"I hardly do, anymore." I lowered my head back to the ground and stared up through the tree branches at the night sky. The stars glistened like chips of crushed ice in the moon's absence. Glowing red embers swarmed in their midst like a host of demonic fireflies. The breeze began to freshen, sweeping the sparks away to the west, along with most of the heat from the smoldering wreckage. My undead flesh, lacking even its basal blood supply, felt the night breeze as a chill wind.

"You're not like other vampires, Chris," Mooncloud said quietly.

"Yeah, no fangs."

"I don't mean in that way. There's a coldness that sets in. . . ."

"I think I'm feeling it right now." I repressed a shiver.

"I don't mean temperature, either."

"Well, I imagine it takes a certain kind of mindset to hunt human beings for food."

She nodded. "That and, as I mentioned before, there are biochemical changes in the brain. I wonder if you'll eventually lose touch with your own humanity as the others have done, take on their arrogance. . .

"I don't need anybody else's arrogance; I brought my own, thank you." I thought back to the Doman, Suki, Damien, and Dr. Burton. "But, so far, everyone's been pretty friendly." Not counting New York's involvement. Or Lupe, of late.

"Perhaps you are mistaking curiosity and interest for warmth. Don't get me wrong, Chris; Pagelovitch is a good Doman. Fair, never unnecessarily cruel, and he looks after those he considers his own."But you have been treated particularly well because of your intrinsic value on the Underworld market: your condition may be the key that unlocks a number of secrets that have eluded the wampyr for centuries.

"It also is a matter of your transition. There is a caste system in which the rules of behavior are very strong and compelling. Mutual respect is de rigueur among vampires. But only among their own kind. To the Doman and the other vampires of his demesne, Lupe and I are valued servants, serfs-possessions even. We are not now nor ever can be 'equals.' Vampires are 'the Masters.' "

I remembered Bachman's words in my room just before I got my first swimming lesson as one of the newly undead.

"And it's worse for us than most of the others," she continued. "It's our job as part-time enforcers to go after other members of this Master Race. And put them down, if necessary. You see the problem?"

Yeah, it was starting to come into focus. Given the mindset, Mooncloud and Garou were the equivalent of a couple of uppity n.i.g.g.e.rs to this cold-blooded "Ma.s.sa" Race. "Is there anything I can do?"

"No. And don't try. You won't make anyone happy and you'll just get Lupe all the more confused.

Was there any sign of Luath while you were out there?"

It took me a moment to mentally shift gears. "No. Why? Do you think Lupe is imagining things?"

"Maybe. But it's more likely that the cu sith wasn't fully banished."

"Fully what?"

"He may have only been pushed into an overlapping dimension. Maybe partially phased."

"Partially phased," I said.

"Right. In which case it might be possible that he's still around. In a phased sense, you understand."

"Me? Understand?"

"So it would still be possible to track our quarry as long as Lupe can hear him."

I was tired and cold and even more confused than I had been five minutes before, so I didn't waste my energy trying to point out that we had no weapons, no transportation, and no means of tracking the cu sith through the transponder anymore.

"Found something!" Lupe said, loping up out of the darkness. Unnerving enough that we didn't hear her returning, but it always gave me a turn when she spoke while still in wolf form.

"How far?" Mooncloud wanted to know.

"Not far. A short walk." Her muzzle swung over to consider me. "For a healthy man."

"How about if I crawl?" I asked.

"I'll help you." Lupe's shape shifted back along human lines as she came and leaned over me. "Can you sit up?"

I decided I needed proper motivation when I failed at my first attempt. Maybe I'd do better if someone placed a TV remote between my feet. . . .

She hoisted me to my feet on the second attempt and then had to hold onto me to keep me from falling over. "Friends don't let friends walk drunk," I chided.

"Tell the Doman," Lupe told Mooncloud over her shoulder, "that he owes me big time for this."

"Good luck," Taj called as we lurched off down the road.

It was worse than embarra.s.sing, it was humiliating: not just in that I had all the stamina of Raggedy Andy on Percodan, but as lucidity came and went like a bungee jumper, I found myself draped over my human crutch in a variety of positions. Bad enough had she been wearing clothes, but under the present circ.u.mstances. . .

When she slapped my face to bring me around, I awoke thinking I had just been called on an "out of bounds" penalty. Slowly I discovered that I was lying down and sitting up at the same time. And that weseemed to be in a tunnel.

"We're in a dry culvert that runs under the road," she said, the corrugated metal tube echoing her words into a distorted booming sound. She put her hand to my forehead. "How do you feel?"

"Thanks for not saying 'we.' " My teeth were starting to chatter.

"You're not running a fever. You're cold. Is that good or bad?"

"Doesn't feel so good. But then again I'm feeling surprisingly well for a guy who got run through with a pitchfork."

She frowned. "Yes, and we have an account to settle on that matter." She reached out and began unfastening the b.u.t.tons on my shirt. "But for now we'll do what we can about keeping you alive. Let's see if we can get you warmed up." My shirt, still damp but turning crusty with blood, came off, and she used it to sponge the area around my wounds. Then she pulled me against her and down to the ground.

Her skin was covered with short, downy hairs like peach fuzz, and the feel of her was like warm velvet. She wrapped her arms around me and slowly slid her hands up and down my back, trying to pull the chill out of my semidead flesh. The pain receded as I basked in the warmth that poured out of her like secret sunlight.

It wasn't long before I felt a familiar stirring. A hunger was awakening. Not now, I thought.

But I needed blood. And that need was inescapable.

Undeniable. . . .

Except, as the feeling grew in intensity, it didn't feel like the bloodl.u.s.t that had become increasingly familiar of late. It was a different kind of hunger, of need.

"Is this helping?" she murmured, her face close to mine.

In response, I touched my lips to hers. She answered in kind. The kiss that followed was long, deep, and more satisfying than anything I could have imagined.

"This is a bad idea," she whispered, finally.

"I'm just full of bad ideas," I whispered back.

She snuggled against me. "Are you warm enough?"

"I'm getting there."

She sighed. "You still need blood."

"It will have to wait."

"You don't have to wait. I can give you some of mine."

I flinched: the thought of taking a little of her blood seemed even worse, now, than what Deirdre had seduced me into doing just days before.

"I can't," I said, falling back on the old standby. "Dr. Mooncloud insists that I have nothing but normal blood. It might contaminate her research-"

She shook her head. "I don't care about research. I care about keeping you alive."

"I don't want your blood."

"You'd drink Deirdre dry but refuse a single swallow from me?" She looked in my eyes and flinched.

"I'm sorry. I know that wasn't your fault." Claws extended from her fingertips. "We can argue about this later." She drew a single claw across the inside of her hand. Blood began to gather in her cupped palm.

"You've got to have something." She raised her hand to my lips. "Drink."

"If you take even one swallow," said a new voice, "then I shall be forced to kill you both!"

I looked over and, at the opening of the culvert, I saw a familiar face.

The face of Death.

I swooned."Chris, what happened? Are you all right?"

"Daddy, Daddy, what happened to your shirt?"

I look down and eventually realize that my shirt is half on, half off and soaked with a witch's brew of blood, water, and mud.

"What happened to him?"

"Don't rightly know, ma'am," the fire chief is telling my wife. "My guess is he got a lungful of smoke, staggered into the barn, and collapsed. We found him there and the paramedics have been looking him over.

"Hey, Jim!" He motions to one of the firemen who was holding a breathing mask over my face when I woke up.

"We gave him oxygen," Jim explains as the chief moves off to direct cleanup efforts, "but he's still pale and shocky. Take him straight to a doctor or the emergency room and have him looked at."

"What about that bandage on his arm?" Jenny wants to know.

"Well now, ma'am, I was about to ask you the same thing. That's not our handiwork; he had it on when we found him."

"Well, he didn't have it an hour ago." She looks at me.

"I-I don't remember," I say. It is something that I will say for the rest of her life.

"Will you help me get him into our van?" she asks the paramedic. "I'll take him straight to the nearest doctor."

"I can walk," I say. When I prove that I can, I'm even more surprised than they are.

"Daddy, are you going to go to the hospital?" Kirsten asks as her mother eases the van around in a slow, tight turn.

"No, honey, we're going to go straight home so I can rest."

Jennifer gives me the Look. "We are taking you to a doctor."

"Seriously, Jen; I am feeling better!" And I am. The farther away we get from the fire and the creepy old barn, the better (safer) I feel. "In fact, I'm ready to drive now."

"Don't be silly."

We are back on 103 now, and the town of Weir is just ahead. "Tell you what, though," I say, spotting an IGA Food Mart up ahead, "I could use a couple of Tylenol. Why don't we stop here? It'll only take a moment."

My wife is a woman completely devoid of guile. More surprising: after nine years of marriage, she still doesn't expect it from me. When she comes back out with the tiny sack, I am sitting behind the steering wheel with the driver's door locked. Kirsten laughs delightedly at Jennifer's scowl. "Daddy tricked you, Mommy! Now he gets to drive!"

"I don't think you're funny," she says, climbing into the pa.s.senger seat.

"Oh, lighten up, Jen," I say, pulling us back out onto 103. We head east.

"You're a macho pig just trying to prove how tough you are." The words are not devoid of affection as she says it.

"Not only that," I say, "but a penny-pinching tightwad who doesn't believe in wasting ninety bucks and another hour in a waiting room with two-year-old magazines just so a doctor can tell me to take some Tylenol and go home and lie down."

Outside the town limits, I bring the van up to fifty-five miles per hour and set the cruise control.

"See?" I raise my knees to the steering wheel. "Nothing to do but steer. And I can do that with one hand.

With one finger."

"My, my, aren't we feeling better?" She smirks, but there is genuine concern in my wife's eyes. I'llalways remember those eyes, just that way. Wide, cornflower blue-they have a way of shining in a very special way when she looks (looked) at me. "Now, maybe you can tell me what happened to you back there in that barn?"

"Wh-what?" I feel an unexpected wave of dizziness.

"I hope that old man is going to be all right."

My heart lurches in my chest. "Old . . . man . . . ?"

"Can't you remember anything?"

Don't want to!

"The barn?" The periphery of my vision is clouding, growing dark. My foot dances for the brake, finds only the accelerator. A red tide washes over my thoughts.