Jarod laughed. "A vampire safe house."

"Something like that."

Lilith hoped it was true. It was unavoidable, of course, that they would end up far too close to enemy territory, but now that they were actually here the idea made her nervous.

"Will they be able to sense you?" Jarod asked her.

"I don't know." She winced at the sound of her own voice.

Jarod, ever the doctor, looked concerned. "Headache still?"

"More than that."

"Tell me."

"Later."

That Ialdaboth might sense her had occurred to her, of course, and she wondered about the wisdom of their mission. She should have drawn maps for Lucien and Julian and stayed in New York, where she felt at least partially safe. Here she was too close to old memories, old ways of thinking. She could almost hear Ialdaboth breathing behind her. She couldn't exactly sense him, but she couldn't swear that he couldn't sense her. If he could, they might be dead by morning.

"He doesn't know we're here," Lucien announced abruptly, and Lilith realized he'd addressed her.

"Stay out of my head," she snapped, without thinking, then flinched, anticipating punishment.

But Lucien only smiled. "I'm not in your head. You're projecting.

You might want to stop."

"How can he not know we're here?" she countered.

"I know things he doesn't. You'd never get him to admit it, but there are things to be learned on the path I chose. If you remain a demon, you close yourself off to a great deal."

"He would say the same about your path. That you closed yourself off."

Lucien nodded. "He would be right. But right now, what I know trumps what he knows."

The others, Lilith noted, had followed the conversation with interest, and William voiced the question she guessed was on everyone's mind. "So we're safe here?"

"Until nightfall tomorrow," said Lucien. "Lilith, William and Sasha, you need to pick out sleeping quarters. Dr. Greene, I saw you sleeping on the first leg of the flight. Are you up to keeping me company?"

The doctor nodded. Lilith looked at him, and he smiled encouragement.

Reluctantly, she followed the other two vampires up the stairs, to the second story bedrooms.

There were four rooms, and so no arguments. She sat on the bed in her room and put her head in her hands.

Daylight approached. She still had some time, but not much. And inside her head it seemed a thousand voices battled for her attention.

All voices from her past, all demanding her soul. It belonged to them.

She had stolen it. Blasphemed, by joining her fate with that of those who had denied their fate, who refused to accept their demonic nature.

The Damned Ones. The Children of the Lie.

The voices screamed and whispered, cajoled and demanded. She pressed her fists against her temples and screamed.

Four "So, was this house supplied by the Italian convocation, too, or-"

Jarod broke off as the scream shredded the air. Lilith, he thought, freezing for a shocked split-second before tearing up the stairs, with Lucien on his heels.

But when he shoved open Lilith's door, Lucien was already there, sitting next to her on the bed, holding her wrists as she struggled against him, clawing the air, clawing toward her face, her eyes.

Jarod stood transfixed, staring. Lilith's screams hadn't stopped, but tore at him as if her hands and her long nails were slicing into his belly. Behind him, vaguely, he heard William and Sasha come in to stand and stare with him.

Lucien was getting nowhere. Lilith fought him with every breath, howling and spitting into his face. Jarod knew, as surely as he knew his own blood type, that their mission was teetering on the edge of disaster.

A moment later, with equal certainty, he knew what to do about it.

He crossed the room fast and pressed his wrist hard against Lilith's mouth.

She bit down, hard, and he went almost to his knees with the pain.

Lucien grabbed him, propping him up. "I hope you know what you're doing."

"Me, too- Ah, shit-" He clutched Lucien's shirt with his free hand, twisting the cloth in his fist until, abruptly, the pain disappeared.

Lilith's mouth clutched at him, suckling, and he could feel the blood draining out of him, as if she were pulling it out of his heart.

"If she takes too much, you're a dead man," Lucien muttered in his ear.

Suddenly, Lilith let him go, falling back against the pillows, a thread of blood tracing its way down her cheek. Lucien grasped Jarod's wrist just below the wound, squeezing hard, but the flow had already become sluggish. Within moments, it stopped, congealing around the twin wounds.

Jarod wrenched free from Lucien's grasp and turned his attention to Lilith. She was still breathing too fast, and when he peeled back an eyelid he saw black, dilated pupils. She slapped at his hand.

"Stop it."

"Are you all right?" he asked, reaching for her other eye.

She looked at him, obligingly showing him the other dilated pupil.

Both were gradually contracting to a more normal size. "No. But I'm better. The voices have stopped." Her gaze shifted to his bloodied wrist. "How did you know?"

"I'm a hematologist," he said.

"That's a stupid answer."

"It's the best one I've got."

She shifted on the blankets, slowly, as if her body were too heavy to move. "I'm so tired."

He bent close to her. "Just go." His lips brushed her cheek. "Rest.

We'll see you at dusk."

With that, nearly an hour too soon, she shifted into silence, her breath gone, her face still. With his thumb, he wiped blood from her mouth, then straightened.

For a moment, he'd forgotten he wasn't alone with her. But when he turned, it was to face Lucien's far too serious expression, and behind him William's surprise and Sasha's smirk. Jarod's face went hot.

Lucien assessed him, then turned to the others.

"Get out of here," he said. They obeyed, heading toward their own rooms. "So what the hell was all that about?" he went on when the others were gone.

"She's been acting weird ever since we got here," he replied. "I think she's too close. They have some kind of hold on her." "And the blood?"

"Not just any blood. Human blood from your biological line. And I doubt it's a permanent solution."

Lucien waved him toward the door. "That would suck for you.

No pun intended."

A half-hour later Jarod sat stretched out on the couch, sipping milk. Whoever had supplied the safe house had known they would need human food. He'd found bread and a package of pastrami, and he'd polished off two sandwiches. His body was starving for protein.

Lucien had watched in silence, apparently not in need of nourishment himself. At first Jarod had found being stared at disconcerting, then realized Lucien wasn't really paying any attention to him. Half the time, he sat with his eyes closed and his head cocked to one side, as if listening. The rest of the time he stared absently into space, and Jarod came to realize that the eyes that occasionally seemed to point in his general direction weren't actually focusing on him. Once he made a face at him, just to see what would happen. Lucien gave no indication he'd noticed.

Yet as soon as he set down the empty glass, Lucien said, "Do you think she'll need blood again in the morning?"

"It wouldn't surprise me."

"So how does it help?"

"My blood's related to yours, somehow, on a genetic level."

Lucien nodded reflectively. "Natural reproduction."

"That would be my guess." Since Lucien and the other First Demons were fertile, they could have left any number of descendants scattered throughout the world. The blood ties wouldn't be as strong as those between blood-made vampires, and the offspring weren't immortal, or even vampires in any sense, but the echoes were still there, even after twelve thousand years of dilution.

"Something like the way Lorelei's genetic marker came to be."

"Yes, but that was some kind of cross-breeding between your blood and either Ialdaboth or Ruha-" He broke off, realizing he was boring himself. "It's not important, though. What's important is that we figure out what to do about Lilith."

"I think we're going to have to get her out of here."

"But you need her."

"I don't know that I'll need her once we find this cave. And I might be as likely to find it as she is." Lucien shook his head. "I'm not sure what to do, frankly."

This admission surprised Jarod. He'd though Lucien had a well- laid plan, with all contingencies considered. Then he realized the protovampire was looking directly at him, eyebrows raised in expectation.

Jarod blinked. He was supposed to come up with a plan?

"Not necessarily a plan," said Lucien. "Just some advice would be good."

"Don't do that," Jarod muttered.

"I'm sorry. I thought you said it out loud."

"No, I didn't." He scrubbed his forehead with both hands. "The information she can supply is vital. But her links to Ialdaboth and the others may endanger our mission. My blood-somehow-reduces that danger by muting the bonds. But I can only spare so much blood."

"Are you prepared to die for the cause?"

"Not really. Besides, if she bleeds me dry, what do you do the next time she goes loopy?"

Lucien nodded. "And we have no lab facilities here to see if there's another way to neutralize whatever's in her blood that ties her to Ialdaboth."

"His blood is what's in her blood. I'd guess she's a first- or sec- ond-generation blood-child of his."

Jarod saw Lucien's eyes go distant again, looking straight through him to a point on the back wall. He resisted the urge to turn around to see if he could figure out what Lucien was looking at.

"We need to keep her here as long as we can," Lucien finally said. "I'm not sure where to find the cave, but I think between the two of us we could suss it out. Plus we might need her, if we run into a situation where we need to get by Ialdaboth's guards, or pass through some part of his convocation's sanctuaries."

Jarod shrugged, looking at the bite marks on his wrist. Some bruising had spread around them, but the edges were white and clean. "I'll give her what I can."

Lilith dreamed. Deep in the daytime Sleep, she saw Ialdaboth's face.

What makes you think you can leave us so easily? What makes you think our control over you is gone simply because you ran away?

She was helpless to avoid the echoes of his voice, but somehow she knew he was bluffing, or at least half-bluffing. He couldn't reach her, not quite, not with Lucien close by and Jarod's blood in her veins.

Remember what you were. Remember what I made you.

She didn't want to remember, but she did, anyway, in a sudden flash, a condensed version of her hundred years of initiation, the murders, killings of humans and vampires, senseless and retributive.

If they knew. If they only knew exactly what you are The voice, perhaps, was Ialdaboth's. But it might also have been her own.

In spite of his nap on the plane, Jarod drifted off before noon. It was a spotty sleep, though, leaving him aware of Lucien's movement around the room. Lucien didn't sleep, apparently, but he spent a ridiculous amount of time walking in circles.

Just past noon, Jarod bolted awake. His mouth tasted like metal, and some vague dream-shadow twinged at the back of his memory.

Whatever it was, it had been nasty. He rarely remembered his dreams, and in this case he was glad.

When he rolled off the couch, Lucien was nowhere in the room, so he headed into the kitchen to look for more pastrami. He was abominably hungry. He wondered if the food and the sleep had been enough to replenish his blood in case Lilith needed it this evening. He needed more meat, some green leafies. Iron, folic acid, B12. Drugs for anemia.

Anything. Otherwise she might just kill him, which would not be a good thing.

Footsteps on the stairs announced Lucien's return. Drinking directly from the jug of milk, Jarod met him at the kitchen door.

"Something's up with Lilith," Lucien volunteered, "but I don't know what."

Alarmed, Jarod lowered the milk jug. "Is she all right?"