When Gabrielle didn't add anything, Erik supposed that it had been 'I won't', and nodded. Without even thinking about it any longer, he came to kneel next to her and offered her his wrist. Her fangs slid easily into his flesh, and he had to focus on something other than her as she drank not to become aroused. The black length of fabric draped over the room's window looked like it had been cut out of a cloak; he wondered, for a while, if it was hers, only noticing now that she had not been wearing a cloak when he had found her. She used not to ever go out without one, and he had once heard her joke that it was part of the vampire tradition to wear long, black cloaks.

By the time she stopped pulling on his blood, he was hard again, and cursing himself for it. Trying to hide his discomfort from her, he quickly left the room, advising her to rest. There was a lot he would have wished to tell Gabrielle, a lot of questions he would have wanted to ask, but after two hundred years the pain was still fresh of waking up alone in the deserted ruins of their lair, and his pride wouldn't let him risk a repeat of that. He left the house to take care of his horse, and hunted for a few minutes for small game to feed from. It wasn't long though before he returned to the house, and after checking on Gabrielle, he took his own advice and tried once more to find sleep.

Erik wasn't sure whether it was his body or his heart that hurt most as he curled up on the floor, closing himself to the world. Nothing left, in this world, for him. No one.

He was aware, barely, of Gabrielle's presence, but her silence was painful. Why wouldn't she say anything? Why wouldn't she even say his name, acknowledge that she was seeing him, that they were still there together, that not everything was gone?

A strong hand closed on his arm, pulled him until he was straddling Gabrielle's lap, but Erik continued to tremble, still convinced that he had lost everything and everyone that night. Blunt teeth closed on his neck, not painfully but hard enough that he couldn't ignore them, and he froze. Such a small gesture, but it meant everything to him. It meant he wasn't alone. And so when Gabrielle let go, Erik held her in place, silently begging for the connection to last. He had no warning before the fangs sank in his flesh, and he whimpered, both in pleasure and pain.

He whimpered, but heard nothing. And in that instant, he realized that he hadn't heard a thing for hours, not since the Primal Forces had broken free from their cage in an explosion of noise and light. No sounds. No sounds at all.

Fear mixed with pain and l.u.s.t, and he tore at Gabrielle's clothes as she tore off his own, trying to find comfort and rea.s.surance in touch since he couldn't find them in words. Blood welled up from scratches he inflicted on Gabrielle and he cleaned it off frantically, needing the additional contact and reveling in thetaste of his Sire as much as in her touch. It felt as though Gabrielle hadn't touched him in centuries, rather than a couple of years, and each slide of her fingers, each caress or pinch, brought him back to less complicated, happier times. Forgetting was good. Remembering, even better.

And Erik remembered, quite well, having been as pliant under his Sire as he now was, letting her position his body as she wanted it. He had stopped submitting as thoroughly long before, but when raw l.u.s.t and pure need were stronger than instinct, even the rebellious demon inside him quieted down and simply accepted.

His shout, when Gabrielle roughly sank down on his c.o.c.k, was as much one of pain as it was one of satisfaction at being claimed. Gabrielle's eyes remained locked to his as she rocked herself up and down onto him, and that connection, the feel of her around, above, so d.a.m.n close, the so powerful scent of wanting and needing were enough to anchor Erik to the world. He had been ready to wait for the sun, earlier, but not anymore, not when he was wanted, not when he hadn't lost everything as he had believed he had. He only wished he had been able to express it, make it clear to his Sire, but how could he do that when he couldn't even hear the sound of his own voice?

It wouldn't matter, he decided. He would find a way to tell Gabrielle just how much this-she-meant to him. Maybe she already knew anyway, why else would she be doing this, why else would they be coming together, sharing blood, going to sleep curled against each other?

When Erik woke, late the next night, he was alone. He waited for Gabrielle to return, staring at the lightning bolts that tore the sky open in perfect silence. It took him three long days and three even longer nights to realize that his Sire wouldn't be coming back for him.

Awakening from a bad dream, Erik stared at the wood grain of the table in front of him for a long time, trying to remember where he was. And then, the scent a.s.saulted his consciousness, Gabrielle's scent, and everything came back to him. Wary, he went to the bedroom and leaned against the wall, watching his elder sleep.

For a day and half, he watched her sleep, feeding her from his wrist a few times, practically seeing her heal in front of his eyes. The temptation existed to look around the house, try to guess what had happened to Gabrielle since the last time they had seen each other, but Erik fought it. He didn't want to know. Knowing would make everything even more difficult when it was time to leave.

Finally, Gabrielle roused. They were only subtle changes in her body, but Erik recognized them immediately.

"You're awake?"

It was still strange to talk and not hear his own voice. He could feel the vibrations, and that helped him know whether he was talking loud enough to be heard, but he couldn't control his voice as he once had.

"Yes, I'm awake. How long have you been here?"

Keeping his eyes on Gabrielle's mouth, Erik shrugged. It had taken him a long time to learn how to read lips, and he couldn't do it perfectly, but it was good enough for small talk. "Couple of minutes. Was going to wake you. You slept a long time."

"How long?" "Day and half. Feeling better?"

After Gabrielle had not answered for a few seconds, Erik realized she was testing her body. If she could do that, it had to mean she was much better. And as well she should be, seeing how he had fed her his own blood five times in the last two days. Unwilling to leave her alone for too long in case she would have awoken, he had hunted for small animals in the forest around the house and couldn't wait to feed properly. Humans were reluctant in offering blood to vampires these days, but they could be persuaded, when they were shown a few severed demon heads. And if everything else failed, demon blood tasted terrible but it was at least strong enough to satiate a vampire, unlike rabbits and foxes.

Tired of waiting for an answer, Erik approached the bed, already steeling himself. He had purposefully refrained from checking her wounds until now so he wouldn't have to be so close to her naked body again, but if he wanted to know how far along her healing had progressed, he would have to check for himself.

She closed her eyes when he tugged at the sheet and revealed her, and he was thankful for the reprieve.

He wouldn't have wanted her to see he couldn't keep his eyes off her. She had changed, since he had last touched her with anything other than medical intentions. She had cut her long hair, so that its curls barely touched her shoulders. The main difference though was her weight. Vampires weren't supposed to change, but they lost weight when they didn't feed enough or properly. Judging by how frail this Gabrielle looked compared to the one that lived in his memories, he had no doubt that she hadn't been feeding right for a long time. That didn't explain however her refusal to fight back the humans who had attacked her.

Even thinner, she had to have conserved most of her strength. One thing she definitely hadn't lost was her beauty, and it was hard for him not to reach out and simply run his fingers over her.

Sitting down next to her, he tried to concentrate on his task, and nothing else. He was going to check her thigh, and for that he needed to touch her; there was nothing wrong with that. The fact that her skin was as silk under his fingers when he unwrapped the bandage was just completely beside the point.

When he had finally discarded the length of cloth, he looked closely at the wound. It was still red, but it had closed nicely, and he was ready to bet that in a few months the scar would have faded away to nothing. Standing, he left the room for a few moments. He had pulled water from the well earlier, intending to use it to wash Gabrielle's wounds, and without pausing to think had put it to warm in the pot hanging in the chimney, and had lit a fire. Only after the flames had started rising, strong and hot, had he realized what had motivated his actions. Cold water would have cleaned blood off Gabrielle's skin just fine, but he remembered that she had always preferred warm water to clean herself, remembered baths they had taken together in a large copper tub they had had made for this very purpose, remembered too many things he wished he could have forgotten.

Gabrielle's eyes were open as Erik returned to her with a bowl of hot water, and he was careful to keep his eyes down as he sat near her again and started cleaning the dried blood off her thigh. He forced himself to think of nothing as he did; he could feel Gabrielle's eyes on him, and he didn't want to open himself to more pain by revealing any of his feelings or thoughts. It was difficult not to let the memories take over, however, when the familiarity of his actions was still so fresh, even after centuries. Difficult, also, not to notice that Gabrielle was not unaffected by his touch, and difficult not to react to all of it. All he could do was pretend that nothing was going on, that his c.o.c.k hadn't hardened to the point of pain, that he didn't want her. Thankfully, he was soon done with his cleaning, and taking the bowl of dirty water away gave him an excuse to have a moment to himself. Leaning for a few seconds against the table, he summoned a particularly painful memory back to his consciousness, and his erection subsided instantly. It wasn't a trick he liked to use often. His Sire had been anything but gentle when she hadreplaced him in her bed, and the memory was still as painful as it was vivid in his mind. But it worked, and at that moment it was all that mattered.

Returning to the bedroom, he was very careful not to breathe and take in her scent again as he walked to the other side of the bed. Her arm had been broken, and he held it carefully as he freed it from the bandage. He was soon satisfied that it was healing properly, but he looked at Gabrielle's face nonetheless and asked: "Does it still hurt?"

"A little," he easily read on her lips.

If it still hurt, he figured, the bone must not have repaired fully yet. If she hadn't been underfed before he had found her, she would probably have been healed by now. As it was, it probably was safer to keep the bandage in place to prevent the bones from shifting by accident.

"The break was clean," he said, feeling the need to explain his actions even if he knew she probably understood them. "It'll probably heal just fine as long as you let it."

He asked her to sit up once he was finished with her arm, and was unable to resist helping her with a hand against her smooth back. His hands were trembling as he unwrapped the bandages that had bound her sides, and as much as he tried not to touch her, it was too tempting to be this close to her and not do it. The first time was an accident, but as he saw her nipple harden when the back of his hand caressed the underside of her breast, he couldn't help repeating the gesture. Such a striking woman, so responsive, so...

So cruel, too, sometimes.

He held on to his resolve as he carefully checked her ribs, and kept his touch strictly about her healing.

He couldn't tell whether she was fully healed; if her arm was any indication, she probably would need to remain bandaged.

"You had three broken ribs as far as I could tell, maybe more. Do you want to keep the bandages a little longer?"

Her headshake was answer enough, and he didn't insist when she reclined again. Wrapping that bandage around her again would have been torture for him. And speaking of torture...

"Hungry?"

Almost without conscious thought, he drew the sheet to cover her and noticed her frown at his actions.

She didn't reply for long seconds, to the point that he wondered whether he had spoken aloud or not.

Finally though, she nodded, and he presented his wrist to her. As a Childe, he had always offered her his neck; doing so now would have been too hard, which was why, even though she was conscious, he preferred to give her his wrist. Ritually, it was from their wrists that Masters fed their Childer, and he wondered if Gabrielle had picked up on the significance of his gesture.

She might have, because she bit hard, almost angrily, and took very little blood from him, as though reluctant to do so. It was this, more than anything else, that made him look back after he had walked away. If she didn't want to rely on him, he certainly wasn't going to impose his presence on her.

"Can you stand?" He watched her, immobile, as she tried and succeeded.

"Good. I've got places to be. Can't stay here when you can take care of yourself."

Keeping his eyes on Gabrielle's face, Erik waited for an answer, for a plea, a request not to go. Nothing came, and he simply nodded, trying to hide his disappointment and berating himself for even feeling disappointed. He had known it would end this way, hadn't he?

"Right then. I'd better be going."

Blinking away the tears he refused to let come to his eyes, he turned around and walked out of the room. He only stopped in front of the door, one hand on the handle. Gabrielle was going to be fine, he repeated to himself. She didn't need him by her side to heal fully, and if she wanted to be dust, she would eventually manage to do it, whether he was there or not.

It didn't matter that Erik was lonely enough to long for the sunrise again himself. It didn't matter that he had missed Gabrielle so much, hated her so violently, loved her even harder. It didn't matter, because he didn't matter to Gabrielle. Deluding himself into thinking otherwise was simply begging to be hurt once more. He wouldn't stay here only to have Gabrielle walk out of his life. Not again.

Shaking his head at his own stupid hesitation, he took a deep breath, breathing in the scent of his Sire one last time, and walked out without a look back.

Chapter 7.

Moonlight pierced the light clouds, and Gabrielle's gaze was drawn to the suddenly bright head in the middle of a group of patrolling humans a little ahead of her on the road. She only realized she had urged her horse to a trot when she was already halfway to them. But then the blonde girl laughed, head thrown back, and the illusion shattered. She gave the group of young people a last glance, deemed them safe as long as they would remain together, and directed her horse on another path. The night was still young, the predators, humans and demons alike, still in need of being found and dealt with.

Her spirit was heavy as she let her mount choose its way; it always was when a sound, a flash of blond hair, the blue-gray of a sharp eye made her think of Erik.

She had last seen her Childe ten months earlier, as Erik had walked out of her home without so much as a word of goodbye. She had hoped in the days, the weeks that had followed that Erik would be back, that his leaving was just a flare of temper, a revenge of sorts for Gabrielle doing the same to him so long ago. She had hoped, and her hope had sustained her, allowed her to keep fighting, keep living, keep searching, night after night. Keep searching for the one person who knew her, what she had gone through, what she had lost. The one person who could understand her, and whom she could understand.

But even though she had acquired a horse to cover more ground as she looked for him, even though she had approached more humans in these few months than she had in the previous decades to ask them if they had seen Erik, she had found nothing but blank stares.

She had eventually stopped asking. Had stopped hoping. Had tried to stop thinking about what had happened, what she could have said to convince Erik to stay. There was probably no answer to that.

They had a history far too long to be solved with a few words. It had all started with the way Gabrielle had chosen him as her first Childe and, to her own shock, fallen in love with him. It had continued as she had lived many happy decades with him always at her side, even when she had made more Childer. Theend had come when she had finally realized she had to let him go and become a Master, create his own clan. He would never have listened to her if she had said it that plainly, and so she had found another way, and chosen someone else to share her bed. She had known she would hurt him by doing so, and she had in truth hurt herself just as much, but the break had allowed him to start looking beyond their clan. He had slowly distanced himself from her, then from her other Childer, and started hunting demons on his own. He had even found a human lover, in time, and Gabrielle was sure that, if the girl had survived their last battle, she would have been the first of Erik's Childer when he left the clan's lair for good. Gabrielle had often wondered what would have happened to Erik and to the girl if, as a last caprice, she hadn't demanded her first Childe's presence at her side for the spell that had freed the Primal Forces and the battle that had followed.

As much as she could, she tried to avoid thinking of that battle, but the memory popped in to the front of her mind with frightening regularity. In the first years, she had dreamed of it every day, had relived the battle, the deaths, and awoken with the shouts and screams still ringing in her ears. The nightmares had slowly become less frequent, less vivid over the years, and she had been grateful. But since she had seen Erik, they had resurfaced, and were becoming more and more regular. She wasn't sure how long she would be able to endure it all now that her hope had faded again. What she knew, however, was where her life would end once she gave up.

Never, since it had been destroyed when the Primal Forces had turned against her, had Gabrielle gone back to the village that had been the first to take her as Master. It had been ravaged by both demons and the Primal Forces that should have stopped them.

When the anniversary date was close, like now, she invariably felt the need to return there, but she resisted it. She would return to the village, some day and she would wait for the sun there. It would be a fitting grave.

There, she had fought, survived, and lost so much, more than she could afford to lose. What was left of the village was hers, somehow, her legacy, but she didn't want to, couldn't go there alone to pay her respects, not until her final night, nor could she go with anyone who hadn't shared the experience. That only left Erik. And Erik was nowhere to be found.

And again-always-her thoughts were back to Erik. Was her Childe even still alive? His att.i.tude-so cold, so distant even as he had saved Gabrielle's life-reminded her of herself. Loneliness, despair, and no prospect of anything getting better as day after day, decade after decade pa.s.sed without changes other than the world disintegrating around her.

"Mistress Gabrielle?"

She tensed at hearing her name p.r.o.nounced aloud. She couldn't remember the last time she had told someone what she was called. She couldn't remember either when she had last been given her t.i.tle. Only those vampires who had met her before the battle knew her name, and there weren't many of them left.

Stopping her horse and directing it to turn toward the voice, she discovered a girl who looked as if she had barely reached seventeen, dressed in the red and white robes of the humans who practiced magic.

"Do I know you, child?"

The girl's heart was beating faster than was normal and she held herself quite stiffly on her horse, yet there was no scent of fear coming from her, merely a sense of deep determination.

"No, you don't. But you know the Master of my village. He is Master Lukas, from the northeast clan."She waited for Gabrielle's slight nod of recognition before continuing. Lukas and she had the same Sire, and he had gone to establish his own lair a good century before she had. "My name is-"

Gabrielle cut her short. She wasn't interested in the child's name, or in anything the girl had to say, really, but she figured she would be left alone once she had allowed the girl to tell her why she was there.

"What do you want?"

The child let out a dry laugh that reflected the hard glint in her dark eyes; her body was young, but she seemed to have lived beyond her years.

"I want you to fix what you destroyed," she said flatly. "Because of what you did, humans are being chased and treated as slaves or food. Sooner or later, we'll be extinct and..."

Gabrielle's mind shut off at the words, like her eyes, shut tight, and her hands closed into fists on her reins. Did the girl really think she didn't know all that? Wasn't she thinking about it enough already, and regretting that decision every day and every night?

"How 'bout you listen to what the child has to say before you take a nap?"

Shock hit Gabrielle like a bucket of icy water, and she opened wide eyes to find Erik coming closer, his horse stopping next to the girl's. She had been so focused on the human, she had not even noticed her Childe. Before Gabrielle could make eye contact, the girl leaned over to lightly punch Erik's shoulder, drawing his attention to her.

"I'm not a child, old man," she protested, but the faintest smile drawn on her lip was proof enough that they were teasing each other.

Gabrielle felt as if she was about to be sick, a very odd sensation for a vampire. Erik was here. He was back. After all of these months of Gabrielle searching for him, he had come back. With a lovely young woman who seemed to have the same feisty spirit his human lover had had, two hundred years earlier.

"I don't want to hear about it," Gabrielle said blankly, directing her horse with her knees to turn away from them. "Whatever it is, I don't care."

"You don't care?" the girl repeated, raising her voice. "You turn the world into h.e.l.l, you cause the death of almost every single member of your clan and..."

"I warned you," Erik growled. "Do not bring them into this."

"And what do you suggest..."

The two of them continued to argue, but Gabrielle wasn't listening; she refused to listen. She pressed her mount harder, never looking back. What was the point of fighting, again and again, the same battles?

She had already lost this one.

Chapter 8.

+ Two hundred years earlier For months now, Gabrielle had been watching her favored Childe with different eyes. She tried to see, in him, the same young man she had sired more than a century and a half earlier, but the more she tried, the more she realized how much he had changed. She had known it would happen; she had just hoped it would take longer than that.

Sunrise was close, as she and five of her Childer rode back from battle, but they didn't need to hurry, the lair was only a few minutes away. They had been chatting like excited children when they had gone out to hunt that evening, but now they rode in near silence. The night had been long; together they had cleared a demon camp farther inside Gabrielle's territory than had ever happened before. The demons had been becoming more daring and unstable for years, but this was downright worrying. Gabrielle was both impatient and anxious to hear from the other clan members that had gone out to hunt that night, to see if they had found demons in such numbers and so deep within her territory, too. Something would need to be done about the situation, and soon. She had started thinking about old legends that might have a truth to them, but so far only had the mere beginning of an idea, nothing that she could call a plan.

While earlier she had been leading the group, she was now riding behind her Childer, where she could keep an eye on them, and she could not fail to notice the way Erik went from one of the Childer to the other, sharing a few words with all of them, praising them for the way they had fought, or pointing out a flaw in their technique that could have proved deadly. It was only when he pushed his mount closer to Diana's, riding as close to her as he could and extending his arm to her, that a realization struck Gabrielle.

He was acting as Gabrielle would have herself, had she not been so preoccupied with the demons'

attacks.

Diana was the one amongst them who had been the most badly hurt tonight, when a demon's horn had speared her side before she could kill the beast. Someone had bound her side with a crude bandage before they had started riding again so she wouldn't lose too much blood while she waited until they reached the lair to ask one of the older Childer for blood; she could even have waited for the humans from the allied villages to bring their tribute the next day. But as far as Gabrielle could tell, before she had even asked, Erik had offered his wrist to her.

Childer didn't share blood that way. Masters did. And by acting like this, more obviously than ever, Erik left Gabrielle no choice.

The rising day, she decided, would be the last they would spend together. She had delayed it as long as she could, but now it was time.

Still, even after having made that decision, she kept delaying. She took her time, once they reached the lair, gathering reports from the three other groups that had gone hunting, and even offered blood to two of her younger Childer who had been badly hurt. Her blood would help them heal faster. She had twenty-two Childer now, enough to keep her territory and its villages safe, but she couldn't afford to leave too many of them at the lair to heal while the rest of them went out to hunt.