were tears in her eyes, despite her will--her wanting--to halt them, and they turned the whole scene into an eerie, dreamlike mosaic.

"You truly love him," Edward said, his voice dead like his eyes.

"Please don't kill him," Robyn said, hating the childlike, pleading quality of her voice, hating it. "Please...I'll stay with you and do what you want, but don't harm him."

"Robyn," Edward said with enormous patience, "does he look harmed to you?" He indicated the whole lurid scene with his upraised gla.s.s.

"You've slept a whole day, my dear. In fact, that other unfortunate young man has been here for only a fourth of the time your valiant knight has.

Kurayami has had the dhampir for almost twenty hours now."

Dhampir again.

Robyn frowned and dismissed the word. Twenty hours--but that wasn't impossible. It took Kurayami no more than four or five hours to emaciate and kill a full-grown man. If what Edward said was true...that meant the gaki had been feeding off Alek for four times as long as the dead man. It just wasn't possible. Except for his apparent lack of consciousness, he looked perfectly normal, no aging, no decay at all. She racked her brain for an answer, trying to remember all the folklore she knew or had learned about mist vampires, about slayers. The only way he could possibly survive Kurayami...well, that was if he had her power-- or a power similar to it.

Robyn felt her heart sink and her breath catch like a claw in her throat. She didn't want to ask, didn't want to know, but she had to.

"What's a dhampir?" she said.

Edward sipped his drink. "You might say," he said, "that it is the folly of a vampire's pa.s.sion and a human woman's stupidity."

Again Robyn looked at Alek. Really looked at him. He didn't look real.

He looked like an automaton or a great beautiful doll, something not human and only painted to look human. Something that missed being human by a hair's breadth. Something far too perfect to pa.s.s for human. Dhampir. He had felt human when she touched his hands. His downcast, perpetually hurting eyes were human. He was human, and yet not. Dhampir. No. He wasn't Kage. He wasn't an It. He was strong and perfect, and capable of protecting her from an imperfect world...

"Poor Robyn. You still don't understand."

"He isn't..."

"He is," Edward said. "He is human, in his way, I suppose. Yet he has their hunger. He plays their games. And if you stay with him, Robyn my love, he will rip you apart in time."

Robyn stepped back, away from the window.

Edward saw her horror. And then he turned the last screw. "You might as well be in love with Kage," he whispered.

"You f.u.c.king liar!" This time Robyn did strike the gla.s.s from Edward's hand. The gla.s.s shattered against the vast picture window, the amber liquid running down the gla.s.s like the tears on her face that she could no longer hold back. Turning away from the window and the endless nightmare she called life, Robyn raced from the room.

19.

Kage watched the girl flee from the Ryuujin's study. He was crouched on a ledge halfway up the tall eastern wall of the foyer, the bleeding light of the stained gla.s.s window washing over his leather greatcoat like a spillage of blood. The girl never noticed him. Few ever did, and only if he chose so.

The sun was coming up and he felt wearied by it. It had been a very long night, a lot of activity, and he had not had much time for nourishment. Not even to feed on the humans he had killed. He had thought about the blood in those bodies, two gallons apiece--how he hated to waste such things--but there was Charlie to think of. Feeding was like...well, it was a lot like s.e.x. So he had done nothing about the blood. He had washed the incident from the other pa.s.sengers' memories and replaced it with the details of some terrorist incident, which was easy in a city as terror-stricken as New York. And then he had taken Danny and Charlie had taken the girl and both of them had returned home. But Kage could sense that the master was still not happy. The moment he arrived the Ryuujin had asked that he watch over the boy, a task he found increasingly difficult to perform--even more difficult than reweaving that clot of pa.s.senger's memories-when all he could think about was the warm, glowing human bodies all about him. The life- giving juices in them...

Kage shook himself back to the present. The girl had retreated upstairs to hide in her room, and so Kage leapt down off his perch and headed for the study. The room faced west over the courtyard, sparing him the apocalypse of morning light. Yet the daylight was no less painful to endure. The brightness of the window made Kage squint and sent a worm of reluctance crawling down his spine. He hung undecidedly in the doorway until the Ryuujin sensed his presence and turned his way.

"Danny?" the Ryuujin asked.

"I left him with the men, my Ryuujin. Forgive me."

"I..." The Ryuujin went to retrieve his fallen gla.s.s, but his eyes were pinned on Kage's face. "I suppose it's my turn to say you look unwell."

"Not unwell, my Ryuujin."

"Ah." The Ryuujin looked at his empty gla.s.s. "Come here."

Kage did, despite the glaring agony of the window.

"You did well, Kage," the Ryuujin said with quiet affection as he tuned to pull the drawstring and the heavy velvet drapes shushed closed over the window, blocking out the light and the courtyard and the dhampir still suffering Kurayami's power. "Your plan worked exactly.

But tell me...how did you know the dhampir would come here?"

Kage bowed his head. "You honor me." He thought about telling the truth, that he had planted the suggestion in the dhampir's mind and that the creature was only reacting to Kage's will by coming here, as everyone who stood in his way did--but Kage found himself hesitant to reveal that. He had never been comfortable with explaining his power, even to his Ryuujin. It was worse than trying to explain the different subspecies of immortal to a human being. Worse than feeding in front of one, the s.e.xual frenzy witnessed. There was something about his power that made him feel terribly odd, as if he were an alien creature with no right to exist in this world. So in the end he opted to say, "I knew his mind well enough to know he would choose a forward confrontation." It wasn't a lie, really. In time the dhampir would choose the offense. Kage knew that innately upon meeting the whelp the first time--he was young, pa.s.sionate, unbroken by the years like most of their kind were. Kage simply did not have the patience to wait around for all of it to come to pa.s.s, so he had pushed the dhampir to make the inevitable decision earlier than expected.

The Ryuujin nodded, and Kage used that moment of beaming silent approval to take his master's empty gla.s.s and courier it over to the wet bar. He should feel exonerated. Rewarded. Happy. Yet he just wanted to sleep. Sleep and be done with this all. As he poured fresh ice and scotch into the gla.s.s he heard the great Ryuujin say, "I would honor you further, if you will allow me to."

Kage looked at the stainless steel decanter on the bar. Yes, he could use to be honored, and very soon, too, before the craving overwhelmed him completely.

"No, Kage. I would honor you."

Kage turned at that, the ice in the gla.s.s clinking together. He was stunned. It was rare he was offered such a gift as this. The Ryuujin himself. His blood. Rarer still, that the Ryuujin offered it to him with the option of refusing. It was Kage's duty to serve the Ryuujin, not to be served by him. But this was a gift he was being offered, and no j.a.panese man with any self-respect turned down a gift, or a gift-giver.

The Ryuujin unb.u.t.toned the two top b.u.t.tons of his white dress shirt and bared his throat.

Kage stopped breathing and the drink he was preparing for his master was completely forgotten. Dragon's blood, he thought, and from the throat of the Dragon himself. His mouth was suddenly deep with teeth and saliva, his body wracked with a desire so powerful he heard an animal-like whimper catch in his own throat at the sight. The Ryuujin should not see him like this, Kage thought, not like this. Not with his eyes like this. Not as if he were something alien to this world.

Alien and unknown to it. And then the sorrow was there inside Kage like a sob and Kage closed his eyes.

"Don't hide yourself from me," the Ryuujin whispered sagely. "Come to me."

Kage did. He touched his master, the backs of his fingernails grazing the sacred flesh, amazed with it, with the Ryuujin himself. That a man should want him like this. That a man should tolerate his presence.

Yet he hesitated. He remembered the pa.s.senger in the subway, the snap of bones and juices as he bit deep into her spinal column. He should not touch the Ryuujin with such a mouth...and yet, savage that he was, he did. He was offered a gift as a man and he took it, knowing he was only an animal. How great you are, my lord, he thought, to offer such kindness to such a beast as I! He leaned forward and kissed the sacred skin as if it were the fragile white flesh of a lily, or a fruit waiting to be opened to the senses, and in that kiss he tasted the sweet nectar of the Dragon Lord's blood, nearly swooning in the sensation of it burning on his tongue and at the back of his throat.

How great Man was.

20.

He felt her lips on him. Everywhere. He was well aware that she was feeding on him, taking him in fluttery little kisses, her killing sweet and slow and seductive, yet he was unable to react. It was like a whisper in the dark, her killing him. A whisper on his skin. Except it echoed everywhere within him and without him and all around him. At first it was like the tickle of a tongue, an arousing and uneasy feeling. Now he felt the pain of it as she drank deep of his strength, leaving behind only her own yawning emptiness. The emptiness that was becoming him.

The emptiness that he was filling moment by moment.

Her felt her gnashing teeth, her undying years...

Kurayami!

She did not hear his voice, or chose not too. She seemed too enthralled by her power over him.

The pain intensified. Now it was less like a hungry woman's mouth and more like the jagged cuts of a blade. Like tearing. Like bleeding from within...

Alek shivered and felt a gnawing ache grow inside his belly and loins.

He knew that ache all too well; it had a sister ache in the back of his mouth. He sucked back a breath as new pain ripped mercilessly through him. He tasted his own blood from the tongue slashed in his mouth by his own teeth. The blood was like water on a fire, like wine. He needed it. Needed it so badly. Needed more. So much more...

Kurayami...

The gaki crooned in response, her voice lilting and mischievous. She had begun to sing, such was her pa.s.sion--a long wordless dirge that spoke only of primal desire met, hunger sated. She twisted, first this way and then that, like a lover in the throes of climax. And then, suddenly, the body of the young man she had turned her attention on some time ago dropped lifelessly to the ground far below. Alek saw it there, crumpled and finished. Like an insect. The boy had held on a long time, or so it seemed. It was impossible to tell. Time no longer had any meaning. After the first few hours Alek had lost his grasp of time. He wondered how long he had been here, lost in Kurayami's pain and years and endless hunger, if it could be measured in hours or days, or something longer still.

No...the boy proved that it had not been long. Not long at all. A few hours. He wasn't lost yet, he decided. Just trapped. For what seemed the hundredth time he tried to focus all his remaining strength and psi power on finding his fallen sword...but the pain--he grimaced--the pain was too great, too distracting. He was drowning in the tearing- KURAYAMI!.

The cry cut like a blade through the veil of mist. Yet it was not his cry, he suddenly realized.

Something stirred in the mist, something there with them, yet something he had not noticed until now. Something there but apart from them in shape and form.

Kurayami's great silvery eyes blinked open. And for the very first time he saw them half and a childlike shadow of fear come alive in them.

Kurayami not afraid! the gaki insisted. What have Kurayami to fear?

Me.

Someone was there beside him, between himself and the gaki. Alek saw the woman, her writhing black hair and gown, her eyes as dark and seething as blood rubies in the dark. She looked at Alek and Alek recognized the predatory gleam in her face, the stubborn concentration there, the love and the power. Where would I be without you, beloved?

he wondered.

Debra smiled but it was not a smile of happiness. Instead, it was one of pure, unadulterated greed. Wantonness. She had no intention of allowing Kurayami to harm him. She loved him, but she also possessed him. He was her toy, her tormented captor, her greatest pa.s.sion. And Debra had never been one to share her toys.

Kurayami reacted to the affront at once and tried to s.n.a.t.c.h up her new foe as she had s.n.a.t.c.hed up countless other victims, but failed because Debra existed beyond life--and certainly beyond even Kurayami's powerful grip. The realization hit Kurayami the same time it did Alek: the gaki had no power over Debra because Debra was dead, and the gaki, though unnatural, was still very much bound to the rules of the living world. The gaki growled like a storm, her eyes cruel with childish fury. Then her mist-like substance reshaped itself into a fearsome reptilian creature full of teeth and horns, an only dreamt-of nightmare out of fable and folklore. Her powerful jaws agape, the mist dragon leapt forward, roaring like a lioness at Debra.