"The problem now is native soil. We need it for sustenance. We weaken and eventually die without it. We're standing on ours."

And she was four thousand miles from hers. "What am I going to do? How am I managing now?"

"You're on it now." Christopher reached under the mattress and plonked a Ziploc bag on her lap filled with dark, dry powder... Dirt.

"My native earth?"

Justin smiled. "Thank Tom for it. He fetched it while you were in hospital."

"From the States?" Being a vampire was even more impressive than she thought.

"He just went south to Runnymeade. There's an acre of American territory there, donated in memory of Kennedy. The tourists will never miss a couple of cardboard boxes of the stuff. We've enough for a mattress pad and a couple of pairs of shoes. Get used to wearing platform shoes. You'll need a good inch of American soil between you and the ground."

She shook her head to clear her confusion. "What about lining my coffin and all that?"

Christopher's hand crept over hers like a slow promise. "You won't need a coffin, I've got a soft bed ready." A slow blush crept up from under her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. She could no more stop it than hold back the tides. He had the s.e.xiest laugh in creation. Add his long, tapered fingers and the possessive gleam in his eye and Justin had better get out of here. Fast.Christopher leaned close. "Mask your thoughts," he whispered with a throaty growl. "You treated him to a free p.o.r.no flick."

That did it. She stood up, all the better to glare head-on. "I'm going to wash my hair." She pushed past him and strode across the room, ignoring the draught as her hospital gown swung open. She slammed the shower shut behind her and then clutched the rail as anger and giddiness swirled her senses. Okay, she needed to grab both rails and press her forehead against the cold tiles. She'd take deep breaths, if she still could. Another wave of dizziness shook her. At this rate, she'd be lucky to turn on the water.

Her head jerked up as the door clicked open. "You'll need these." A pair of rubber flip-flops slapped onto the cold tile. "I taped bags of your soil to them. Wear them. You'll crash to the floor if you don't."

That she didn't doubt. Sliding her feet into the slippers, she let go of the granny rails and turned the spigots. By the time she'd adjusted the water, the giddiness faded and she stood upright, face tilted into the warm stream.

The shampoo lather streamed down her shoulders to pool around her rubber sandals. Her fingertips ma.s.saged her scalp, as if was.h.i.+ng away the terror of the past days. She rinsed the past down the plughole. Now to face eternity, and a vampire playwright with an Elizabethan sense of macho, who'd just brought her back from the dead.

She smoothed back her hair to keep the drips out of her eyes. With a sharp turn of her wrist, she turned off the spigot, and heard a metallic grate. They'd mentioned something about learning her own strength... The water running off her hair cooled as it trickled down her spine. Not that she need worry about catching cold. Not now. Not ever again.

The door snapped open and Christopher eyed her over the collar of the white toweling robe he held out with both hands. "Turn around." Her mouth half-opened to protest his giving orders, but she slid her arms into the sleeves. He settled the soft terry robe over her shoulders and she pulled it closed across her chest, knotting the belt tightly before she turned to face him.

He pulled a fluffy white towel off the heated rack and draped it over her damp hair. "I do know how you feel," he said, his fingers rubbing her curls through the thick towel. "I was terrified when I realized Justin had transformed me."

His hands moved in gentle rhythm over her scalp, easing the tension. "The change is always hard on a fledgling. Tom cussed Justin and me out when he woke. I think you Americans call it culture shock."

"At least you didn't call me a Yankee that time!"

He inclined his head, half-smiling as his hands rubbed faster and pulled her head towards him. "Listen, fledgling, like it or not, I made you. You are mine. I drained you. Our blood mingled. You drew from me. Our bond is closer than husband and wife, or mother and child. It's vampire." That last word resounded in her mind. Still only half-understanding, she turned her head to the white-framed mirror over the washbasin.

Mist still covered the top but in the clear area, she saw a half-fogged reflection of the still-open shower door, the towel rails and the steamy white tiles, and-nothing else.

"I think that's what's unnerving me," she whispered. "I'm not human anymore."

"You're as human as ever. You're just no longer mortal." He eased the towel off her head and pulled it gently across her shoulders to draw her to him.

She pressed herself against him, needing his closeness, wanting her b.r.e.a.s.t.s flattened against the weight of him, scared of the unknown that faced her. His hand eased up the back of her neck, stroking her as if calming a frightened animal. "You've just shed one existence. You need to learn to survive in the new one. I'll teach you, don't worry. I won't leave you until you learn how to live our way."

At that, her head snapped up. "But you'll leave me then?""Hush," he whispered, pressing her head back to the security of his shoulder. "We'll not talk of leaving now. Later, you'll decide whether to stay with me or go. You decide."

This was getting too much. "Go where?"

"I'll explain later. We have time. Now, get dressed. Want me to leave?"

"I think you've seen everything already. Where are we going?"

"A safe place, not far from here. Just the two of us, the moors and a few sheep among the heather."

She nodded, her throat too dry to whisper. Slowly, like moonlight creeping across the fields, he pushed aside the soft cotton of the robe, easing the fabric away from her neck. Dixie let her lids drop as her body sagged, warm and limp between the wall of his chest and the circle of his arm. His fingertips burned a trail of sensation from the curve of chin to the swell of her b.r.e.a.s.t.s and back across her shoulders. At the base of her neck he stopped, letting the pads of two fingers press a gentle circle where her pulse once beat. The need, the memory, the ache stirred like a fire kindled in a warm breeze, until every nerve ending burned with need.

"Christopher," she muttered. "Please." Now her arms locked around his back, wanting him close, closer than even before, needing him in her, starving for his strength. "Oh, please," she begged. "I need..."

His lips cut her off. All speech and thought blocked as his mouth covered hers and her brain shorted out. She knew his lips, his tongue and his taste, and the rest of creation faded to a beige mist. She tightened her arms, holding him close until she felt him press against the length of her, hard where she was soft.

She sighed. He groaned.

They drew apart. Suffused in heat and need, she smiled up at him, wanting, needing more, aching for him to continue. "Dixie, you don't know your own strength. One more squeeze and you'll crack half my ribs."

She released him, moving her arms faster than ever before. "Have I hurt you?"

He shook his head. "Not to worry. At the worst, a few bruises."

He might smile about it. She wouldn't. "I had no idea. If I'd hurt you!"

"Before we're through, you'll give me more than a few bruises."

"What do you mean?"

He stroked her cheek with the back of his hand. "Don't look so worried. It's quite normal-for us. Vampire s.e.x is unrestrained and uninhibited."

"I see."

"You don't really, my love, but you will soon! Get dressed." He pushed her gently away.

Dixie glanced at the high hospital bed. "Why wait?" Heaven help her, she'd lost all restraint! She yearned for him to toss her on the hard mattress and go at her like a wild thing for some-what did he call it? Unrestrained and uninhibited vampire s.e.x.

"I have a wide double bed with satin sheets. Beats an iron hospital bed with envelope corners." His hand warmed the back of her neck, fingertips smoothed the curls at her hairline and worked a caress up to the crown of her head. He tilted her head back and dropped a gentle kiss on her mouth-gentle, but alive with wild promises. "Besides, the staff here is used to face-lifts and liposuction. Vampire mating would throw them off."What was it going to do to her?

"Show you how much I love you." He grinned at her, enjoying her embarra.s.sment, d.a.m.n him! "I warned you to veil your thoughts." Easier said than done, with major distractions like him, and immortality, to consider.

"I'm getting dressed." Suiting action to words, she snapped open the case he'd brought in earlier and yanked out a pair of jeans and a tee s.h.i.+rt.

"Want me to leave?" he offered, leaning against the wall like a permanent fixture.

"No need," she replied slowly. "You're making me wait. You might as well, too." She shuffled in her suitcase searching for underclothes, chuckled as she found a black lace bra, and then ruffled through everything to find matching panties. She slid off the toweling robe and slowly stepped into the lace panties, pulling them up and smoothing them over her hips. Then she slipped on the black bra, grinning to herself as she hooked it behind. She reached for her jeans.

"You made your point!"

Dixie turned, jeans in hand and stared. She didn't need to looked down to know he was as aroused as she. She pulled on the jeans, balancing from foot to foot, careful always to keep one in contact with the now-slippery bags of dirt. Tucking her tee s.h.i.+rt in and zipping up her jeans, she turned back to Christopher. He looked like a lean, hungry wolf. "I think I'm ready." She snapped the case shut. "What about these flip-flops? If I walk out in them, I'll leave a wet trail behind me."

"We'll take you out in a chair."

As if on cue, Tom came in trundling a wheelchair. "Hop in."

Feeling foolish, she let him settle her in with a blanket over her lap. "Do something with those b.l.o.o.d.y slippers," he fussed at Christopher. "We'll have half the ward about our ears if we leave a wet snail trail behind us."

"I've got them." Christopher held them at arm's length.

"No! I need them!" she cried. Without them, she'd be trapped like a jellyfish cast up on the beach.

"Don't worry." Christopher grabbed a towel from the bathroom and rolled up the flip-flops before tucking them on her lap, under the blanket.

"Right, let's get this show on the road." Tom swiveled the chair on its back wheels, but before he reached the door, Christopher pushed him aside.

"Thanks a lot, old chap. I'll take her. She's mine, after all."

He claimed her. The others acknowledged his owners.h.i.+p, but what about her? The thought of being owned, possessed, alternately thrilled and terrified her.

She tensed as if fighting resistance when he picked her up to place her in the pa.s.senger seat. As he fastened the seat belt, she half-smiled at him. They left the stone gates posts behind them and turned left on a road bordered by dry stone walls. She pulled off the bed socks and slipped back on the rubber flip-flops.

"Feel better?" he asked.

She nodded. "I feel anch.o.r.ed."

"You are. Without your native soil, you're rootless. You'll have shoes by the time you wake tomorrow. I'll take you across the moors by moonlight. We'll watch the stars come out."

He felt her relax, just a smidgen, and remembered his own shock and fear facing eternity for the first time. She didn't have Francis Walsingham to worry about, but she had her own horrors-especially Caughleigh. No matter. He'd keep Dixie by him until she had skill enough to survive among mortals.

The cool softness of her palm smoothed across his left hand as it rested on the steering wheel. He glanced down at the slim, white fingers that rested over his. "You're worrying about me," she said.

"And I thought I'd masked my thoughts."

"I'll be all right. Once I get used to the idea of living forever." She paused. "It just seems such a long time."

"Forget about time as you knew it. We don't age or change. Think of eternity as a permanent now."

"Better pick the right 'now.'"

He couldn't help smiling. Even terrified, she had a ready answer. With full powers and confidence, she could take on the world.

"When Justin transformed me, I was furious with him. Furious and frightened and confused. He'd s.n.a.t.c.hed my corpse from the coroner's shed and replaced it with a dead beggar."

"That explains the inconsistencies in the evidence and the contradictions about the inquest."

"You studied them?"

"The last few weeks, I've read everything about you I could lay my hands on. I scoured the library in Leatherhead and then went to the University in Guildford. There's been a lot written about you."

"What did they say?"

She chuckled. "Just about everything and they all seem to disagree. Your politics, your religion-or lack of, your involvement or not in the secret service, your s.e.xual orientation..." She paused. "I could put them straight on that."

So could the lower half of his body, right now. Her fear fading, she smelled of woman. Vampire woman. Unaware of her effect on him, she went on, "Whether you did or did not write Shakespeare, or whether he wrote you. I've always wondered about that. Did you?"

"Use your sense! It's hard enough writing your own work. Why would anyone in his right senses take on anyone else's?"

"Ghostwriters do."

"We didn't. I wrote mine, Tom wrote his, and Will Shakespeare wrote his own-but he wasn't above swiping ideas. He stole from me, and Rob Green swore he stole from Pandosto."

"I read that somewhere." She paused. "I just read The Jew. I've never seen it though."

"I'll put that one right. They're putting it on in August at the Barbican. Come with me. Afterwards, we'll climb the dome of St.

Paul's together and watch the lights of London."

Her fingers meshed with his. "I'd like that. How about standing on the top of Tower Bridge while we're at it?"

"If we hold hands, we could probably jump it-across from St. Paul's to the Mansion House, then take another leap to the Monument and just a hop over to the Tower. And if it's too far, there are lots of buildings to hold on to.""Hmmm." She sounded thoughtful. "There are obviously some distinct advantages in being a vampire."

"I'll show you them all, starting in about five minutes." He took a sharp right up the rough track that led to the cottage.

"Starting where?"

He couldn't resist the challenge in her voice. "How about right here?" He tightened his hands on the steering wheel and thought his way up from her toes, squeezing the sensitive spots on either side of her knee, and then wis.h.i.+ng his way up her soft thigh, ruffling the short curls between her legs and reaching into the soft, hidden warmth.

"Christopher!" She jerked and turned to him, her eyes wide with fury but pale with desire. "What are you doing?"

"It's called foreplay."

"Any more tricks like that and you may wait longer."

He willed his mind over her tight, hard nipples. "I don't think you can."

"How much farther is it?" She couldn't hide the need in her voice or the heat rising from her skin.

"Almost there." They b.u.mped over a cattle grid, around a corner and pulled up in front of a gray stone cottage.

"Wait here while I get the place open. The rough ground will rip those bags. Can't risk spilling the little bit of soil you do have."

She smiled up at him as he swept her up out of the seat and turned up the narrow path of crazy paving. "I think I could walk,"

she said.

"Save your energies," he said and his mind stroked between her b.r.e.a.s.t.s.

Her hips jerked in response. "More foreplay?" A slow, almost teasing smile curled her wide lips. "I see." She relaxed against his chest. He took two paces towards the door, then felt her touch between his legs, smooth, gentle and insistent until he hardened and gasped. "Two can play that game."

Lord, she learned fast. He put her on her feet, after sliding her down his body inch by teasing inch. Lifting the latch, he unlocked the door and pushed it open. "Go on in. I'll get our bags."

"Suitcases can wait. Why should I have to?"