He went pale and swallowed. "I'll sleep in the study," he offered, getting up himself. "Let me get some things so I won't disturb you."

Back in bed, I watched guiltily as he gathered up a pillow, an extra quilt, jeans and a cardigan, and a book on Da Vinci. "Promise me you won't look," I said.

"Yes," he said. "I won't look."

"Thank you for believing me."

"I can't otherwise." He shut the door gently behind him.

I was asleep before I heard him reach the other room.

Chapter Fifteen.

He seemed to honor my request; when I woke up into the late evening redness, the door was still shut, and he looked up from the television with surprise as I came out. "Hi," I said.

"Was watching the news," he said, turning back. He was drinking a tall glass of scotch and ice. "Wondering if any of your handiwork was going to make the six o'clock news. It seems that a few deaths here and there don't make a damn bit of difference."

"Actually, they might have made the L.A. papers," I murmured, smoothing my hair and sitting beside him. My hair would no longer smooth down; it was a mane of deep auburn ringlets, as bouncy as telephone cords. Only its weight kept it from surrounding my face like a clown's wig. I had stood before the mirror in John's room, vowing to never cut my hair shorter than shoulder length. "Our accident, that is. It was pretty huge."

"What accident?"

"Car crash," I said with surprising calm. "A very good friend of mine was killed in it. Some other people were too."

"When was this?"

"Um, well, it was last night." And the last glimpse of Lovely's face came to me; grinning, rosy-cheeked, the dark smudge worn off his great dark eyes, his rosy lips pursed around a joint. He'd winked at me in the rearview mirror, and I'd turned away, consumed in my own thoughts.

John wiped my face with a scratchy tissue. I'd been weeping without realizing it. "I can't believe it was only last night. I can't believe all this has happened so fast."

He gently kissed my cheek. "How long have you been-"

"A vampire? Um, this is my third day."

He made a face. "What?"

"You'd have never guessed, huh?" I stood up. "I have to go, John."

"Are you coming back?"

I stopped halfway into the leather jacket. "I don't know," I said, continuing, the other arm finding its place. I pulled my hair from under the collar. "It's probably best if you never saw me again."

"You can't do this," he said. "I'm going to go crazy. Everyone will think I've snapped."

"You probably have," I replied.

"I love you-don't go. Don't go back to them. Please. Maybe this is reversible. Maybe-"

"It's not reversible, John. Any more than you could be reversed into a chimp. Just because I look superficially like a human doesn't mean that I am. I'm not. I'm different. I'm like them, and like it or not, I have to learn to be what I am now."

"Then take me with you," he said. "I don't want to... be separated from you again."

I sighed. "All right then," I said, "come with me tonight, and see if you want to come with me. I don't even know where I'm going. Come with me and see the men who got me into this."

He put on his coat and his cracked, polished black oxfords, and we went out into the street and waited for a taxi to come by. We walked a bit, stood under the brilliant red light of the Church Street Safeway sign, watching a purple cloud come down over the hill and extinguish the feeble blinking of Sutro Tower. He bent over me and kissed me on the neck, breathing so that he could watch the hairs stand up.

I watched his eyes get big as we drove into North Beach, through the sleazy streets advertising every manner of voyeurism-watching people fuck, watching people eat, watching people shop, gamble, get arrested. I paid the taxi fare with what was left of my money. John smiled at me as I compulsively lit a cigarette. "I see you haven't stopped," he commented.

"For all the good they do me." I took another lungful, then tossed the useless glowing thing into the gutter. "Let's go, we're sort of in a hurry."

The door of Ricari's suite was closed, but not locked. I entered first, listening and smelling for the two of them. John stayed close behind me, hands jammed sweating into his pockets.

They were in the bathroom. Daniel raised his head from Ricari's wrist and regarded us with bright, calculating eyes. Ricari slumped drowsily against the back of the satin-upholstered chair next to the bathtub. "Ariane brought us company," Daniel declared, his voice slick with sarcasm.

I looked behind me at John; he was very pale, and his eyes didn't seem quite focused. I steadied him to the chaise longue, where he promptly fell completely unconscious. It wasn't like John to faint, but I guess he wasn't prepared. "Good work, Dan," I snapped, loosening John's shirt collar.

Daniel, quite restored, stalked out into the front room. "Is that where you've been all this time, love-nesting with this fine English wren? Now, now, don't be selfish, let Daddy take a good long look." He pushed me out of the way with startling ease. Now that he was back to himself, Daniel was ten times stronger than I was. He bent over John carefully, his nostrils sweeping through John's scent, poked gently at John's cleanshaven cheek. "Oh, I guess he's all right. You have good taste in men, Ariane. What... lovely skin."

"Daniel, don't fuck with me," I said.

"Who's fucking with who? Who asked you to bring your boyfriend? What kind of obstacle does this throw up? Oh, I bet Ricari said it was all right. Ricari can't refuse his precious Ariane anything. If I so much as ask for a drop of blood, it's 'You're evil, Daniel, you cause so much trouble.' I ought to slit this pretty throat. That would teach you all about trouble, wouldn't it?"

Ricari had come out of the bathroom, incredibly white and lissome in a simple blue linen shirt, rolled to the elbows and open at the neck. A few crimson drops stained the collar and sleeves. "Don't make threats," Ricari said with utmost calm. "I really don't care for them."

"I don't really intend to take John along with us," I said. "I only wanted him to see this, maybe understand why he can't come. Why it's better for him to just forget about me." I smoothed his hair off his forehead, where it had grown in so long that it more than covered his face. "Not to see me again."

Daniel moved away to the other chair and sat in it, brooding handsomely. In the dim light of the perennial candles, he was the incubus again, the dissatisfied angel. Ricari looked down at John, whose eyes were moving restlessly behind his closed lids. "It might have been the right thing to do," Ricari said, "and it might not. I suppose the evening will tell. There is no way to avoid hurting him. We all hurt one another."

John opened his eyes slowly, uncomprehending. "What happened?" he mumbled.

"You passed out," I told him.

"I did?" He had sat up and combed his hair back with his fingers before he noticed Ricari and Daniel and me all staring at him; I'm sure the effect must have been something like being a missionary in the middle of the cannibal village. He locked his arms about himself and squeezed into a corner of the chaise. "You're going to kill me, aren't you?" he asked in a very small voice.

"We don't want to kill you," Ricari said patiently.

"We can," Daniel added.

"But we won't," I said, staring Daniel down. He rolled his eyes at me. "John, this is Orfeo Ricari. That's Daniel-just Daniel. And this is John Thurbis."

"Charmed," John managed to say. I gripped his hand gently in mine, trying not to return his white-knuckled grip for fear of crushing his hand.

"I won't allow any harm to come to you," Ricari said. "Don't mind that one. He's got, as you might say, an 'attitude problem'?" He gestured. "He's been knocked off the top of the play set, and he's learning about what it's like to not be a god for a change. That is why I like to stay on the ground, yes?"

"Stuff it," said Daniel.

"You look tired, Ariane," Ricari said to me. "Do you need help?"

"It Couldn't hurt," I said.

"You're new yet. You need as much as you can stand; gets you through it sooner. Though some, like Daniel, never lose the taste for blood every night." He put his arm around my shoulders and pulled me gently from John's grip. "Don't worry, John. Daniel would never be so bold-and besides, we can see him." He herded me into the bathroom.

First, a kiss. Our mouths met; my tongue was pricked on his teeth, and he sucked the blood from that for as long as it lasted. Nipping his lip brought forth a tiny trickle, barely perceptible to the taste, but enough to drive my body insane with wanting more of it. I took him at the neck and breathed in his blood. We held each other tightly; I crushing him down, he resisting with equal force to keep us in equilibrium. I drank for what seemed like an eternity. Then he pushed my head back and I breathed air again, my blood cells fattening with oxygen. I felt high.

What is he doing? came Ricari's voice clearly in my head.

Who? What?

Maria, Mother of God, I can't leave him for a second- I had to steady myself against the wall to follow Ricari into the living room. By the time I got there, Daniel was on his behind on the floor, laughing, mouth a scarlet gash in his face, and Ricari was bent over John, chafing his hands. "You malicious dog," Ricari breathed.

"You can see me, huh? So you can see me, right?" Daniel crowed.

"He's dying," Ricari said to me sorrowfully. He let the limp hand drop.

Progressive hypovolemic shock. The term from first-year human physiology popped into my mind unbidden; the last thing I needed right now was a term for what was happening to John. He had fallen into shock with an expression of pure, sad terror marked clearly on his features; he was pale, his gums were pale, he was fading fast.

I acted almost without thinking, blindingly fast with Ricari's old blood inside me; I tore open my wrist and held it to John's pale cold mouth. "Drink it, stupid," I hissed.

"Ariane!" Ricari protested.

I whirled to look at him. "Help me!" I shouted to him.

Daniel had fallen silent, stymied, his expression bemused. He watched us with detached interest.

Ricari sighed impatiently, and obligingly opened his wrist as well. There was little blood left to spare in him, and it barely squeezed out of the four slits punctured by his teeth. I hadn't been keeping track of how many times my heart beat while my wrist was in John's mouth, so I counted two and then pulled back. John had swallowed at least twice, mostly mine, but a few trickles of Orfeo's as well. "Is that going to work?" I asked him anxiously.

"We shall see," he murmured. His eyes were very tired.

Daniel picked himself up off the floor. "Have fun, you two," he said.

"Where do you think you're going?" Ricari snapped.

Daniel shrugged and smiled. "You wanted me out of here, I'm going. Besides, I don't know the first thing, or the second thing, or probably the fifth or sixth thing... I'd just get in the way." He stretched his arms, admiring himself in the candlelight. "Please. Keep the jacket. And..." He reached into the pocket of his own jacket and tossed something at me. I watched as it skittered across the floor-my rat pocket watch, busted and dented and dirty with dried blood.

"Asshole," I muttered.

"No time," said Ricari, "look."

John was conscious again; his eyes rolled about in confusion. "What the hell... what did he do to me?"

"It isn't what he did to you," I said. "It's what I did to you."

John wiped his face, coming away with the fast-clotting, blackish vampire blood, leaving raw patches in the flesh. "God, no," he swore, "no, please, God, no!"

Between Ricari and me, we got him to the bathroom. John was staggering, looking around him with undisguised horror. "My heart," he kept sobbing, "my heart."

"It's only the beginning," I said, "but don't be afraid, I'm with you, Orfeo is with you."

"I'm not ready to die!"

"You're not going to die," I soothed him. Though you'll wish you did.

I don't know if the experience is worse when you're having it, or watching someone else go through it. It took longer than I remembered it; John vomited blood for a good hour before the rest of him started to change. Ricari held him down on the floor while he went through convulsions; sat patiently while John's soft short human fingernails tried to tear off Orfeo's skin. I held myself and cried. After a while, I took off all my clothes-no sense in them being destroyed in a tide of blood and body parts-and Ricari took his off as well.

Such a lot of flesh in a human body. I watched in sickened dismay as his skin peeled off in messy strips, his eyes turned to fluid and ran from his sockets, the muscles reduced to a gummy mass. After five hours, there was little recognizable in the bathtub; simply a human-shaped blob of tissue, with the sharpened bones protruding from the fingertips and kneecaps. "I can't believe I went through this," I gulped.

"Watch," Ricari said softly, a slick wraith gleaming with blood.

I watched. The bones were moving; the fingertips of bone were becoming longer, and the bluish gristle holding them together shone and then sprung together in a fetal fist. The mess of red tissue began to glisten brightly.

"It's complete," Ricari said. "If you want, you can go to sleep; I'll watch."

"Are you kidding? I wouldn't miss this for a million dollars."

He smiled at me from his scarlet mask.

John's body wasn't being put back together from the shed parts; it was growing back out of new tissue, almost buzzing as it arranged itself in neat, perfect, programmed pools and bunches and rows. His skin grew back before his body was completely filled out; he was quite loose, a bag of bones inside a sheath as thin and fine as spider silk. As his body grew itself out, wrinkles developed in the skin, and a fine sheen of dark baby-hair grew from his skull, growing thicker by the second.

I glanced out the bathroom door. "It's getting light," I murmured, yawning.

"Yes... we should go to sleep... this part's really boring. It's the inside of him that's organizing itself, and the fireworks are over. We should sleep so that we're here when he wakes up."

We washed ourselves and each other from the sink, since John was still occupying the bathtub. Ricari kissed me as he washed my hair and wiped the skin below my breasts and between my buttocks with a wet towel; I licked the shed blood from the skin under his chin. When we were reasonably clean, we went into the suite's bedroom, leaving the door to the bathroom open, and got into the bed, under the light summer blankets. Looking back into the bathroom, I saw the immaculate white porcelain and gilded paint streaked and smeared with blood, the floor slippery with bits of skin, shed teeth, mucous membrane. "I'm not cleaning it up," I mumbled, embracing Ricari.

"Me neither."

"I guess we'll have to call for maid service."

He almost giggled and fell into an acting mode. "I say, goodwife, could you perhaps clear up some of this muck? I was thinking of having a formal tea in that room... there's a good girl."

I pulled down his head and kissed him.

We made love, and fell asleep.

I awoke still full of the sense-memory of his hips urgently feeding his cock to me with gentle, restrained thrusts; but he was not beside me in the cold sheets. I felt for him before opening my eyes, but finding nothing, sat up at last and pushed my hair out of my face.

Ricari sat crouched in the chair, back in his black clothes, knees drawn up to his chest. He stared intently down into the bathtub.

"Ricari?" I inquired.

"There's something wrong," he murmured.