TIME WITHOUT END

By

Linda Lael Miller

Prologue

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21

Readers from coast to coast have fallen in love with

Linda Lael Miller's extraordinary vampires!

"It has been forever since I actually fell in love with a character from a novel… but it happened, beginning with Forever and the Night and it hasn't quit! The character Valerian is so extraordinary and so exciting—he has just captured my attention and heart. And to think, he's a vampire… but then, he would have to be, as I am sure no mortal man could capture me like this! I can hardly wait to read his story! This series leaves me breathless and wanting more."

—Sara Maria Brockunier, Tampa, Florida

"Not many novels can move a reader through so many emotions… I loved your book, and I crave more! You have made me an addict for the characters."

—Betty Reed, San Antonio, Texas

"You have done a wonderful job of combining my two favorites, romance and the supernatural. The characters are wonderful, and the story was very believable. It made me feel that there could be such things as vampires."

—Elise Skidmore, Mastic Beach, New York

"What an excellent story… [You] certainly sated a yearning for something different yet also made me want more… Thank you for your daring in writing a love story that's on the dark side."

—Sandra C. Honeycutt, Kingsport, Tennessee

"I find myself totally captured… You have a very special gift."

—Judy Cottrell, Stockton, California

Turn the page to read what the critics are saying about Linda Lael Miller's unusual and enthralling novels…

FOREVER AND THE NIGHT

The spectacular New York Times bestseller. The book that lured readers into Linda Lael Miller's spellbinding world of vampires and mortals, lovers and legends…

"Forever and the Night is a terrific read. Exotic, lush, sensual and exciting… I loved it."

—Jayne Ann Krentz

"Bravo! What a tale. I was hooked from page one."

—Jill Marie Landis, bestselling author of After All and Until

Tomorrow

"Sizzling, sexy, and absolutely scrumptious. It's the vampire romance to end all vampire romances. It's the fabulous Linda Lael Miller at her scintillating best."

—Romantic Times

"A sensually luscious supernatural romance…

thrilling… chilling… an immortal classic."

—Affaire de Coeur

"Aidan and Neely are a very special pair. Readers will root for them through every suspenseful twist and moving love scene right to the bittersweet ending."

—Gothic Journal

"One of the best books that Linda has ever written… It has great appeal for Anne Rice fans as well as romance readers. It's a great story."—Janet Carroll, The Book Emporium, Long Beach, California

"Triumphant!"

—Kliatt

FOR ALL ETERNITY

Linda Lael Miller returns with the passionate story of

Maeve Tremayne—a beautiful vampire who haunts the

battlefields of Gettysburg like an angel of death… and

who dares to lose her soul to a mortal soldier.

"The reigning queen of the supernatural romance…

Ms. Miller has brilliantly written a haunting love story."

—Affaire de Coeur

"Highly recommended."

—Booklist

"Absolutely fascinating… intriguing… the mesmerizing Valerian steals the show once again."

—Romantic Times

"Linda Lael Miller's fabulous time-traveling vampires are back… The exciting plot and fast pacing will keep readers enthralled to the very last page and eager for the next vampire installment."

—The Talisman

"This page-turner will keep you on the edge of your seat… a fast-paced, mysterious tale woven by a master storyteller."

—The Time Machine

"Ms. Miller takes the reader into the world of the damned [and] carries the reader on a river of emotions that are hot and sensuous."

—Heartland Critiques

Berkley Books by Linda Lael Miller

FOREVER AND THE NIGHT

FOR ALL ETERNITY

TIME WITHOUT END

A Berkley Book / published by arrangement with the author

PRINTING HISTORY

Berkley edition / November 1995

This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part, by mimeograph or any other means, without permission.

For information address: The Berkley Publishing Group,

200 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016.

ISBN: 0-425-15042-9

BERKLEY®

Berkley Books are published by The Berkley Publishing Group,

200 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016.

BERKLEY and the "B" design are trademarks belonging to Berkley Publishing Corporation.

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

For Doreen Drago,

Valerian's good friend and mine.

Heartfelt thanks from both of us.

^ »

Las Vegas, Nevada

1995

A hush fell over the audience as the full-sized glass coach rolled onto the stage, drawn by six perfect white horses with golden manes and tails. Dense fog tumbled and spun along the floor, rising slowly, encompassing the silent, gilded wheels of the carriage, swirling around the black iron pillars of the old-fashioned streetlamps lining the wings.

Daisy Chandler had been on a stakeout until half an hour before, and she'd arrived in the theater of the new Venetian Hotel just in time for the finale. Even though she'd lived in Las Vegas all her life, and knew more than a little about trickery and sham, she held her breath as the carriage door opened.

The magician stepped out of the coach onto the stage.

Tall and very broad in the shoulders, he stood just behind the fog-dimmed footlights, regarding the audience in imperious silence for a few moments, as though deciding whether or not these particular people were worthy of his presence, let alone his performance. He wore a plain tuxedo, exquisitely tailored, beneath a flowing black velvet cape embroidered with glimmering threads of every conceivable color, and his chestnut hair was thick, slightly too long over his collar, and faintly shaggy. His features were patrician, his complexion pale with a pearlescent glow to it.

Although Daisy could not see his eyes in the darkness, she would have sworn his gaze touched her, passed by, and then returned to cast some subtle spell.

Daisy felt an immediate wrench of sorrow and joy deep within herself, a recollection of great love and even greater tragedy. A fury of faded pastel images fluttered in her mind, like antique valentines…

Memories.

Daisy tried to shake off the fanciful impression. She was a cop, and an especially pragmatic one at that. She didn't believe in magic, or in memories of things that had never happened to her in the first place. She'd been having spooky dreams, on and off, ever since she was eight years old, but that fell into another category entirely.

She shifted in her seat, wondering why she'd come to see a magic show instead of going home to her apartment for a Lean Cuisine, a hot bath, and some badly needed sleep. Hell, she'd even laid out the seventy-five bucks for a ticket…

Daisy bit her lower lip. She'd heard about the magician, who billed himself simply as Valerian—with no Greats or Magnificents or Incomparables tacked on for purposes of pizzazz—from her friends. They said his tricks were impossible, that other sleight-of-hand specialists were flying in from the world over, hoping to figure out how he did it all, and Daisy had wanted to see the act for herself.

It was as simple as that. Wasn't it?

She realized she was holding her breath, and ordered herself to take in air, but her hand trembled as she reached for her glass of diet cola. Her gaze never left the commanding figure dominating center stage.

Daisy was enthralled, like all the other spectators, as Valerian raised his arms high in the air, turned his back to the audience, and faced the team and carriage. The metallic threads in his cape seemed to ripple and undulate under the stage lights, and Daisy shook her head, overwhelmed by another flood of footloose, whimsical remembrance.

The magician lifted his hands slowly, gracefully, from his sides, palms up, and as he did so, the fairy-tale coach and all the horses rose a few inches off the floor, then a foot, then several feet.

The silence in the room was explosive, absolute. No one spoke, or coughed, or cleared a throat. The horses seemed unconcerned with the fact that their hooves weren't touching the floor; they moved in place, as though they were trotting on top of a cloud, and the carriage wheels spun accordingly.

Valerian turned, in a swirl of shimmering color, and glared fiercely at the audience, seeming to challenge them to question the trick. Then the fog dissipated, and Cinderella's coach-and-six were still jostling along in mid-air, supported by nothing at all.

Daisy scooted to the edge of her chair, frowning, her practical cop's mind racing even as her emotions wrestled with the lingering sense of poignant recognition. She knew razzle-dazzle when she saw it. No matter how polished the magician, no matter how sophisticated the trick, illusions were illusions. There could be no question that her eyes were fooling her, but she was more than mystified by what she was witnessing—she was unnerved.

The wizard gestured, and a half dozen of the requisite dancing girls pranced onto the stage, three on one side, three on the other. At another silent command from Valerian, a trio of the skimpily clad women moved to sit cross-legged under the suspended coach. One of the three seated beneath the horses glanced upward with a thoughtful expression, then produced an umbrella.

A twitter of nervous laughter rose from the crowd, but that feeling of collective breath-holding remained.

Having proven, ostensibly, that there were no wires supporting the coach-and-six—an idea Daisy had already dismissed as preposterous anyway—the dancing girls scrambled out from under it.

Valerian raised an arm, and the coach door opened again. A glittering gold ladder stretched with soundless grace to the stage floor, and the girls ascended, one by one, into the carriage. The door closed behind them.

There was a sort of psychic drumroll, something felt rather than heard. Then the great deceiver raised his arms again, and the onlookers cried out in wonder, Daisy included, when the team began to move, still suspended, pulling the coach out over all their heads, making a grand and glorious sweep before returning to the stage.

Daisy's mouth dropped open. She closed her eyes, then opened them again.

The coach-and-six settled gracefully back to the floor of the stage, then rolled out of sight.

The audience soared to its feet, clapping and cheering wildly. The magician bowed deeply, a small, ironic smile lifting just a corner of his mouth, then vanished in the proverbial cloud of smoke.

Daisy sank back into her chair, still in shock. The horde of tourists straggled out, murmuring among themselves, speculating. Soon, the theater was empty, except for a few waiters, and the stage, with its tiered curtain of ivory silk, was dark.

Daisy remained, her heart in her throat, inexplicable tears burning in her eyes, obeying some unspoken command because she could not find the strength to defy it. Waiting.

For Daisy, the show was far from over.

« ^ »

Dunnett's Head, Cornwall

September 1348

"You've ruined both of those lads," Noah Lazarus groused from his position next to the table, mallet in hand. His wife, Seraphina, stood gazing out of the shop window, looking for those scoundrel sons of hers. He spat in an effort to gain her notice, knowing beforehand that he would fail. "The names you gave them, Sera—Krispin, Valerian—names fit for the sons of princes and kings. And me naught but a bootmaker!"

Seraphina turned those extraordinary violet eyes on him at last, and even though they flashed with contempt,

Noah was glad of her notice. He knew he was pathetic, but in such moments he couldn't make himself care.

"They are fine lads," she said acidly. The late afternoon sun came through the thick, bubbled glass of the window, playing in her rich chestnut hair. Noah marveled that such a creature had bound herself to the likes of him, under the laws of God and man, that she'd lain with him, borne the children he sired.

Just then, Noah caught a glimpse of the boys, returning from the keep overlooking the small seaside village and the wild Irish Sea. Valerian, the elder, was seventeen, tall and straight as a ship's mast, with powerful shoulders and his mother's dramatic coloring. He had strong bones, unblemished skin, and straight white teeth, Valerian did, and he was so physically perfect that Noah could hardly believe he was the get of his own loins. It was as though the boy had willfully taken all the best of his parents for himself, leaving little or none for the children who followed.

Krispin, smaller than his brother, fair-haired and as delicate as a girl, came next. He'd managed to survive, at least—that was more than could be said for the others.

Poor little Royal had been born three years after Krispin, only to have his mother confer that embarrassment of a name upon him. He'd been a blue and spindly twig of an infant; hadn't even survived a fortnight. As for the two girls, well, those wretched creatures, twins they'd been, had both given up the ghost before they could be christened.

The door of the shop swept open, and Valerian strode in. He wore the plain garb of a tradesman's son, leggings and a tunic of the cheapest wool, and yet he looked out of place, as he always did. More like a dandy down from London Town than the pauper he was. He kissed his besotted mother on the forehead, and she glowed as if she'd just been blessed by John the Baptist, or one of the lesser saints.

Valerian's eyes met Noah's, and the old knowledge passed between them; they had always despised each other. That day the whelp carried an unbelievably rare and precious item—carelessly, of course—in the curve of one arm. It was a book, bound in leather, and Noah knew without looking that its parchment pages would have been painstakingly inscribed by one monk or a succession of them, and exquisitely illustrated with vivid colors and fragile brush strokes.

Noah's heart clenched, and he felt a thin sheen of perspiration dampen his forehead and upper lip. "Where did you get that?" he demanded in a hoarse whisper. Jesus, Joseph, and Mary, the manuscript was worth more than the shop and all its contents—more, probably, than the whole village of Dunnett's Head. If such a treasure were to be damaged, or lost, there would be hell to pay.

And it would be Noah who paid, not his son. It was always Noah.

Valerian—God, how he hated that pretentious name, hated even more that it fit the young rogue so well, in its innate elegance—smiled in that way that made his father want to box his ears. Noah had done exactly that often enough, as it happened, and relished every blow, but Seraphina invariably coddled the rotter afterward and made the rest of them suffer.

"It belongs to the baron," Valerian said, following a short silence. It was as close as he'd ever come to explaining anything he said or did; he seemed to have some personal rule against giving reasons.

Krispin, that nimble shadow of a boy, spoke at last, in a quavering and earnest voice. "Our tutor told us we could take it," he burbled. "Just until we go back for our lessons…"

Noah felt the blood pounding under his right temple. Lessons. Books. That had been the start of it, Seraphina's foolish insistence that her sons be taught to read, to yearn after poetry and art.

The older man fixed his gaze on Valerian. "Take it back to the keep," he commanded in a tone of coldness and thunder. "Now."

Valerian's look, indeed his whole manner, was one of purest insolence. "I will not," he replied very quietly.

Noah closed one fist—he was a big man, and stronger than his son, and he wanted with all his soul to strike the impudent pup over and over, to force him to his knees, to make him bleed and whimper—but Seraphina was beside her husband in a trice. She gripped Noah's hard arm in her small hands, their tiny bones fragile as a bird's skeleton beneath her silken flesh, and looked up at him with both a plea and a warning in her strange purple eyes.

He could bear no more of it, her choosing this whelp over him, her own mate. It was an abomination! "This is still my house, my shop," Noah said evenly. "And I, God help me, am still your father. I am the master here, and you will do as I tell you or take a hiding the likes of which you've never imagined."

"Noah!" Seraphina whispered, horrified, clutching at him again.

"Enough!" he rasped at her, wrenching his arm free and nearly oversetting her in the process, glowering all the while into Valerian's magnificent, hateful young face. After a few deep and tremulous breaths, he managed to speak more calmly. "Now. What shall it be?"

Valerian spat onto the rush-covered floor.

His behavior was beyond enduring; Noah wrenched the precious manuscript from the lad's grasp, shoved it into Seraphina's, and struck his son with such force that Valerian stumbled backward and collided with a wooden support beam. Blood trickled from the corner of his mouth, and the fires of deepest hell blazed in his eyes.

He didn't say that he hated his father, for there was no need to speak of it. Noah knew a moment of torturous despair, and wondered if things would have been different if he'd made Seraphina call the boys by solid, ordinary names, such as Thomas or John, Gideon or Joseph.

Seraphina screamed, but Noah could not stop himself. He cuffed the lad again and entangled a meaty peasant's hand in that mass of chestnut hair, pulling hard, forcing his firstborn to his knees.

Valerian did not fight back, even though Noah could feel the strength surging inside the youthful, granite-hard body; he endured each blow, each kick, each slap and wrench, all the time gazing upon his father with that ancient, murderous contempt in his eyes. Only when it was too late did Noah realize that this very passivity was Valerian's greatest weapon; by suffering the punishment without struggle, he had assured his mother's undying devotion. At the same time he had sealed Noah's doom, robbed him of the last shreds of Seraphina's esteem. He, this changeling with the face of an archangel, had at last destroyed that which Noah valued above all else.

He drew back his foot, with a mighty moan of sheer agony, and kicked the crouching Valerian as hard as he could.

Seraphina shrieked, kneeling in the rushes to gather her bleeding and now-unconscious offspring into her arms, cradling his head on her bosom. When she raised her eyes to Noah's face, his worst fears were confirmed; the hatred he saw in her gaze would outlive them all.

Though she might lie beside him every night, and even suffer his gropings and groans in the darkness, though she might sit across the board from him for a hundred meals, nay, a thousand, Seraphina was eternally lost to him.

Noah felt tears burning in his eyes, for he loved his wife the way a saint loves God, with fevered and unutterable devotion. He held out one hand to her, unable to speak, and she stared at the twisted, calloused fingers for a long moment, then turned her head away. She buried her face in Valerian's hair and spoke not to Noah, but to their second son.

"Take your brother to his bed," she told Krispin in a bleak, distracted tone. "I'll get a cloth and some water."

Only then could Noah manage one desperate word. Her name.

She rose, helping Krispin lift an insensate Valerian to his feet. She did not look at her husband, and her words sliced through him like a reaper's scythe honed for harvest. "May God curse you, Noah Lazarus," she murmured. "May all His angels despise your name, now and on the Day of Judgment.

Valerian

I remember clearly, even after six hundred years, that I awakened sometime after sunset, in the dark, cramped little cell I shared with my brother, feeling as though I'd been trampled by the baron's horses. The straw in my pallet rustled when I moved, and I heard Krispin breathing softly in his own bed, against the opposite wall, but there was another noise tugging at the edges of my mind. It was several moments before I realized what else I was hearing—the sound of my father's drunken, disconsolate weeping.

I closed my eyes, as if to block it out, for although I had never loved Noah, I was not immune to his suffering. I did not revel in his injuries as he did in mine.

"Do you think she's left him at last?" Krispin asked.

"No," I replied, unable to withhold a small groan as I shifted on my bed, disturbing bruised muscles and broken skin. "She'll never leave him. Where would she go?"

There was a brief silence, within the room at least. Without, Father's wails grew louder and more desolate, like the cries of a wounded wolf, and I wondered if his agony would drive him to come after me again. Although he was not a cruel man in any other respect, there could be no denying that he enjoyed taking off strips of my hide.

"You're not his get," Krispin speculated, with no emotion whatsoever coming forth in his voice. "That's why he hates you so much."

The words wounded me sorely, although they shouldn't have. Certainly I'd had the same thought myself more than once, and I'd often pretended, when I was small, that I had sprung from the loins of someone far more interesting than Noah Lazarus, bootmaker, of Dunnett's Head, Cornwall. A smuggler, for example. Or a poet. Or one of the pirates who plagued the coasts of both England and France.

Alas, I had the boot-maker's broad shoulders and powerful, long-fingered hands; I had his temper and his oddly aristocratic nose, though he probably hadn't noticed the similarities. Oh, I was Noah's seed all right, but he couldn't have despised me more if I'd been begotten by the devil's great-uncle. And rather than try to make peace with him, to win his affection, I had always mocked him instead. Even now, after all these centuries, I'm not sure why I had to defy my father, to constantly rouse his ire; I only know that I could sooner have ceased breathing and stilled my own heart than begged him to love me.

"Valerian?" Krispin sounded slightly irritated; it always annoyed him when he spoke to me and I failed to reply straight away. "What do you think? Are you his son, or are you a bastard?"

I smiled in the fetid gloom, even though I ached in every conceivable part of my anatomy, even though I wanted, on some level of my being, to weep and weep until my body was dry as sun-parched straw. "I am his son," I replied, "and I am most assuredly a bastard."

Krispin did not laugh at my jest, and I was sorry for that. It would have been a comfort to me, his amusement.

Things began to crash against the walls and floors in the outer part of the house where Father kept his shop. He was overturning cherished possessions now, flinging them in rage, and I shuddered inwardly, praying he would not remember me.

"He might have loved us," Krispin said at length, "if we'd wanted to be bootmakers."

I was weeping silently by then, and I didn't want my brother to know, so I didn't speak. But I knew it wasn't our rebellion that made our sire hate us, most especially me. It was the fact that our mother had always taken our part against him.

After a while Father was quiet. Krispin drifted off to sleep, and so eventually did I. On the morrow Mother gave me the book that had started the latest battle, carefully wrapped in her best shawl, and spoke to me in a subdued tone.

"You bring it upon yourself, Valerian," she said, pouring water from a ewer into my wooden cup. Father was not in the shop, and Krispin had gone down to the sea at daybreak to watch for ships, the way he always did, so Mother and I were alone. "Always baiting him, always defying him. Why do you do it?"

I was ashamed, for I knew she had endured much because of my willful nature. "I don't know," I answered glumly, tearing off a piece of coarse brown bread for my breakfast. My lower lip was swollen, and it hurt to chew and swallow. I did not express my fear that if I ever stopped rebelling against Father I would instead grovel at his feet, pleading with him to love me.

She looked upon me sternly, then touched my hair. "Be gone. He'll be back soon, with the things he needs to put the shop to rights again, and he mustn't find you here."

I nodded, snatched up a second piece of the hard, dry bread, took the manuscript shrouded in poor brown cloth, and started for the door. Matthew Challes, Brenna Afton-St. Claire's tutor, whom she generously shared with the boot-maker's boys, disliked laggards and dealt with them severely.

I was the first to enter the schoolroom, that hallowed, light-filled place, with its rush-scattered floors and windows opening onto a vista of the wild sea, and Challes gasped audibly when he saw me. He was a tall man, taller than I was by the span of my hand, with deep-set brown eyes, a poet's sensual mouth, and pale skin. There was a faint smattering of pockmarks across his right cheek.

"So Noah's been at you again, has he, lad?"

I simply nodded and held out the book.

Challes set it aside, with less reverence than I would have expected, and stooped slightly, eyes narrowed, to study my battered face. "Good God, it's barbaric. How do you bear it? Why haven't you run away to London or gone to sea?"

I could not go from Dunnett's Head, though I dreamed of it, because I knew my mother would perish if I abandoned her, and because there was someone else I could not bear to leave, but of course I had too much pride to admit the truth. Blessedly, before I could be compelled to make an answer, the Lady Brenna breezed into the schoolroom, and as always, I felt my steady heartbeat turn to a violent thud-thud-thud when I saw her.

She was fifteen that year, nubile and womanly, and it was generally known that her father, the baron, was seeking far and wide for a suitable husband. He had only two requirements in a prospective son-in-law, as I recall—social rank and a respectable fortune. The contents of the baron's coffers, never remarkable, had been dwindling rapidly for a generation or so.

I remember quite clearly that I would have given my immortal soul to be her mate, to bury my hands and face in that wild cascade of lush, red-gold hair, to see myself reflected in those jewel-like green eyes, to press my body against hers, my masculine frame moving in sweet, intimate concert with her soft, lithe one.

To this day I recall that she was wearing a velvet frock that morning, rendered in a deep blue, and that it was no less beautiful for its shabbiness.

Seeing me, and my wounds and swellings, she winced in mingled amusement and sympathy. "My poor Valerian," she said, touching my cheek with a light, cool hand. "When will you learn to steer around trouble instead of sailing straight into the heart of it?"

I had no answer for her question; I was too busy wondering if she knew what even so innocent a caress did to me. Although my tunic fit loosely and hung to the middle of my thighs, thereby covering any involuntary evidence of my desire for milady, a sidelong glance at my tutor told me he'd guessed the true state of affairs.

I blushed and pretended I hadn't seen the mating of mirth and censure in his gaze. I was just opening my mouth to babble something inane to Brenna when Krispin came in, bearing an armload of autumn wild-flowers and grasses and beaming.

"For you, milady," he said, holding the gift out to Brenna and following up with a courtly bow. He adored her, as I did, and I wondered if she knew and returned his esteem in even the smallest part.

The light of pleasure blazed in her eyes, and I was bludgeoned by jealousy.

It was Challes who interceded, clearing his throat loudly. "Here, now, no more of this nonsense. Sit down, the lot of you, and we'll begin our lessons."

I couldn't concentrate; the sun was bright and the wind coming up from the sea and swirling through the gapped wooden walls and high windows of the old keep smelled of salt. I dreamed of grand adventures in faraway, exotic lands, with the Lady Brenna at my side, and paid scant attention to my Latin.

When we were through with our studies, Krispin vanished, as he often did, to explore one of his sea caves or walk the shore, and I lingered just outside the great, sagging gates of the keep, looking at the sea. Being a lad of seventeen summers, I was in no significant hurry to return to my home and spend the remainder of the day helping my father in the shop.

I had not heard Brenna's approach, and I was a little startled when she suddenly appeared beside me, holding some of Krispin's now-fading bouquet of flowers and sea-grass to her freckled nose. "Do you dream of leaving here forever, the way your brother does?"

I smiled, even though I felt an infinite sorrow stir in the depths of my spirit. Yes, I thought. And I dream of taking you with me. "I'd like to see France and the lands beyond," I conceded, cautious in her presence as always, because her opinion of me meant everything. "What about you, milady? Do you imagine being married and bearing children?"

A brief, troubled silence followed, during which I suffered the proverbial agonies of the damned, fearing I'd said the wrong thing. She gazed out toward the sea, squinting against the brightness of the late afternoon sun, her expression so solemn, so mournful, that I wanted to take her into my arms and promise to protect her from dragons and devils and all else she might fear.

Finally she looked up into my face. "I'm to go to Northumberland," she said at last. "Father has found me a husband there. Word reached us yesterday, and he told me as we supped."

I felt a great wail of grief and protest rise in me, pulsing painfully in my throat, but I did not release it. It would have frightened Brenna, and otherwise changed nothing.

Brenna linked her arm through mine. "I don't want to leave you, Valerian," she said. "You love me, don't you?"

I merely nodded, for I would not have dared to speak even if I could have managed it. Without Brenna, my life would be unendurable. And there would be no more lessons in the keep, no more Challes, no more books and poetry and music.

For the first time, I truly wanted to die. In retrospect, that seems an exquisite irony.

She rested her head against my shoulder, and I could smell woodsmoke in her hair, and the sea, and that scent that was, and is, peculiar to her. "I've always pretended," she said in a voice so small that the wind nearly carried it away, "that I would marry you one day. I knew it couldn't happen, and yet…"

I turned, staring into her face, bewildered and full of wild, impossible hopes. "What did you say?"

Brenna smiled that same unbearably sad smile that had rested upon her lips moments before. "Is it so difficult to believe," she countered, "that I should love you?"

I swallowed hard, full of sadness and ecstasy. How wrenching it was, knowing that she wanted me as I wanted her and, at the same time, being aware to the depths of my soul that we could never be together.

She interlaced her fingers with mine. "How will I bear it?" she murmured, asking herself, not me. Asking the sea and the hard, brittle blue of a September sky.

By then it was all a blur to me, the water, the village, the grassy slope leading down to the shore, for I was blinded by tears. I could not answer her question, or my own, which was exactly the same.

Brenna stepped in front of me, raised her hands to my face. "Perhaps Father would let us be married if I told him how much we care for each other."

I laughed, and the sound was jagged, seeming to tear the flesh of my throat as it passed. "The baron? Bless a marriage between his daughter and the bootmaker's son? Good God, Brenna, he'd have me in chains before day's end, and on the rack not long after!"

She rested her forehead against my chest, and I wanted to push her away, for there were always servants and others about, watching, interpreting what they saw and heard to suit themselves, passing it along to all who would listen. Still, thrusting her from me would have been like expelling the breath in my lungs and never drawing another. I felt her tears dampening my tunic, and laid my hands lightly, reverently, on her slender shoulders.

At last she drew back, sniffling, and her attempt to smile rent my heart. "Perhaps he will be a good man, my husband. Perhaps he will be gentle and think me pretty."

I closed my eyes, remembering the sounds I'd heard so often, through the daub-and-wattle wall that separated my parents' chamber from the one I shared with Krispin. Those were primitive times, and that particular brand of modesty was in short supply in the countryside and the village alike. I had seen men take their wives in the fields, like dogs mounting bitches in the street.

"Jesu," I whispered, shattered by the image of Brenna lying in another man's bed. In that moment I wanted to go to the high cliffs south of the village and fling myself off them, into the sharp rocks clustered below. "Yes," I said finally. "He'll think you pretty. How could he not?"

We parted then—surely it was Lady Brenna who broke away first. I descended the hillside toward the village without looking back. I was still half blinded by tears and thus didn't see Krispin until I'd practically collided with him.

"There's a ship on the horizon!" he cried, fairly dancing with excitement.

I pushed him aside—perhaps I was a bit too rough in my despair. I didn't gave a sacred damn if the shore was lined with Viking vessels, brimming with spear-waving invaders. Brenna was going away, probably before the winter snows, and I would never see her again.

Krispin was not content to let me pass; he clutched the sleeve of my tunic and wrenched me back. I swung at him without thinking, catching him up alongside the head and dropping him to his knees.

I barely noticed the flush of fury in his fine-boned face, or the venomous spark in his eyes. He raised himself and came hurtling at me like a snarling dog, and I cuffed him again, more out of surprise than anger.

He went sprawling once more, in the chilly grass, and then sat up, wiping blood from the corner of his mouth. His face was utterly expressionless as he sat there, looking up at me, thinking God only knew what.

"I'm sorry," I said, extending my hand to him, making no effort to hide the mark of tears on my face.

Krispin allowed me to help him, though oftentimes when we'd had such a scrap, he'd slap my hand away when I offered it. "What's the matter with you?" he demanded, dusting off his leggings and tunic. Like mine, they were poor and ugly garments, rough to the touch and virtually useless against the chill of a cold night. "I was only trying to tell you about the ship—"

I was already striding toward the village again, and the shop, where my mother would be keeping her pitiful vigil, watching for Krispin and me as if we were sailors just home from the sea, while my father watched her, in turn, and seethed. My brother scrambled to get into step with me.

I dragged one arm across my wet face, and we talked no more of ships. We could not have guessed, in our innocence, what monstrous suffering that vessel would bring to us all.

That night Father was in a mood, and Mother had taken to her pallet with some ailment born of the strain between them. Krispin slipped out to mingle with the men from the ship and hear their tales, while I sat in my chamber with my back to the wall, brooding over Brenna's impending departure.

In the morning there was no sign of Krispin. I shrugged at the realization, filled a basin with water from the ewer my mother kept filled, and washed as best I could. During the night I had conceived a plan—I would go to the Baron Afton-St. Claire, Brenna's father, and ask for her hand. If he had me clapped into chains or pulled me apart on the rack for getting above myself, so be it. I had to try.

As it happened, Challes was waiting at the schoolroom door when I arrived, his eyes red-rimmed, fairly bursting with tidings. Dire ones, I could tell.

He grasped my arm, hard enough to leave bruises, and growled, "What in God's name have you done? The baron is demanding to see you, and he is in a towering rage!"

I wrenched free of my tutor's hold, drawing myself up in fury even as terror seeped into every part of my being. In our village and in all the barren lands surrounding it, Afton-St. Claire was the most powerful of men, and my fate was most definitely in his hands.

When I did not answer his question immediately, Challes leaned in close and spat, "Damn you, bootmaker's son, what have you done?"

I remembered holding Brenna the day before, while she cried over our parting. Even though I might die screaming for daring to touch her, when I searched my heart I could find no regret. "The Lady Brenna was weeping. She laid her head against my shoulder."

"And you touched her with your hands?" Challes cried in a strangled voice. "Fool! Arrogant, willful fool!"

I straightened. "Where is the baron? In the great hall?"

Challes ran one narrow hand over his face. "We're all finished, you know. Not just you, you young peacock! The Lady Brenna will be locked up until her husband comes to claim her, and Krispin's education will be come to an end, as well as your own. And I will lose my position!"

I wanted to apologize, I truly did. I couldn't bring myself to proceed, though, because in my deepest being

I knew I had done nothing wrong. If others suffered because of the situation, it would be by the baron's decree, not by mine.

"Where is he?" I asked again. Stiffly.

Challes's sigh contained all the misery of that difficult and unjust world we lived in. "You'll find him in the inner courtyard—practicing with his sword."

I was no fool, though Challes had called me one. I wanted to bolt from that keep, to run for my life, but there was nowhere to go.

I made my way to the inner courtyard, careful to keep my shoulders straight and my head high. When I arrived, the baron, a muscular, thick-chested man, was indeed wielding a sword, battling a knobby-kneed squire who was plainly terrified. It was little wonder, given the baron's earnest dedication to his task. The nobleman was drenched in sweat and bellowing like an outraged bull.

I stood waiting, and beyond the clanging flash of the swords I saw the Lady Brenna huddled in the shadowy arch of a doorway, watching me.

I was destined to lose her, I knew, and the realization gave me a strange, desolate sort of courage. Facing a lifetime apart from her as I was, years of knowing another man was laying his hands to her, in love and perhaps in anger, I could not but think that death would be a mercy. Any sort of death.

« ^ »

Valerian

Las Vegas, 1995

She was there.

Even before I walked onstage that fateful night, to regale the baffled masses with my illusions, I felt her presence in the grand showroom of the Venetian Hotel. The knowledge that she was nearby left me so shaken that I could barely concentrate on the performance.

Brenna. Dear God, my Brenna…

My lusty Elisabeth. And sweet, fragile Jenny. And Harmony. And Sarah.

But of course she had a new identity now, and those other names, all of which had been her own at one time or another, would mean nothing to her. Nor would I, I was certain.

I'd be lying—not that I've ever hesitated to bend the truth should it serve my purpose to do so—if I said I took no joy in the prospect of another encounter with my elusive beloved. Just the thought of speaking to her again, of touching her, was rapture, but there was fear, too, and I already felt the weight of the sorrow that would inevitably follow any bliss we might share.

For my darling and me, the story, played out over and over on the stage of six centuries, had never had a happy ending. Not once.

Invariably, except in her first incarnation, the ruby ring had arrived, out of nowhere, a mysterious thing of splendor and antiquity, and precisely a fortnight later I had been bereaved again. And always, try though I did to discover who had sent that glittering jewel, and with it the curse, the thing vanished while I was caught up in my mourning. The tragic puzzle was no closer to solution that night, when I found Brenna once more, than it had ever been.

I used my powers to hold her in her seat, there in that large and otherwise anonymous audience, sensing her desire to bolt as well as her fascination with my legerdemain, but even after the carriage trick had been completed and all the others had straggled out, I lingered backstage.

I remember wishing I could simply walk away—each time I found her, I entertained that same futile notion, of course—but I am neither fine nor noble enough to make such a sacrifice. I was starved for the sight and sound and feel of her, just as I had always been. It would have been easier to forgo the taking of blood than to turn my back on that particular woman.

So it was that I stood in the wings as the silence lengthened in that great room, watching her fidget at her table, seeing the shadows play in her coppery hair, for some fifteen minutes before one of the dancing girls appeared at my side. Her name was Jillie, and she was still wearing her delectably inadequate costume.

I do enjoy the many and varied facets of my work.

"Someone you know?" she asked with a slight edge of envy to her voice. Jillie was more than passing-curious about me, and I suspect she saw me as a romantic challenge. Being older, to say the least, and infinitely wiser, I didn't encourage her; she could have no way of guessing she was flirting with a bona fide monster.

"An old friend," I said softly, never taking my eyes from the woman sitting alone in the auditorium. She had finished her drink and begun chewing ice cubes, and the crunching sound made me wince.

Jillie lingered a moment, cast a venomous glance toward the object of my attention, and swept off toward the dressing room she shared with the other women in the act.

I allowed myself a fraction of a smile. I'd done Jillie a favor she could not begin to comprehend or appreciate by spurning her naive affections. Would that I could be so gracious with my Lady Brenna.

I had shed the cumbersome cape as soon as the show ended, but I was still wearing my tuxedo when I finally forced myself down the steps at the side of the stage and along the aisle.

If I'd had a living, beating heart instead of an atrophied vestige of one, that organ would have twisted at the sight of her watching me approach. She was helpless, like an animal dazzled by light; I knew that and used it to my advantage.

Fate is cruel, in my experience—except for the modern haircut and clothes, she looked just as she had in each of the previous lifetimes in which our paths had crossed. Her hair was a coppery-gold color, thick and lush, and her eyes were green. Even her face, with its delicate bone structure and impertinent little chin, was the same, right down to the faint smattering of freckles across her nose.

I closed my eyes for a moment, caught up in a spindrift of emotions, and when I looked again, she was staring up at me. Her throat worked, as if she'd attempted to speak and failed, and she offered me her hand. She seemed bewildered, afraid, and perhaps just a bit enchanted.

Her introduction was woven of pure bravado. "Daisy Chandler," she said, offering me her hand. '"I'm a homicide detective with the Las Vegas Police Department."

I was taken aback by this flood of information, and arched one eyebrow as I enclosed her hand in my own. I wondered if she felt the chill in my flesh, and puzzled over it. Although I can usually read a mortal mind with embarrassing ease, hers has always been veiled from me, except for a few shifting flickers of discernment here and there—perhaps because I care so much. Creation can be perverse in that way, so often withholding from us the very insights and objects we desire most.

"I am pleased to meet you," I managed to reply, though I have to admit I was as nervous as Daisy. I was just better at hiding what I felt than she was, that was all. I'd had a long time to practice.

She frowned, her pretty brow knitting for a moment in consternation. "Do I know you?"

The answer to that question was better saved for another time. "No," I replied, missing a beat or two. I knew that, deep in her subconscious, she remembered me, and everything we'd been through together, in minute detail. The human mind is a superlative scribe, missing nothing, trundling its uncountable impressions from one lifetime to the next.

Daisy rose, somewhat shakily, and only thought to remove her fingers from mine after she'd gained her feet. She was wearing tight jeans that had seen better days, and her white summer top was airy and ruffled, inviting the eyes to her finely shaped breasts.

I felt a rush of jealous irritation, a downright silly desire to fetch one of my capes and cover her with it. I had had to share her with others when she was Elisabeth Saxon; I could not do so again.

"Your show was fantastic," she said with a tentative smile.

I merely inclined my head once, in acknowledgment of the compliment. There was—and is—no false modesty in my makeup. The performance was indeed "fantastic," and more; my audiences paid for magic, and they got their money's worth.

She looked about, noticed as I did that the waiters and bartenders were gone, replaced by the cleaning staff. "I guess I should be going," she said with a sort of cheerful desperation, and I felt a pang of regret because I knew Daisy wasn't normally a timid person. I was frightening her, and I hated that.

"Yes," I said quickly, at last releasing the mental hold I had taken on her earlier. "Good night, Miss Chandler."

She studied my face, and for a breathless moment I thought she consciously remembered me. In the next instant, however, the pensive expression in her beautiful eyes vanished. Daisy waggled her unmanicured fingers in farewell and dashed out of the showroom without looking back.

I went to my dressing room, where the mirrors were draped and the lights were dim, and stood in the middle of the floor, struggling against the rage and frustration that had arisen in me. I didn't want to go through it all again, loving her, wanting her, losing her, and suffering the soul-crushing consequences once more, but I knew the curse some passing devil had cast over both of us would run its course. The ring would arrive, and Daisy would die.

I was standing there, outwardly still, but with all hell breaking loose inside, when a soft tapping sounded at the door.

My first reaction was fury; I was grieving and did not wish to be disturbed. But then the door opened, and I saw my caller.

Daisy had returned, looking uncertain, as if she'd reached the end of some invisible tether and been drawn back by it. She gripped one of my colorful, printed programs in her right hand and wore a determined if still-fragile smile. There were no photographs of me in the publication, of course, only reproductions of paintings, and she had the booklet open to one of these.

"I was wondering…" she began, her eyes straying around the dressing room, taking in the shrouded mirrors and muted lights.

I was so glad to see her that it required the utmost restraint on my part not to wrench her into my arms. "Yes?" I prompted, perhaps sounding the least bit patronizing. My friends, as well as my enemies, tell me that a certain arrogance is native to my manner.

She shoved the program at me, along with a cheap plastic pen. "Would you autograph this, please?"

I did so with a flourish and handed both the booklet and the pen back to her.

Daisy bit her lower lip, and I felt a rush of arousal so keen that I writhed in the core of it, like a man in flames. "'Thanks," she said. She hesitated, then went on in a tumbled hurry of words: "I know magicians never tell their secrets, but that carriage trick was—well, it was impossible. You couldn't have used wires or platforms. So it had to be some sort of mass hypnosis—"

"Or," I interrupted gently, "it might have happened exactly as you saw it. By magic." I smiled and spread my hands.

She frowned, and I wanted to kiss the place between her brows where the skin creased prettily. "Something weird is going on here," she finally blurted out. "Who are you?"

I wanted to tell her; it would have been the most delicious relief to explain it all, but I couldn't. For one thing, the story would have taken hours to relate, and for another, I didn't want to frighten Daisy off forever. "You'll understand it all in good time," I replied with resignation. I was beginning to feel restless, agitated; I needed to hunt and feed, and perhaps prowl a bit, before retiring to my lair.

"I'm coming back," Daisy announced, still frowning.

I took a printed pass from the top drawer of my dressing room bureau and handed it to her. "Be my guest," I said.

Daisy accepted the special ticket, nodded her thanks, and left, looking as befuddled as ever. I suspect it wasn't me or my magic that made her thoughtful, but her own unexpected captivation with both. She was clearly not a person given to obsessions and strange fancies.

After she'd gone I mourned her, for even when we parted briefly, I was invariably bereaved. I stood with my forehead touching the door and my hands gripping the woodwork on either side, remembering. Suffering. Loving.

The Lady Brenna

Dunnett's Head, Cornwall, 1348

They were facing each other in the courtyard, Brenna Afton-St. Claire's father, the baron, and Valerian. The autumn sun, though fiercely bright, felt cold, and Brenna shivered.

Her father had been practicing his swordsmanship, though it was unlikely the king would ever again call upon him to serve as a soldier, given his age. For all his four and forty years, however, the baron was strong.

"The bootmaker's son," the baron said, assessing Valerian and at the same time using the hem of his tunic to polish the steel blade of his sword. It caught fire with daylight and flashed like a mirror.

Brenna held her breath, watching Valerian's face. Jesu, she prayed silently, make him hold his tongue. If he doesn't my father will surely kill him, and with pleasure.

Valerian only inclined his head, and Brenna nearly swooned with gratitude. The baron's anger was violent, burning hot as the fires of perdition, but it died quickly when it was not fueled.

Sweating profusely from his exercise, the baron held the sword up, between himself and the bootmaker's son, and then pressed the point to the pulse at the base of Valerian's throat.

Brenna gasped and started to bolt toward them, intending to intercede, but Challes, her tutor, gripped her hard by the arm.

"Stand fast," he warned in a whispered hiss, his grasp tightening when she struggled.

Valerian stood still, surely aware that the baron could kill him easily, with no penance forthcoming, looking almost insolently calm. Even from several feet away, Brenna could see that the expression in his eyes was fearless.

With a silent wail of despair Brenna realized that Valerian was courting death—he wanted to perish! She tried to cry out, but the only sound that came from her throat was a hoarse, senseless whisper.

The baron broke the awful silence, his words as cold and hard as the blade of the sword he held. "Why did you lay your hands to my daughter, peasant? How dare you touch a noblewoman?"

Brenna squeezed her eyes shut, terrified.

"I forgot myself," Valerian replied. There was no trace of subservience in his tone or manner, but no mockery, either. He was simply stating a fact.

Brenna put one hand over her mouth and swayed slightly in Challes's now-gentled grasp. Her eyes burned with tears as the full measure of her ardor for Valerian Lazarus came down upon her, crushing her spirit as surely as a fallen wall would have done her body. In that terrible moment she knew that she had loved Valerian as long as she had known him, which was all her life, and that they had been together before the stars were born.

"You are bold," the baron remarked, lowering the steel only to beckon to his squire, who was yet trembling from his own encounter with the nobleman. "Fetch a second sword," he told the servant.

Brenna's heart seized with the knowledge that her father meant to challenge Valerian. There could be no contest—despite the lad's youth and strength, he had no experience with weapons. The baron, on the other hand, had wielded heavy swords daily, from earliest childhood. He was a seasoned warrior.

"No!" she managed to shriek. Challes tried to hold her, but in her desperation of fear, Brenna broke free. Her face streaked with tears, she clutched at the sleeve of the baron's tunic. "Don't do this, Father," she pleaded. She dropped to her knees then, grasping his clothing with both hands now, her knuckles white with the effort. "Don't kill Valerian," she pleaded. "Oh, please—I'll do anything—"

Her father's face was terrible, flushed with rage and chagrin, and Brenna did not dare to look at Valerian's. She knew, too late, that she should have listened to the tutor, that she had made a grave mistake in revealing the extent of her devotion.

"You would beg like a street whore," the baron seethed in a vicious tone, "for the life of this—dog?"

Valerian stiffened; Brenna felt it, though she still lacked the courage to look into his eyes. It was bad enough meeting her father's condemning gaze.

"I love him," she said.

The baron backhanded her then, so hard that she went sprawling backward into the dust of the courtyard. Valerian made a growling, inhuman sound and lunged at her father.

A furious bellow spilled from the baron's throat, and over it all Brenna's own sobs could be heard, as well as the frantic peace pleas of poor Challes.

The baron raised his sword and neatly sliced open Valerian's poor garment, along with the flesh beneath. The baron laughed, the sound echoing off the inner walls of the keep, like the ravings of a madman. "So you dare to go for my throat, do you?" he roared as the squire returned with the extra sword. "You are brave, as well as insolent, like so many fools." At a gesture from his master, the servant handed the second blade to Valerian. "Well, upon this day, you shall die."

"No!" Brenna screamed, clawing at the ground with spread fingers in her effort to get to her feet and fling herself upon her father. But this time Challes succeeded in forestalling her; he wrapped an arm around her middle and dragged her backward into the shadows. When she shrieked in protest, the tutor slapped her, but it was the words that followed that quieted her, rather than the blow.

"God save us all, my lady, you've already doomed your beloved with your imprudent ways! Will you see him sundered at the joints as well, like a fowl to be served at supper? In the name of all that's holy, be still, and perhaps some passing angel will show us mercy!"

Dirty and broken inside, Brenna sagged against her teacher, weeping softly, and he held her.

Valerian took the sword, and though he was not experienced, he was strong. The battle raged for an eternity, it seemed to Brenna. Her father prevailed for a time, then Valerian. Both men were bloodied, their clothes drenched with sweat and gritty with courtyard dirt. At last the baron swung his blade in a mighty arch, and Valerian went down with nary a cry, with a deep, crimson gash in his middle.

He did not rise.

Brenna screamed inwardly, silently.

The baron, unsteady on his feet, breathing hard and bleeding copiously from wounds in his upper arm and one shoulder, looked down upon the half-conscious lad and raised his sword for the kill. For a long time he stood there like that, prepared to run Valerian through and finish it, and for Brenna all of creation stopped, as motionless as a painting.

The baron glanced at her, and she saw the utter absence of love in his eyes, and then looked down at Valerian again. Finally the nobleman spat on the lad and flung the faithful sword aside, sending it clattering across the stone pathway that wove through the courtyard.

"He shall rot awhile in my dungeon, and then hang," the baron decreed, pointing one bloodstained, filthy index finger at Brenna. "You, Daughter of Eve, shall be witness to the fruits of your whoring, and so shall the bootmaker and his wife, and everyone else in the village who cares to witness the spectacle."

"There was no whoring, Your Grace," the tutor said quickly, stunning them all by what he risked. "The Lady Brenna was weeping, and the tradesman's son attempted to comfort her. It was no more than that."

The Baron assessed the scholar he had engaged some years before, at the behest of Brenna's late mother, whom he had loved with a slavish devotion. "Get out," he rasped. "Or you shall swing from a gibbet with this dog's get." He kicked Valerian's prone body once, eliciting the first and last moan from him, then stalked away.

Brenna ran to Valerian and placed his head in her lap, stroking his blood-streaked hair. "I won't let him part us," she whispered, cold with shock. "I'll die with you—I vow it by all I know of heaven—before I'll say farewell."

Somewhere, deeper within the keep, she heard her father shouting orders. Too soon, men came, wrenching the dazed Valerian from her arms, roughly hauling him away. Brenna did not fight them, because she was afraid of doing Valerian further injury.

Challes crouched beside her briefly, where she sat in the dust like a beggar, and spoke in a quiet but stern voice. "Go to your quarters, Lady Brenna. Wash yourself, and brush your hair, and don a clean gown. When your father summons you, and he shall, answer his questions respectfully and keep your opinions to yourself. Do you understand me?"

"Yes," she whispered. She didn't see what any of it mattered; all she cared about was saving Valerian.

Then even Challes was gone.

Brenna rose after a while and was met at the edge of the courtyard by her lady's maid, Moll, who clucked and fretted at the sight of her charge. Like a sleepwalker, Brenna let herself be led inside the keep, across the great room, up the broad stone stairs, and along the passageway to her own chamber.

There she stood still and endured while Moll stripped away her gown, along with the shift beneath it, and scrubbed her with chilly water and a rough cloth. Brenna's hair was brushed, then thick tendrils at either side were plaited, with narrow ribbons made from cloth-of-gold woven through. She was powdered and perfumed, like a bride being prepared for her husband. Then, finally, she was laced into a green frock, just a few shades darker than her eyes, and steered across the rushes to the looking glass.

Brenna did not connect herself to the beautiful image wavering upon the murky face of the mirror. She was numb, as insubstantial as a ghost, with no more depth than her reflection.

She turned to look into Moll's eyes and clutched the maid's work-worn hands in both her own. "I must go to him," she said. "Where is he?"

Moll's plain, earnest face paled. "The bootmaker's lad? I would imagine he's in the dungeon still, mistress, where the baron had him put, but—"

Brenna's mind was beginning to work again. The servants lived in a world all their own; they knew each other's habits, had their own feuds and romances. Without their help, she could not hope to reach Valerian. "I know Father has already ordered that I am to be closed up in my chamber, after tonight. But you must bring the key and let me out, Moll, as soon as the moon is high."

Moll swayed slightly with fear. "Milady!" she rasped. "Do you know what you're asking of me? Why, if I were found out—"

"You won't be caught," Brenna interrupted, knowing the promise was a rash one even as she spoke. "Please, Moll—I must go to Valerian. Tonight!"

"It's no use, your putting yourself into such danger!" Moll rarely argued, but she did so now, with fervor. "He's to die one day soon, with the sunrise, is Noah Lazarus's son! And nothing you can do will save him!"

Brenna would not, could not, turn away from her course, though she knew as well as anyone that it was a deadly one. If these were Valerian's last days on earth, then they would be hers as well. If she must see him step into eternity, in the first flowering of his manhood, then she would follow on his heels, and cross the unseen river knowing what it was to pass the night in her beloved's arms.

She tightened her grasp on Moll's hands and looked deep into her old friend's troubled eyes. "My father will have me whipped if he catches me at this," she said softly. "If I can risk that, can you not chance letting me out of my room when the time is right?"

Moll was in anguish, but she nodded just before she turned and left the room.

Brenna's evening meal was served in her chamber, by the light of tallows, for she was well and truly banished from her father's table as well as his heart. He would not forgive her, and the knowledge grieved her sorely, but that night her status in the household was the least of her concerns.

She didn't even pretend to eat; the food on her trencher had grown cold, and she was pacing nervously back and forth at the foot of her bed, her hems whispering in the dry rushes. Moll did not return, and the hours dragged past, with Brenna still a prisoner in her chamber.

She slept in her beautiful gown, and no breakfast was brought when the morrow came. She was given water, that was all, by a servant who would not meet her gaze or answer her questions.

A week had passed, during which Brenna had eaten nothing and heard not a word spoken by another human being, when a burly manservant came and summoned her to her father's chamber. Still wearing the green gown, now much crumpled, she finished the last of a cup of water before stepping into the passageway to follow her silent escort across the stone floors to the other side of the keep.

The baron stood at an open window when she entered, gazing out at the dark sea, and he did not turn to greet her.

Brenna herself heard the song of the tides and felt the cooling mist on her face. She took courage from those things, and straightened her back, for she loved the sea.

"You sent for me," she said with simple dignity. She was light-headed with hunger and worry, but her sense of injustice sustained her. "I am here."

Her father's broad back stiffened, and she felt a stirring of pity for him. He was bound by what and who he was, she realized, and even if somewhere inside himself he truly wanted to show mercy, he would be unable to do so. He had been born to a rigid code, he knew nothing else, and it was not in him to change.

"You have broken my heart," he said starkly, and still he did not face her. "Tell me, have you lain with that devil's spawn or simply lusted after him?"

Brenna swallowed. Tread carefully, warned a voice in her giddy mind, one with the timbre and substance of Challes's. "I want him," she admitted without the slightest remorse. "But, no, Father, I have never lain with Valerian or any man. You knew that before you asked me."

At last the baron turned, very slowly, and Brenna's heart quailed behind her rib cage. She was not effortlessly, foolishly bold like Valerian; she had seen her father punish servants and errant villagers, and she knew the ferocity of his rages. Now she was utterly stunned to see that his face was wet with tears.

"Perhaps," he whispered, "your body is indeed pure, just as you say. But yours is the soul of a whore. You have fused yourself to that filthy peasant as surely as if he'd taken you to his bed. And now there is nothing to be done. He must die, and you must go to your new husband in shame."

Brenna interlaced her fingers and bit her lower lip for a moment, trying to think calmly. "There is something that can be done," she said quietly, and at length. "Banish us, both of us, Valerian and me. We'll make our way to London, or—"

"Silence!" the baron roared. "Do you argue for him still, when you know I cannot bear any reference to the scab?"

A shrill commotion in the hall beyond the baron's heavy door stopped Brenna's impulsive reply in her throat. It was undoubtedly for the best.

"What in the name of—?" her father muttered as the great door crashed inward.

Seraphina Lazarus, Valerian's mother, filled the chasm, beautiful even in her frenzy. Her flawless skin was white as a corpse's, her violet eyes wild, her chestnut hair loose and untamed, like a witch's tresses, and her simple gown was streaked with ash.

Brenna felt ill, and would have retched if her stomach hadn't been shrunken and empty, as she watched the woman rush to the baron and kneel at his feet.

"My firstborn," Seraphina pleaded, clutching the nobleman's hand and kissing his knuckles and fingers and wrist, frantically, feverishly. "Oh, sir, I beg you, spare my boy—allow me to die in his place—take all of us, my husband, my other son—" The bootmaker's wife paused and made a pitiful, strangling sound, far down in her throat. "There is pestilence abroad in the land," she blathered. "Set Valerian free, I pray you, sir—if it is the will of Heaven that he perish for his sin, then surely the plague will take him—"

Plague. Brenna barely registered the word on a conscious level, weakened by her confinement as she was, and sharing Seraphina's agony as she did, but she felt a ripple of fear all the same.

"Damn your indecent soul, woman," the baron seethed, glaring down at Seraphina. "You utter one travesty on top of another, arguing and bargaining for the life of this young devil as if he were a lover!"

Brenna flinched at the cruelty of the words. "Father—" she began in protest, starting toward the pair, but there was no stopping fate.

The baron's rage mounted visibly; he went crimson, temples pulsing, and raised a swordsman's hard fist to strike Seraphina a savage blow. Even after he'd struck her, the bootmaker's wife scrabbled through the rushes to clutch at his garb again, sobbing now, and wailing piteously.

Brenna's father tore himself free with a great curse, and he might have kicked the poor woman if his daughter hadn't stepped between them.

"Her only crime is love," Brenna reasoned with a tranquility that surprised her as much as it did the baron. "Oh, Father, turn from this—please. I'll do anything you say, anything at all, if you'll just unbend this once and show compassion."

The baron eyed her coldly, and then the woman groveling on the floor. He raised his voice to cover the sound of her anguish; she babbled something unintelligible and then fell to whimpering. "Valerian dies," he barked.

Seraphina gave a great, bubbling shriek and fell unconscious onto her side, and a spew of bright red blood burst from her mouth.

Brenna tried to go to the woman's aid, but the baron took a bruising grip on his daughter's arm and flung her out the door. He was shouting for the servants when Brenna started for her chamber, paused, and then slipped into the shadows and made her way to a rear passageway.

The dungeon was unguarded—the baron knew Valerian was injured and probably considered him unworthy of a bailiff's time. Carrying a tallow she'd stolen from the kitchen, along with some cheese, a basin, and a piece of soft cloth, Brenna moved from cell to cell until she reached the last and most cramped of them all. A rat scuttled out of the gloom before she could work the lock. It stopped at her feet to rise onto its haunches and whirl about in a macabre little dance, before falling dead on its side.

A chill trickled down Brenna's spine, and she crossed herself hastily and offered a prayer to the Virgin. Then she stepped over the small, furry corpse and into the cell where Valerian lay.

He was a shadow, curled in the fetid straw. The dank walls dripped with water, and the faint, panicky twitter of other rats reached Brenna's ears.

"Valerian," she whispered urgently.

He stirred. "Milady?" Valerian moaned the word, then sat up, blinking, one arm clutching his wounded middle. "Jesus, Joseph, and Mary," he marveled on a long breath. "Leave me—now—before they find you here!"

Brenna set down the cloth and tallow on a crude bench and knelt beside him in the straw, giving him water from a cup and the morsel of cheese. "This is where I intend to pass the night," she answered. "Here, with you."

He managed to eat just a little, and Brenna went back for the basin. Then, kneeling beside Valerian in the fowl straw again, she began to bathe the blood and dirt from his flesh. Even in the dim glow of that one candle, she saw the tears shimmering in his eyes.

"Oh, God, Brenna," he whispered. "How did we get ourselves to this place?"

"Shhh," she said and went on washing him. Her own hunger and weakness floated somewhere above her, suspended.

Presently the loving task had been done as well as it could be, given the circumstances. The tallow guttered out, and Brenna laid herself beside Valerian on the cell floor, and gathered him close with one arm. With the other hand she undid the laces at her bosom and, baring her breasts, offered him the only intimate comfort she knew about.

He was half dead of his wounds, but the blood in his veins was youthful, like the sap in a fierce young tree, and he drank hungrily from her breasts, and kissed her, and spoke pretty, disjointed words while he nibbled at her earlobe. Finally he raised her skirts and took her, with a hard, greedy thrust.

Brenna felt searing pain, followed swiftly by a treacherous pleasure, and she gave herself up to her forbidden lover with all the passion pent up in her innocent soul.

« ^ »

Daisy

Las Vegas, 1995

The victim was a showgirl, no more than twenty years old, and she lay sprawled on the living room floor of her cramped apartment, wearing nothing but a short sea-green robe. Her shoulder-length blond hair spilled over the cheap carpeting and partially covered her face.

She was impossibly pale, even for a corpse. Daisy thought of Snow White waiting for her prince, and shuddered. There was no blood anywhere.

Daisy had been promoted to detective six months before, after the requisite four years on the street, and she had seen her share of murders. No matter how many she investigated, the bile still rushed into the back of her throat, and sometimes she had to run to the nearest bush or bathroom to throw up. On other occasions, especially when the victim was a child, she wept.

This time she felt an ugly sort of shock take hold, deep inside her. Even before her partner, O'Halloran, started filling her in on the details, she knew they were dealing with some kind of monster.

"Look at this," O'Halloran said, crouching beside the body, which had already been outlined and photographed. In fact, the coroner's people were hovering, ready to do their grisly duties. He brushed back a tendril of the dead woman's glossy blond hair with remarkably gentle fingers to reveal a pair of neat puncture wounds, set about two inches apart, in the victim's neck. "If I didn't know better, Chandler, I'd say this was the work of one of them vampires. You know, like in the movies."

Daisy felt a chill trip down her spine. "I know what vampires are," she snapped.

O'Halloran, a wiry, graying man of medium height, with twenty-eight years on the force to his credit, sighed loudly and stretched to his feet. His eyes were either pale blue or pale green, depending on the weather and how things were going at home. This was a blue day. "What's the matter, Chandler—you suffering from PMS or something? Well, take a pill. I got enough problems without you flashing an attitude."

Daisy didn't apologize, though she knew O'Halloran was right. She was off track—her meeting with the magician had occupied her every waking thought since she'd left his dressing room the night before. When she had managed to sleep, she'd been plagued by strange, vivid dreams of a medieval courtyard and two men fighting with swords…

"Chandler," O'Halloran prompted, poking her with an elbow.

Daisy jumped and shook her head once in an effort to clear her head. "Yeah, I'm with you. Sorry. What's her name?"

"Jillie Fairfield," O'Halloran answered, consulting his notes. "She was nineteen and worked with that hotshot magician over at the Venetian. What's his name—?" He began flipping pages.

"Valerian," Daisy said, feeling jolted.

"Yeah," O'Halloran agreed, tapping his pocket-sized notepad with the end of his stubby pencil. "That's him. You ever catch his show?"

"Last night," Daisy managed.

"I've heard it's really something. According to the papers, there are magicians flying in from all over the world just to see the act and try to figure out how he pulls it off. And he won't let anybody take his picture, either."

"He's good, all right," Daisy said, glancing at the body again. She remembered the dancers coming out of the coach while it was suspended in midair, then sitting underneath, smiling and posing. She wondered if Jillie had been the one who'd brought out the umbrella and gotten a chuckle from the audience. Even to Daisy's trained eye, the performers had looked very much alike.

The older cop led the way toward the gaping front door of the apartment, and Daisy went along gratefully. She'd never gotten used to the smell of death, or the clammy feeling it gave her.

"You look a little peaked," O'Halloran remarked. "You have a bad night?"

She drew in a deep draft of desert air as they descended the wooden stairs outside. The Las Vegas sun was bright, and for Daisy it dispelled some of the chill that had settled into her spirit. "Me? I never have a bad night, O'Halloran," she said with a manufactured smile. "And I never get PMS, either. What's your take on this? What happened to the Fairfield woman?"

O'Halloran shrugged. "I don't know. The coroner will fill us in, though." He paused beside his car, a battered sixty-seven Mustang on its fourth engine, and scratched the back of his head. "This one's different, I can tell you that much. There ought to be blood, and we didn't find a drop. No blow to the head, no visible wounds except for those punctures on her throat. You'd better haul it over to the Venetian and see if you can track down that magician character. See what he can tell you."

Daisy had hoped to encounter Valerian again, though certainly not under those circumstances. "I'm off to see the wizard," she said, heading for her own car, a sporty blue convertible. "Meet you back at the office later."

When Daisy reached the Venetian, Las Vegas's newest and most elaborate hotel-casino, she left her car in the outer lot and stood looking at the place for a few moments, marveling. It was a spectacle in and of itself, bigger and gaudier than the Mirage or Excalibur or even Caesar's, an elegant palace with pillars and fountains. There was a maze of canals in front, traversed by sleek gondolas with costumed attendants.

With a shake of her head Daisy went to the quay and allowed herself to be helped into one of the boats, along with several tourists. Sunlight flashed on the water, dazzling her, and she slipped on her sunglasses, turning her thoughts from the conspicuous consumption that surrounded her to the magician.

Her first reaction, when she'd learned of Valerian's connection with the dead woman, had been to wonder if he'd had something to do with Jillie Fairfield's death. In cases like this one, the murderer often turned out to be someone the victim had known fairly well.

The gondola coursed along the narrow channels, making its way toward the hotel entrance, and Daisy propped her elbow on her blue-jeaned knee and rested her chin in her palm. If Valerian hadn't killed Jillie, and there was no reason to believe he had, he probably wouldn't have heard about her death yet.

Daisy hated being the one to break news like that. She and O'Halloran usually alternated, and when they couldn't remember whose turn it was, they flipped a coin.

Daisy murmured a curse as the gondola struck the dock in front of the hotel. It was O'Halloran's turn, damn it. She'd told a woman, just two days before, that her fifteen-year-old son had been shot in a gang fight.

Inside the hotel was a massive casino, filled with noisy slot machines, blackjack tables, and other accoutrements of gambling. The light was dim, the temperature pleasantly cool. Cigarette smoke made simple breathing a game of chance.

Daisy hurried through, toward the nearest bank of elevators. She hated casinos; they reminded her of when she was a kid. Her divorced mother, Jeanine, had been a cocktail waitress, and every once in a while she'd gotten the gambling bug. When that happened, Jeanine either left Daisy and her younger sister, Nadine, to fend for themselves, often for days at a time, or dragged them along with her. In some ways, that was worse, because Jeanine would either park them on the curb with a hamburger and a bag of french fries to share, or point out the pinball room and order them to stay there until she came back. Only later did she allow the girls to stay with their grandmother for a short time before wrenching them away again.

Snap out of it, Daisy scolded herself as she stepped into a sumptuously appointed elevator and pressed the button for the third floor. The business offices were there, along with a number of conference rooms and hospitality suites.

The receptionist looked Daisy over coolly when she asked where to find the magician. The main entrance to the theater would be locked at that hour, and there were probably big guys posted outside the stage doors.

"You a fan?" the girl asked. Her name tag read "Tiffany."

Daisy wondered how Tiffany could see, since her false eyelashes were the size of whisk brooms. In answer to the girl's question, she pulled her badge out of her handbag and showed it with the appropriate flourish. "Where do I find him?"

Tiffany tapped acrylic nails on the surface of the desk while she thought. From the looks of her, that was no small accomplishment, but a feat involving many wires and gears. "How should I know?"

Daisy braced her hands against the desk's edge and leaned in close. "Look it up," she said evenly.

The receptionist flushed, and her plump lips, no doubt pumped full of collagen, quivered. She left her desk, disappearing into a nearby office, and returned a few moments later, looking resolute.

"We're not supposed to tell," she announced.

"Do I have to get a warrant?" Daisy muttered.

Tiffany vanished again, and when she came back, she brought a man in a three-piece suit. He smiled and offered a manicured hand.

"My name is Jerry Grover," he said. "I'm the assistant manager. And you're Officer—"

"Daisy Chandler," Daisy said. "Look, I don't see why this has to be a big deal, Mr. Grover. I want to talk to your headliner—" She pretended that the name had slipped her mind for a moment. "Valerian. It's police business, and it's important."

Grover smiled sleekly. He reminded Daisy a little of a lithe, vicious fish, gliding smoothly through his environment, hunting weaker prey. "If you'll just step into my office, Ms. Chandler…"

Daisy shrugged and followed him. Jillie Fairfield had had a connection with the hotel, although she'd been employed by the magician. She might as well clue management in before somebody saw it on the news.

Tiffany gave her another haughty once-over as she passed. A look was nothing to Daisy—the names gang members, streetwalkers, and other misguided souls had called her had hardened her sensibilities a little.

"We found a body this morning," Daisy said without preamble when she and Grover were inside his office. Apparently the casino brass believed in looking after middle management—the desktop was black marble, and the view from the wall of windows at the opposite end of the room was panoramic. The carpet swallowed up the lower half of Daisy's purple Keds. "The victim was identified as Ms. Jillie Fairfield. She was one of the dancers in the magic show."

To his credit, Grover paled and sagged bonelessly into the leather chair behind his desk. He recovered quickly, though, and gestured for Daisy to take a seat. "Damn," he said. "What happened?"

Daisy settled herself in the cushy leather chair she'd just pulled up. "We're not sure," she admitted readily, but she had no intention of discussing the details. "Ms. Fairfield was a hotel employee before signing on with Valerian, wasn't she?"

A thin sheen of perspiration appeared on Grover's upper lip. "I wouldn't know that, Ms. Chandler, without checking further. We employ a great many people, and as you probably realize, the Venetian hasn't been open all that long. In either case, the publicity won't be good for the Venetian, will it? Any hint of crime or scandal can be devastating financially…"

Daisy felt the old impatience surface inside her. A woman was dead, damn it. Jillie Fairfield was never going to dance or laugh or make love again; somebody had put her out like a candle. And all Grover was worried about was the publicity.

"You didn't meet Ms. Fairfield personally, then? Ever?" she asked in a taut voice.

"No," Grover answered quickly, flushing. "And I don't know the magician, either. He's an eccentric—in fact, he gives new meaning to the word weird."

Daisy leaned forward, intrigued. "In what way?"

Grover spread his hands, clearly flustered. "There are rumors, that's all. It's probably just a lot of hype, to bring people in to see his shows…"

"What rumors?" Daisy pressed. There it was again, that odd quivering in the pit of her stomach; her own instincts were telling her, as they had the night before, after the show, that there was something very strange about Valerian. Something far beyond the ordinary mystique of a magician.

"Well, he won't come out in the daylight, for one thing. And for another, he refuses to be photographed—ask our publicity people if you don't believe me."

Daisy thought of the program she'd brought. The text was accompanied by drawings and paintings, but there had been no photographs.

"I believe you," she said, wondering if she should go and get Grover a glass of water or a paper bag to breathe into. He looked really upset.

Grover wrenched a wad of tissues from a box in the top drawer of his fancy desk and daubed at his face with them. "Murder," he muttered to himself. "Oh, Christ—"

Daisy took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "Is there anything else?"

"Yes," Grover burst out, after a moment of consideration. "Even the people closest to Valerian have no idea how he performs his tricks. He has never revealed even the smallest detail."

Daisy was irritated and not a little disappointed. "Of course he doesn't. He's a magician—everyone knows how carefully they guard their secrets." She stood. "If you'll just give me Valerian's home address," she said, nodding toward Graver's computer, ''I'll be on my way."

"We don't have one," Grover said.

"What about a Social Security number?" Daisy pressed.

Grover spread his hands again. "Too personal. I don't have to give that out unless you can show me a warrant."

Daisy bit back a nasty remark. Grover was right. "At least get one of your security people to let me into the backstage area, then," she said. Maybe Valerian was in his dressing room meditating or practicing his levitation or something like that. Or perhaps he was onstage, rehearsing.

"All right," Grover agreed at length and with the utmost reluctance. "Come on. I'll let you in myself."

Valerian

Dunnett's Head, 1348

Today, I thought when I felt a shred of cold sunlight touch my face, I am going to die. I was in such pain, both physical and emotional, that I could not help thinking death would be a mercy.

Then Brenna stirred beside me, in the stale straw, and I remembered all that had transpired the night before, with rising horror as well as desperate love. She had come to me, washed my wounds, and finally lain with me.

We had both been virgins, and for me at least, the experience had been one of almost unbearable bliss. Before Brenna, I had known only the usual furtive satisfactions a lad discovers on his own. Now, having entered her sweet body, moved upon her supple softness in that ancient rhythm, and cried out as she rendered my seed from me, I was a man. And I was more aware than ever that life is precious, poignantly so.

"Valerian?" She raised herself, rumpled and mussed, her lovely hair filled with straw. That same skimpy light that had awakened me, infiltrating that dark hole through some chink in the dungeon wall, played over her face. "I love you. And if you die today, you must wait for me on the other side. I'll soon follow."

I felt tears fill my eyes. The pain of my wounds was nothing to that of loving her, of knowing that an irrevocable parting lay ahead. I cupped her face in my hand, and brushed the pad of my thumb over the lips I had kissed so thoroughly, so hungrily, during the night.

"No, Lady Brenna," I said hoarsely. "You must live."

She shook her head wildly, but I stilled the motion with my hand.

"Listen to me," I growled as we heard an outer door opening, far off in the distance. We both knew that the day had arrived, they were coming for me, and I would soon mount the scaffold. "You must hide, over there in the shadows, until they've taken me out. Don't move until you're certain they've all gone. Return to your chambers when you think it safe, make yourself pretty, and pretend you've never heard of the bootmaker's son—"

She was sobbing by then, incapable, I think, of responding.

"I will find a way to be with you," I vowed, and I meant it with all my youthful soul. "I will curl up in a corner of your heart, and all you'll have to do to find me is turn your thoughts inward. Please, Brenna. Give me this one gift—a living heart to hide in."

Brenna was silent, and the voices grew nearer. Finally she nodded and hid herself in a pile of straw, off in a corner of the cell.

Two of the baron's men arrived to collect me only a moment later. They were murmuring to each other in fearful tones, and I could not make out what they were saying.

Finally they reached the cell door.

"Come along, then, bootmaker's son," said Tom, the largest of the two. He'd often come to my father's shop; they'd been friends, in a manner of speaking, and Tom, like the rest of the men in the village, had enjoyed watching my mother as she went about her daily tasks.

"The baron says you're to be set free. Or at least that's what his manservant told us he said."

Brenna moved, rustling the straw slightly, but I made a surreptitious gesturing, bidding her to be silent. There would be no freedom, and no mercy, for either of us if her father learned what we had done, lying together in the straw.

I stood, painfully, for though my wounds were superficial, they burned like fire. I felt as if I'd been trampled by war horses and then set ablaze, but beneath it all was a thrumming sense of satiation. Brenna had done that with her lovemaking.

"If this is a jest," I said, "it is a cruel one."

Tom opened the cell door, never noticing, it would seem, that the lock wasn't engaged. "It's no jest," he replied. "The baron fell ill two hours ago. Black as a Moor and spewing blood, he is. And there are others, too."

I shivered, despite the wild relief I felt. "What others?"

"Your mother for one," Tom said. "You'd best go home and look after your family. Both Noah and Seraphina are both off their heads with fever, according to that brother of yours."

Alarm mingled with the ineffably sweet knowledge that I was going to live. I would find a way to be with Brenna forever—after the events of the night before, we were certainly bonded, in God's eyes as well as our own hearts—and we would both put Dunnett's Head behind us.

In the meantime, though, I had to go to my parents.

I made my way back to the shop as rapidly as I could, while the sunrise spilled a golden glow to light my way. The village was unnaturally quiet, even for such an early hour, and rife with a hideously putrid stench. There were no dogs barking in the streets, no housewives throwing pots of slop from windows and doorways, no fishermen going down to the sea.

It was eerie.

When I reached the shop, I entered by the back way, peering first into the little room Krispin and I had always shared. I had never expected to see it again, and, humble as it was, my heart lifted at the sight of my pallet, my blankets, my spare tunic and leggings.

There was no sign of my brother, so I went on to my parents' chamber. It was a squalid cell, barely larger than the one Krispin and I shared, and when I stepped over the threshold I was struck by a smell so much viler than the one pervading the village that it sent me stumbling backward a few steps.

"Mother?" I said, speaking to the shadows.

I heard a moan from within, and knew it for my father's cry, not my mother's. I squared my shoulders and forced myself to take a step inside. "Father?"

"No—" he said hoarsely. "Don't—come any closer. We—it's plague. Save yourself. Save—Krispin."

Yet again I wept. And for once in my life I obeyed Noah Lazarus, the bootmaker. "What of my mother?"

"Dead," my father answered. "For your own sake, and hers, you must not look upon her. Please. Flee this—place—"

I turned, unable to bear the stink any longer. My father could not be saved; I knew that. I would find Krispin, if I could, and Brenna, I decided, groping numbly through a welter of disjointed thoughts. We would take horses from the baron's stables and ride away to a new place—London, perhaps.

I stumbled back into the street and encountered Mistress Jane, the cooper's wife. Her face was contorted with grief. "God have mercy on us!" she cried, seeing me and, at the same time, not seeing me. "My Will, and my babies—all dead—"

I wanted to offer the poor woman some comfort, but there was nothing I could say that would alter the grim realities in any way. I took her shoulders gently in my hands. "Have you seen my brother?" I asked.

She looked at me without recognition. "All dead," she said again. "Little Mary, and Sam, and my Will, too. All dead, with their skin all black—"

I embraced her for a moment, on impulse, and went on.

All through the village, it was the same. Death raged in every hut and croft, and among the living there was naught but chaos. I didn't find Krispin, though I searched everywhere, and once I stopped, enthralled, to watch two rats rise onto their hind legs in the path and twirl, in a horrible and graceless pirouette, before toppling over in death. Blood spilled, thick, from their muzzles.

Finally I returned to the keep—the shock of all I'd seen waking instilled a new prudence in me—and I entered through a servant's gate in a rear wall. After a considerable exploration of the place, I found Brenna in her father's room, kneeling beside his bed and holding his hand.

He was blackened, like a statue burned in a fire, his flesh grotesquely swollen, as if his skin would split like a sausage. He stared sightlessly at the beams high overhead. He, like so many others, was dead, and the stench was overwhelming, causing my empty stomach to pitch and my eyes to water.

I hesitated a few moments, then took hold of Brenna's shoulders and raised her gently to her feet. "He's gone," I whispered, and she turned and burrowed into my embrace, burying her face in my tunic and weeping.

I held her until the storm had passed, and spoke to her only when her sobs had turned to soft, heartrending sniffles. "We must take ourselves from this place," I told her. "By some miracle, we've been spared, but if we linger, the plague will surely find us."

She nodded against my chest.

"We'll need horses and food and coin."

Brenna drew back and looked up into my no-doubt bruised and dirty face. "Let's go, Valerian. Now. Let's go and never look back."

I kissed her then. It was just a light, moist touch of our two mouths, but how I treasure the memory of that innocent contact. I hadn't learned, even then, how infinitely precious, and how profound, the simplest expression of affection can be.

"I'll fetch some food from the larder," Brenna said when we drew apart. "And my father won't be needing his purse." She glanced woefully back at the body lying on the bed. A light flickered in her weary eyes; perhaps it was hope for our future. "Hurry, Valerian. I'll wait for you at the servants' gate."

I nodded and hurried out.

At noon Brenna and I sat on a knoll east of the village, our horses nibbling at the sweet grass, saying our own silent goodbyes to the only home we'd ever known. We watched, dry-eyed, beyond horror, while the lucky ones carried corpses into the square and hurled them into a great, roaring fire. Later, I supposed, thinking of my mother and father, already beginning to accept the fact that my brother's body was surely there among those others as well, the charred skeletons would be properly buried. Prayers would be said, and absolutions granted, and heaven would enfold them all.

Please God.

"What of Challes?" I asked, hours later, as Brenna and I rode slowly along the inland road, passing no one. It was the first time either of us had spoken since we'd watched the bodies burn. "Did you see him?"

Brenna, who wore a cloak over a plain kirtle, shook her head. "No. He is probably dead, like Father. I wonder if Moll fell sick."

I knew Moll was her lady's maid, and that she had loved the woman devoutly. Moll, I suspected, had overlooked much mischief in her time at the keep. "It won't serve us to look back," I said quietly, reaching across to squeeze her hand where it grasped her mare's reins. "We have each other."

She looked at me with wide eyes, eyes void of innocence and girlhood fancy, and haunted by inconceivable horror. "Yes."

I reached out, grasped the mare's bridle—I was riding one of her father's geldings—and stopped both horses there in the middle of the road. "I love you, Lady Brenna," I said. It was all I had to give her—a few words, a fragile assurance. We both knew how easily fate could part us—the roads were dangerous in those days, and there was no guarantee that one or both of us would not fall ill with the pestilence at any moment.

Tears pooled along Brenna's lower lashes. "And I love you," she said. "It's enough."

I nodded, and we rode on, but there were clouds gathering on the horizon, and I had a feeling of foreboding. I tried to shake it off, telling myself the events of the day just past were reason aplenty for my gloom.

I was only partially right.

That night Brenna and I slept in an abandoned crofter's cottage, with straw for a bed. We made love, as much to give each other solace and consolation as to appease any physical need, and this second time my thrusts were pleasurable for Brenna. She strained beneath me, offering herself, crying out in her delight, and finally arched like a supple bow, quivering, her eyes sightless, her fingers clawing at my bare back.

I groaned, transported, and spilled myself into her. Soon afterward we tumbled headlong into sleep. It was raining when we awakened, and Brenna seemed uneasy, distracted.

"I want to be near the sea," she said.

I didn't question her, for I knew the waves of a sheltered cove near the keep had been her playmates—she loved the water, and took solace from it. So we ate our poor breakfasts of stale bread, and washed ourselves, running naked in the rain like pagans, and finally turned back, through the gray drizzle, in the direction from which we'd come.

I have tortured myself for centuries with a single question. Would things have been different if we'd pressed on toward London Town instead?

« ^ »

We rode hard all that day, through the gray drizzle and the chill, until we reached the sea. Brenna gave a soft gasp when first she glimpsed that steely, white-ruffled expanse, and drew up on her mare's reins, plainly struck by the harsh beauty of the scene.

The shore was narrow and littered with great stones, and the surf battered the land with such ferocity that huge and glittering scallops of spray arched high against the charcoal sky. The shiver that slipped down my spine like the tip of a dead man's finger had little to do with the cold; no, it was born of the terrible, nameless dread stirring in the darkest reaches of my being. Had I possessed the powers that were conferred upon me later,

I would have taken Brenna far from that place, be she willing or unwilling, but I could do nothing then.

She spurred her mare onto a steep, treacherous path that led down to the water, and though I lunged for the reins, I was too late. There was nothing to do but follow—and shout her name.

If Brenna heard my calls over the roar of the surf, she paid no heed. Instead she quickened the mare's pace, driving the frightened beast skillfully between boulders and churning pools toward the jagged shore. My own mount balked at the top of the path and would go no farther.

I sprang from its back and ran after Brenna, stumbling and falling several times before I gained the beach.

I screamed again; I can still feel that cry, swelling sore in my throat, lodging there like the pit of some large and bitter fruit. Brenna looked back at me over one shoulder, and I saw intense joy in her face as she rode, splashing, into the thundering waves. She threw back her head and laughed, and though I could not hear the sound, I saw it, and felt its echo in the very center of my soul.

I dashed toward Brenna, meaning to grasp the mare's bridle and haul the pair of them back to safety, but my sudden motion only frightened the horse, causing it to rear and toss its head in even greater panic. Brenna fought to calm the animal, but there was no fear in milady's magnificent face, only the purest concentration. I don't believe she regretted her recklessness; she surely hadn't guessed what was about to happen. To my torment, for that moment and all of eternity, I foresaw the event with sudden and brutal clarity.

I stood sodden in the cold tide, buffeted by it, blinded eyes stinging from the salt, and I was full of horror. My very breath was battered from me, and when I finally caught sight of Brenna again, she was far beyond my reach. The horse reeled and pitched, and Brenna went hurtling from the beast's back, her slight figure disappearing beneath the relentless waves.

I scrambled toward her, only to be swept back toward the shore by the sheer elemental force of the water. I struggled through the tide once more and was nearly trampled by the terror-stricken mare as it battled its way back to solid ground. I had a glimpse of Brenna's red-gold hair in the surf, and somehow, by strength of will, I reached her and gathered her into my arms.

I wept as I carried her ashore, for I knew, even before I laid her out on the sand, well away from the grasping, murderous water, that she was gone. I knelt beside her, the stony ground biting into the flesh of my knees, and emitted a great, wailing sob that shaped itself into her name. Then I fell forward, my forehead resting against her bosom, and gave full rein to my grief. My cries were wrenching and hoarse and seemingly without end.

Night came; I did not venture far from Brenna's side, even to search for the horses, which had both bolted long before. Instead I gathered what twigs and bits of driftwood I could find and managed to make a small fire—I still believed, in my bewilderment and sorrow, that I might offer my beloved some degree of comfort and protection.

I felt the too-rapid beat of my heart and the raw rasp of my breathing, but I cared nothing for those things. My tunic and breeches clung to my flesh, soaked and icy, and that did not matter, either. Physically I was numb.

I kept my vigil throughout the frigid night, holding her small, still hand in mine, and with the dawn came the devastating realization that this was no nightmare, but the cruelest reality. My Brenna was well and truly dead, and needed burying.

I lifted her into my arms once again and started off toward the place where I had glimpsed smoke rising between the gentle green hills the day before. I did not think beyond the hope that I would find a village, with a churchyard to receive Brenna's fragile remains and a priest to say the holy words that might secure her place in heaven.

I don't know how long I staggered over that barren, windswept terrain, holding my perished angel close against my breast, and I have no memory of reaching the small cluster of huts where I came groping and flailing to my senses some days later.

By that time, according to the aged and crowlike woman who had, by her account, dragged me back from the threshold of death, Brenna had already been laid to rest. Lucky she'd been, too, my nurse proclaimed, not to die of the plague like those other poor souls. They'd been flung onto a blazing pyre as soon as they'd breathed their last.

As I lay on my pallet, drenched in the sweat of a recently broken fever and smelling of all manner of base things, I wished with all my being that I, too, might be taken by the pestilence. I realized even then, however, that I was condemned to live, and to my great and secret shame, I also knew I hadn't the courage to put an end to my own misery. I believed too little of my father's grim theology to follow its dictates, and too much to risk the fires and pitchforks of hell.

I turned my face to the dank, daub-and-wattle wall and mourned in silence.

After a while a holy man came to see about me. I would not look at him.

"I am Brother Timothy," he said.

I did not reply.

"You must be grateful and repentant," he persisted. "God has chosen, in His infinite mercy, to spare your life."

I spat, though my mouth was dry.

The man of God sighed and left me to my private damnation.

I might have lain in that wretched hovel forever, despising everything that was holy, waiting to perish of despair, if the crone hadn't finally grown impatient one foggy day and put a foot hard to my ribs.

"Get up, you," she commanded, having apparently passed the outermost bounds of Christian charity. "I can't abide the smell of you, and I'm that weary of spooning gruel and goat's milk into your mouth as if you was a sickly babe. Go on, take yourself out of here."

I groped to my feet with her none-too-gentle help and swayed dangerously before finally catching my balance. I staggered out of the hut with its thatched roof and hard dirt floor into the cold glare of sunlight. For a moment or two I was blinded by the dazzle and raised one arm to shield my eyes.

Mortals are damnably resilient, even when they don't choose to be. Within a moment or so I could see clearly, and my weakened frame supported itself with a shaky determination that came from some unexplored part of my mind. I looked about and saw other huts—pigs and dogs and chickens wandering in their midst—and a few gaunt humans in poor clothes. Not far from the edge of the village was a great firepit, encircled with stones, black and acrid at its center. I was drawn to the place by a horrible fascination that shamed even as it compelled me to take the next step toward it, and the next.

Blackened bones and skulls lay scattered, haphazard, through the ashes, and I recognized a single charred arm, muscles clearly defined, sooty fingers curled. I wretched convulsively and reeled away from that grim sight and the other helter-skelter leavings of death. I could be grateful, at least, that Brenna's mortal remains had not been cast into the pit. That none of those hideous pieces and parts were hers.

I nearly collided with the small, rotund monk who stood behind me.

"What is your name, lad?" he asked, and I was struck, even in my welter of confusion and agony, by the serenity in his expression. I knew this was Brother Timothy, the holy man who had visited me in the witch's hut.

He wore robes of undyed wool, a narrow, frayed rope girding his middle, and his tonsured head was fringed with brown hair. The flesh of his face was tight, but the eyes were old, and I could not begin to guess his age; he might have been seventeen or seventy.

"Valerian," I answered hoarsely. I did not speak of my dead father, nor did I offer the name of my village. I had no home now, after all, and no kinsmen. For me, there was only one question, one concern, in all creation.

"Where did they bury milady?"

Brother Timothy gestured toward a copse of naked birches on top of a small knoll nearby. The branches of those trees looked like white cracks in the smooth, chilly blue surface of the sky. "There," he said. "On the hill."

I moved past him, awkward in my weakness, near collapse, but desperate to look upon Brenna's grave.

"We did not know her name," the monk hastened to inform me. "But there is a cross to mark her resting place. Was she your sister. Your wife, perhaps?"

At his words, the loss of Brenna cut through me anew, fresh and sharp, seeming to sever not just muscle and marrow, but other, less tangible parts of me as well. I locked my knees to keep them from buckling and forced myself to keep moving. "I have no sister," I said. "And the word wife is too feeble to contain all that Brenna was to me. If I could have died in her place, I would have done it."

"Such decisions are not ours to make," Brother Timothy replied. "Perhaps that is a blessing in itself. Nor is such a desire unselfish, for its root is merely the cowardly wish to escape your own pain."

A surge of contempt swelled within me and, somewhere deeper, where I was wont to look, shame. "Pray, do not speak to me of blessings," I said without meeting his eyes. "There is no mercy in your God, and I seek no favors of Him."

How glibly I uttered sacrilege in those days of innocence and sorrow, and how very little I knew of damnation and devils, gods and angels! I was yet a lad, after all, with a child's blithe certainty of a multitude of things.

Brother Timothy laid a hand on my shoulder, and though he was smaller in stature, his grasp was forceful enough to stop my progress. "Your grief makes you bitter and angry," he said with a tenderness that made me yearn to sink, weeping, to my knees. "Those feelings will pass one day. The wounds will heal. In the meantime, though, you must turn your heart toward heaven, where comfort and absolution lie."

I shrugged free of his grasp and went on, propelled by stubbornness, not strength. I ached with frailty and fatigue. "No more talk of heaven," I growled, blinking back the stinging moisture in my eyes. "No more."

I knew which plot was Brenna's, even before Brother Timothy pointed it out.

My beloved rested beneath a gentle mound of newly turned earth, with a crude wooden cross to mark her passing. It was a peaceful place, though the sea churned in the near distance, like some tempestuous gift seeking to ungive itself. Light would dance among the shimmering leaves of the birch trees, come summer, and in other seasons the wind and the rain and the sea would sing their varied choruses.

I pressed my palms into the raw dirt and dug my fingers in deep, as if to find her, drag her upward, resurrect her somehow. "Brenna," I whispered. What I wouldn't have given, facing the finality of her death yet again in the moments that followed, to be as she was, unaware, empty of emotion, immune to suffering. Hidden from the gazes of man and God.

I trembled, light-headed from my exertions, and might have pitched forward to lie sprawled across the grave if Brother Timothy hadn't grasped my shoulders and raised me to my feet.

"Come away," he said quietly. "You can do no good here."

I had risen from my sickbed not even an hour before, and I had no power to resist. I allowed that tenacious and good man to support me as we moved away from the village, descending the opposite side of the hill.

Below lay an ancient structure, surely a monastery, with low stone walls and a single crumbling tower. From that height I saw garden plots, a well, a narrow courtyard without fountain or bench. I stumbled, and Brother Timothy tightened his grasp, and once again kept me from falling.

The interlude that followed lies strewn through my memory like dried bones, disjointed and strange. I was taken to a cell, furnished only with a cot and a crucifix, and able hands stripped away my ruined garments. I was bathed in warm water, garbed in a clean, if coarsely woven, robe, given stout wine and broth by spoonfuls.

I slept, wandering in the dark mists of my dreams, searching tirelessly and in vain for Brenna.

When at last I returned to full awareness, body and mind rallying to a semblance of their former vitality, I discovered myself to be a dry, hollow husk of a man. My grief had vanished, but so had my conscience, my better graces, and, indeed, my soul.

I was empty.

"Stay with us, your brothers," Timothy pleaded when, after days of gradual, painstaking recovery, I was well enough to rise from my cot and move about the monastery and the grounds. We were in the courtyard that afternoon and the weather was bright and crisply cold. "Surely it was a sign, our finding you—"

"I am grateful for all you've done," I said, though in fact I felt nothing—not gratitude, not hatred, not grief or joy. What followed, however, was purest truth. "I am not suited to this life, Timothy. I was born a sinner and I shall remain one for all time."

Would that I could have known how prophetic those rashly spoken words really were. But then, I do not believe anything short of Brenna's return from the dead would have changed my course.

Timothy looked pained; tears filled his kindly eyes, and he spread his hands in a gesture of pleading. "Valerian—"

I was unmoved by the monk's sorrow and held up a hand to silence him. In the next moment I looked ruefully down at my borrowed robe. "Have you no breeches in this dreary place? No tunics or belts or boots?"

He drew an audible breath. "We keep a store of such garments, yes," he admitted slowly. "Each of us arrived here as an ordinary man, after all. Our possessions are part of our sacrifice, and as a rule they are either sold for the benefit of the order or given to the poor."

"No one," I said, laying my hands on my chest and looking at Timothy with gentle impudence, "is poorer than I am."

Timothy nodded sadly and left my cell, returning minutes later with a stack of colorless, somewhat ragged garments, neatly laundered and folded. He said nothing as he held them out to me, and I confess that I snatched them from his hands.

I was eager to be gone from that place and those people.

I left the following day, wearing the ill-fitting tatters Timothy had brought to my cell. I also had two coins, of very modest value, that he had provided.

Thus began seventeen years of searching, not for Brenna now, but for that vanished part of myself that had enabled me to love, to laugh, to weep, to mourn.

All hope of that soon perished, and I sought only to meet a merciful death. I was, like the Prodigal, a libertine, a liar, a heretic, and a thief. I wandered, and I committed every sin I could think of without compunction, and a few that were suggested to me. I consumed what wine I could beg or steal, and awakened in pigsties and gaols and the beds of strangers. I cared for nothing and for no one, least of all myself.

Then one momentous gloomy night, when I was five and thirty, and the most devout of derelicts, my old tutor, Challes, quite literally stumbled across me where I lay sprawled, stuporous with drink, upon the filthy floor of a stable.

It was soon after that the dark miracle occurred, and I was forever changed.

Daisy

Las Vegas, 1995

Daisy was not the whimsical type, but it seemed to her that a faint echo of magic lingered in the silence of that empty auditorium. When Jerry Grover flipped on some of the interior lights, the multicolored tinsel curtain threw off a blinding dazzle, and Daisy winced.

Grover smiled, obviously pleased by her discomfort. "You won't find Valerian here," he said with a combination of indulgence and condescension in his tone. "As I told you, he never appears during the daylight hours." He paused to smirk, then added, "Perhaps he's a vampire."

Daisy thought of Jillie Fairfield and her bloodless body and felt a quiver of fear. She quickly squelched it. "No doubt," she answered dryly, widening her eyes, "he's tucked up in a coffin somewhere, fast asleep."

Grover sighed. "Where Valerian is concerned," he said, "nothing would surprise me." He paused to consult his watch, a sporty Rolex, and Daisy didn't miss the point of the gesture.

She folded her arms. "I won't keep you—I can find the dressing rooms on my own," she told him. "In the meantime, I suggest you take another look at your computer files. For a start, I'd like to know where you send this guy's paychecks."

Color seeped up Graver's tanned neck, and he spoke with exaggerated slowness, as though addressing an idiot. "That's easy, Officer Chandler. Like most performers, Valerian has an agent. There are contracts."

"That's Detective Chandler," Daisy said, undaunted. "What's this agent's name?"

A pulse pounded in Grover's temple. "I haven't the vaguest idea."

"Then I'd suggest you find out," she answered, turning to start down the nearest aisle. "I'll stop by your office for the information before I leave."

Grover spared her a slight nod, whirled on the heel of one Italian loafer, and strode away.

Daisy lingered for a moment, recalling the events of the night before. She'd never seen a trick that even remotely rivaled the carriage bit, and the mystery of it both intrigued and frustrated her. And there was something else, she admitted to herself, walking toward the door at the right of the stage.

Valerian had touched her, not with his hands, but with his mind. She'd been downright mesmerized by him, and the realization was profoundly irritating. If for no other reason, she wanted to face the magician again and prove to herself, as well as to him, that he had no power over her.

Very little light reached backstage, and the ornate carriage Valerian used in his act loomed in the shadows, ghostly and somehow ominous.

"Hello?" Daisy called out. "Anybody here?"

No answer.

She left the wings and proceeded into the area behind the stage. She immediately encountered a ponytailed young man in jeans and a T-shirt, pushing a rack of costumes along the hallway.

"Hi," she said, pulling her badge from her purse and offering a glimpse before stowing it again.

"Hi," he replied, looking uncertain and slightly flustered. "Can I help you?"

"I hope so," Daisy replied, smiling in an effort to put him at ease. "What's your name?"

He flushed, perhaps with relief. "Joe Fitch. Is—is something wrong?"

Joe hadn't heard about Jillie Fairfield's murder, then. Daisy wished she didn't have to be the one to break the news.

Joe went pale as he took in Daisy's words. "Oh, my God," he whispered when she'd finished, clasping the clothes rack with both hands to steady himself.

Daisy put a hand on his arm. "Would you like to sit down?" she asked.

"I'm okay, really," Joe said, but he fell into a folding chair next to the wall all the same. "Oh, God," he murmured again. "Oh, God—I don't believe it."

Dragging up another chair, Daisy sat down facing Joe. Between the two of them and the clothes rack, they blocked the hallway. "Did you know Ms. Fairfield well?" Daisy asked.

To Daisy's disappointment, Joe shook his head. He looked sick, and he was trembling. "Not really. Neither of us have been here very long. You know how Vegas is—people move around."

Daisy nodded. There was a watercooler a few feet away, with a stack of paper cups on top. She rose to fill one and bring it to Joe. "How about Valerian? What's he like?"

Joe took the cup in both hands and drained it before answering. "He keeps to himself."

"How about the other women in the show? Were any of them friendly with Ms. Fairfield?"

"I think I'm going to puke," Joe confided. Then he bolted, overturning his chair with a metallic clatter, one hand clasped over his mouth.

Daisy followed him to the door of the men's rest room and waited, leaning against the wall until he came out. His skin, starkly white before, had turned to a greenish shade of gray.

She let her folded arms fall back to her sides and straightened, then reached into her purse for a dog-eared business card. "Here," she said. "Give me a call if something comes to you."

Joe took the card and stared at it like a foreigner trying to read a strange language. "Okay," he agreed. Then he turned and fled back into the men's room.

Daisy heard him retching as she turned away. It was a good thing Joe had gotten the bad news secondhand, she reflected. If he'd actually seen the body, he would have hocked up his socks.

She rapped at Valerian's dressing room door and, when there was no answer, tried the knob. To her surprise, the lock wasn't engaged. She stepped over the threshold and turned on the lights, frowning.

What did you expect, Chandler? she chided herself. An open casket? Maybe some cobwebs and a pair of six-foot candelabras?

"Vampires, indeed," she scoffed aloud, recalling Grover's smart-ass remark and what O'Halloran had said that morning at the crime scene. She backed into the hallway, even though she didn't believe in monsters, and her pace was a little faster than usual as she made her way toward a rear exit.

Valerian

Las Vegas, 1995

I awakened promptly at sunset, as usual, after a troubled sleep. I'd been tormented by dreams of Brenna—now called Daisy Chandler—throughout the daylight hours, and the terrible images followed me into full consciousness.

I sat up and took in my immediate surroundings, and I was oddly surprised to find myself in my desert lair, even though I distinctly remembered retreating to it just before dawn.

My subterranean palace had been built by a paranoid billionaire with a bizzare imagination and a taste for luxury. I had always found it ironic that the survivalist had not survived, but had succumbed to some relatively minor ailment. I had purchased the place from his widow, who evidenced no desire to live in a rabbit's burrow, however splendid.

The soft strains of Mozart poured into the master suite as I rose from my silk-covered bed. My beloved had returned to me, and I could not help rejoicing in the knowledge, but I felt terror, too. Through the centuries since Brenna's drowning in the treacherous waters off the coast of Cornwall, we had found each other no fewer than five times.

On each occasion, in each new incarnation, Brenna had succeeded in winning my heart, no matter how I resisted. Oh, and I did resist, with all the might I possessed, for there was a curse upon milady and me, and it followed us mercilessly, relentlessly, down through the years.

Always, in every lifetime, Brenna's soul remembered our bond, but consciously I was always a stranger to her, a wayfarer who could only come to her in the night. I invariably fell in love with her all over again, and more deeply then ever before, and she returned my affections—for the most part. What bliss it was to hold her, to look upon her face, and what hell to know that she would soon be gone.

It mattered not what efforts I made to protect my darling; my powers were useless against this hex, whatever it was. We were doomed, Brenna and I, to relive the torment of parting, over and over. I could only conclude that it was divine punishment, meted out to me because I had accepted Challes's evil gift all those years before, and used it to the fullest, without the slightest hesitation.

But what sin had Brenna committed, to deserve such a fate? The question angered me, as it had always done.

I went into my glittering bathroom and groomed myself, then selected a starched shirt and a perfectly tailored suit from my wardrobe. A smile, faint and fleeting, touched my mouth. It puzzled the mortals of my acquaintance that I never suffered from the desert heat, no matter how formally I dressed, and I enjoyed their consternation.

Usually.

I affixed my cufflinks and wandered into the vast living room, where the stereo system spilled soft, vibrant notes of music into the air. I silenced the machine with a sort of mental nod and by the same means caused another contraption, an enormous television screen, to fold down from its hiding place in the ceiling.

The set flared with light, and a scene took shape. The images I saw were not being broadcast by any station or network, however. I knew well enough that they sprang from the secret realms of my own mind.

I saw a corpse lying on a matted carpet. The body was that of a woman, and I knew what had killed her even before I focused on the tiny puncture marks on her throat, knew there wasn't a drop of blood left in her veins.

Jillie Fairfield. One of the delectable young creatures who had added so much to my act.

Suddenly weak, I sat down in a soft chair and stared at the horrific vision. This was no ordinary murder, no crime of vengeance or passion. It had been committed by one of my own kind—a vampire. And because of Jillie's connection with me, I could be certain the gesture had been meant as a challenge.

I closed my eyes and willed myself to the scene, materializing in Jillie's small apartment only moments later. The place was dark, a fact that was of no consequence whatever to me, and the body, of course, had been removed.

The corpse had been emptied of blood, but there were traces of that precious stuff everywhere, glittering in the gloom like tiny points of blue light. The scent of it, stale now, and wasted, filled my nostrils.

"Who are you?" I demanded aloud. "Show yourself!"

There was no sound besides the ordinary doings of nearby mortals, which came to me through the walls and the floor as a low murmuring. And yet there was something beneath it, a deeper silence, and not an empty one.

I tried to go back to the moment of the murder—vampires travel through time as easily as men and women pass from one room to another—but my way was blocked. I heard poor little Jillie's muted scream, I felt her terror and then the unholy ecstasy that is a hallmark of a blood-drinker's fatal kiss, but I could not see her killer, and I was unable to help her.

I was swamped by despair, then fury.

The woman's death was the work of another night-walker, a powerful fiend. But who was this monster? I knew of many other vampires, of course, but of all those, only Maeve was stronger than I. She was a regal creature and did not feed on harmless chorus girls—her prey fell into two distinct categories: those who took pleasure in evil, and those who were already on the brink of death. Lisette, the former queen, would have done just such a murder, sparing no thought for the victim's youth and relative innocence, but she had been destroyed long ago. Dingdong, the witch was dead—but something else, something equally pitiless, was very much alive.

« ^ »

Valerian

England, 1363

Forceful hands gripped the front of my tunic, and I was wrenched, half insensible, out of the stinking straw where I'd collapsed earlier, and onto my feet. I recognized Challes, my former tutor, in spite of my wine-sodden state.

"By the gods, it is you!" he rasped. "What in the name of heaven—?"

I swayed, and he steadied me. I felt a rush of drunken sentimentality, followed by an emotion I had not acknowledged in a long while—hot, searing humiliation. I had liked my teacher and sought his approval, and I found that I wanted it still. My normally quick tongue failed me, and I could say nothing at all.

Challes cursed and released me with such force that I struck the stable wall behind me. The shock cleared my head a little.

"You were the brightest pupil I've ever had," he said furiously, waving with both hands, so that somehow the gesture took in both my disheveled person and my disordered soul. "Now look at you—dissolute, filthy, wasted! Why have you allowed yourself to fall into this shameful state?"

I swallowed, clinging to the last rotted shreds of my pride. "I want nothing but to die," I said in an undertone that was both truthful and defiant.

He stunned me again by slapping me hard across the face. "Weakling!" he whispered vehemently, and when I tried to sidestep him, he grasped my shoulders and thrust me back against the wall once more. "Every day and every night brave men and women beg whatever gods are listening to let them live. And you, you sniveling, pettish little whelp, dare to throw away your powers and your gifts like so much rubbish! Well, I won't have it, do you hear me? By God, I will not allow you destroy to yourself!"

Tears burned in my eyes, shaming me anew, and I looked away in a vain effort to hide them. "It is too late," I said in a bare whisper. "Too late."

For a moment I thought Challes would strike me again. Instead he tightened his grasp on my shoulders just briefly, then spoke in a gentle, broken voice. "When was the last time you had a decent meal or a real bed to sleep in?"

I had been stealing food, sleeping in ditches and horse stalls, and begging coin for wine for so long that I could barely recall any other life. My childhood in the village of Dunnett's Head seemed unreal, and my brief happiness with Brenna was naught but a pretty tale.

I spread my filthy hands. "When I was with the brothers, I suppose. They took me in after milady died." I didn't remember the old woman and her rough ministrations until much later, and therefore failed to mention her in my hazy account of those wretched days.

"And you've wandered ever since, like some savage lost from his tribe?"

The answer came hoarse from my throat. "Yes." Only then did I notice that Challes was finely dressed—much too finely for a poor tutor. His tailored garments and exquisite opera cape would have been more suited to a London theater or a gentleman's club; to say he looked out of place in the stable of a disreputable country inn would constitute an understatement of gross proportions. Odder still, he had not aged in the years since I had seen him last; there was a subtle vitality about him, and yes, he'd acquired an attractive air of quiet menace that made me think of wolves prowling stark and snowy downs.

Challes laid a hand to my shoulder. "Come," he said. "I have a splendid gift to offer you, my misguided friend, but first you must be made ready to receive it."

The strangeness of the remark did not penetrate the dense muddle drunkenness had made of my mind. I believed he was offering food and shelter, perhaps wine, too, and I wanted all of those things. Especially, I am ashamed to admit, the latter.

Challes led me to a carriage, waiting axle-deep in mud on the road. The moon rose around it like a huge and silvery halo, and I felt a shiver at the sight, one more akin to excitement than to fear. A footman opened the door for us, and I sensed the look that passed between him and my tutor rather than saw it.

"How did you know where to find me?" I asked, once settled in the sumptuous leather seat across from Challes.

He sighed. "I will explain that at a later time. For now, it is enough to see that you are fed, scrubbed clean, and rested."

I was already beginning to feel thirsty, and hoped the impressive improvement of Challes's circumstances meant he kept a good stock of wine. Even though I was not particularly alert at that point, I know I didn't give voice to the thought, for I'd guessed that it would not be well received.

Challes heard it all the same, for he responded as if I'd spoken aloud. "Foolish knave. You will crave another nectar soon, but the questionable pleasure of drunkenness is behind you."

I folded my arms, still too fuddled to sort out the fact that Challes had just read my mind. What was clear to me was the absolute conviction that I could not bear a lifetime without wine. Such a sacrifice would lay bare my every nerve, physical and spiritual, to agonies beyond my ability to endure.

"Nonsense," Challes said, though again I had not spoken. "You are not about to die, Valerian. You are on the verge of a glorious rebirth."

I frowned. "You sound like my father now, God rest his soul. If it's religion you're peddling, I'll go back to the stable. And how did you do that?"

"I assume you're asking how I interpreted your thoughts. Alas, the divination of mortal minds is the least of my powers. Hardly a challenge at all."

If I'd been sober, I believe I would have been insulted. I started to ask Challes what he was talking about, but he extended an imperious hand in a demand for silence, and I obeyed. My dedicated debauchery had reduced me to less than nothing: I had all the dignity and self-possession of a slat-ribbed hound snuffling through garbage.

"I live near here," Challes told me after a brief silence, during which he gazed pensively through the carriage window, his oddly beautiful face drenched in moonlight. "Our journey will not be a long one."

I studied him, struck by the differences he evidenced and yet unable to define them. "What's happened?" I said. "You've changed."

For the first time my tutor smiled. "So have you," he answered. "Do not trouble me with questions tonight, Valerian. It is enough for now that I have found you."

We traveled the rest of the way without speaking. I closed my eyes and pretended to sleep, and although I was still thoroughly inebriated, I was well aware of Challes's gaze upon me. I knew, somehow, that his regard was pensive, and that there was a certain strange hunger in it.

His home was grand, for that desolate part of England, a small, square keep, made of gray stone and lighted from within. Surely there would be wine in such a place.

I had recovered some of my spirit, so buoyed was I by the mere prospect of a bath and the knowledge that I would not be required to share my bed with vermin. I glanced warily at Challes as a new and disturbing possibility struck me.

My tutor was just alighting from the carriage, tugging at one immaculate white glove as he did so. "Pray do not pursue that ridiculous and insulting thought any further," he said dryly. "I have no designs on your virtue—such as it may be. In point of fact, I shall ask nothing of you behind the joy of seeing you find and exercise your own magnificent powers."

That was all Challes would say, and I had neither the energy nor the will to press him for more. I simply followed him up to the arched wooden door, which was promptly opened for us by a servant bearing a flickering tallow.

He nodded deferentially to Challes, but gave me an oblique look as he stepped back to admit us.

My wits were not about me, so to speak, but I did take note that the place was very clean, and not in the least gloomy. Indeed, moonlight streamed through the high windows in one wall, illuminating the foyer with a glow that was no less beautiful for being eerie.

It seemed that I had been expected. A spacious chamber awaited me abovestairs; there was a cozy blaze snapping on the hearth, and a table had been laid for a meal. A large metal tub steamed in the firelight, and the counterpane on the featherbed had been turned back to reveal linen sheets of the purest white.

I went to the table and checked its contents. There was bread, cold meat, boiled turnips, and even fruit, but alas, no wine.

I sighed.

Challes laughed. "Reprobate," he said, tossing me a bar of hard soap. "You'll find nothing there to fog and foul that splendid mind of yours. I've told you—no more wine."

Not troubling to answer, I raised the soap to my nose; the scent reminded me of my beautiful mother, Seraphina, and for a moment I missed her keenly. I turned from Challes, seeking to disguise my emotions—I had not yet learned that I could hide nothing from him.

"I shall not stay long, then," I answered.

"We'll see," Challes replied. And then he left me.

I bolted the door—in my sorry travels I had learned that what seems like good fortune is often a trap instead—and then stripped off my pitiful clothes and stepped into the tub. I gave a low groan of pleasure as the warm, clean water lapped against my flesh.

I soaked for a long time, then scrubbed my shaggy, red-brown hair and every dirty inch of my hide. When I was clean at last, I rose and stood naked on the hearth, letting the heat of the crackling fire dry the little glittering beads of water that trembled like jewels upon my skin.

A nightshirt of some fine, shimmering fabric—I know now that it was rare and priceless silk—lay spread upon the bed. After I had enjoyed the fire for a time, I pulled the garment over my head and took myself to the table. I ate with remarkable appetite, given the shrunken state of my oft-abused stomach, and no semblance of grace. When I'd finished, I was dizzy with fatigue.

Sated, and able to tolerate my own company for the first time in recent memory, I fell into the lush depths of the bed and gave myself up to sleep. My rest was absolute; I kept no vigil and dreamed no dreams.

It makes me smile to remember that I felt safe.

Daisy

Las Vegas, 1995

Daisy was waiting in Valerian's dressing room when that night's performance ended to thunderous applause and shouts of approbation, and he did not seem at all taken aback to find her there.

So much, she reflected, for the element of surprise.

The magician was a spectacular specimen, not only onstage, but up close as well. Something fast-moving and intangible came to a lurching stop, deep in Daisy's middle, when he looked at her.

She reminded herself that show-business types didn't impress her, and he smiled slightly, as though he'd heard the thought.

But that was impossible, of course.

Daisy's face felt warm. "I'm Detective Chandler," she said.

"I remember," Valerian replied smoothly. He was wearing a majestic black silk cape, lined in red, and he loosened the ties and slipped the garment off, laying it almost tenderly over the back of a chair. There was something intimate and sensual in the way he performed that simple task, and Daisy had taken a hot, dark pleasure in watching him.

"I'd like to talk to you about Jillie Fairfield's murder."

She saw a flicker of grief in the aristocratic face. There was something so regal about the man, she thought, something old-fashioned and almost courtly.

Valerian took his sweet time replying. "What do you want to know?'" he finally asked in an abstracted tone, his gaze fixed just above her head as he unfastened his cuff links.

"Several things. Starting with this—did you kill her?"

He met her gaze then, and both pain and annoyance moved in his eyes. "No," he said, and the chill in his voice went straight to the marrow of Daisy's bones, like a wintry wind. "Of course not."

Daisy was unnerved, even disturbed by this guy, though she could not have said why. Even if he had done the murder—and practiced instincts told her he was innocent—she had no reason to be afraid of him. She was a good cop, and she'd learned to take care of herself a long time before.

"Do you know who did?"

Valerian raised one eyebrow and flung his gold and onyx cuff links onto the vanity table, where they landed with a clatter. The wall above, where there should have been a lighted mirror, was empty. "No," he bit out. "It's your responsibility to determine that, isn't it?"

Daisy was stung, and it made her damn mad to catch herself feeling that way. She couldn't afford that kind of vulnerability. "I'm trying to do my job, Mr. Valerian," she seethed. "Unfortunately, that usually involves a lot of spade work."

"Just Valerian," he said, and the very calmness with which he spoke made Daisy feel like a raving hysteric. "Sit down, please," he went on, gesturing toward a velvet-upholstered antique chair, which Daisy promptly took. He drew up a high stool and perched on the seat, arms folded, looking art-deco elegant in his tails, tuxedo pants, and white pleated shirt. "I didn't know much about Jillie," he confided. "We worked together, but that was the extent of our association. I am not a social animal, you see. The other women in the act might be able to tell you something more, however."

Mentally Daisy awarded Valerian a point for referring to the dancers as women and not girls. And it struck her that, although he'd been working under hot lights for a couple of hours, wearing a full suit of clothes and a cloak, he had not broken a sweat. Odd, indeed, she thought.

"I've talked to some of them already. They're pretty upset, though I've got to say they performed well tonight."

Valerian loosened the collar of his shirt, which had probably cost more than the new engine O'Halloran had just put into his car. "I'll pass along the compliment," he assured her. There wasn't a trace of sarcasm in his tone, and yet Daisy knew he was needling her.

Or was she just being oversensitive?

"Where can I get in touch with you during the day, just in case I need to question you again?"

There was a wry twist to his mouth, and a weariness in the set of his broad shoulders that seemed ancient as well as profound. He produced a card, by some sleight of hand, and held it out to Daisy.

"Call my answering service," he said. "I usually spend the daylight hours perfecting my magic, but if you leave a message, I'll be in touch."

Daisy had no reason to linger, and yet she longed to stay. A fragment of a dream she'd had stirred somewhere in her brain, and she heard the terrifying clang of swords clashing in battle. She eased toward the door.

"Well, thank you," she said. "And good night. It was a terrific show."

Valerian bowed. "Sleep well, Miss Chandler."

Daisy went home to her apartment in a complex at the edge of town, heated a frozen entree, and curled up to watch a news channel. The state of world affairs left her thoroughly depressed, as usual, and she went to the kitchenette and tossed the rest of her dinner into the trash, box and all.

"Maybe I should get out of this business," she said aloud. She was talking to herself more and more these days, but she figured it would be okay as long as O'Halloran "didn't find out. He was a good guy and a first-class cop, but he saw it as his mission in life to give her a hard time. That, according to him, was what partners were for.

Daisy kicked off her sneakers as she crossed the gray carpeted floor of her living room, checked her answering machine, and saw that there was one message. She reached for the Play button and then drew back when a vague sense of menace brushed the back of her heart.

She was being silly, she chided herself. The message was probably from her sister, Nadine, who lived in Telluride and was expecting her first baby. Or maybe O'Halloran had called to ask about her interview with the Great Valerian…

Daisy touched the button, and one ominous word swelled from the machine like an evil genie from a lamp.

"Soon," the voice said, and Daisy could not tell whether the caller was a man or a woman.

"What the hell?'* she demanded, stabbing the button again.

That time the tape dragged, making the warning, if indeed it was a warning and not a prank, that much spookier.

"Damn," Daisy whispered, more irritated then afraid. Was this somebody's idea of a joke—O'Halloran's, for instance? Even as she framed the thought, she knew her partner wouldn't try to scare her. His sense of humor ran toward whoopee cushions, plastic vomit, and hand-buzzers, bless his tacky and totally uninspired heart, but he wasn't cruel.

While Daisy was still standing there, gnawing at her lower lip and wondering whether to worry about this development or have a light beer and go to bed, the telephone rang. It was an ordinary sound, but she almost jumped out of her sneakers, and her hand trembled when she reached for the receiver.

"Hello!" she barked.

"Soon," said that same genderless, robotlike voice she'd heard on the tape only moments before. "Soon you—will—die—again. And again—and—"

"Who is this?" Daisy demanded, furious.

"—again and—"

Daisy slammed down the receiver and shoved a hand through her hair. "Take a breath, Chandler," she told herself in a whisper. "It's just some smart-ass kid, or one of the guys at the station—"

She closed her eyes for a moment, deliberately making her mind a blank, until she was calmer. She started to dial O'Halloran's home number, then stopped in the middle of the process. She had worked damn hard and taken a lot of scary risks to get where she was. She didn't want her partner, or anybody else on the force, to think she couldn't take care of herself.

Daisy went back to the front door and made sure the deadbolt was turned and the chain in place. Then she checked the windows and, on a roll, peeked behind the shower curtain and under the bed.

Finally she washed off her makeup, brushed her teeth and hair, and went to bed. The telephone on her night-stand rang once, but by the time she'd groped for the receiver and put it to her ear, the line was dead.

"Damn," she said again. Then she turned over onto her side, yawned twice, wondered whether or not Nadine suffered from morning sickness, considered getting a big dog, and dozed off.

The dream was remarkably real.

She was wearing strange, simple clothes—medieval, perhaps—and riding a horse. She could hear the roar of the sea and taste its salt in the mist, and suddenly she felt a surge of wild, ebullient daring. With a laugh, she spurred her mount toward the water.

Someone shouted at her to come back, but she had suffered much in recent times, and she had grown up beside the sea, playing chase with the tide. Now the vast ocean seemed to beckon. It was a siren's call, one she could not resist.

She rode down a steep path, wending her way between giant stones, urging the little horse onward when she knew it wanted to bolt.

Another cry found its way over the roar of the waves and made her turn, laughing with delight, to look toward shore. She saw him then, her companion. In that strange way of dreams, she recognized him as the magician, Valerian. And yet he was much younger, hardly more than a boy, and his clothes were ill-fitting and strange.

His face was a mask of terror as he lunged down the rocky path and raced toward the water.

Poor silly darling, she thought indulgently. He's afraid for me. I must tell him that I've ridden into the sea many times before without harm.

She smiled, tossing her head, and raised one hand to wave him back. He was no swimmer, after all, and the sea was more fractious than usual that day.

He shouted to her again, foundering through the surf, and she lost control of the horse. The animal shrieked and reared, and she was flung off, striking her shoulder hard against a rock.

Pain thundered through her. She tried to scream, and water filled her mouth, drove her under, held her there, flailing. The weight of her gown and kirtle pulled her deeper into the smothering darkness, and then a current caught her up and twirled her around.

There was another blow, this time to the head, and then she saw nothing, felt nothing, knew nothing—except for the name she'd been screaming before she died.

Valerian.

Valerian

England, 1363

When I awakened that first morning, to find myself in the place I would later know as Colefeld Hall, I am ashamed to say that my first conscious sensation was a craving for wine. My mouth was as dry as straw, my stomach felt as though it had withered within me, and every bone and sinew ached in merry time with the slow thud of my heart.

I rose from my bed, relieved myself in the chamber pot provided, and unbolted the door to peer into the hallway. The taciturn serving man was almost to the threshold, his arms laden with folded garments of exquisite quality. Raised in the home of a poor bootmaker and residing, until very recently, in horse stalls, abandoned dovecotes, and pigsties, I had never dared to dream of such things.

"Good morning, sir," said the quiet fellow. "Milord instructed me to provide you with whatever you required." He actually smiled, taking in my nightshirt. "I see I was correct in assuming that proper garb would make a good beginning."

I was delighted and forgot for a moment my deep-seated yearning for the fruit of the vine. I reached out for the garments with a nod of gratitude, barely able to keep myself from donning them right there in the doorway.

"Where is Challes?" I asked, turning away. "I must thank him personally for his generosity."

"I am afraid His Lordship is engaged this morning. He'll be quite busy for the remainder of the day, as it happens. In the meantime, I will look after you—my name, by the way, is Abelard."

I might have been curious about Challes's "engagement" at any other time, but I was still sick and half starved, and those splendidly embroidered tunics and closely woven hose held me rapt. Oh, I was a greedy creature, even then.

Abelard went away, and I put on dark blue hose and a multicolored tunic. When I stepped into the hallway again, intending to explore—and, yes, I confess it, to find Challes's store of wines and spirits—a pair of soft leather boots waited by the door. I snatched them up with joy and paused to pull them onto my feet before proceeding downstairs.

The great house had a curiously expectant air, it seemed to me; as though the very walls and floors and rafters in the ceiling were awaiting some momentous event. I found the kitchen and purloined the leg of a roasted fowl of some sort before continuing to acquaint myself with my tutor's domain. ' He owned many manuscripts and even a few bound books—envy flared inside me when I saw those tomes—row upon row of them, brimming with secrets and with magic. I touched their spines reverently, but even I did not dare to take even one down from the shelf to examine it. Those volumes were holy to me in a way crosses and relics and statues had never been, and one does not touch sacred things thoughtlessly.

Besides, my fingers were greasy from the food I'd consumed.

I left the books, albeit reluctantly, and went in search of the wine. Abelard appeared to be occupied elsewhere and did not bother me for the whole of the morning.

The cellar was empty, except for a heavy iron door that would not open when I pulled on the latch. I tried several times and even kicked it once—for I had a more than ordinary dislike for things that thwarted me—but to no avail.

After that small defeat, I searched the pantries, the storerooms, and even the stables and the carriage house. I found nothing except my friend's tidy possessions, all neatly tucked away in their proper places.

Abelard produced a venison stew for the midday meal—he was, it appeared, the only other occupant of the house besides Challes and myself—and sat on the other side of the trestle table talking with me while I ate.

"Has Mr. Challes—his lordship—always lived here?" I asked. It had occurred to me, as my throbbing head cleared, that the gentleman might have deceived us all—Brenna, the baron, her late father, my brother, Krispin—every one of us. Perhaps he had never been a poverty-stricken tutor at all, but a dilettante, merely amusing himself among the poor. Experimenting, perhaps, to find out if country folk were as stupid as mules or if they could learn to reason and work sums.

"He came into an inheritance quite recently," Abelard replied, obviously uncomfortable with the line of questioning. "We have been in residence for perhaps five years."

My mind, ever fitful, had returned to thoughts of Krispin. I did not often let myself remember my brother, for when I did I always imagined how the plague would have changed him. Had his skin turned to a dark, bruised color before he died? Had he risen from his pallet and spun about in a hideous death dance as I had heard of others doing?

I pushed my stew away, my appetite spoiled.

"Where is this engagement of his lordship's?" I asked with an impertinence that causes me to wince when I recall it. "I've looked through practically every window in the keep, and there's naught but empty moors in every direction."

Abelard's patience was not easily strained. "Not empty," he said, drawing a trencher of bread close and tearing off a piece. "There are wolves abroad. Gaunt ones, with ribs showing through their hide, that like nothing better than to happen upon an arrogant fool of a man with more bravado than good sense."

Everyone in England was afraid of wolves in those stark, brutal days, when vast forests still covered the land—the creatures had been known to leap, snarling, into carriages and even to creep into huts and crofts and carry children away in their teeth. The stories about the beasts were rife, told at every cradle and fireside in the country, used, as fear has ever been used, to control those who might otherwise take it into their heads to wander.

Just the mention of the beasts made me go bloodless with dread. In the next instant I blushed furiously, embarrassed by my first reaction.

"We saw no such animals last night while riding in the carriage," I pointed out. The unpleasant images of a dying Krispin had faded from my mind, and I reached for my half-finished stew again.

Abelard made a production of chewing his bread, swallowing, and biting off a new piece. "I suppose they were busy elsewhere, then," he said at long last. "They're out there, though. You can be sure of that, sir."

I could not hide my shudder. "Have you seen them?"

"Oh, yes," Abelard confided in a low voice. "And any man with ears can hear them howling of a night. Calling and calling they are, wanting the unwary to come out and play their dreadful games."

I shifted the conversation away from the subject of wolves. "Is his lordship here, in this house?"

"He might be," Abelard said speculatively, though it was plain, even to me, that he knew exactly where his master was and what he was doing.

"It's damn rude," I blurted out, "making such a mystery of things and leaving a guest all on his own. I didn't ask to come here, after all."

Abelard smiled. "Didn't you?" he asked.

I was completely confused. "By the saints, man, I wasn't so drunk that I can't recall what I said with my own mouth!"

The servant finished his bread and then rose from the table. "There's no need to be afraid, lad," he said gently. "This is where you belong, and you're welcome here, and safe, too, if you mind your manners."

I wanted to point out that I was not some witless youth, that indeed I had lived five and thirty years, but I realized as I shaped the protest in my mind that I would sound foolish if I uttered it.

"Have you any wine?" I wanted to know. Blustering bluff was one of my stock traits; I had relied upon it, among other deceptions and ruses, for a long time.

Abelard sighed. "No," he told me. "And if I did, I would not offer it to you. The stuff might have been your destruction, if his lordship hadn't found you when he did."

I was yet considering the wine, and resenting my host's lack of charity where strong drink was concerned, so I did not stop to wonder how Challes had known where to look for me, or what business he had with me in the first place.

By the gods, I was not only mortal then, I was an idiot. I might have been deaf and blind for all the notice I took of the terrible and magnificent drama unfolding around me!

Abelard brought me one of the precious books that afternoon, and I read hungrily of ancient Greek adventures, hardly noticing when twilight came and the candles were lighted. I was so absorbed that I did not hear Challes enter the room where I sat, my stool drawn up close to the fire.

"This," he said with gruff fondness, "is the Valerian I remember."

"Tell me," I demanded quietly, closing the manuscript with great care. "Tell me why you sought me out, why you brought me here. Now."

He smiled. "I have told you, my friend. I have an astounding gift to offer you. If you accept my tribute, you will have powers you cannot begin to imagine now."

I was intrigued. "What is this great and mysterious treasure?" I asked.

Challes reached out to touch my shoulder. There was love in the contact, and reverence. His eyes glowed with affection as he looked down at my face. "Life upon life," he said. "Endless, fathomless, unbounded life. Drink from the cup I hold out to you, Valerian—arrogant Valerian, as beautiful as Lucifer in his days of perfect favor—and you will never die."

« ^ »

The light of the drawing room fire flickered over Challes's features as he sat beside me on that momentous night, staring fixedly into the grate. Beyond the windows, on the moonlit moors, I heard the wolves calling sorrowfully to each other like souls just waking to find themselves in hell, and I shuddered.

Nearly imperceptible though the motion must have been, it somehow drew my tutor's notice. He turned his head toward me and smiled, and I remember thinking how remarkably white and even his teeth were. I was more conscious than ever, in that moment, of the dangers that filled the world.

"The time has come, Valerian," Challes began moderately, "to discuss the gift in depth. Preparations must be made, of course, before it can be given. Still, I wish to tell you all that this entails, for you will be called upon to make a choice never presented to most mortals."

I could barely contain my eagerness and curiosity; indeed, I had been in a state of quiet frenzy since he'd made the astonishing claim, a short while before, that I need never die. I find my excitement ironic now, in light of the fact that I had been trying for fifteen years at that point, albeit in a cowardly and indirect fashion, to murder myself.

"Tell me," I pleaded on a scant breath and came near to clasping his arm like a supplicant begging blessings from a saint.

"Be patient, beautiful one," he said fondly. "Once you shed your mortal limitations, you will have all eternity to celebrate what you are."

I waited and held my tongue, but it was the most difficult thing I had undertaken since my failed attempt to rescue Brenna from the merciless surf. I trembled with my need to understand what Challes was offering me, to snatch it from his grasp and hide it in my heart.

He settled back in his great chair, draped now in shadows, now in dancing light, and watched the blaze again. Just when I truly believed I would not be able to restrain myself from lunging like a fevered beast, to somehow wrench the secret from him, Challes began to unburden himself.

"I went to sea after I left Dunnett's Head," he told me, still gazing into the fire. "I know not how I kept myself apart from this cursed plague—it was, and is, everywhere. I saw so many perish, so horribly. I wandered, as you have done, and finally settled on the Continent, in Florence. There I encountered artists, bards, philosophers, and men of science—" He paused and smiled again, not at me certainly, but at some memory he must have glimpsed in the snapping flames of that cheery fire.

"Whores and dancing girls, too. Gypsies and princes, and vagabonds, like myself. Those who were drunkards"—he had the charity, bless him, not to look at me when he made this last statement—"those who were saints, and those who were a curious and fascinating combination of the two. I cannot possibly describe the richness and pleasure of my life in that gracious city—and yet I was not truly happy. At times I knew unutterable loneliness."

I bit my lip, feeling no compunction to interrupt now, listening with all my powers of attention. I, too, had known such a separation from others—it was that, more than any other factor, which had spawned my eternal need for strong drink.

"I encountered a magnificent being one night when I was brooding in one of the small piazzas that abound in Florence. We became friends, and then something more than that. Lovers, of a sort, though our consummation was spiritual, rather than physical. Many wondrous nights passed before Christoph told me what he was. What he is and will always be—" Challes hesitated again and studied my face with a troubled expression in his eyes, and I thought I would burst with waiting before he went on at last. "Christoph is a fiend, Valerian, as am I. He is a vampyre."

My heart seemed to stop and, just as quickly, start itself pumping again. I drew back a little, I think, though the response was not a conscious one. "A vampyre? You mean, a drinker of blood?"

"Yes," Challes answered with a sound that resembled a sigh, but was not.

I bolted to my feet, overturning the stool with a crash, suddenly far more frightened of my old friend and tutor than I'd ever been of the wolves waiting outside in the darkness.

"Wait," Challes ordered calmly, even gently, rising unhurriedly from his chair. I would not have obeyed the command, but there was something in his eyes, something that held me spellbound and stricken, overriding my weak will. "I will do you no hurt, cherished one. There is only pleasure in what I would give to you, only joy." He was silent for a moment, gazing at me, and when he spoke again, it was briskly, in the schoolmaster's tone from days of old. "Sit down, pray, and listen."

Though I was terrified, I righted my stool and slumped onto it, speechless and void of grace, my limbs full of trembling. I made the sign of the cross, and to my horrified amazement, Challes did not recoil. Did not so much as flinch. No, there was only the brief hint of a smile, falling across his lips like a passing shadow, and a deep, pitying sorrow in his eyes.

"Such gestures have their power," he told me, "when there is true faith behind them. But you have none of that, do you?"

I tried to speak, stammered insensibly, and began again. "I believe there's a God—I believe in the Holy Mother, and the Son", and all the saints and angels—"

Challes laughed outright, and the sound echoed, raucous, off the high ceiling of the keep. "Such a hasty and convenient creed!" he exclaimed finally with grim humor. "Even the demons grant the existence of God, Valerian—oh, especially them. Do you think you can fool me—I, who know you so well? You believe now, in this moment, it's true, but only because you perceive your sinful hide to be threatened. Tell me, lovely one, were you so devout when the good brothers bade you stay there to take up the cross and become one of their number?" He shook his head, as if in response to something I'd said, although I spoke not a syllable, for I was too shaken to refute his words. "Let go of what is past, you spectacular idiot, and enter into the glorious future that awaits you."

I could not move or make a sound. I heard the wolves, nearer now, and wished that I might be their prey, alone and unprotected on the moors—that I could be anywhere but in that warm, comfortably furnished drawing room in the company of a devil.

Challes began to speak, his tones the low and measured ones of a father lulling a fretful child to sleep. He told me what it meant to be a vampire—told me of the powers he possessed, the powers I would command should I raise the figurative chalice to my lips and drink. I would be able to will myself from one place to another and, eventually, from one century to another. I would become a shape-changer, of sorts, able to present myself to mortals in an endless variety of forms. I should not need food or water, nor would I lack any desirable thing—gold, castles, fine horses, and exquisite garments could be mine by means of simple trickery. And there were much greater gifts and abilities that would come to me over time, with the practice of my art.

"But I must drink blood?" I asked with a slight shiver when Challes had finished painting his grand, glorious images in my mind.

His smile was tender now. "Not in the way you think," he said. And he proceeded to explain that, too—how the blood was drawn in through the fangs, how the victim could be made to feel ecstacy instead of fear and pain if the vampire wished it so, how the innocents need never be touched, because there was such a thriving abundance of truly evil mortals.

I was intrigued, despite my terror. I wanted the terrible magic of which Challes spoke, as he had always known I would. I wanted to fly, to learn, to explore. I wanted to wear rich clothing, always, to hear the music of a thousand minstrels, to traverse the wide seas and continents, to know secrets forbidden to ordinary men.

"Will you accept this gift?" he asked, although he knew what the answer would be. We both did.

I flushed. "Yes," I heard myself say. My old life was untenable now; I truly would surrender myself to the wolves before returning to the beggar's existence I had known only the day before. "Now. Tonight."

Challes laughed again and shook his head. "Dear, precious fool! If I changed you now, you would be forever as you are at this moment—gaunt and ill mannered and totally void of the graces. No, Valerian—you must be groomed and prepared for the transformation, as I said before."

I was alarmed—now that I knew what it meant to be an immortal, I could not bear the idea that my tutor might change his mind, might deny me what he had already offered. "How long will it take, this preparation?"

"A month, perhaps two," Challes said. "I will bring you along slowly, lovingly, just as my dark angel Christoph did for me. That way, when you enter in, it will be willingly, and with full knowledge of what you understake. Anything less would be a travesty before hell as well as heaven."

"I must have it now," I muttered, covering my face with my hands. "I cannot bear to wait!" The marvelous gift would be withdrawn, snatched from my fingers for all time—I knew it would. I would suffer that worst of all fates, and remain ordinary.

Challes laid his hand on top of my shaggy, unbrushed hair. "Do not fret," he scolded with gruff affection. "I cannot hurry this process, for it is too important. But I shall show you some of the joy that awaits you, if you're willing."

I raised my eyes to meet his gaze. And I nodded.

Not even Brenna or my poor, ill-fated mother had ever looked upon me with the kind of love I saw that night in Challes's translucent face. It was not a lascivious regard he bore me—even in my ignorance and self-centered naïveté I knew that—but something much deeper and far more complex. The emotion transcended gender, made a mockery of human gropings, and I was in awe.

I could not have known, back then, that one day I would cherish another in just that way, that I would understand completely how Challes felt.

I knew nothing of anything. I craved some blessing from Challes, some unnamed and joyous communion, with an intensity greater even than the wanting of wine.

In the end he dismissed me, to my wretched disappointment, and sent me off to my chamber as if I were a child. Certainly he had power over me, even then, but my obedience was grudging.

Challes came to my room perhaps an hour before dawn—I lay wakeful in my bed, watching the moon through the window and listening to the wolves' song—and suddenly he was simply there. I knew he had not entered by any ordinary means, but I was beyond questioning that. I simply looked at him, silently imploring him for I knew not what, knowing I would perish of grief if he denied me.

Challes knelt beside my bed, smoothed my hair, murmured words I did not comprehend, and bent his head to my throat. The experience was profoundly sensual, but again it was more a thing of the mind and spirit than of the body.

I, who had never knowingly been intimate with a man—I confess there were instances during the dark years after Brenna's death, however, when I was too drunk to know whose pallet I'd shared—was ready to surrender my very soul.

I started when I felt two sharp points penetrate the skin of my neck, and perhaps managed a whimper of fearful protest, but in the next instant, as my very life's blood flowed in Challes's fangs, ecstacy crashed down upon me like a giant wave. I moaned as he drank, only vaguely aware that he wasn't touching me at all, except where his mouth was pressed to the pulsing vein at the base of my throat. It was as though every erotic point, within and without, was being stimulated at once.

It was dark and sweet and violent, my first communion with Challes, like the pleasure I had known when Brenna wooed my seed from me, except that this release encompassed the whole of my being and went on and on, endlessly. At long last I swooned, the exertion and the joy so great that I could not endure them, and when I awakened with the morning sun I believed at first that I'd dreamed the entire episode.

When I touched my throat and felt the two tiny, rapidly healing puncture wounds, however, I knew all that Challes had said was true, that all I remembered was real. And I was filled with a delight, and a terror, of truly infinite proportions.

I did not see Challes that day, and I grieved until darkness fell. It was just after sunset when he returned, and began molding me, ever so artfully, into a fiend's fiend.

Daisy

Las Vegas, 1995

"Why the hell didn't you call me?" O'Halloran demanded the next morning when Daisy had told him about the threatening telephone message. They were riding in his car, on their way to the home of Jillie Fairfield's next of kin, her divorced mother. Daisy was up to her ankles in empty soda bottles, misfolded maps, and crumpled candy wrappers.

"What would you have done?" she countered irritably. "Hauled yourself over there and sat on my couch all night, holding a .357 in your lap?"

It wasn't the crank call or O'Halloran's gruffly solicitous attitude that was bugging her, she admitted to herself. Mrs. Fairfield resided in a trailer park where Daisy and Nadine had spent six happy months when they were in elementary school, in the care of their paternal grandmother. Inevitably their mother, Jeanine, had returned, rumpled and a little drunk and smelling sour from the bus ride that had brought her back to Vegas from wherever she'd been. She'd reclaimed her daughters, over Gran's fierce but helpless protests, and headed straight for the nearest social worker. A couple of kids made it a whole lot easier to collect welfare, after all, and once Jeanine had dumped or been dumped by her latest boyfriend, a biker with a slipped disk that entitled him to state compensation, she'd suddenly developed all manner of maternal instincts.

"Relax, Chandler," O'Halloran said. "I'm not trying to step on your goddamned feminine rights or anything like that. I just want to make sure this sicko doesn't get too close, okay?"

Daisy wanted to reassure her partner, but she was still distracted by her dread of returning to the trailer park. She and Nadine had never been allowed to go back, even to visit, and after a couple of years the old woman had passed away. Jeanine's boyfriend at the time—Daisy couldn't remember his name and didn't care if she ever did—had shown her the obituary in the newspaper and said maybe they'd get a mobile home out of the deal, "now that Granny has kicked off."

"Chandler?" O'Halloran prompted. They turned a corner on a yellow light, and the door of the glove compartment fell open, slamming against Daisy's knees and spilling a variety of cassette tapes, empty cookie packages, expired registration slips, and unpaid parking tickets into her lap.

She stuffed the whole mess back where it came from and closed the little door with a crash. "What?" she snapped.

"You suffering from a year-round case of PMS, or what?"

Daisy sighed and shoved a hand through her hair. "Why is it that men always think any change in a woman's mood has to be connected with her hormone levels?"

O'Halloran shrugged, running another yellow light, bald tires squealing, and the driver of a tour bus blasted his horn and displayed a specific finger behind the broad tinted window. "After ten or twenty thousand years the evidence starts to stack up," he said. "The thing is, we got this weird case to solve—you know what the medical examiner said—and it's gonna take our undivided attention to work the snarls outta this one. You gotta get all your body chemicals in sync, Chandler, 'cause I need your help."

Daisy tossed him a mock salute. "No problem, Officer Friendly. My mood has nothing to do with chemistry. And slow it down, will you? You take one more corner on two wheels, and I'll have to write you up for driving under the influence of sugar and preservatives."

He grinned, but in the next moment his expression was solemn again. "I don't like this, Chandler," he confided. "This Fairfield thing, I mean. By the time we got to that girl, she didn't have enough blood left in her veins to reach a gnat's ankle. What the sonnabitchen hell happened in that place? What about those marks on her neck?"

Daisy shifted in the seat as the entrance to the trailer park came into view. She took a pair of sunglasses from her purse and put them on, telling herself it was because of the glare. "Forensics found blood on the scene when they went over it after the body was removed," she pointed out. "It just wasn't visible to the naked eye, that's all."

"Okay, so there was a little blood. There sure as shit wasn't enough. What happened to the rest of it?"

She shivered, somewhere down deep, and knew her reaction didn't show on the outside. Jillie's corpse, the crank call, the dream, and the magician all sprang out of her subconscious at once to haunt her. "I don't know, O'Halloran," Daisy replied finally in a somewhat testy tone. "Maybe you were right in the first place. Maybe we've got a vampire running loose."

O'Halloran flung her a mildly contemptuous glance and slowed to enter the Lucky Dollar Trailer Park, passing beneath the burned-out neon sign and bouncing down the rutted gravel road between battered mobile homes. "You wish," he said, making a cranking motion with his left arm as he rolled down the window. The air-conditioning had petered out years ago, with the second or third motor. "Better the real thing, for my money, than some psycho who believes with all his diseased little brain that taking a drop of human blood now and then will make him live forever."

Daisy didn't answer. Her thoughts lingered on Valerian. She was comparing the way he looked in real life with the younger, less polished version she'd seen in her dream, wondering if he was gay, straight, or in between, and where he'd learned to do magic. Something told her he was accomplished in the subtler forms of wizardry as well as the spectacular ones he employed onstage.

"Chandler?" O'Halloran barked. "Pay attention, damn it."

Daisy switched mental gears and forced herself to concentrate. "I'm with you, buddy. Let's go make the world safe for humankind."

After asking directions from a gray-haired man mowing^ a lawn, they found the Fairfield trailer. It was a rundown, two-tone double-wide with a sagging step and a yard made up of crushed gravel and cigarette butts.

Mrs. Fairfield came out onto the dilapidated porch when they drove up, a petite blonde with a leathery tan, wearing white short-shorts and a skimpy red top. She wore high-heeled sandals, her toenails were painted, and her makeup gave rise to speculation concerning the way she earned her living.

"You the cops?" she asked, raising a lipstick-stained cigarette to her mouth.

Just two of them, Daisy thought, flashing her badge, but she didn't say the words out loud because after all, this woman's daughter had just been murdered. Just to the left and a little behind her, O'Halloran flipped out his wallet.

"I'm Detective Chandler," said Daisy, "and this is Detective O'Halloran. We're investigating your daughter's death, and we need to ask you some questions."

"Took you long enough to come around," Mrs. Fairfield replied, giving no sign that she intended to invite them inside.

Daisy was relieved. The place probably reeked of smoke, and worse, it might look too much like Gran's trailer. There might be a loosely crocheted afghan draped over the recliner in the living room, pictures in dime-store frames on top of the television set, cheap shag carpeting with a worn spot in front of the door—

O'Halloran consulted his ever-present notebook, and out of the corner of her eye Daisy saw a short grocery list scrawled on the first page. "According to my log here, I called you myself from the station, about an hour after we left the—er—scene."

Mrs. Fairfield sat down on the top step, crossed her still-shapely legs, and tapped the ashes from her cigarette into a clay pot containing a dead plant. She sounded bored when she spoke again. "If you're going to ask me who Jillie was dating, or who her friends were, I couldn't tell you. She and I didn't get along too well. I do know that she worked for that magician, Valerian something-or-other, in the showroom at the Venetian Hotel. That's some kind of place, isn't it?"

Daisy felt a swift, dizzying fury. Someone was dead, and this woman, the victim's mother, for God's sake, was talking about the latest addition to Glitter Gulch. She opened her mouth to comment, but O'Halloran, who could be amazingly perceptive when he tried, silenced her with a touch to her forearm.

"Yeah," he said. "It's something, that hotel. You ever go down there and take in your daughter's show?"

Mrs. Fairfield laughed. The sound was low and throaty, but there was more despair in it than humor. "At the price those places charge for a ticket? Not on what I make serving drinks in a fourth-rate casino. And Jillie sure as hell never found it in her heart to get me comped in. I hear it's a great act, though. HBO wanted to do a special a few months back, according to the papers, but this Valerian character won't let any kind of camera through the door." She tapped more ashes into the planter. "It's all a lot of hype, if you ask me—that stuff about how he's never seen in the daytime and everything. There's nothing like an attitude to generate publicity. You gotta know how to sell yourself in this town, and that guy's a master at it."

Daisy wondered if Mrs. Fairfield was really as crass and unfeeling as she seemed. People handled grief in a lot of different ways, some putting on fronts, some breaking down right away. Daisy had heard more than a few talk all around the subject of their loved one's death, too, just the way this woman was doing. "We need to know if your daughter had any enemies, Mrs. Fairfield," she said, grateful to O'Halloran for running interference until she could get her emotions under control. "In an incident like this, the killer is often someone the victim knew." —

The aging cocktail waitress raised a carefully plucked eyebrow. There was something faintly mocking in the motion, and some of Daisy's sympathy ebbed away.

"Is that right? How long you been a cop, sweetie?"

Daisy took a breath, let it out slowly. "We're not here to talk about me, Mrs. Fairfield. Please—tell us whatever you can about your daughter."

"I told you, we didn't get along," came the distracted, slightly hoarse reply. "We didn't speak at all for the last two years."

"Why not?" O'Halloran asked with quiet compassion.

Mrs. Fairfield's eyes were luminous with tears when she raised them to meet his gaze. "It was a stupid thing, really—she was dating a married man, and I told her he'd never leave his wife for her, 'cause they never do, you know—and Jillie and me, we had too much to drink one night, and we got into it good. We tore into each other, right here in front of this piss-ant trailer, and it was a catfight like you never seen before." She paused and smiled faintly at the memory, as though proud that she and her daughter were scrappers. "The cops came, too. Look in your computers if you don't believe me. Jillie and me, we was both too stiff-necked to say we were sorry afterwards. We thought we had forever to make things right, you know?"

At this last, her face crumbled, and Mrs. Fairfield gave a small, raw sob that wrenched hard at Daisy's insides.

"I'm so sorry," she said.

Mrs. Fairfield rose gracefully to her feet and tossed her cigarette butt into the gravel. Then she wiped her mascara-streaked cheek with the back of one manicured hand. '"Yeah, sure you are, honey. Sure you are."

With that, Jillie's mother turned and went into the trailer, closing the door firmly behind her.

"Back to square one," Daisy said.

"Families just ain't close anymore," O'Halloran philosophized in response as they walked back toward his car.

Later that afternoon a woman ran over her ex-husband in the parking lot of a convenience store, and a fifteen-year-old gang member was knifed to death by his older brother, who had been out of prison just over two weeks. It all seemed to underscore O'Halloran's theory about families, and Daisy was thoroughly depressed when she went off duty at six-thirty that night, got into her convertible, and drove back to her apartment.

There were no messages on the answering machine. That was something, at least.

The blues invariably made Daisy restless, so she dragged her rowing machine out from under her bed—she'd ordered it eighteen months before, inspired to a frenzy of ambition by a late-night infomercial—and into the living room. Usually she worked out in a health club a couple of miles from her building, but that night she just didn't feel like dealing with a lot of people.

She put on her shorts and a T-shirt, switched on the TV, warmed up with a few brisk calesthetics, and rowed up a sweat. The effort relaxed her, as she had known it would, and Daisy showered and put on her chenille robe. She had just put some low-fat fish sticks into the microwave for her dinner when the telephone rang.

Daisy didn't hesitate to answer. Maybe Nadine had picked up on her intent to call and beaten her to the punch.

"Chandler," she said, just in case.

"We got another one," O'Halloran told her wearily.

The bottom dropped out of Daisy's stomach. No matter how many homicides she investigated, she never got over the shock of learning that one human being had killed another. Again.

"What do you mean, 'another one'?" she snapped, though she knew. Damn it to hell, she knew.

"Her name was Susan Cantrell," O'Halloran said. "Miss Cantrell's roommate came back from a long weekend this afternoon and found her dead in the bathtub. No blood, Chandler. And she had those funny little marks on her neck, just like the Fairfield woman did, and the M.E.'s office thinks it happened last night sometime. God, but I hate this job."

"What else?" Daisy prodded, knowing there was more because she could read O'Halloran so well. She didn't argue that he shouldn't hate his job, because he always did when there was a murder. So did she.

O'Halloran gave a deep, sorrowful sigh, and Daisy could just see him running a stubby hand through what was left of his hair. "She worked for that magician, too. The one that's been packing them in down at the Venetian since the hotel opened—" Daisy heard papers rustling. "Let's see here," her partner went on. "His name's—"

"Valerian," Daisy said, leaning against the wall and closing her eyes as tightly as she could.

« ^ »

Valerian

Las Vegas, 1995

For the second time in as many nights, I regained consciousness at sunset to find that there had been another murder. I saw poor Susan's death plainly before I ever opened my eyes—the horrible images were imprinted on the insides of my lids—and I glimpsed the vampire who had done the killing as well. I could not recognize the fiend, for its face was shadowed by a hooded cloak, but I intuited that the creature was male, and for a reason I could not grasp, I felt that I should have known him.

I wept with grief and helpless frustration, although I had not been well acquainted with Miss Cantrell, as I rose from my luxurious pallet and began to dress. This night there would be no performance at the Venetian Hotel—how could there be? No, tonight I would hunt, traverse centuries and continents if necessary, to run this monster to earth and put a finish to him by whatever means that might seem prudent at the moment.

Before destroying this vampire, however, I would extract much in payment for the suffering of my friends. I was furious that the thing had not confronted me directly, for I was obviously the true object of its hatred. The creature was cowardly, however, as well as implacably vicious; it clearly knew that, save Maeve Tremayne, who had not been weakened by her marriage to a fledgling named Calder Holbrook, I was the most powerful blood-drinker on this plane of existence. Better, then, to torment me through those helpless beings close to me, those I valued and, in my way, loved.

I had to find it before another innocent died.

Before it turned to Brenna—now Daisy Chandler—the love of my eternal life.

Before the ruby ring arrived.

I was drawn to the living room of my hideaway, and the television set descended from the ceiling as I entered. I had not willed this to happen, and I felt a mental chill as I watched light flicker in the center of the screen and then spread into an image. My lair had heretofore been sacrosanct, but now it seemed that some other creature dared to work magic within its walls.

Perhaps, I thought, I would not have to search out my enemy after all. Perhaps he had come to me.

The televised picture solidified into an image of Brenna, riding boldly into the surf, laughing, never dreaming that her death was imminent. Before my eyes the scene shifted; Brenna was gone, and the raging sea had vanished to become a shoddy fifteenth-century tavern called the Horse and Horn. Brenna appeared instantly, immediately recognizable for her green eyes and coppery hair, but now her name was Elisabeth Saxon. She was a bold and fiery wench, her cheap dress showing too much of her bosom, flirting shamelessly with the ruffians she served, permitting them to touch her. Driving me half mad with jealousy and frustration. She faded away, and then I saw Jenny Wade, my lovely Jenny, another incarnation of Brenna, though she wore the lush, red-blond hair in a tidy chignon and her green eyes were sightless. I had cherished her especially, because she loved me so completely and so selflessly without ever seeing my face.

Jenny and I were together in the late sixteenth century, for far too short a time.

I heard that gentle angel whisper my name, and when the screen went blank, I was startled to find myself standing in front of the set with both hands pressed to the glass.

"No more," I whispered, for I could not bear to see the other incarnations my beloved had donned, like pretty frocks, over the centuries. It was enough to be reminded of Brenna and Elisabeth and Jenny, of how completely and how hopelessly I had loved them, all different facets of the same glorious, intrepid spirit.

Suddenly another picture spilled across the surface, and I drew back, appalled. The leading lady in this new tableau was Daisy Chandler—the latest incarnation of Lady Brenna Afton-St. Claire. I saw that she lived in one of those bland and anonymous apartments that are so prevalent in the twentieth century, with no more variance between the units than between the cells in a honeycomb.

"Daisy," I muttered, but of course she could not hear me. She was only an image, but a modem version of Brenna nonetheless, projected from the dark depths of my mind—or, more likely, the mind of my enemy, whoever and whatever it was.

I watched as Daisy moved about her small kitchen, preparing a frozen dinner—a peculiarity of the modern age that makes me glad vampires do not require the same sort of sustenance mortals do—and I heard the nerve-jangling ring of her telephone. When she answered, "Chandler," I was touched by the note of bravado in her voice.

I could not discern what the caller said, but I saw Daisy's lovely, impudent face go white with fear and fury. I watched and listened helplessly as she slammed the receiver back into its cradle and then sagged against the wall, trembling.

I wanted to will myself to her side, to draw her into my arms and offer her what comfort I could, but better judgment prevailed. The vignette I'd seen was not occurring at that moment; it was a colorful shadow of the future. If I went to Daisy then, I might find her in the shower, driving her car, doing any one of the millions of wonderful mundane things mortals do. It would be neither kind nor wise to reveal my unique powers to her in such an abrupt way.

Yet I feared for her in those moments as I had never feared for another living being. My unknown foe had shown me all these visions, but most especially the last, to taunt me with the fact that it was stalking Daisy, that it meant to murder her as it had already murdered poor Jillie and Susan.

I closed my eyes. What was this thing?

There was no answer, of course—not then. The television screen went dark and returned to its nesting place in the ceiling with a low, electronic buzz.

I was instantly possessed of a brutal weariness, as abject as if my immortality had suddenly proved an illusion or a jest, as if my vampiric powers had been wrested from me and I had been reduced to a fragile, human state. To ask such pitiful flesh and bone to bear the weight of some six hundred years of adventurous living would be like expecting a spider's web to support a cathedral.

With some effort, I collected myself, faced down the consuming panic that threatened me, and centered my thoughts on the one immortal I truly trusted, the only vampire I dared depend upon for help and advice.

I sought Maeve Tremayne, once my fledgling and now my friend and my queen—she who knew our species to be ungovernable, and governed it nonetheless. She who protected us from our foes, be they angels, warlocks, or rogue vampires, and meted out punishment for our crimes.

I found her in the uppermost chamber of her London house. She shared the residence with her mate, Holbrook, who had been a brilliant physician and surgeon in his mortal life. Their remarkable child, Kristina, was grown and far away.

Maeve was at her weaving when I arrived, and alone, as I would have preferred. Calder and I are not particularly friendly; I find him too absorbed in his incessant experiments, and he dislikes me, I suspect, for my superior mind.

Maeve feigned a little sigh when she saw me and said, "Ah, Valerian. What now?"

Daisy

Las Vegas, 1995

Susan Cantrell had died in the same way Jillie Fairfield had, except for a few small details. Her slender dancer's body had been virtually bloodless and unmarked except for the two small puncture wounds at the base of her throat.

The differences were minimal—Jillie was murdered in her living room, and she'd been partially clothed.

Susan's body was found naked, and in a ludicrously modest pose, lying in her bathtub.

Two full days after the killing, late in the afternoon, Daisy left the city morgue in a daze. She'd seen corpses before—a lot of them in far worse condition than Miss Cantrell's—but there was something chillingly different about these cases. Even O'Halloran was subdued, and he wasn't given to sensitive contemplation of the deeper mysteries.

"You gonna be okay, Chandler?" he asked when he and Daisy stood between their cars in the parking lot.

She thought of the calls she'd been getting, and a shiver of pure paranoia trickled down her spine and formed a chilly pool in her stomach.

"Yeah," Daisy answered. "As soon as we nail this pervert, I'll be fine."

O'Halloran nodded, opened his car door, and pushed a crumpled potato chip bag off the seat before getting behind the wheel. "You watch out for yourself," he said. "You get any hotshot ideas, you call me. Don't go running off on your own. You hear me?"

Daisy sighed and saluted.

O'Halloran slammed his door and rolled down the window. "And eat a decent dinner for once in your life, will you? Something besides them frozen things with more calories in the carton than in the food."

She smiled. "A nutrition lecture from you?" she said. "I must be in a bad way."

"Get outta here," O'Halloran said. "I'm tired of looking at you." With that, he started up his car and backed out with a screech, narrowly missing Daisy's left foot and a UPS truck.

Daisy got into her car and locked both doors with a flick of a button on her armrest. Ironic as it was, she suspected O'Halloran was right about her eating habits. She hadn't had real, unrefined food in days, and she felt like an old beater in need of an oil change.

She went back to her office for an hour, going over reports and statements on the Fairfield and Cantrell cases, looking for something—anything—she might have missed.

Later, on the way home, she stopped at a supermarket in her neighborhood, arriving just after dark, and started wheeling a cart down the aisles. A well-nourished, healthy cop, she reasoned, is a smart and insightful cop. She bought fresh vegetables and fruit, chicken and fish, bread and cereal, and some skim milk. She was standing in the checkout line, reading a tabloid article about space aliens having affairs with members of Congress, when her personal reality splintered.

Suddenly she wasn't Daisy anymore, and at the same time she was, and she was no longer standing in a busy supermarket in one of Las Vegas's more ordinary neighborhoods.

Her name was Elisabeth Saxon, the year was 1457, and she was serving ale-in a tavern with the picturesque name of the Horse and Horn. Everything around her seemed real, although she knew it was an illusion, that she was finally cracking—everything from the spit-slickened board floors to the impossibly grubby men seated at tables all around her. They were singing bawdy songs, in a version of English she could barely understand, and swilling ale between choruses.

One of them reached out and pinched her hard on the backside, and she was still Daisy enough to be outraged. She spun around on the heel of her soft leather shoe and clouted the culprit over the head with a pewter trencher.

A trencher? She thought frantically, looking down at the weapon in her hands even as her victim swayed beneath the blow. Since when did she refer to platters as "trenchers"?

A raucous cheer rose from the crowd of unwashed revelers, and Daisy—that was her real name, wasn't it?—glanced wildly about for an escape route. There was a door open to a starry night, and she dashed toward it, her customers grabbing at her apron and her skirts as she passed.

She collided with a hard form in the doorway, felt strong hands close over her shoulders.

"It's all right," a familiar voice told her gently, and she looked up into the dark blue eyes of the magician, Valerian. "You're safe. I'll take you home."

His clothes were strange—he wore a tabard, belted at the waist, and his silk shirt was puffed at the shoulders and then fitted to his wrists. Woven hose accentuated his muscular legs, and high boots, with cuffs folded down from the top, covered his feet.

All the same, this was the man she knew from her dreams—and from the Venetian Hotel in that faraway world she was already starting to forget.

She fainted, and he caught her up in his arms. When Daisy came around, she was back in the supermarket, and Valerian, incredibly, was there, too. He was holding her.

Daisy stared at him and saw understanding in his eyes, along with sorrow. She was struck in that instant with the dizzying realization that he knew exactly what had just happened to her, that he had indeed shared the experience.

"Put me down," she said, embarrassed by the gathered crowd and the revolving lights in the parking lot. Obviously the paramedics had been called. "I'm fine, damn it."

Valerian set her on her feet without a word, but there was a wry twist to his mouth. .She stole a sidelong glance at him, half expecting to see that he was wearing a tabard and boots, but his clothes, though obviously expensive, were quite ordinary, quite suited to the twentieth century. Black slacks, a gray silk skirt, Italian shoes.

The paramedics burst through the doors, and Daisy's embarrassment intensified. She knew the majority of these people—worked with them practically every day of her life. The very last thing she needed was for them to think she was losing her grip.

"What happened?" Charlie Cook, the senior EMT, asked Daisy, looking around for the patient.

"Nothing," Daisy said without looking at Valerian, pushing her hair back from her forehead as she spoke.

"Nothing?" demanded a middle-aged checkout clerk with the name Marvella stitched onto her red smock. "This young woman fainted dead away, right here in my line. Went down like a ton of bricks. And look at her—she's pale as milk."

Charlie looked stern, and his co-worker, a rookie Daisy wasn't acquainted with, studied her with a critical eye.

"We'd better check you over, Chandler. After all, it isn't normal to pass out in the supermarket when they haven't even rang up your total yet."

Daisy grinned, though she felt shaky and sick and wanted nothing so much as to be alone with Valerian, so she could ask him what the hell had just happened to her. She was certain that he knew. "Okay," she said, pushing back her hair again. "But just let me pay for this stuff first. I don't want to lose my place in line."

"Funny," Charlie said, and then he glanced at Valerian.

The magician nodded and spoke for the first time. "I'll look after her," he said.

Charlie was apparently satisfied; he cocked a thumb toward the parking lot and told Daisy, "We'll be waiting outside. Follow the flashing red lights."

Daisy paid for her purchases, Valerian standing silently beside her the whole time, and then started to push the cart out of the store. He edged her aside and took over the small task.

"Did you cast some kind of spell over me back there?" she whispered. "Or am I losing my mind?"

"Neither," he answered, with that half smile that tugged at something deep inside her. ''What happened to you is called spontaneous regression. You just visited one of your past lives."

"Oh, right," Daisy retorted. She had a headache—stress-related, to be sure.

"Your name was Elisabeth Saxon," Valerian said. "You lived in the mid-fifteenth century. You were a serving wench, and something of a lightskirt, at the Horse and Horn, a tavern on the London road."

Daisy stared up at him as the supermarket doors swished open and they went outside into the dry warmth of the night. "How did you—?"

"I was there, remember?"

He had been.

"I'm having a nervous breakdown," Daisy announced.

Valerian raised one majestic eyebrow. In the glow of stars, streetlights, and the not-too-distant Strip, his skin had a translucent quality. "Are you?" he countered, pushing the cart toward her car without being told which one it was. "If that's the case, then how do you explain my presence there? I was on the threshold of that inn, Daisy, when you hurtled into my chest like a rabbit fleeing a pack of foxes."

Daisy murmured an exclamation. "What is this? Some kind of hypnosis?"

"I'll explain it later," he said, glancing down at the trunk of her car. It sprung open, though neither he nor Daisy had touched the latch, and Valerian began putting the grocery bags inside, that curious little smile playing on his mouth again. "You'd better let your friend listen to your heart, test your reflexes, and look into your ears." he added, nodding toward the ambulance parked only a few spaces away. "He'll follow you home if you don't."

"You'll wait?" Daisy asked. She should have been afraid of this man, she supposed, but she wasn't. Instead she was full of questions she knew only he could answer.

"I'll be right here," he said.

Daisy started to turn away, men frowned down at the trunk of her car, now tightly closed again. "How did you open that without a key?"

Valerian shrugged. "I'm a magician, remember?"

Daisy left him, shaking her head.

She endured the exam, which was perfunctory, knowing all the while that Charlie probably thought she'd fainted because she was pregnant. By this time tomorrow, she figured, the word would be out that Detective Chandler had passed out in the supermarket with a cheap tabloid in her hands. She'd be called into the chief's office, no doubt, and probably taken off the Fairfield/Cantrell case if she didn't talk fast. Her boss was more likely to attribute the fainting spell to stress than pregnancy, and to decide that Daisy needed a break from homicide.

Maybe she did. God knew, she didn't love it.

Valerian waited, as he'd promised, and he insisted on taking the wheel.

Daisy looked around the lot. "Where's your car?"

"I don't own one," he said and offered no further explanation.

Daisy gave him the keys because on that one night she needed to lean on somebody. The fact that he was a stranger, for all practical intents and purposes, and up to his eyeballs in murdered chorus girls, didn't seem to make a difference.

"Where do you live?" he asked, once they were inside the car, though Daisy guessed from his tone that he already knew her address. For some reason, he was going through the motions.

"Are you the nutcase who's been calling me?" she inquired after rattling off directions to her apartment complex.

"No," he said, starting the engine and driving with an easy confidence that made Daisy wonder why he didn't have a car of his own. It wasn't that he couldn't afford one, that was for sure—headliners like him brought home the big bucks.

Maybe he'd lost his license, she speculated to avoid scarier concerns for a little while longer.

"I didn't have a license to lose," he said, as if Daisy had spoken aloud. "And I don't own a car because I have no need for one. Furthermore, the phrase big bucks, tacky as it is, doesn't begin to describe my salary. Now, could we talk about the real issue here?"

Daisy sagged back in the passenger seat, knocked breathless by his words. "I wish you'd teach me that trick," she said after a few moments of tumultuous silence, her voice squeaky with bravado. "Mind reading would come in handy when I'm interrogating suspects."

He gave her a sidelong look, then turned his attention back to the road. "Come back in a thousand years or so. By that time the ability will have evolved to the point where ordinary mortals can use it."

The term ordinary mortals nettled Daisy, and, besides, it sounded weird, as if Valerian considered himself to be outside the category. "Gee, thanks," she snapped, to hide the fact that she was seriously spooked. "Of course, most of my cases will probably be solved by then, though God knows the paperwork won't be caught up. On the other hand—what will I care? I'll be somebody else."

"You don't believe me?"

"Why should I?"

He smiled. "Why, indeed?" he replied, signaling to turn onto the side street that ran behind her building. "Perhaps our little talk will change your mind—if the incident in the supermarket truly wasn't enough."

"I want to ask you some questions while we're chatting," Daisy said as he brought the car to a stop in her assigned space. Which, of course, was unmarked. She got out of the car and closed the door with a bang. "Like how come the women in your act are being murdered?"

"I don't know," he answered with a weariness on a scale with Daisy's own and perhaps even greater. "Maybe you and I can figure that out together, after you know the truth." He handed her the keys and then opened the trunk, again with no outward motion, and took out both grocery bags.

Daisy led the way up the outside stairs to her apartment.

Inside, Valerian carried the bags to the kitchen and set them on the counter. "Sit down," he said when Daisy started putting things away. "You're still in shock."

With that, he took a head of lettuce and a bag of tomatoes from Daisy's hands and proceeded to put them in the refrigerator. Daisy sat on one of the two stools at the breakfast bar and cupped her chin in one hand.

"Evidently," she said, "your wish is my command."

He grinned at her, and again she felt a wrenching, so far within herself, so far back in her memory, that momentary tears burned behind her eyes. He took a half-eaten entree, still in its box, and carried it disdainfully from the refrigerator to the trash bin. "Wretched stuff," he muttered.

Daisy was defensive. "I suppose you eat nothing but gourmet fare?"

He laughed and returned to the task of emptying the grocery bags. "Au contraire," he said. "I subsist on a very simple liquid diet. It's the secret of my great longevity, along with a certain talent for evading the consequences of my own actions."

Daisy ran her eyes over Valerian's magnificent physique and discounted most of what he'd just said. Nobody looked like that living on fruit juice or vitamin shakes. "I believe that last part—about your evading the consequences of your own actions, I mean," she conceded. "But I'm warning you right now—if you killed those women, I'll get you."

"I believe you would," he answered thoughtfully, having finished putting the food away. "You're very good at what you do, I think."

"So are you," Daisy said, remembering his magic act at the Venetian Hotel, the way he'd opened the trunk of her car, that knack he had of appearing in her dreams. That night he'd even managed to be a part of a psychotic episode.

Impressive.

He brewed tea for her—her favorite English brand, purchased in London in the food stalls at Harrod's by a friend who worked for an airline. Not surprisingly, he didn't ask where it was, where the cups were, or if she wanted tea at all. He simply made it and set it in front of her.

She took a sip, and some of her strength returned. "Am I going crazy?" she asked, addressing herself as much as Valerian.

He leaned against the breakfast bar from the other side, arms folded on the countertop. "No," he said easily, "but there is much I must tell you. You have, to paraphrase one of your better poets, 'miles to go before you sleep.'"

"Talk," Daisy said.

Valerian

Colefield Hall, 1365

"You are ready at last," Challes announced one winter night, some three months after he'd found me unconscious in a horse stall. We'd accomplished a great deal in the time that had passed since, but I was young and impatient for the gift to be given, and it seemed then that my tutor had deliberately withheld the joys he'd promised. That he wanted to taunt and torment me.

He had brought me along so slowly, making sure I ate robustly, so that my frame filled out, teaching me to fence, that I might be graceful, pouring the most exquisite music into my ears and inundating me with poetry and numbers, philosophy and science, languages and etiquette.—

I was an apt student, perhaps because of my eagerness to be what Challes was, to do what he did, and I was handsome in my fine new clothes, with my trimmed hair and clean-shaven face. I possessed an almost boundless vitality, even surpassing the energies of my early youth, except during the blissfully languid interval following Challes's nocturnal visits to my bedside.

"Tonight, then?" I cried, nearly oversetting my chair by the drawing room fire, where I had learned so many lessons, as I bolted to my feet.

"Tonight," Challes confirmed with tenderness and sorrow in his voice.

I wondered at his sadness, but I was too self-absorbed, too eager to make the change, to ask why he was troubled.

There was a Roman couch beneath the window, with its glittering frosting of ice, and my tutor led me to that and bade me to lie down.

I would have done almost anything he commanded, for by that time I loved him completely. My adoration for Challes was a thing of purity and grace, transcending genders, a joining of spirits rather than bodies. There are those who would call me deviant; instead, I am simply whole.

I did as Challes asked, closing my eyes while he opened the collar of my shirt, listening to the thin, far-off cries of the wolves. I felt their starvation in my own gut, and at the same time my whole being, flesh and soul, hummed with the anticipation of ecstasy.

My joy was terrifying, beyond anything I'd felt before, surpassing every happiness except what I had known in the arms of Brenna Afton-St. Claire. Nothing, before or since, on earth or in heaven, could rival the mere touch of her hand. Still, the pleasure Challes gave me was keen-edged and beautiful.

He had told me that I would die as a man, during this, the greatest of our communions, but when I felt my mortal life ebbing away, I panicked and tried to cry out. By then I was too weak to make a sound, and certainly I could not struggle, but Challes murmured words of comfort and soothed me with gentle whispers. I sank quietly into my death, and all consciousness was obliterated, swallowed up in darkness.

When I awakened, I realized I was in a cryptlike vault, under the earth. I lay on a slab of cold stone, and Challes slumbered an arm's length away on another pallet of rock. I heard rats scrabbling in the corners and shuddered.

A low chuckle sounded, and I turned my head to see that Challes had awakened and lay with his weight braced on one forearm.

"No need to be afraid, Beautiful One," he said. "The rats cannot hurt you. Nothing can, except sunlight or the point of a wooden stake. If you do as I have taught you, you will live forever."

I had wanted this, yearned and pleaded for it, and yet the magnitude of eternity was only then coming home to me. Never to die? To never lay down my burdens and rest?

"Now you must learn to hunt," Challes told me, rising from his slab and dusting off his leggings and tunic. "Once that is done, I shall be gone."

I sat bolt upright. He had never spoken of leaving. Did he truly mean to abandon me now, when there was still so much I did not understand?

As he had done so many times before, my tutor laid his hands to my shoulders. "It was worth incurring Nemesis's ire to create such a splendid fiend as you," he said.

I knew, from our studies together, that Nemesis was a warrior angel, greatly feared in the dark realms. "You've had dealings with—" I could barely speak the name, it inspired such terror in me. "With Nemesis?"

"In a manner of speaking," Challes replied without flinching. "I have made too many blood-drinkers for his liking, and he is a powerful angel. He vowed revenge, with or without the permission of higher angels, should I make even one more." He feigned a sigh. "Alas, you are so beautiful and so bright—even in your drunkenness, you were magnificent. I could not resist making you immortal, for you were wasted as a mere man. To think of you here a moment, then gone—it was too painful to endure."

"What price have you paid?" I whispered, but I knew the answer already, and it filled me with fathomless grief.

Challes, my teacher, my only friend, was to be destroyed.

Because of me.

I whispered an exclamation that might have qualified as a prayer, had I been anything other than the abomination I was, and wept my first tears as a vampire.

Would that they had been my last.

« ^ »

Daisy

Las Vegas, 1995

The thing that surprised Daisy most about Valerian's story—and it was an incredible tale, spanning some six hundred years—was that she was very much inclined to believe it. She guessed she'd had some glimmer of the truth that first night, in the showroom at the Venetian Hotel, when she'd watched him raise a coach and a team of horses off the stage floor and send them sailing out over the audience members' heads. And while she still didn't consciously remember being those other women he spoke of with such passion and love—Brenna Afton-St. Claire, Elisabeth Saxon, Jenny Wade—the mere mention of their names had struck a resonant chord within her. Perhaps the dreams she'd had all her life had not been dreams at all, but memories of those other lifetimes.

"I've looked exactly the same, in every incarnation?" she asked. "Is that how you recognized me?"

"Yes," Valerian said, his eyes glowing with affection. "You are always your same beautiful self, at least when I've known you—only the costumes and the hairstyles change. Still, I think I would know you even if your looks changed significantly. I felt your presence in the audience at the Venetian long before I actually saw you."

She nodded thoughtfully. "I've read about reincarnation," she said, "like almost everyone else. But I thought people came back in different bodies, sometimes as men, sometimes as women."

"They do normally," Valerian affirmed. "You are an exception, and you needn't ask me why, for I confess I do not know. I can tell you that souls tend to return to the flesh in the company of others they've known and loved or hated in the past."

"You've told me that you can travel through time—back to the point of your own death as a mortal. If that's so, am I in all those other places, as all those other selves, simultaneously? Can you journey back there and see me as Jenny, for instance? Or Elisabeth?"

The magnificent face was drawn for less than a moment with terrible grief. "I don't know," he said. "Some vampires can change the course of events and see and influence the ones they love. Whenever I've tried to find you, however, I've met with utter failure."

She considered that. "Talk about information overload," she murmured. "If you're really Count Dracula, Junior," Daisy reasoned at some length, still sitting at the breakfast bar, elbows on the counter, fingers buried in her hair, "why haven't you tried to bite my neck? And why should I believe you when you say you didn't commit the Fairfield and Cantrell murders? That was a vampire's M.O. if I've ever seen one."

Valerian smiled, and there was just a hint of condescension in it. "Have you?" he inquired. "Seen a vampire at work, I mean?"

Daisy sighed and sat up straight on the stool. "It was just a figure of speech," she said impatiently. "Answer my questions, please."

"I haven't 'tried to bite your neck,' as you so crassly put it, because I adore you—in whatever lifetime I happen to stumble across you. That is my curse. As for why you should believe I'm innocent of these killings—" He paused and shrugged aristocratically. "Because I have told you so. I have done murder in my time, make no mistake, but these poor little creatures? No. I cared for them."

Daisy pondered him skeptically, chin in hand, and said nothing. He had just confessed to the worst crime a person can commit, but she could not picture him taking a life and therefore did not really believe that he had.

"All right," Valerian snapped, waving his arms in a gesture of wild impatience. "Don't believe me. Lock me up in one of your silly jails. But I warn you"—he was shaking his finger now—"that any attempt to detain me is an exercise in futility. If you try, I shall evaporate like so much smoke!"

Daisy looked down at her empty cup and frowned. Her head was still fogged, and it was late. Maybe that was why she believed everything Valerian said; because she was tired and her defenses were down. Or perhaps he'd drugged her. "I'll keep that in mind. Did you put something in my tea?"

Valerian drew himself up, annoyed to a truly imperial degree. "Of course not. I have no need of such silly contrivances—I am a vampire!"

Daisy sighed. "Have I missed something? Did Halloween sneak up on me this year?"

He leaned across the counter and bared his teeth with a theatrical hiss.

She bounded off the stool, wide-eyed, her heartbeat making a one-second leap to warp speed. Valerian's incisors, while beautiful like their dazzling counterparts, were longer, and they came to distinct points, sharp as a wolf's fangs.

"Shit!" she blurted, before regaining her courage, easing back to the counter, and raising herself onto the stool again.

"Trick or treat,'' he said.

Daisy flushed, embarrassed that she'd shown fear. "You could have had that done," she reasoned hastily. "This town is full of people with custom-made teeth. Some of them are probably even crazy enough to think they're vampires!"

Valerian subsided a little, leaning back against the counter opposite the breakfast bar, his hands on his hips, and regarded her wearily. "What do you want, Daisy? How do I prove to you that I'm telling the truth?"

She leaned forward again, studying him for a long time. She was mystified by this maniac, or this vampire, whichever he was. But, oddly, she wasn't afraid of him; underlying all her misgivings was a strange sense of familiarity and the sure knowledge that she was safe in his presence. "I did not say I didn't believe you," she reminded him. "Something weird is definitely going on here. I just need to work through it for myself, that's all." She paused, remembering her impromptu visit to the year 1457, via the supermarket, and how vivid the experience had been. There could be no denying that the episode was more than a dream or a hallucination. "I saw you," she said. "In my—vision, I mean. But you were wearing different clothes. If you were really there, how did you make such a quick change?"

Valerian made a sound that might have been a sigh, but was somehow different. "I merely projected myself into the scene," he said patiently, "complete with costume. You saw me because I wanted you to see me."

Daisy ran her tongue over her teeth, something she often did when she was pondering an enigma. Her headache was starting to come back, and if she didn't get some sleep, she'd be a zombie all the next day. "Earlier, when you were telling me the story of your life, you said you could travel back in time, as far as the point of your own death as a mortal."

He sighed again. "Yes."

"What's to prevent you from meeting yourself somewhere between now and then?"

"Nothing. Occasionally it happens. It's a paradox, like time travel itself."

"I don't understand."

"I'm not surprised. I don't understand, either. I suspect that no one does—at least, not completely. It's a universe of specialties—vampires are vampires, roses are roses, jellyfish are jellyfish. Which of us can grasp the whole of reality, in all its multifaceted complexity?"

Daisy didn't have an answer.

Valerian came around the counter and very gently touched her face, his thumb tracing the outline of her cheekbone. "My poor love," he said. "You've always been this way, you know—wanting answers to impossible questions, tilting at windmills, chasing rainbows. Just as you always have copper-colored hair, green eyes, and a smattering of freckles across your nose."

A shiver of mingled delight and passion moved through Daisy, and strange erotic images stirred in her memory. She did not recoil, although Valerian was still a stranger, and probably a dangerous one at that. Instead, she wanted him to make love to her, she who had slept with exactly three men in her entire life.

The pad of that same thumb strayed sensuously across her mouth. "Soon," he said, apparently reading her mind again. A thoughtful expression darkened his eyes. "But perhaps a small reminder of what we've shared together over the centuries would not be amiss."

He was a hell of an actor, Daisy thought. There were so many things happening in her body, so many sensations bouncing from one part of her insides to another, like laser beams running amuck, that she didn't have the energy to speak.

Valerian smiled ever so slightly, bent his head, and kissed her.

It was only a brief contact, a mere brushing of his lips against hers, but it rocked Daisy to her core. The earth seemed to spin away beneath her feet and shoot off into space, leaving her dangling in a throbbing void. There was no oxygen, and her heart swelled painfully against her rib cage.

She gasped and stared up into Valerian's wise eyes—she could well believe that he was six hundred years old in that moment, for she saw so many emotions reflected there, in that fathomless blue, myriad things that could not have been garnered in a normal lifetime.

"Why aren't I afraid?" she whispered.

He smoothed her hair, and even that innocent motion sent new fissures streaking through her few remaining defenses, caused the last walls to crumble and the innermost doors to swing open. "Because you know, in the essence of yourself, that I would brave hell itself for you." He glanced at the window above the sink. "It will be dawn soon. I must go."

Daisy was disappointed. Hadn't he promised to stay?

He'd read her thoughts again. "I promised a small reminder of what we had together," he clarified with a smile. "And now for one of my more impressive tricks."

With no more preamble than that, he vanished. In the space of an instant—with no drumrolls, no smoke, no mirrors—he was simply gone.

Daisy swore and leaped off the stool, as if to pursue the magician into thin air. She thought she heard, far in the distance, the faintest echo of a chuckle.

She stood there for a few moments, open-mouthed, convinced she was certifiable, before her basically pragmatic nature took over. After washing her face, brushing her teeth, and gulping down two aspirin, Daisy fell into bed and slept like a dead woman.

She did not dream.

With the morning and full consciousness came vivid memories of the night before—her "spontaneous regression" to the fifteenth century, Valerian's wild, and undeniably fascinating, tale of living six centuries as a vampire, that soul-shattering kiss, and, finally, his spectacular disappearance.

He was a magician, she reminded herself. But that single fact didn't explain all the things she'd seen and felt. There was more to it—much more.

All right, then, Daisy's highly developed left brain argued, he was a hypnotist as well as a stage wizard. He'd said straight out that he could project his own image into her mind at will, hadn't he? That, supposedly, was how he had joined her in the Horse and Horn, when she was Elisabeth Saxon, erstwhile tavern wench.

Somehow, logical as it was, that explanation didn't work, either.

Daisy tossed back her covers and got up. She was probably getting an ulcer from trying to figure this out—better to let it simmer in her subconscious for a while and think of other things with the everyday brain cells. She'd gotten to the crux of more than one case that way—using what O'Halloran called her woman's intuition.

She smiled. He'd never claimed to be original.

After going to the bathroom, Daisy opened her front door and picked up the newspaper lying on the mat. The headline wiped the smile from her face.

POLICE DUB RECENT CRIMES 'VAMPIRE MURDERS.'

"What police?" Daisy grumbled, pushing the door shut with her foot and scanning the article as she crossed the apartment to the kitchenette. "Nobody asked me about the case."

The piece was peppered with quotes from one Detective John P. O'Halloran, who was, according to the reporter, "in charge of the investigation." Daisy might have been his golf caddie, for all the mention she got, but she didn't care about that. What bothered her, and she knew it was a waste of time to worry about it, was the way the press seemed to glamorize what had happened.

Whoever the killer was, he was sure to get off on the attention and notoriety.

When the telephone rang, she was already reaching for the receiver to call the office. She almost hoped it would be the screwball who'd harassed her after Jillie Fair-field's murder; there was a thing or two she wanted to say to him.

Alas, the voice that replied to her brisk "Hello, this is Chandler" was O'Halloran's.

"It's your partner," he said, master of understatement that he was.

Daisy dragged over one of the stools from the breakfast bar and perched on it. "Oh, yes—the dimpled darling of the Fourth Estate. Tell me, O'Halloran, did you have to stay up all night to make the world safe for old ladies and Cub Scouts, or did you just take care of it on your break?"

"Smart-ass," O'Halloran said fondly.

"Have you got something new to tell me about the case, or are we going to go on exchanging sloppy sentiments all morning?"

He cleared his throat, then took a noisy slurp of what was probably coffee. He was stalling, and that was a bad sign.

"O'Halloran," Daisy pressed.

"All right, all right," her partner blurted. "The chief saw the EMT's report on your collapse at the supermarket last night. He wants you to take a few days' leave and get a checkup."

"Are you telling me that I'm suspended?"

"I'm telling you that you have to rest a few days and see a doctor. Don't come unwrapped on me now, Chandler, because this wasn't my idea. It came down from the brass."

"Shit," Daisy muttered, chewing one fingernail.

"You shouldn't talk like that. It ain't becoming."

Daisy struggled to regain her self-control before going on. There was no sense digging herself in deeper. "What the devil did Charlie tell those people?"

"That you passed out."

"And?"

O'Halloran let out a long-suffering sigh. "And the head office got a call from the checkout lady late last night—Marvella somebody. She was worried—said you were talking gibberish while you were out."

Daisy closed her eyes. "They want me to take a drug test, don't they, O'Halloran?"

"Look, it's routine—you know that. Any one of us could be asked to pee in a cup at any time."

She sighed. "I'm not popping pills or shooting up," she said, suddenly feeling as if she could crawl back into bed and sleep for two weeks. "You know that, don"t you?"

"Hell, yes," O'Halloran answered gruffly. "Of course I know that. Look, partner, don't try to buck the system, okay? Just catch up on your sleep, get the checkup, and come back to work. If you stay out too long, somebody might get the idea that you're the real supercop and I'm just the sidekick. I've got to think about my image, you know."

Daisy laughed, even though there were tears gathering along her lashes. "Don't worry, fella—your reputation is safe with me."

She hung up the receiver and moved around the apartment in a sort of stupor, showering, brushing her hair and teeth, dressing in jeans and a lightweight sweater, making toast and a poached egg for breakfast. When she'd done those things, she got into her car and drove downtown.

After a thorough examination and a lot of questions, the official department physician announced that Daisy was suffering from exhaustion and recommended that she take two weeks' leave. Her first instinct was to resist, but then she reconsidered. She had all the signs of a classic case of burnout, and if she kept pushing herself, she might just wake up one morning to find that she was an ex-cop, with her law enforcement career behind her forever.

With that specter staring her in the face, Daisy filled out the necessary papers, called O'Halloran with the news, and then went back home. For now, she told herself, it was enough that there would be no question that she'd been abusing drugs.

She stayed in her apartment just long enough to pack and call her sister, Nadine, who reported that she was getting labor pains. Within half an hour Daisy was on her way to Telluride, tape deck blaring. The screaming ghosts of all her fears and doubts followed along, staying just inside the outermost edge of her awareness.

Valerian

Las Vegas, 1995

I knew Daisy was gone when I arose that evening, rested and ready to feed, and then to resume the hunt for my enemy. Her absence gave me a bereft, hollow sensation, in that dry and atrophied thing that had been my heart, but I thought it better that she was far away. The greater her distance from me, the safer she would be.

I fastened my cuff links, smiling to myself. I had chosen a special pair that night for luck, antique gold ones that had been a gift from a cherished friend, George Bernard Shaw. But it wasn't the jewelry that gave me pleasure, it was the idea of keeping a certain promise to Daisy.

Tonight she would know my magic in a new way, and I hoped it would cause her to remember all we had been to each other over the centuries. She had been a will-o'-the-wisp, flitting from one identity to the next, having the same face and body but a different name in each generation, and having no conscious memory of me whatsoever.

I, on the other hand, had always been Valerian. Endlessly, eternally myself.

I confess that I grow weary of my own company on occasion, fascinating though I am. One gets to know one's self, over the course of centuries, and the utter absence of surprise can grind at the spirit.

"How like you, Valerian, to wax philosophical," observed a cheerful feminine voice, catching me completely off guard.

I whirled to see Maeve standing only a few feet away, gloriously beautiful in her flowing, iridescent robes, her long dark hair falling free around her shoulders, her dark blue eyes like windows into the heart of the universe. She has a penchant for the dramatic, our Maeve, a fondness for spectacular entrances and fiery exits.

But then, so do I. Perhaps it is a trait of vampires, after all, for they tend to be flamboyant creatures.

"You honor me," I said with a slight inclination of my head, "both by your visit and your words."

She laughed. "Still charming as a serpent," she said, putting her hands on her hips. "What a flatterer you are." She paused again, gazing upon me thoughtfully. "I came to ask if there have been more difficulties with this rogue vampire you spoke of the other night."

"I have not been successful in tracking him down," I admitted ruefully. I thought of Daisy again and my resolve to protect her strengthened. "But you have my vow that I will put an end to his mischief, whoever he is."

Maeve picked up one of the pretty glass bottles I kept on my dressing table and examined it with the absorbed interest of one who appreciates fine craftsmanship. "Do not be too hasty, my friend," she warned, returning the bauble to its place before turning her gaze to my face. "This may not be a blood-drinker, but a warlock, for instance, only posing as one of us. I feel certain that this is some sort of trap."

I almost whispered my next words. "Could it be that Lisette has returned?"

"No," Maeve answered with a reassuring lack of hesitation. "She is most certainly dead. You saw her perish—we all did."

"Still—"

"If Lisette had managed to resurrect herself, even in some other form, I would know it. We have other enemies, Valerian. There are many monsters roaming creation—ones we know nothing about. According to Calder, who has been performing some very interesting experiments since his transformation, there could well be other species of vampires, with different powers from our own. He has even uncovered evidence that gaps might exist between dimensions—passageways leading in and out of other realms and realities."

I found the mere prospect so overwhelming that I could not speak. The fiends of my acquaintance were daunting enough, without being joined by a host of other horrors skulking back and forth from one world to another.

Maeve folded her arms and looked at me with sisterly concern. "What is it that you're not telling me?"

I smiled sadly, touched and somehow calmed by this reminder that she cared for me. "I have found her again."

"Not—?"

I nodded, reaching up to straighten my elegant string tie. I often wear formal garb to hunt—a cape and tails, ruffled linen shirt and cummerbund, trousers with silk stripes down the outer seams—due to that theatrical streak I mentioned before, I suppose. And because my victims expect me to resemble the classic media vampire.

Who was I to disappoint the poor wretches?

"Yes," I said. "Same face, same body. This time her name is Daisy Chandler, and she's a homicide detective with the Las Vegas police."

Maeve looked worried. "You know what always happens—the ruby arrives, she dies, and then you are heartbroken. You must avoid this woman at all costs, Valerian, for your own sake as well as hers."

I wanted to weep at the impossibility of the situation, at the injustice and terrible irony of it all. "It's already too late," I confessed. "Besides, there is no avoiding Daisy. It's part of the curse."

"The curse," Maeve mocked. Surprisingly, considering what she is and what she's seen, my revered queen is not in the least superstitious. "That's a medieval idea. There is no dark magic at work here—someone or something is causing these things to happen. Find the root of the problem and you will know how to solve it."

"So practical," I said with a sad smile. Maeve is young, in terms of being a vampire, having been made quite recently, in the turbulence of the eighteenth century. "Do you fancy that I've never tried to uncover the cause? I have searched for centuries, all to no avail. And every generation or so, the horror repeats itself."

She approached me and put a gentle hand on my arm. "Perhaps Calder can find some remedy in science," she said in an effort to lend comfort.

I laughed, though my feelings resembled bereavement more than mirth. "You have great confidence in that husband of yours."

Maeve nodded. "I have," she admitted. "And it is well placed, I assure you. Now, come with me. We'll feed together, and then search for this mysterious foe of yours."

"It has occurred to me," I said, looking down into her sweet, beautiful face, "that our cause would be better served by keeping watch over the four young women who remain in my employ. I shall sever all ties with them, of course—when I again perform my magic act, I will appear alone—but they seem the most likely targets."

"What about this Daisy woman? I should think she would be in the gravest peril of all."

There could be no denying that, but I had a suspicion that the creature wanted to punish me, to subject me to a lengthy and torturous ordeal. Logically, he was more likely to save Daisy's death for last—and to make it the most grisly of all.

I voiced these thoughts to Maeve, who agreed, though with reservations.

"Still," she said, "you must not leave her unguarded for long."

We linked arms, as though to enter a grand dining room or stroll onto a dance floor for a waltz. "I would like to bring Daisy here to my lair, where she would surely be safe, but mortals balk at such forms of protection—they consider them arbitrary. Remember how Calder hated your efforts to keep him out of danger?"

Maeve winced and then flashed me a guilty little smile. "He was quite impossible as a mortal," she said. "I like him much better as a vampire."

With that, we willed ourselves away.

Feeding was not a challenge—though neither of us had a taste for the blood of innocents—for humans with evil hearts, while in the minority, are still all too easy to find. Prisons abound with them, and so do the world's various halls of government.

When we had taken the necessary sustenance, Maeve and I set out on our search for the demon who had murdered Jillie and Susan.

Our efforts met with failure.

Daisy pulled into the parking lot of a well-known motel at ten-thirty that night, too tired to travel even one more mile. After buying half a turkey sandwich and a can of tomato juice in the convenience store across the highway, she locked herself in her room and sat cross-legged on the bed, consuming her dinner and watching the early news.

There was nothing about the so-called "vampire murders" in Las Vegas, but she supposed it was only a matter of time before the wire services and major networks picked up the story. What the tabloids could make out of it didn't bear thinking about.

She got off the bed and threw away the debris from supper, muttering to herself. "Don't think about work, Chandler. Think about Nadine and your niece or nephew. Think about happy things—fun things. Do you want to have a nervous breakdown, for heaven's sake?"

Daisy looked at her reflection in the mirror over the sink. "You're not a crazy person," she said forcefully. "You're smart and strong and brave, and a damn good cop on top of it all. And you are not losing your mind. You're just tired, that's all. A week with Nadine and you'll be thrilled to rub elbows with homicidal maniacs again!"

She laughed, but the sound lodged in her throat when the telephone rang.

A lesser person wouldn't have answered it at all, Daisy reflected, but she was Woman, and if she had to, she would roar.

"Hello!" she snapped.

A familiar chuckle came over the wire. "I found you," Valerian said. "There are times when I wonder if my magic is a plus or a minus."

Daisy was pleased out of all proportion to reason to hear his voice. Later she would think about the impossibility of his finding her in a motel she'd chosen at random. For the moment she was simply happy that he had.

"I guess it's a plus,'" she said. "If I asked how you tracked me down, would you tell me?"

"Sure," came the blithe reply. "But you're not going to ask me, are you? Because you already know the answer I'd give."

Daisy wound an index finger in the telephone cord, as wildly happy as a teenager about to be asked to the prom by exactly the right guy. "You'd say it was vampire magic."

"Something like that." He sounded solemn now, almost sad. "Are you all right, Daisy? Have I frightened you?"

She considered. "Yeah, you've done that all right, but in a different way than you probably think. It's a kind of quivery, excited feeling, like I get used to get in high school, when my girlfriends and I would go to a horror movie and then stay up half the night scaring the hell out of each other."

"I honestly don't know whether to be honored or insulted," he said, and the smile was back in his voice.

Daisy sighed. "Take your choice," she said. "You are definitely weird, but I've got to admit, I like you. Maybe it's the old snake-charmer syndrome."

"Maybe," he agreed. "I have to go now, love. But before I hang up, I'd like to ask you a question."

"Okay," Daisy replied.

"Do you remember the promise we talked about last night?"

She felt a shivery, delicious warmth in all the places where she was most feminine. "Yes," she said. "Sure."

"I'm about to keep my word," Valerian told her. "That is, if I have your permission."

Daisy was trembling with anticipation and sweet terror. If this was a sexual fantasy, it was a hot one, and she wasn't about to squelch it. "Okay," she said shakily.

"If you want the lovemaking to stop, you have only to form the thought in your mind, and it will be over."

Daisy was glad he couldn't see her—at least she didn't think he could—because she was blushing like crazy. "That sounds fair."

He chuckled. "Good night, Daisy."

"Good night," she whispered, but the line was already dead.

Confused, happier than she'd ever been, Daisy got ready for bed, turned out the lights, and slipped between the sheets. Both the nightgowns she'd brought were still neatly folded in her suitcase.

She lay still for a long time, waiting, half expecting Valerian to appear in her motel room in the same way he'd vanished from her apartment..

Forty-two minutes had passed on the digital clock on her bedside table when the urge to throw aside the blankets and sheets struck her like a sudden fever. She trembled as the cool night air touched her bare skin, making her nipples tighten.

In the next instant she felt hands on her flesh, and she knew the hands were Valerian's, even though she was still alone. Then she felt his lips, warm and wet and soft, on her breasts, on her belly, on her neck and her thighs. It seemed that every part of her, inside and out, was being kissed and caressed, fondled and teased.

Daisy arched her back, giving herself up to the passion that swept around and through her like a storm. She was reminded, in the midst of the wild ecstacy that followed, of a recent dream. She'd been someone else in that dream, living long ago and faraway, and she'd ridden a horse into a pounding surf. The waves had consumed her then; this time, it would be the pleasure, the mounting, excruciating, glorious pleasure.

« ^ »

Valerian

England, 1457

True to his word, Challes had abandoned me after teaching me the rudiments of feeding and protecting myself from certain gruesome perils to which vampires are subject. I was at my most licentious in the years and decades that followed; there were few pleasures I did not sample and even fewer sins I did not commit. In retrospect, it seems that my proclivity for wine had been replaced by an equal devotion to the ever more capricious demands of my senses.

I was beautiful as an archangel and as self-centered as a spoiled child, and I resented my erstwhile tutor bitterly for leaving me to my own devices as he had. I carried cynicism to new heights, and might have continued on this treacherous and unsavory course if I hadn't happened into a seedy roadside inn one spring night in 1457. I'd been traversing the countryside in my coach, pretending to be a mortal, as I sometimes did when I was bored.

I doubt it will surprise you to learn that the place was the Horse and Horn and that I found Brenna within its shoddy walls, clad in a cheap, undyed gown that revealed too many of her charms and carrying pitchers overflowing with ale to tables full of leering louts.

Imagine my astonishment, my joy, my outrage! I had believed her dead—I knew she had perished in the waters off the coast of Cornwall—and yet here she was, looking as she had always looked, except for the coarse dress, laughing and bantering with a lot of louse-ridden sailors and highwaymen!

Utter silence descended when I was noticed at last, standing there in the doorway of that wretched establishment, a gentleman to all appearances, finely dressed and obviously rich. I heard their jumbled thoughts—more than a few planned to rob me, and most would have done murder for the least of my valuables—but I was interested only in Brenna.

She turned to see what had caught her customers' attention, and the look of speculation in her green eyes was devastating to me, for there was no recognition in them and certainly no love. She, like the bilge-rats and pickpockets seated round the rough-hewn wooden tables, was calculating my worth. The thought that I would pay well for a tumble in the straw, and probably be a pleasant partner in the bargain, flitted across her mind.

This was not my Brenna, and yet it was. The flowing, coppery hair, the slightly freckled and otherwise flawless skin, the sumptuous little figure and the breathtakingly beautiful emerald eyes all belonged to my beloved. The mind and spirit, at least in their deepest recesses, were hers, also; it was the outward character I did not recognize.

She sidled over to me, smoothed the fine silk of my tunic with the palms of her small, grubby hands, and smiled up into my rigid face.

"My, ain't you pretty," she crooned.

Catcalls erupted all over the room, but those men were no more to me than the vermin that crawled among the folds of their ragged garments and skittered behind the walls.

Despair nearly overwhelmed me, and yet I could not help rejoicing. In whatever form I found her, this was my treasured one. The darling of my heart. I would carry her away and, in time, share with her the gift Challes had given me. Together we could explore eternity.

"Brenna," I whispered, catching her fingers in my own.

"You can call me whatever name you want, pet," she simpered, batting her eyelashes and even managing to blush a little. "But I'm Betsey to me friends."

I wanted to carry her out of that place over one shoulder and to throttle her, at one and the same time. In the end I did neither, for I could not move. "Betsey?" I echoed stupidly.

She drew herself up, preening, and her coquetry almost made me laugh, for she was no cleaner than if she'd been thrown down and dragged through a barnyard by her ankles. The poor thing suffered greatly in comparison to the sophisticated mortal women I normally consorted with; in her present state she barely had the grace to slop swine.

"Elisabeth Saxon's me full name," she announced very proudly.

More hoots and crude comments rose from the Great Unwashed, and I ignored them as before. I would deal with any who dared to approach me—or Elisabeth—later.

I placed a small leather pouch in her palm, weighted with gold, and watched with an odd mingling of pleasure and pain as her eyes lit up at the prospect of such wealth.

"Come with me," I said quietly.

Elisabeth did not hesitate; she untied her stained apron and tossed it aside, never noticing that it settled over one reveler's head like a crudely woven shroud. Then she offered her hand to me, and I took it and pushed her out into the dark dooryard of the inn.

Her companions rose almost as one from their benches and stools, and their faces, in the flickering light of the candles and the scant fire on the hearth, were the faces of fiends.

It was pitifully easy to intimidate them, however; no magic was required. I simply swept them up, one and all, in a look calculated to shrivel their very souls. None of them tried to follow as I turned and strode outside, catching Elisabeth's elbow in a forceful grasp as I passed her and thrusting her toward my waiting carriage.

"You're not one of that sort what likes to be rough with a girl, are you?" she asked as I bundled her inside.

"I won't hurt you," I said. I was trembling with emotions I could barely sort through—passion, fury, adoration, disgust. "Great Zeus," I muttered at last when we were settled and I had signaled the driver to be off with a rap of my knuckles on the carriage roof. "What's happened to you?"

Her eyes were huge in the darkness, and she held the small bag of gold tightly against her belly, as though fearing I might snatch it back from her at any moment. "What do you mean by that, sir? I've just been making me way in the world, like any girl would, in me place—"

"When was the last time you had a bath?"

Fire flared in her spirit, and I was heartened to see it.

"Baths ain't good for a lady's health," she said with conviction.

I folded my arms and regarded her in silence for a long time. "Don't you remember me, even a little?" I asked at last, unable to keep myself from voicing the deepest disappointment at all.

Elisabeth shook her head. "No," she answered bluntly. "And I'd recall a fine and fancy man like yourself if we'd ever met, now wouldn't I?" She paused to ponder me, though I must have been nearly invisible to her in the thin moonlight, her lovely eyes narrowed. "Why did you call me by that other name, even after I told you it weren't mine?"

I feigned a sigh, wondering what this poor little urchin would think if she knew I wasn't a man, fine and fancy or otherwise, but a beast instead. A creature that ventured out of its vault only by night, loving the darkness, exalting in it, drawing nourishment from the veins of hapless mortals.

"You remind me of someone I knew a long time ago," I answered at length. I believe I realized, even then, that I would not be able to change Elisabeth back into Brenna, but I was not yet ready to accept the fact. I was still caught up in the miracle of finding her at all, and I did not think beyond the easing of my own terrible loneliness.

She held up the pouch and gave it a slight shake, causing the coins inside to jingle with merry solidity. "I guess you'll want plenty for this," she said with what seemed to me uncommon valor, given the circumstances. For all she knew, I meant to make full use of her grubby little body, kill her for sport, and reclaim my gold. She could not have guessed that I wanted only to be near her and keep her safe.

"Yes," I replied, settling back against the upholstered seat and folding my arms. "I will expect a great deal from you. You can start by putting your knees together—you look like a bawd, sitting there with one foot on either side of the coach."

Elisabeth flushed, and that raised the vampire hunger in me, though of course I quelled it immediately. Even I had standards, though one would not have guessed it by my behavior in the years prior to that momentous night, and I had no intention of feeding on her.

Which is not to say that the temptation didn't present one of the keenest agonies I've ever had to endure. Elisabeth's vitality, her sumptuousness, filled the interior of that carriage, thrumming like a heartbeat.

I took her to Colefield Hall, the estate that had been Challes's and was now mine. I had not seen him again since his farewell, shortly after my making.

The moon was high when we arrived, and she'd fallen asleep on the coach seat opposite me, curled up like a child.

She did not awaken when I carried her into the keep, or when I laid her gently on the finest bed in the house and covered her with the best blankets.

I stood there, gazing down at her, spellbound by her disheveled magic, stricken by her unexpected reappearance in my life. I had not made the effort to investigate such things up until that time, having been wholly devoted to the pursuit of unceasing pleasure, but now I could only conclude that Brenna had been reincarnated as this grimy, tousled hoyden.

For what purpose, I wondered, if not to find me, her true and only love, once again? That would explain why she looked exactly as she had a century before, in that other, too-brief existence.

She stirred in her sleep, and I smiled to myself. By returning, she had transformed me, I thought—for I, too, was still naive in my fashion, having troubled myself to learn so little of life and love.

I left her to hunt, retracing my steps, so to speak, to the dooryard of the Horse and Horn to feed, and returned to Colefield Hall just before dawn. I was settled in my vault, far beneath the earth, where the acidic light of the sun could not reach my vampire's flesh, when Elisabeth awakened and proceeded, as I later learned, to set the household on its ear.

Daisy

Between Las Vegas and Telluride, 1995

The orgasm was violent, when at last it overtook her, seeming to slam her deep into the mattress even as it sent her hurtling upward to collide hard with the ceiling. She alternately moaned and mumbled incoherently, having no breath for the screams of pleasure that throbbed in the back of her throat, pitching and thrashing and clawing at the sheets with splayed fingers as her body convulsed in spasm after spasm of ecstasy. She longed for peace and stillness, fearing her heart would explode at any moment, it was beating so fast, and at the same time she prayed the release would never end.

Alas, it did, ebbing away slowly, like a tidal wave in grudging retreat, leaving a limp and trembling Daisy behind. She felt the sheen of perspiration cooling on her body, felt her hair clinging wetly to her cheeks and temples and nape. She huddled there upon that strange and anonymous bed, quivering inside an intangible cocoon that still reverberated with the force of her satisfaction. Her breath came in gasps and her heartbeat was still too rapid, thudding like the hooves of a fleet horse racing over hard ground.

She wept, because her mystical union with Valerian had been so unbearably beautiful, and because he was not there to gather her in his arms and hold her close. Then, exhausted, utterly sated, in soul as well as body, Daisy slept.

She awakened with a start, blinking against the bright sunlight sneaking between the blinds at her window, to the sound of someone pounding at the motel room door.

"What?" she demanded, pushing back her hair.

"Five minutes until checkout time," a woman warned cheerfully.

Daisy swore and scrambled out of bed to wash her face and brush her teeth. She wriggled into fresh clothes, grabbed her suitcase and purse, and made a dash for the door, and it was only later, when she had paid her bill, bought a breakfast sandwich, and hit the road again that she let herself think about what had happened the night before.

The languid, limp-muscled sense of well-being was still with her, a warmth that had settled in deep, soothing her nerves, permeating her very bones. As crazy as it was, and as impossible, there could be no denying that Valerian—or someone—had made slow, thorough, excruciating love to her in that motel room.

Without actually being there.

Daisy swallowed another bite of her sandwich. It was hypnosis again, she concluded, chewing. Valerian had known she was attracted to him, and he'd planted the seeds of that session of solitary passion by things he'd said to her, first in her apartment, and then over the telephone. Or maybe the whole thing had been a sort of hysterical hallucination and she'd done it all on her own…

She discarded the idea along with the rest of her sandwich and its paper wrapper, which she stuffed into a plastic garbage bag hanging from a knob on her dashboard. There was no easy explanation for the kind of long-distance lovemaking she'd enjoyed so much, or for Valerian himself.

He'd disappeared from her apartment, vanishing before her very eyes, and last night he'd given her the mother of all orgasms without even being there. Those were the facts—unless, of course, it turned out that she was suffering from a major case of self-delusion and had flunked the drug test after all.

Hardly likely, Daisy decided, keeping her eyes on the road. She'd tried to go into denial on several occasions, hoping to escape her problems, and it hadn't worked. She was just too damned left-brained to fool herself for more than a few minutes at a time.

Much as she might wish otherwise, Valerian was real. His magic was just that, and he had really and truly seduced her with his mind, from who knew how far away.

Daisy muttered an expletive and reached out to turn on the car radio.

Nadine, normally petite, was as big as the A-frame she shared with her earnest but quiet husband, a greeting-card artist named Freddy. They both looked sleep-rumbled and a little dazed, and Daisy felt a mild twinge of guilt for awakening them at one in the morning. She supposed she could have checked into a motel, but the truth was that she needed some time to recover. Another bout of psychic sex would probably have killed her.

She kissed Nadine's cheek and nodded to Freddy. "I'm sorry," she said. "I should have let you sleep."

Nadine, bundled in flannel, laughed and shook her head. She was twenty-two, with chin-length dark hair and brown eyes, and worked as a clerk in a supermarket. "Don't be silly. We're glad you're here, and I would have been worried if you didn't show up."

They were standing in the living room, and Freddy went over to fold out the hide-a-bed while Nadine helped Daisy out of her coat.

"I thought you said you were in labor," Daisy said, rubbing her hands together. The mountain air was crisp, and the fire in the woodstove had apparently gone out a long time ago.

"False alarm," Nadine said with a cheerful shrug. "Do you want a cup of cocoa or something? Are you hungry?"

Daisy felt a small, sharp twist in the center of her heart. She and Nadine had always mothered each other, except for that short stint when they'd lived with their grandmother, since Jeanine hadn't had a clue when it came to parenting. "No, sweetheart," she said, blinking rapidly and looking away for a moment. "If I find myself on the verge of starvation, I'll get up and raid the refrigerator. You go back to bed. You need your rest."

Freddy, having folded out the couch, proceeded to fling a few chunks of wood into the stove, which was set into an old-fashioned flagstone fireplace. "The bathroom's at the end of the hall," he told Daisy, putting a gentle hand to the small of Nadine's back and pushing her along ahead of him. "Night."

"Night," Daisy replied.

She found the bathroom, which was so cold they could have hung beef carcasses in there without fear of spoilage, and hastily washed and brushed her teeth. The living room was a little warmer, but she figured she would have been able to see her breath in front of her face if there had been enough light.

After stubbing her toe on one of the metal legs of the hide-a-bed, Daisy threw back the covers and plunged beneath them, shivering.

She tossed and turned and finally tumbled into a fitful sleep. A sound awakened her sometime later, and she sat up, shoving a hand through her hair. At first she didn't remember where she was, and then she thought there was something wrong with her sister.

"Nadine?"

Silence.

Daisy sat up, groping for the switch on the lamp beside the couch, but before she found it her eyes adjusted to the darkness, and she saw him, standing at the foot of the bed. She didn't scream because she wasn't afraid.

"Valerian," she said softly.

"I'm sorry, love." She heard a smile in his voice. "Did I frighten you?"

"No. Are you really here, or is this one of your tricks?"

He came to sit beside her on the mattress, offering his hand. "I'm here, all right," he said.

"I'd hate to have to explain you to my sister and brother-in-law."

Valerian chuckled. "You won't have to. They're both sound asleep with visions of sugarplums dancing in their heads."

Daisy leaned against the back of the couch. She was wearing long underwear for pajamas in an effort to keep warm. "Last night was pretty spectacular," she told him. "Was I the only one having fun?"

He touched her face, and she saw in the dim light that one corner of his mouth was curved ever so slightly upward. "I knew what you were feeling," he said, "and I took pleasure in that."

"Why did you make love to me from a distance?"

"Because it would be too dangerous up close."

"You certainly take an innovative approach to safe sex. Most people just use condoms."

Valerian laughed, and Daisy was sure the sound would wake Nadine and Freddy, but apparently it didn't, for neither one of them showed up in the living room.

He leaned forward and kissed her lightly, briefly, on the lips. "I was talking about another kind of danger entirely," he said.

"You're afraid you'll pounce on me, in the throes of passion, and bite my neck?"

Valerian shook his head, and she caught a glint of mischief in his eyes, veiled in shadow though they were. "If we were in the 'throes of passion,' as you put it, I would already have pounced." He raised a hand to her face, rubbing his thumb along the length of her cheek. "No, Daisy love, I'm quite capable of making love to a mortal woman. But it's better if I stay away from you—I shouldn't even be here now."

"Because?"

He shoved his fingers through his lush, gleaming brown hair. "Because whoever—whatever—murdered Jillie and Susan might come after you next."

Daisy shivered involuntarily, remembering the murder scenes and the bodies of those two ill-fated women as vividly as if she'd seen them moments before. She started to speak, but Valerian stopped her, laying a fingertip to her lips.

"It is vital that you listen to me, Daisy," he said quietly, "that you believe what I'm telling you. You are in grave danger, but there is a place where you'll be at least moderately safe."

She closed her hand gently around his and spoke in a soft voice. "I'm a cop, remember? I'm not really safe—moderately or otherwise—anywhere. Hell, I don't even want that kind of security. The only risk-free place is the grave, and I'm definitely not ready for that."

Even in the gloom, she saw his magnificent face contort with some powerful emotion—anger? Frustration? Fear?

She couldn't begin to guess.

"You don't understand," he said with admirable control, after a short, tumultuous silence.

"I do," Daisy insisted. "You want to protect me, and that's wonderful. But I'm a big girl, with a badge and a thirty-eight. I can take care of myself, and I won't hide from anybody or anything."

"What use would a piece of metal and a primitive handgun be against a vampire?" Valerian said, leaning in close to make his point. "Don't you see that I—another nightwalker—am your only hope?" He paused, and his struggle to contain his emotions was visible in his face, despite the shadows. "Damn it, Daisy," he whispered, "if you won't do this for yourself, do it for your sister and her family. Do you want to draw this creature here, to this house?"

Daisy felt the blood drain from her face, and she raised one hand to her mouth. "Oh, God," she murmured. "Nadine—Freddy—that poor little baby—"

Valerian gripped her shoulders and gave her a gentle shake. "They have guardian angels, Daisy," he said quickly to stem her panic. "Especially the child. But angels are single-minded creatures, almost wholly absorbed in the adoration of their Creator. Sometimes they miss things."

"Oh, great," Daisy muttered.

"You've got to leave here now, tonight," Valerian insisted.

She glanced toward the doorway to the hall. Just beyond it, Nadine and Freddy lay sleeping peacefully in their bed. "I can't just abandon Nadine," she argued frantically. "What would she think if she woke up and found me gone? She's counting on me to help her—she's about to give birth, for heaven's sake!"

"That's easy," Valerian said. He was already pulling her to her feet, finding her discarded clothes unerringly in the dark, tugging the garments onto her body, over the bulky long Johns, as if she were a child. "I'll simply remove all memory of your arrival from both their minds."

"That's crazy," Daisy protested and he closed her suitcase and shoved it at her. "You can't actually do that, can you?"

"I can," Valerian said, "and I have. Tonight your sister dreamed you came for a visit. In the morning she'll feel a little wistful and wonder how you are and if you're taking good care of yourself."

He pushed her out the door, closed it quietly behind them, and ushered her straight to the car.

"What about Freddy?"

"Same thing. 'Strange,' they'll say, 'that we both dreamed about Daisy. Do you suppose it means anything?' "

Daisy was pressed into the driver's seat. "Won't they hear the motor?"

"They might," Valerian said, relaxing at last, "but they'll just think it's one of the neighbors' cars."

"But—"

"Just drive, Daisy."

"Terrific. After all this, I don't even get to travel by broomstick."

She could see his face clearly in the moonlight, and his expression was downright reproving. "That was beneath you, Daisy," he said. "Just go home before I lose my patience."

"Okay, genius, I will. It's not like Super-ghoul would think of looking for me there of all places. And what happens if you lose your patience?"

"Leave," Valerian said evenly, "before you find out."

With a sigh Daisy started the engine, backed out of Freddy and Nadine's driveway, and headed back in the general direction of Las Vegas.

Valerian

Colefield Hall, 1457

Elisabeth let out a bloodcurdling shriek, not of fear but of fury, as I ripped away the last of her clothes—no better than rotted rags, they were—and hoisted her off her kicking feet and into the brimming tub before the fire. "This is foul treatment, sir!" she shrilled, hammering at my chest with her fists and splashing enough water over the sides—and down the front of my breeches—to fill the long-empty moat outside. "And it weren't no part of our bargain, neither! Don't you know I could catch me death? And you don't care, neither, do you, you bloody mother-loving—"

"In the name of whatever deity you worship, Elisabeth," I said through my teeth, "stop this mewling and thrashing, or I swear I'll take you to the nearest nunnery and leave you there to rot!"

She fell silent, and I felt pity for her, seeing the look in her eyes, but I wasn't fool enough to show it. She'd have been raising the roof again in a trice, the little imp.

"That's better," I said with what would have been a heartfelt sigh, had I been a mortal man. "You've been laboring under a delusion, my dear. Being clean is a most desirable state."

Elisabeth's expression was one of pure bafflement, and I realized, with both tender amusement and weariness, that she hadn't grasped my meaning at all.

I tried again. "No one has ever died from taking a bath," I assured her quietly. I scrubbed her from head to foot, for it was plain that she hadn't the vaguest idea how to scrub herself, then wrapped her in a blanket.

She knelt in obedient silence by the fire while I sat in the hearth chair, gently combing the tangles from her copper-gold hair.

At last she turned and looked up at me, letting the blanket fall away, revealing her exquisite, creamy body with a combination of shyness and pride.

"Will you have me now?" she asked.

I could not help myself; I reached out to touch her damp hair, her smooth, fire-warmed cheek. "Not yet, love."

"But I am a—a whore. You paid for me."

"You are not a whore. You are a princess. And if I paid for you, then I have the right to decide when to take you to my bed. Is that not so?"

The perfect column of her neck moved slightly as she swallowed. No sound came from her lips.

I pulled the blanket around her again and raised her to her feet. "Are you afraid?" I asked, holding her in my arms because I could not resist doing so. Not after loving her, wanting her, mourning for her for so many long, empty years.

Elisabeth nodded.

"Don't be," I whispered. "Because I would sooner destroy myself than do anything to hurt you. All I want is to look after you—"

"I'm not a fine lady, like you're used to," she murmured. "Is that why you don't want me?"

I laid an index finger to her nose, remembering so many things we had done together, things I knew she could not recall. "But I do want you," I said softly. "I want you desperately."

"Then, why—?"

I bent to kiss her lips, but only lightly. Only briefly. "We have time," I told her.

She trembled against me. "Well, I can't stay away from the Horse and Horn forever, you know," she protested, drawing back in my embrace. "There be those who'll be asking after me. I've got to look out for me lads, or some other girl will have them—"

An unholy rage surged through me at the thought of her giving herself to another man, whether for love or for money.

I caught her chin in my hand, perhaps a touch too roughly at first, and immediately relaxed my hold. Still, I knew from the fear that rose in her eyes that I had hurt her a little, and that she had not missed the look of fury I had been unable to disguise.

I closed my eyes for a moment, cursing myself for a rash, intemperate fool.

"I'm sorry," I said hoarsely. "I didn't mean to hurt you."

Her lower lip quivered as she gazed up at me. "I'm not that other girl—the one you used to know. I'm just plain Betsey Saxon, who lifts her skirts for them what can pay."

I should have listened to her. It might have saved us both so much pain.

Instead, I turned furiously away. "Don't ever say that again," I rasped, and she made no other attempt to reason with me for the rest of that night.

« ^ »

Elisabeth Saxon

Colefield Hall, 1457

Elisabeth lay alone and puzzled in Valerian's enormous bed, watching the firelight flicker across the ceiling. It was unheard of for a man to offer coins and then not take his pleasure, and she was troubled. Perhaps the gentleman did not think her fetching—the idea nettled her sorely—or perhaps she just wasn't fine enough for the likes of him.

Well, come the morrow, she'd take her bag of gold—it was tucked safely away beneath her pillow—and go straight back to the Horse and Horn. There were men there what appreciated a sweet-natured woman, and they wouldn't try to drown her in hot water or burn her eyes out with soap, neither.

She stretched, enjoying the feeling of the clean, smooth sheets against her bare skin, and sighed. She'd known a queer sense of recognition, when Valerian had entered the inn, as if she remembered him from somewhere beyond the reach of her memory, but she'd worked out why he'd seemed familiar. He was the living specter of a figure in a painting she'd seen, up in London Town, when she was a girl of eight.

Her father was still alive back then, and they'd gone to the city, the pair of them, hoping to sell off a cartload of cabbage in one of the marketplaces. They'd done well and shared an eel pie to celebrate, but as they started back toward home, a storm had come up, washing the cobbled streets and stinking gutters with rain.

They'd left the cart and pony in the mews and taken refuge inside a vast church, where there were paintings on the walls, and statues all about, and what seemed like thousands of candles. The place was empty, except for a priest and two or three old women kneeling in prayer, and as Elisabeth looked about, she marveled at the grandeur of it all.

The biggest painting loomed on the rear wall of the sanctuary, and Elisabeth's father, cap in hand, had told her in a whisper that it represented the aftermath of the great battle between God's angels and those who followed Lucifer. They'd been tussling on and off ever since, the good sorts and the bad, by his reckoning.

The eerie reality of the picture fascinated Elisabeth. The sky was filled with angels that appeared to fly, wings fluttering gracefully, while below their dangling, snow-white feet, amidst leaping flames, hideous demons thrust their pitchforks upward and leered in defiance.

On an outcropping of rock, well below heaven, but not quite in hell, or so it had seemed to Elisabeth, stood a magnificent figure, gazing up at the angels with a look of such sorrow and yearning that she'd wanted to weep for him. "Who is that?" she'd whispered and would have touched the image with a small, dirty finger if her father hadn't grasped her hand to stop her.

A monk had crept up behind them, leathershod feet moving soundlessly over the cold stone floor, and it was he who answered Elisabeth's question. "That, my child, is Lucifer—once God's favorite angel."

"Why does he look so sad?" she'd asked.

The monk spoke briskly and without compassion. "He knows that he is forever damned. As are all who willfully disobey God. Have a thought for the well-being of your soul, or you also will know the wrath of heaven."

Elisabeth had shuddered and moved a little closer to her father, who had put an arm about her shoulders. He had often remarked, in the privacy of their poor hovel in the outmost edge of the village of Lower Bilby, that kinder gods had once ruled in England, before the Christians came, bringing their devil with them.

Now, lying in a warm bed, with her belly full of good food, Elisabeth realized only too well why the master of this grand house had seemed familiar.

He looked exactly like that beautiful, solemn being in the church painting.

She shivered and pulled the covers up under her chin.

"Don't be a dunce, Betsey Saxon," she murmured to herself. "The master's a strange one, I'll give you that, but he's no more than a man."

A shadow moved next to the window, took on solidity and shape. "Ah," said that cultured, resonant voice she had come to recognize. "But I am 'more than a man,' Elisabeth. So much more."

Valerian.

Elisabeth's heart thundered; indeed its beat seemed to reverberate into every part of her body, but she couldn't rightly say she was afraid. "Where did you come from?" she demanded. "You wasn't here a minute ago."

He laughed, and the sound, rich and masculine, moved over Elisabeth like an intangible caress. "No, I wasn't," he said. He took the candle from its pewter stick, carried it over to the hearth, and squatted to touch the wick to the embers.

Thin, golden light gilded his face, his hair, and the fine, strange cut of his clothes as he crossed the room again. He stood at the foot of her bed, holding the tallow at chest height, seemingly unaware of the hot wax dropping onto the flesh of his hand. In the candle's glow, and the silver wash of the moon, it seemed he'd been sculpted from alabaster or ivory, like the statues in that London church.

"I just wish you'd make up your mind, that's all," Elisabeth said. "About whether you want a tumble or not, I mean."

Something moved in the exquisite, shadowy face at her words. Some fleeting emotion she supposed was better left unrecognized.

"Must you speak like a common trollop?" he asked after a moment's silence.

Elisabeth sat bolt upright in bed, and it never occurred to her to cover her full breasts. Modesty had no place in her life; she survived by enticing men with coppers to spend. And she had not been unhappy or ashamed, for she'd only done what she must.

Her cheeks were as hot as the last coals tumbling through the grate. "That's what I am, sir. Who else would I talk like now, besides me own self?"

Valerian looked as though she'd struck him, then he whirled suddenly and flung the candle into the fireplace. The tallow melted and caught fire before he turned to face her again.

"I can't bear it," he murmured, rubbing his temples with a thumb and forefinger. "This is worse than if I'd never found you at all."

Elisabeth felt a sudden, sweeping sympathy for him, just as she had for that lonely fellow in the painting, standing on the very brink of hell. Rising onto her knees, she made her way to the end of the bed. "For tonight," she said softly, "I can try to pretend that I'm her. I ain't been around so many ladies as some others might have been, but I think if I just kept quiet—"

He made an odd, strangled sound that might have been either a sigh or a sob. Then he came to where she knelt, placed his hands on either side of her head, and pressed her close against his chest.

"No," he whispered brokenly. "No, love. You needn't change to suit me. I adore you—I always will, no matter what you do. Yours is a splendid and brave spirit, and the truth is, you are far better than any woman, anywhere—"

She raised her hands to his shoulders and gazed up into his magnificent face. She didn't understand a great deal of what he said, it was true, but she knew how to console a man. "Let a girl lend a bit of comfort, won't you?" she said. "It won't be so bad, I promise."

He gazed into her eyes, idly smoothing the pads of his thumbs over her cheekbones. "Such charity," he marveled, and she knew by the tender despair in his voice he wasn't mocking her. "Have you no inhibitions at all?"

She was eager to lift his spirits. "I don't know," she said quickly, "but if you'll just explain how that's done—"

Valerian threw back his head and gave a shout of laughter, and when he looked at her again, it really did seem that there might be tears glistening in his eyes.

Elisabeth flushed, closing her hands into fists against his chest. "What's the joke?" she demanded.

He lifted her until she was standing, her feet sinking into the feather ticking as her knees had done before, her face on a level with his own. "Stay here with me," he pleaded quietly. I'll give you whatever you want—all the gowns and kirtles you could wish for—a bucket of gold to celebrate the setting of every sun—anything."

Elisabeth relaxed her hands. No man had ever spoken to her that way, as if she had the option of granting or refusing his petition, when he was willing to pay so dear a price for her company. "And I don't have to be her—that other woman?"

Valerian lifted his face for a few moments, as though silently begging some favor of heaven, and then lifted her into his arms. "You only have to be Elisabeth," he said in a husky tone. "Tomorrow, after the sun goes down, you and I will be off to London, and we'll buy you so many baubles and ribbons that you won't be able to carry them all."

"You wouldn't make a promise like that and then change your mind, would you?"

He smiled and shook his head. "No, sweet. A promise is a promise."

She thought he would lie with her at last, since he carried her around the bed and set her so gently atop the smooth covers, but instead he just stood there, looking down at her.

Elisabeth caught hold of his hand, realizing that she wanted very much for him to stay. A peculiar state of shyness had overtaken her, though, and she could not confess what she was thinking.

"Couldn't we go in the morning?" she asked eagerly. "To London Town, I mean."

"I shall be busy then," he answered, and his words had just the faintest edge. "Have your evening meal early. We'll set out as soon as the moon rises."

Something compelled her to argue, to stall, so that he might stay longer. "But there's wolves about then, ain't there?"

"I am not afraid of those poor creatures," Valerian replied, "nor should you be. They'll do you no harm."

Despite the gentle tone in which he spoke, Elisabeth knew he would not change his mind. For reasons of his own—only the saints knew what they were—he did not wish to travel the road to London by day.

In Elisabeth's opinion, it was daft to take such a chance, for there were not only wolves to lie in wait along the way, but brigands, too. She told herself it was for the gowns she was going, and the gold he'd promised—a bucketful of it for every day at sunset, he'd said! Of course, he was probably bluffing about that.

She sighed. If things didn't turn out to her liking, why, London was a big place, and it would be easy to slip away and make a new start for herself. Especially with money saved and good clothes to wear.

"Won't you stay?" she said, still clasping his hand, which felt strangely cool and hard.

Valerian bent just far enough to brush his lips, shiver-light, across her knuckles. "Some other night, my love. When you've learned to trust me. And don't think of running away once you get to London—there are creatures far deadlier than wolves wandering its streets."

Elisabeth gasped, for she'd only thought of losing herself in that great city—she certainly hadn't spoken of it aloud. "You're a warlock!" she accused, meaning to sit up again, to flee the room, nay, the castle itself, and take her chances with the wild animals and thieves she might well meet on the road.

She could not move. Valerian held her with nothing but his gaze, and yet she was pinioned to the bed.

"I pray you," he said evenly, "do not insult me so again. I am no such creature."

Tears, more of wonder and amazement than fear, sprang to Elisabeth's eyes. She had given up struggling beneath his invisible hold, having found it futile to do so. "What are you, then?" she persisted, barely breathing the words. "You said yourself, when first you came out of the shadows beside the window, that you are more than a man!"

"Brave, foolish Elisabeth," he said, withdrawing a little way into the darkness. "That was your fatal flaw before as well, you know. You were not wise enough to be afraid, and that's why the sea took you from me."

"What do you mean?" Elisabeth might have been bound by visible ropes; the spell he'd cast over her was that strong. "What are you, if you ain't a man or a warlock? And what do you mean, saying the sea took me away from you? What have you done to me?"

Valerian did not reply, but simply retreated another step, and then another. In the next instant he was gone, without so much as stirring a draft.

The enchantment was broken; freed from whatever mysterious power had held her pressed to the mattress, Elisabeth leaped off the bed and rushed to the place where Valerian had been until a mere heartbeat before.

Furious because she could not comprehend his trick, she stomped one foot and let loose with a string of curses that would have turned the River Thames back upon itself.

Valerian did not return that night, although Elisabeth kept her eyes open as long as she could, waiting for him.

Daisy

Las Vegas, 1995

The trip back from Telluride was never quite clear in Daisy's memory. One minute she'd been driving down the highway in the predawn darkness, sensing rather than seeing the mountains and Christmas-scented forests all around her. The next, she found herself cruising through the Nevada desert in the bright afternoon sunlight, only a few miles outside her hometown.

Either she really was losing her mind, or Valerian had come through with a version of broomstick travel after all.

Turning onto the roadside, Daisy put on the brakes and shut off the engine. Then she just sat there, trembling, her forehead resting against the steering wheel, until she was sure she wouldn't a) hyperventilate or b) go into hysterics.

After a few moments of recovery, she reached up and wrenched the rearview mirror toward her, peering into her own eyes, noting the shadows beneath them and the pallor of her skin.

"You're not crazy, Chandler," she said aloud and with conviction. "Have you got that? If you saw a guy disappear, he damned well disappeared! And if you think you made the trip between Telluride and Vegas in practically the blink of an eye, then that's what happened!"

A swirling blue light flashed across her reflected image, and she sighed and tilted her head back against the seat to take a deep breath, hold it to the count of five, and release it slowly. It was an antistress technique she'd read about in a magazine article while waiting in the dentist's office.

The state trooper approached the car on the driver's side and rapped on the window.

"You feeling all right, ma'am?" he inquired through the glass.

Daisy rolled it down. The trooper was young, and probably still convinced he could change the world, and her heart went out to him. According to the plastic tag on his uniform shirt, his name was Wilson.

She nodded and smiled. "I'm okay. I guess I'm a little tired, though—I just drove over from my sister's place in Telluride."

Okay, so that might have been a small lie, Daisy conceded to her twitching conscience. What was she supposed to have said—that she'd been zapped from Colorado to Nevada, without even touching down in Utah? Badge or no badge, she'd wind up in a room with upholstered walls if she told the truth.

"I'd like to take a look at your license and registration, please," Wilson said, with an endearing all-American smile.

Daisy reached for her purse, but slowly. She was a cop herself, after all, and she knew well enough how a quick move would look from the trooper's perspective. She handed him the requested license along with her badge and was removing the registration from the clip on the visor when he cleared his throat.

"That's all right, Detective Chandler," he said, returning the laminated card with her mug shot on it, along with the small leather folder containing her police ID and badge. He was blushing a little. "You know how it is."

"Yeah," Daisy said good-naturedly, "I do."

"I could drive you into town if you're too tired to go on."

Daisy shook her head. "I'm okay. I just needed to take a breather, that's all. Thanks."

The trooper nodded, touched the brim of his hat, and strode back to his car. Daisy watched his retreating figure in the mirror, grinning slightly and thinking there was nothing quite like a man in a uniform.

Except maybe a vampire magician in a tux and a flowing cape, she reflected, starting the ignition, signaling, and pulling back out onto the freeway.

Trooper Wilson chivalrously escorted her all the way to the Las Vegas city limits.

She sighed when he took an exit and headed back in the other direction. So much for the police escort.

At first Daisy's apartment seemed to be just the way she'd left it. She called Nadine right away, ignoring the blinking light on her answering machine, and heard her sister's cheerful "Hello?"

Daisy closed her eyes. Would Nadine remember her visit, or had Valerian wiped it out of her mind, and Freddy's, as he'd claimed? "Hi, sis," she said in a rush of breath. "How are you?"

"Daze! Hi! Freddy and I were just talking about you this morning—it's the darnedest thing. We both dreamed you showed up late last night and slept on our hide-abed! Isn't that wild—the two of us having the same dream?"

"Wild," Daisy agreed, feeling a bit sad and very disoriented. By now she half believed she'd dreamed her part of the experience, too. "When's that baby planning to be born? When interest rates go down? When there's another Republican in the White House?"

Nadine laughed. "I'd ask her, but I think she's busy doing aerobics. This kid never sleeps."

Daisy felt bruised inside. It was, and would always be, a sharp disappointment that she couldn't be there for Nadine at this important time. "Have you and Freddy managed to agree on a name yet?"

"No," Nadine admitted. '"He wants to call her Carmen Miranda. Trust me, Daisy, no child of mine is going to go around with half the produce department piled on top of her head."

Now it was Daisy who laughed. "What do you want to call her?" she asked when she'd recovered.

"Whitney," Nadine replied in a wistful voice. "It's such a classy name, don't you think? But Freddy says it's pretentious."

"I'm sure the two of you will come up with something suitable."

There was a short silence. "When are you coming over to see us?" Nadine finally asked.

Daisy's eyes burned. When we've found this Thing, this murdering fiend, and driven a stake through its heart. Or shot it with a silver bullet.

"Soon," she said aloud, after what she hoped was an inaudible sniffle.

"Are you catching cold?"

It was Daisy's day for telling lies, among other things. "Yeah," she said. "Maybe I'll take a few days off to drink chicken broth and watch soap operas."

"Good plan."

"You'll call? When it's time, I mean?"

"You bet," Nadine said gently. "You're destined to be Carmen Miranda's favorite aunt. Besides, I'm expecting a really good baby present from you."

Daisy smiled. "Don't worry about that," she said. "I've been poring over catalogs and prowling through malls for weeks. I'm going to send something that will make Miss Whitney Donaldson the envy of the disposable diaper crowd."

"Why don't you bring the gift in person?" Nadine asked.

Daisy's smile faded. "I can't get away just now, sweetie," she said. "Trust me when I tell you that some very big things are going down around here right now."

Nadine let out a long, martyrly sigh. Evidently she figured it was her turn to be the mother hen of the pair. "I worry about you, Daze. You take too many risks. And it seems like every time I watch one of those reality shows on television, some police officer gets killed."

"Nadine? There's an easy solution to that—stop watching reality shows."

"Promise me you'll be careful. God knows where Mom is—we're probably happier not knowing. But you're all I've got, Daisy, and I can't bear to lose you."

A tear slipped down Daisy's right cheek, and she dashed it away with the back of her free hand. "I'm not all you have," she reminded her sister. "You've got Freddy and that little one doing a high-impact workout under your rib cage." Images of Jillie and Susan's bloodless bodies filled her mind and made her stomach pitch. She'd try her damnedest, she vowed silently, not to end up like them. "Look, just focus on the business at hand, okay? I'll be fine."

Nadine didn't sound reassured, but they said their goodbyes and hung up. Daisy immediately called O'Halloran on his cell phone, guessing that he wouldn't be in his office if he could help it.

She was right.

"O'Halloran," he barked. "Don't tell me there's been another murder," he rushed on before Daisy could even identify herself, "because I don't want to hear it!"

"Has there been another murder?" she demanded.

"Shit," O'Halloran snapped. "This is Chandler, ain't it? You're already back in town."

There are moments when I'm not sure I ever left in the first place, Daisy thought, with a sort of fatalistic whimsy. "It's your winning personality and your movie-star body, O'Halloran," she said. "You drive me mad with passion. How could I stay away?"

He swore again, more creatively than before and with considerably more venom. "You're on leave, damn it!" he growled once he'd finished reciting the long list of colorful epithets and expletives he'd learned in nearly three decades of public service.

Daisy smiled into the telephone receiver. "Don't talk like that," she said sweetly. "It ain't becoming."

O'Halloran sighed heavily. It wasn't easy, the sound seemed to say, single-handedly thwarting evil and holding back the tide of crime.

"All right," he said. "You'll read it in the papers or see it on the tube anyhow. Somebody else was killed last night."

Daisy leaned against the wall, her eyes closed. "Who?"

"It wasn't another one of that magician's showgirls, if that's what you're thinking," O'Halloran said, his voice gruff with suppressed emotion. "But the M.O. was the same. Lady named Janet Hurly."

Daisy knew her partner well. "There is a connection, though, isn't there?"

"Yes, damn it, for all the concern it is of yours right now, with your badge in limbo. You stay out of this, Chandler, or I swear to God I'll go to the chief myself and tell him you think you've been to Mars twice on an alien spaceship. And he'll believe me, too, after the way you went T.U. in the supermarket."

"O'Halloran."

"She was this Valerian guy's agent and business manager," he finally admitted. "The victim, I mean."

Daisy muttered a favorite swearword of her own, rubbing her right temple with two fingers. "Getting information out of you is like getting a congressman to admit he wears lacy underwear. I feel like I've just dragged Lake Tahoe with a hairnet!"

"Why should I make it easy? This one's my problem."

"That's what you think, O'Halloran."

He hung up.

"O'Halloran!" Daisy screamed into the mouthpiece. Then she disconnected with a belated bang, knowing it was useless to try to reason with the man. He thought he was protecting her.

Instantly the phone rang again, and Daisy snatched it off the hook.

"What?" she demanded, thinking it was O'Halloran calling back with another reason why she shouldn't try to do her job. He might fancy himself her knight in shining armor, but she'd be damned if she'd let him trample her career beneath the hooves of his trusty charger.

"Dai-sy." The voice was the same mechanical, androgynous drone she'd heard before. "Time—to—die—soon—"

"Why did you kill Janet Hurly?" Daisy interrupted acidly. She was too furious to be afraid; that would come later, she supposed, when she'd had time to think. "I thought I was supposed to be next." She drew out the last words, mimicking the caller's tinny monotone.

"I left—a—message—for you," the thing said. There was no soul behind the voice, no emotion. "I'll be sending—a special gift—very soon."

Daisy felt a familiar chill. "Gee, thanks," she replied, revealing none of the cloying, elemental fear that was climbing her backbone, vertebra by vertebra. "I was beginning to think it was over between us."

"Goodbye, Dai-sy/Bren-na/Elis-a-beth/Jen-ny. See—you—soon."

Daisy hung up and dashed into the bathroom as bile surged into the back of her throat. She was bending over the toilet, shivering and retching convulsively, when out of the corner of one eye she caught a glimpse of a still form behind the shower curtain.

With a cry Daisy whirled, automatically reaching for her service revolver—which was tucked away under the front seat of her car. There was a baseball bat in the towel cupboard—she'd never really recovered from seeing Psycho on the late-late show—and Daisy grabbed it and prepared to swing.

The shape behind the shower curtain didn't move or speak.

Bravado was all she had, besides the baseball bat. Reason and experience told her that if she tried to run, the intruder would be on her before she got to the front door. If he happened to be bigger or stronger, she'd be in deep sewage.

"If you have a weapon," she said forcefully, "drop it. Now."

Nothing.

Daisy took a deep breath, let it out, and then, on one of those rash impulses that sometimes earn cops their own segment on the local news, reached out and wrenched the plastic curtain to one side.

A life-size blowup doll, the kind that can be purchased in any sleazy novelty shop, dangled from the shower head by a noose fashioned from the belt of Daisy's bathrobe. For a dramatic touch, two small red marks had been drawn onto the neck.

Daisy turned back to the toilet and threw up in earnest.

When the heaving stopped at last, she rinsed her mouth, washed her face, and called O'Halloran on his car phone again. "Get over here," she said calmly. "Now."

She hung up and went down to her car for the thirty-eight. While she waited for her partner to arrive, Daisy inspected the rest of the apartment. None of the windows had been forced, and she remembered clearly that the front door was locked when she'd arrived home from a trip she probably hadn't gone on in the first place.

Daisy sat down on the couch in her living room, the revolver in her lap, and heard the echo of the caller's robotic voice in her brain.

I left a message for you…

O'Halloran didn't bother to knock. He just walked right in. Daisy thought numbly that she should be grateful he hadn't kicked the door open, movie-cop style, weapon drawn. She might have shot him if he had.

"What's going on, Chandler?" To his credit, O'Halloran looked genuinely concerned. "You space out again or something?"

"Just go and look in my shower," she said.

I left a message…

O'Halloran did so and bellowed an exclamation. When he got back to the living room, his face was heart-attack gray, and sweat beaded his forehead and upper lip.

"Jesus, Joseph, and Mary," he rasped, shoving one hand through his sparse hair. "That's just plain ugly."

Daisy knew there was more. Maybe she was psychic. "And?"

O'Halloran sank into a chair, pulling his cell phone out of his jacket pocket in almost the same motion. "Janet Hurly's body was found hanging from a showerhead," he said as he dialed headquarters. "The killer used what looked like the belt of a bathrobe for a rope. What we got here, Chandler, is a real reasonable facsimile."

« ^ »

Valerian

Outside Las Vegas, 1995

The taillights of Daisy's car, glowing red as the eyes of a demon in a bad painting, dissolved into the predawn gloom. I worked a mental trick that would cause the journey to pass quickly for her and withstood the temptation to set my beloved on a path leading anywhere except back to Las Vegas.

How I yearned to lock her away in some enchanted tower—if such a place existed—or hide her like a treasure in my desert lair. The ruby ring, the harbinger of her death, would arrive soon, I knew, and I was full of terror.

I dared not attempt to shield her, though, however noble my intentions, for Daisy cherished her freedom in this life, as she had in all the others before it. I had learned from bitter experience that she would despise me for imprisoning her.

I was, by that time, utterly desperate. I had searched for my ruthless enemy, along with Maeve, and all to no avail. I think I realized, even then, that if I found the fiend I sought, I would also find the one who had stalked my beloved and me, down through the centuries, making a deadly gift of the bloodred gemstone I had come to hate and fear.

As I saw it, I had no choice but to awaken Tobias, the slumbering one, who had been among the first vampires created. The rest of that strange fellowship had perished by their own choice, in the womb of the earth, except of course for Lisette, the first queen. She'd died by Maeve's hand, and rightfully so, far away on a moonswept moor.

But those are other tales, for other vampires to tell.

I willed myself to Tobias's lair, barely reaching that gravelike pit ahead of the consuming sunlight, and sprawled beside my elder. Before I could even attempt to rouse him, by word or touch, the consuming sleep bore me down and down, into darkness.

I was trapped inside my dreams, where I saw Janet Hurly, my mortal manager and something akin to a friend, savagely murdered in her apartment. I was unable to come to her aid, mired as I was in the vampire sleep, and it was perfect torment to look on helplessly. When it was over at last, when he'd strangled Janet, this creature I couldn't quite recognize, and then left her body hanging from the showerhead by a strip of cloth, it seemed her staring eyes were fixed on me.

Accusing. Asking why.

I flailed mentally, trying to regain consciousness and thus escape the smothering weight of the nightmare, but it was no use. Sometimes I was wakeful during the daylight hours, though I could never tolerate the sun, but it was not a feat I could perform at will. The phenomenon happened on its own, generally after I had been feeding with uncommon appetite for a long period of time.

At last, at last, the blessed caress of twilight reached me, stretching fingers of shadow down through the soil, and I was again in command of my body and mind. I sat up in Tobias's cramped coffin of a lair, pebbles and the bones of some hapless mortal scrabbling beneath me as I moved.

"Tobias!" I shook his slender shoulder. He resembled a lad, having been made while still a youth, but in fact he was, as far as I knew, the oldest vampire in existence.

He mumbled and stirred slightly, making a groping motion with one hand, to dismiss me.

I straddled him and grasped both his shoulders now, and the rotted fabric of his tunic crumbled in my hands, fragile as curls of ash on a cold hearth.

"Damn you, Tobias, wake! I need your help!"

Even in a stupor he was powerful, and with no physical effort at all, with nothing more than a half-formed thought, he cast me from him. I slammed against the side of our joint tomb with a jarring impact, mentally revising my earlier supposition that only Maeve Tremayne was stronger than I.

"Go—away," Tobias muttered.

For Daisy's sake, I would brave Tobias's rare but formidable wrath. I would plead, bargain, lie.

Anything to keep Daisy from the unknown monster.

I knelt at his side. "Please, Old One, hear me. There is a fiend, a vampire, I think, but perhaps a warlock—"

Tobias interrupted in the expressionless tones of one entranced. "Return to Dunnett's Head," he said slowly without opening his eyes. "The answer is there—and not there. That is the riddle."

With that, he settled deeper into his nest of death, looking for all the world like a child curling up on the nursery couch for his afternoon nap. I knew I would get no more from him no matter how long or how forcefully I persisted.

Dunnett's Head. My ancient home.

I sat back on my haunches. I had not been near that accursed place since the day Brenna and I left it, while I was yet mortal. Crouched there in Tobias's grave, I doubted that even a trace of the village itself had survived the passing centuries, though there might well be ruins of Baron Afton-St. Claire's austere keep.

I covered my face with both hands for a moment, hating even the thought of returning to the scene of so much tragedy and pain, knowing at the same time that I must go immediately. Tobias had said its name clearly.

Dunnett's Head.

I dared not even take the time to hunt and feed, for any delay might rob me of my determination to find my foe before he completed his plan of revenge. I did not need to be told that his designs included Daisy.

Daisy. She would have been doomed anyway, like Brenna and Elisabeth and Jenny and the others before her. There was no escaping the curse, no matter what I did or said or thought, but my desperate delusion was also a part of the mysterious evil that had tormented us both for six hundred years. Each time I stumbled across my beloved, in each new incarnation, I believed I could save her. I had to cling to that vain fancy, or go stark, screaming mad at the prospect of losing her again.

I turned the powers of my mind upon Dunnett's Head, and in the length of a mortal's heartbeat, I was there, standing among the moonlit stones that had once formed the baron's keep. I shivered in the night wind that surged upward from the sea, although a vampire does not feel that kind of chill, and turned slowly to look around me.

In a few paces I stood where the courtyard had been, in the exact spot where Brenna's father had bested me in swordplay. I bear the scar of that conflict still, a tidy line across my middle.

Soon I found the remnants of the great hall and the chapel, and there was still a ditch, though so shallow now that it was hardly discernible, where the moat had been.

Memories assailed me, striking my spirit like stones hard-flung, and I found I could not bear to stand in this place where Brenna had been and was no more.

I walked down the hillside to the site of the village, traversing the short distance as a mortal man would have done, instead of willing myself to my destination, for I was in no hurry to arrive.

Not even stones remained to mark where the cluster of humble huts and shops had been, but it didn't matter. I found the location of the bootmaker's shop, with our pitiful rooms at the back, where I'd been born as a human child, where I'd nursed at my mother's breast and endured my father's resentment as I grew. I knew the places where Krispin and I had played as boys, the spots where peddlers had sold their wares and tinkers had made their bright, noisy camps. I looked out upon the dark sea, watching the moonlight dance in ever-changing patterns of gold and silver, and wondered why Tobias had sent me here.

I had found memories, yes. But what of the answers I sought? What had I gained by returning, beyond another increase in my capacity to endure pain?

I might have left then, in frustration and disappointment, were it not for a stray thought of my poor mother. I knew that she, like my father and Krispin, like most everyone in the village, had died in the pestilence. Brenna and I had looked on from the hillside while corpses, blackened by that foul plague even before they burned, were flung onto the blazing pyre.

Someone must have buried the bones afterward, I reasoned, for the majority of our neighbors had been Christians, and they will go, I have found, to great lengths to dig proper graves and say holy words over them.

While I did not mourn my father, I had loved my mother and brother quite devotedly in my way. I wanted to find their last resting place and stand beside those long-forgotten plots for a brief interval, remembering, hoping they had fared well in the next world.

They deserved that much, I reflected, after all their suffering.

When I had made considerable explorations, striding this way and that, dredging my memory and all my senses, I divined the presence of a large, common grave, well away from the place where the village had been, and hurried toward it, gliding silently through the grass like a specter.

Standing beside that unseen tomb, with its great, dry jumble of bones, I closed my eyes and fixed my concentration on days so long past that only immortals remember their like. After a time I began to see images of the bodies in that grave as they had been before the plague struck.

I saw Old Tom, the tanner, and Ben Willy, who milled the corn into meal. I saw their wives and their children, and so many others as well—fishermen, crofters, the baron himself. They were ghosts, some joyous, others full of sorrow, and they cast dancing shadows into my mind.

I saw my mother, the uncommonly beautiful Seraphina, and knew her remains lay disjointed and brown within the pit. My father's bones were there, too, far from hers and reaching out to her even in death, but I felt no impression of Krispin, no echo of his laughter or his quick fury.

I frowned. If he did not lie here with the others, then where? Had he escaped to the sea, onboard one of the ships he was forever sighting on the horizon? Had he gone to London, or taken up the Christian cross, as the good brothers had bade me do so long ago?

I heard Tobias's voice in my head.

Return to Dunnett's Head. The answer is there—and not there.

I frowned, and another chill struck me, coming not from the cold and treacherous sea but rising from within my own being.

Could it be? Was this my enemy, then—my own brother, Krispin?

No, I insisted to myself. He loved me, and I loved him.

Krispin would have been unable to keep his existence from me for so long. Besides, we had been brothers, friends. He had followed me everywhere, looked up to me, laughed with me…

And wanted to do everything I did.

Everything.

I shuddered and tipped my head back to search the starry sky with eyes that burned. "No," I whispered. "Not Krispin."

But I knew even then that my brother had not returned to dust, like our father and mother. He was aboard, and he was my avowed foe. Some vampire, most likely Challes, had transformed Krispin into a blood-drinker.

My despair was absolute, all-encompassing. It drove me to my knees, there beside that mass grave, where I wept with fresh grief.

"Krispin." I whispered. "Why?"

There was, of course, no answer, for my brother, as it happened, was very busy elsewhere.

Elisabeth

London, 1457

The house was fine indeed, with a cozy fire burning in every room and paintings on the walls. Elisabeth had a chamber of her own—that was what the master called it, a "chamber," and she liked the way the word sounded—and even a servant whose task it was to look after her. The maiden, named Kate Crown, plainly disapproved of Elisabeth and her country manners, but she was a canny soul and showed her misgivings only when Valerian wasn't about.

Elisabeth saw neither hide nor hair of the master during the day, and even at night he often had business abroad. She didn't mind dealing with Kate and the other servants of the household, for she could hold her own against that lot right enough, but she'd become somewhat attached to Valerian and was always anxious for his return.

He joined her at the table most nights, and an abundance of roast meat and boiled vegetables was always served, along with fruits and potatoes, but Elisabeth never saw him take so much as a bite to eat. She asked him once why he didn't touch his food, and he said he'd had all he needed somewhere else. She didn't raise the subject again, but she'd often gone hungry in her brief and difficult life, and she still thought it was a queer thing never to take up a spoon or a knife in your own house.

There were other odd things about the household and its master.

For one, Valerian was never addressed as Mister This or Mister That—the servants called him sir or master, and kept their eyes down. His friends, of whom there were a great many, and who always visited at night, were every bit as strange as he was, and greeted him in odd ways. They scolded him indulgently, as if he were a child, and yet they seemed to revere and even fear him.

Elisabeth was frankly jealous and wished they wouldn't be so familiar. She especially hated the women, in their grand gowns and jewel-trimmed capes, for to them he was "darling" and "beautiful one," and they kissed him and smoothed his hair.

Sometimes, when he was home of an evening, he read to Elisabeth from manuscripts and bound volumes by the fire in the drawing room. He took her to see a puppet show once, and every night, when she was ready to go to bed, she found a handful of shimmering gold coins waiting on her pillow.

She hoarded them against a future that might be less bountiful, hiding them under a loose board in a corner of her room. She had learned long since that good fortune was no more trustworthy than spring weather or a tinker's promise, but there could be no denying that she was in luck.

Not that Elisabeth was entirely happy, for she wasn't. She had come to want Valerian, as a woman wants a man, but despite his generosity, he still had not come to her bed. In fact, he hadn't even entered her room since the second night, when he'd appeared as if by conjuring and asked her to stay with him.

One evening, after a month of high living in London Town, Elisabeth was alone by the drawing room fire. She kicked away her slippers to warm her toes and wished it was so easy to take the chill off her heart. She was a woman, not a child, as the master seemed to think, and she longed to be touched and held and spoken to in soft words.

Elisabeth had enjoyed her work at the Horse and Horn, both upstairs and down. It was worth enduring the occasional bad night for all the times when she'd taken comfort from the warm presence of another person.

She wanted that again.

The guest came in the early evening, when the master was out, and asked expressly for Elisabeth. He was fair and handsome in a prissy sort of way, and he would not give his name. He'd brought a packet for her, he said, a splendid gift.

The package was small, a sheet of parchment tied with a thin blue ribbon. Pleased, Elisabeth opened the bundle and found a golden ring inside, set with a great, glittering red stone.

Elisabeth closed her fingers around the jewel, wanting it for her own and yet strangely afraid, too. "What do you want in return?" she asked, for she knew the ways of the world well enough.

The stranger slipped the exquisite ring onto her finger, and the square stone winked, red as an ox's blood, in the firelight. "Only for you to wear it," he said.

Elisabeth was speechless.

He touched her forehead with light, cool fingers, and then he was gone. Within five minutes Elisabeth had no memory of the encounter, and could not explain, to herself or anyone else, how she'd come to have such a ring.

When Valerian returned home, it was late, for the moon had fitted itself into a high corner of the window, and it was so pale Elisabeth could almost see through it, like an onion skin. There were two young men with him, their eyes bright, their beautiful skin white as new milk, their clothes rich and elegantly cut. To another person, they might have seemed drunk, but Elisabeth was an expert on that, and she knew they were sober as Saint Peter, the pair of them.

The master stopped on the threshold when he saw Elisabeth curled up in his favorite chair, and she realized with a start that he was surprised to see her. That was an odd thing in itself, since he usually knew not only where she was, but what she was thinking.

The two knaves squeezed into the doorway behind Valerian, peering over his shoulders at Elisabeth.

"The rumors are true," one of them said. "What a vision she is!"

"However do you resist her?" asked the other.

Valerian's gaze was fixed on the fiery jewel gracing Elisabeth's finger, and a small frown creased his brow.

There ended the theory that the costly bauble had come from him.

She hoped she hadn't taken to stealing in her sleep.

Elisabeth rose, with a dignity she'd learned by watching the master's female guests, and put her hands on her hips. "I'll thank the both of you not to talk about me as if I had neither ears nor wits!"

Valerian's mouth twitched at one side, but Elisabeth didn't know whether he'd suppressed a smile or a scowl. And she wouldn't have cared, whichever one it was.

"Go to bed, Elisabeth. It is late," he said evenly. She noticed that he didn't move out of the doorway, but effectively blocked his friends from entering the room.

"I ain't a little girl and I won't be ordered about," Elisabeth replied with a lift of her chin.

The master raised one eyebrow. "Ah, but this is my household," he countered in the same smooth tones as before. "Here things are done as I command."

"Are they now?" Elisabeth pressed. She had doubts about the wisdom of what she was saying, but she couldn't seem to stop herself. She folded her arms and raised her chin. "For all I care, you can take your bloody commands and bugger yourself with them, one right after the other."

The lads laughed uproariously at this, but Valerian did not look pleased.

"Leave us," he said, without sparing his guests so much as a glance, but they knew he was speaking to them. Elisabeth recognized that right enough, because they almost collided with each other in their rush to back away.

"Wait!" Elisabeth called to them, not in fear, but in defiance. "I'll go with you, lads. It's that dull around this place—"

She started to pass Valerian, as if to follow them, and he caught her arm in a firm but gentle hold and stopped her. It was hard not to smile; silly of him, not to realize that she'd never leave without her store of gold coins and at least one woolen cloak.

"You're not going anywhere," he said. "And we'll discuss that little trinket you're wearing later."

Elisabeth hid her triumph, and the flash of fear that streaked through her like lightning, as she had hid her amusement. He'd read her mind often enough in the past, the master had, but he seemed to have lost the knack.

Still holding her arm, Valerian glanced at his guests and repeated his earlier request in blunter terms.

"Get out."

They obeyed without further ado, and the door slammed hard behind them.

"What is this about?" the master demanded of Elisabeth when they were alone.

Her chin quivered, and she thought she might cry. Damned if she would, she vowed in the very next instant, she who hadn't shed a single tear since the day her father died of a fever, when she was but fourteen.

"I want to go back to the Horse and Horn," she said, hugging herself tightly with both arms.

He did not release her until he'd marched her back over to the chair and pushed her into it. "You want to do what?" he rasped, pacing the length of the stone hearth several times and then stopping suddenly to stand there glaring at her. "'In the name of all that's holy, why? Haven't I treated you well—given you food and coin and garments fit for a princess to wear?"

"You've treated me," Elisabeth said bravely, though in truth her courage was starting to crumble, "like I was your sister!"

The master stared down at her, clearly astounded. "My behavior has been impeccable!"

"Whatever that means!" Elisabeth flung out her arms in exclamation. "Talk like a plain man for once, damn you, and not some walking book with skin and hair and eyeballs!"

He closed his eyes for a moment. "What would you have me say?"

Elisabeth swallowed. "I wouldn't have you say nothing," she replied boldly. "You don't only talk too fancy, sir—you talk too much as well!"

He watched her in pointed silence, his arms folded.

A terrible thought occurred to Elisabeth, a reason why he had never touched her in any intimate fashion.

"No," Valerian said before she could voice the possibility, "I do not prefer boys to women."

It was almost a relief that he was reading her mind again; at least he was paying attention.

Elisabeth blushed, holding his gaze, fierce and intimidating though it was. "I need somebody to lie down with me," she said. "I need to be held real tight in somebody's arms." And then she began to cry. Noisily, with a great deal of snuffling and heaving of shoulders.

Valerian hesitated, then stepped forward and, without a word, pulled her into his embrace. She wailed into his fancy tunic, the fabric bunched in her fists.

Presently, when she'd expended most of her great sorrow, he lifted her gently off her feet and carried her up the stairway and along the passage to the door of her chamber. She was certain she wouldn't be able to stand it if he left her alone, feeling the way she did, but he stayed.

He undressed her slowly and with reverence, admiring and caressing her breasts as he bared them, lightly touching her soft white belly and the tangle of skin beneath, where her legs met.

Elisabeth lifted her hands to his face and drew his head down. When their lips touched, he moaned, somewhere deep inside himself, and for Elisabeth it was as if there were stout ale mingling with her blood, racing through her veins.

After a while he pulled back from her, just far enough to look into her eyes. His hands, though cool, seemed to set her flesh ablaze with sensation.

"Is this what you want?" he asked. "The choice must be yours, beloved, not just mine."

She nodded, frantic and feverish, and pressed herself close to him. Beloved. The word found its way into her very soul and tolled there, like a bell. "Yes," she whispered. "Oh, yes."

He laid her gently on the bed and took off his clothes without hurrying. Moonlight streamed in through the windows, making his splendid body glow like polished marble, and as she watched him, it occurred to Elisabeth that he was too beautiful, too perfect, to be human.

Valerian was indeed, as he himself had once told her, more than a man.

"Touch me," she said, and he lay down beside her on the soft mattress, taking her into his arms. There was a single flaw, she saw, as he poised himself above her, a long, thin scar, pink against the alabaster whiteness of his skin, spanning the width of his torso.

"I have wanted you for so long," he told her, and she believed him.

Elisabeth had never known such piercing desire, never dreamed of feeling the way she did that night. She could not lie still and, putting her arms around Valerian's neck, she moved her hips in a circular motion beneath him.

He groaned, and somewhere far off a hound bayed in primitive harmony.

Their joining, too long delayed, was neither gentle nor ordinary. One moment they were separate, the next they were a single being, with a shared heartbeat, breathing the same air, thinking with one mind, one soul entwined with the other.

There was a sense of the inevitable, of a destiny that could not have been avoided. They moved together, their pace rapid, urgent, fierce.

Elisabeth pitched beneath Valerian, her hands moving wildly over the smooth flesh of his back and the flexing muscles of his buttocks, as if to take the whole of him inside her, as she had taken his manhood. She had pretended with other men, but with Valerian there was no need; her rising cries were born of the purest pleasure.

Valerian did not try to quiet her; instead he thrust harder and deeper. Although he made no sound at all, Elisabeth saw ecstasy in the planes of his face and felt it in the way he trembled upon her.

She reached satisfaction first, sobbing and breathless, soaring into a new place, far above the reach of her own mind and soul.

When Valerian followed her into the flames, only moments later, he gave a long, low cry, and started to spill himself into her. Then his body jerked convulsively, as if to leap to some new and unexpected height of pleasure. He closed his eyes, his head thrust back, and gave a raspy, triumphant shout.

The name he called was not her own. It was Brenna's.

Elisabeth didn't care, for he'd given her what she wanted, and she had never aspired to earn his love, never so much as hoped for such a thing. She cradled him in her arms and soothed him with light fingers and whispered words while he shuddered in the aftermath of a climax that had been emotional as well as physical.

Presently he slid downward upon her warm and welcoming body, still trembling, to rest his head between her breasts, and she stroked his hair. He turned and took her nipple, tentatively at first, and then with greed. Elisabeth felt something reawaken inside her and coil itself tighter and tighter.

She moaned and arched her back, offering herself, and he took her eagerly, gratefully, running his hands down her sides and then lifting them to her breasts again.

When he claimed her for the second time, Elisabeth exploded immediately, a fiery spiral unfurling within her, the circles ever-widening, flinging light with every revolution, warming the parts of her soul she'd kept secret even from herself.

Valerian loved her over and over that night, satisfying every desire, meeting every need. Sometime just before dawn, he let her sleep at last, and when she opened her eyes at midmorning, he was gone.

She got up, washed, donned a clean gown and over-skirt, and silently dared Kate Crown, who brought her breakfast on a tray, to speak so much as a word.

Kate did not take the challenge, but the fine ring on Elisabeth's finger caught her eye, and there would be talk about it in the kitchen for sure. The maid left the food on the table next to the bed with its tangled covers and left the room again.

Elisabeth ate fruit and brown bread and some cold meat, then used her knife to pry up the loose floorboard. She took out the hoard of gold, which was tightly bundled in a bit of cloth pinched from the kitchen, and marveled at how heavy it was.

There was enough there, she guessed, to keep her for years, if she was careful, and she wouldn't have to go back to the Horse and Horn, either, or to any place like it. The night just past had changed her, in some way she didn't fully understand. She knew now that she would never lay with another man in the whole of her life. She had made a serious mistake in wooing the master to her bed, for she had fallen in love with him in the course of their time together, but she knew he couldn't return her regard.

Valerian cared for a woman named Brenna, and Elisabeth, wise in the ways of men, knew it was an eternal bond. There was no room in the master's heart, generous as it was, for the likes of Betsey Saxon.

A tear fell onto the back of Elisabeth's hand as she replaced the board in the floor. She could have stayed, if only she'd left well enough alone and contented herself with what she had. She might not have discovered what love was, might not have learned to need and want the impossible.

Everything was different now.

The servants were busy, and it was easy to creep out of the house into the shifting morning fog, with the bundle of gold coins rattling beneath her skirts and bumping against her thigh as she walked.

She didn't know which way to go, and it didn't really matter, as long as she got away.

Elisabeth wandered all that day, growing more frightened and confused with every passing moment, and finally took a room above a seedy, dockside tavern. She lay curled on the filthy bed, the gold clutched to her middle like an unborn child, and watched the eerie dance of the fog outside the high, narrow window.

She slipped into a strange reverie, and a fever followed, with terrible cramps in her bowels.

Valerian found her that night, just after sunset, and brought her home, holding her even in the carriage, and she felt his tears on her face and in her hair.

He bathed her himself, tenderly, and sent for a physician, but Elisabeth was dying. She knew it, and so did Valerian.

He asked her about the ring once when she was lucid, but she could not recall where it came from, and said she was sorry if she'd pinched it from one of his lady friends. He wept silently at her words and did not speak of the ruby again until the following night when he was feeding her spoonfuls of broth.

"Kate said a gentleman brought it, the evening before you ran away," Valerian said gently. "That would have been a fortnight ago, as of tomorrow. Do you remember a caller, Elisabeth?"

She sensed that the ring had meaning, as well as value, that it was terribly important in some way, but she couldn't recall any man. She wished she did, for that would mean she didn't have to die a thief, with the fires of hell licking at her toes.

"No," she replied, her eyes filling with tears, and she saw by Valerian's expression that he believed her.

Just before dawn Elisabeth awakened to see an angel of death standing over her. He was very beautiful, and a tear left a glittering streak on his cheek.

Despite her weakness, she became aware of a probing sensation, and felt his mind searching hers, reaching past the fever, the confusion, the pain, into that place where her spirit lived.

"We can be together for all time," he said. "Let me give you the gift—"

Elisabeth had risen out of her body, and she could see so clearly now that her physical eyes had closed. She knew what Valerian was, knew he was damned, as surely as Lucifer and his fallen angels. She loved him without reservation and without regret, but the price of that love, her very soul, was too dear.

She came back to herself briefly and with an agonizing effort. "No," she said. "I cannot."

Valerian held her tightly, and she rested her head against his shoulder, inexpressibly weary. She felt his grief and wished she could console him or simply say good-bye, but her consciousness was fading, stretching and spreading itself thin like smoke, until finally it became part of the fog stroking the window glass with white, shifting fingers.

Dying, it turned out, was easy. A simple matter of letting go…

« ^ »

Valerian

Las Vegas, 1995

I was remembering Elisabeth Saxon when I returned to Daisy at sunset of the following day, having taken my fitful rest in a burrow far beneath the ruins of the baron's keep. Remembering, with punishing clarity, that I had not watched her closely enough, not protected her. Perhaps I had even cursed her with my lovemaking. I suffered greatly over her passing, certain that she would not have fallen ill and perished after much suffering if I had left her alone, instead of dragging her away from that wretched tavern to live in a city where disease flourished.

I forgot about the mysterious ring in my frenzy of bereavement and did not notice that it was gone until the undertaker and his helper had come to take her away.

Elisabeth's death had been my doing, of that I was certain. And now Daisy was doomed as well, if Krispin had his way.

Beneath that terrible certainty was another brier, caught in the tenderest part of my psyche and festering there—my fragile, cherubic brother, whom I had loved, despised me and wished me harm. That pup, who had frolicked at my heels, who had emulated my every word and move and aided me in all forms and fashions of mischief, had somehow become a ravening wolf, bent on tearing out my heart.

Thus distracted, I failed to concentrate and bungled into Daisy's apartment with an ungraceful crash, finding myself in the shower stall.

The running water instantly drenched my hair and the dusty suit and cloak I was wearing, and I roared in surprise and dismay, reaching for the plastic curtain and shoving it aside. There was a simultaneous scream from beyond.

Daisy stood on the cheap pink-fluff rug, dressed in a pair of oversize pajamas, with mayhem in her eyes and a baseball bat poised at shoulder level, ready to do serious damage.

"Oh, for God's sake," she spat, "it's only you." For a moment I thought she was going to take a swing at my head anyway, and although it would not have done me any lasting injury, I was still relieved when she lowered the bat.

Belatedly, I confess, I turned off the shower spray and stepped out of the stall, snatching a towel from a nearby rack and sponging gingerly at my sodden, mud-streaked cloak.

"Who were you expecting?" I demanded somewhat impatiently. "Norman Bates?"

Some of the air seemed to go out of Daisy, and I thought I discerned the faintest glimmer of tears pooling along her lower lashes.

She recovered quickly, as she had always done, for among the many sterling qualities she tended to carry from lifetime to lifetime was a perfectly astounding capacity for resilience. There had been many occasions when, in my opinion, cowardice would have served her better. When she rode into the sea as Brenna, for one example, and she fled my house in London as Elisabeth, for another.

A corner of Daisy's mouth tipped upward in a cocky little grin. "Are you losing your touch?" she asked, looking me over with a slow impudence I wouldn't have suffered from anyone else. "Frankly, I'd come to expect a little more subtlety and grace from you."

I don't doubt that the sheer heat of my annoyance could have dried my sodden garments, but I chose instead to construct another suit of clothes entirely, by means of my will. In the figurative blink of an eye, the tails and cloak and trousers were gone, and in their place were tailored slacks and a cashmere turtleneck sweater, both black. On my feet, instead of the former water-spotted spats, were a pair of the sleek boots I have made in a certain elite shop in Milan.

I must admit I enjoyed Daisy's round-eyed reaction to the transformation, which had been virtually instantaneous.

"I'm not even going to ask how you did that," she informed me after closing her gaping mouth and swallowing a few times. "I don't suppose it's a trick we poor, bumbling mortals can learn?"

I touched the tip of her nose, with its faint golden trail of freckles, and smiled. "Sorry, love—I believe that particular feat will require a few more millennia of evolution. Don't feel badly, though—the ability is there, slumbering away in a rather gelatinous portion of your brain."

Daisy gave me a spook-house smile, purposely grim and humorless. "Thanks so much for setting me straight," she said with mild irony, then turned on one bare heel to march out of the bathroom. "Every once in a while I lose touch with the fact that I'm Only Human."

I had no choice but to trail after her, and I don't mind saying that it galled me. It has always been my habit, and my distinct preference, to lead, not follow.

"Is that about poor Janet?" I demanded, hastening along that shoddy little hallway behind Daisy. "Is that why you're so peevish tonight?"

She turned so quickly that I nearly collided with her at the entrance to her uninspired living room. "I'm not peevish!" she insisted, folding her arms. "I'm scared, damn it! I'm scared shitless!"

I hated it when she, or any woman, talked like that. Call me a male chauvinist vampire, but I miss the old-fashioned female virtues, gracious speech among them. Sometime, I vowed to myself, I will tell her about her incarnation as Jenny Wade, when she'd been so sweet-tempered and ladylike.

But this was not the time for lectures. I put my hands on Daisy's shoulders to steady her and was struck anew by the fragility of her tender flesh and delicate bones. Ashes to ashes, I thought with a stab of sorrow, and dust to dust.

"I cannot endure this again," I muttered, speaking more to myself than to her. Even then, of course, I knew I had no choice but to endure, to suffer, to pass through the very fires of hell, and, worst of all, to survive it.

Daisy reached up and touched my mouth with the fingertips of her right hand. "What do you mean by that?" she asked in tones so gentle that they splintered my dry and hollow heart. "You left out some things the other night when you told me about our past lives together, didn't you?"

"Not 'our past lives,' darling," I replied, closing my hand around hers, because I couldn't resist, and brushing her knuckles across my lower lip. "Yours. I have been who I am—Valerian Lazarus, the bootmaker's son—since my birth in the fourteenth century."

"What is it that you haven't told me?" she persisted. She might have been Elisabeth then, or Brenna, or any of the other saucy, dauntless minxes she'd been through the endless and dreary march of years that lay between our first encounter and this one. In each successive encounter I have loved her more deeply than before. "Speak up, please."

I had not told her about the curse, of course. Or about the ruby ring that always heralded the end of another bittersweet episode between us. And I would not burden her with those things now, for there was nothing she could do to change the future.

"Do not ask," I said, and the words came hoarse from my throat, "I cannot and will not answer."

For a long moment Daisy simply stared up at me, working some old and potent magic of her own. She looked incredibly small and breakable in those blasted pajamas, and yet I sensed in her some mysterious power that I would never understand or possess.

"He was here," she said. "The killer."

I could not have been more horrified or taken aback if Daisy's bat, which she'd left in the bathroom, had suddenly materialized in her hands and slammed into my middle. How could I have failed to sense such a threat? How?

"When?" I rasped, grasping her shoulders again.

Daisy turned beneath my hands and walked away, into the kitchen. She took some modern horror from the freezer and slid it into the microwave before deigning to meet my gaze and answer my anguished question.

She shrugged, leaning against the counter while the oven whirred behind her. "While I was visiting—make that not visiting—my sister in Telluride. I came home and found a life-size doll hanging from the showerhead, with an improvised noose around its neck. There were two red marks on the throat—for dramatic effect, I suppose. It was overkill, if you'll forgive the pun."

I stopped myself just as I would have smashed one fist through the cheap plasterboard of her living room wall. "Here? Krispin was here?"

The bell on the oven chimed, and Daisy opened the door and took out something evidently intended to pass for a pizza. "Ah, so Super-fiend has a name now. How interesting."

I was still struggling to regain my inner—and outer—equilibrium. The scent of the wretched thing she'd cooked and was now preparing to eat—oh, yes, vampires have the sense of smell in abundance, and all the others, too—nearly gagged me.

"I discovered the truth only last night," I said, curling my lip and trying to distance myself from the culinary travesty, which Daisy was now balancing atop a folded paper towel and raising to her lips. "My brother, Krispin, lives."

Daisy took a bite and had the effrontery to chew as she answered. "So does my sister, Nadine."

I went to stand on the other side of the living room and opened a window to the still desert air. "The difference," I said coldly, "is that Krispin, like me, was born in the fourteenth century. He is a vampire."

"I take it the two of you haven't kept in touch," Daisy observed.

I thrust a hand through my hair in exasperation. "I believed him dead all these years, and he never troubled himself to disabuse me of the notion."

She shrugged again, raising just one shoulder, and gazed at me over the expanse of the half-eaten pizza.

"Maybe he didn't know about you, either," she suggested.

I glowered at her. "He veiled himself from me. He could have no honorable reason for doing that. We were brothers, after all, dragged, bloody, from the same womb."

Daisy made a face and dropped what remained of her food into the trash. "Maybe he—what was his name again?—Krispin, that's it. Maybe Krispin simply doesn't like you? Did you ever consider that possibility?"

She started to lick her fingers—a habit I cannot abide—but stopped when I fixed my gaze on her and projected my disapproval.

"Clearly, to say that Krispin 'doesn't like me' is an understatement of truly enormous proportions. I believed, however foolishly, that he cared for me while he lived, as I did for him."

Daisy raised an eyebrow and, to my relief, wiped her hands clean on a dishtowel hanging from the refrigerator handle. "It couldn't have been easy to be your brother," she said. "You've got to admit you can be a bit overwhelming. A hard act to follow, in more ways than one."

"Be that as it may," I said, struggling again to control my impatience, "I believe Krispin is the killer. I must find him."

She paled slightly and came a step nearer. "And then?"

Such sorrow welled up within me that I could barely withstand it. "And then I shall destroy him."'

Daisy drew closer still and laid a hand on my arm. I hoped she did not feel the involuntary tremor that spilled through what passes, in a vampire, as flesh and muscle.

"How?"

I saw my brother in my mind's eye, as a small, coltish boy, with sunlight gleaming in his bright yellow hair and mischief shining in his eyes. I heard him running after me, imploring me to slow my strides so that he might keep pace.

The memories caused me pain the like of which I have known only a handful of times—always in connection with this woman—and the images of what the future might hold for me and for Krispin were so horrible that I could not hold them in my mind.

I said nothing, because I was incapable of speaking at that moment.

"Is it like in books and movies?" Daisy asked with a tenderness that made me long to lose myself in her arms for a little while, to nestle in her warm heart like a dream and hide from all that was mine to do. "Do you have to drive a stake through his heart?"

"Something like that," I managed to say. "I would almost rather destroy myself than Krispin. Great Zeus, Daisy, if you could have seen him as a child, as a youth—he was beautiful."

"Like you," she said. "But smaller, I think, and perhaps not as quick, or as bright, or as bold."

I looked into her eyes, surprised by her insight. "My father used to say I took the best of my mother's nurturing—that my craven hungers made my brother weak and robbed the children who came after him of the very marrow of their bones and the potency of their blood."

"Father of the Year," Daisy said with gentle sarcasm, putting her hands on my shoulders.

I wanted to melt beneath her warm, soft palms and supple fingers, but there was, regrettably, no time to waste on such sweet indulgences.

"You are not safe, Daisy," I began.

"Tell me about it," she interrupted before I could go on. "I'm a cop, remember? And we've had this conversation before. There is no safe place, Valerian—maybe not for any of us."

"My brother will come for you in earnest. The thing you found in your shower was only his calling card."

She lowered her lashes briefly, then looked up at me again. I saw in her eyes the shimmering courage that was woven into the very fiber of her spirit long, long ago, at some celestial loom. "Where shall I hide, Valerian? Name the place that you, or creatures like you, cannot enter."

I could not answer her challenge, for besides heaven itself, there was nothing that could keep me out, no place I could not go if I so wished. The same, of course, applied to Krispin.

I was forlorn in those moments, filled with hopeless despair, but then a stray thought caught in my mind. "This mannequin he left for you—where is it?"

She drew back a little way. "O'Halloran—my partner—took it in for evidence. He thinks we're dealing with an ordinary human being, you see, so he wanted the thing dusted for fingerprints, after Forensics looked it over, of course."

I would get the dummy if I had to—I needed to lay my hands to something Krispin had touched—but I preferred to avoid dealings with the police for as long as possible. Now that Janet had been killed, they were almost certain to lay the crimes at my door, and it would be awkward to vanish from their midst when they attempted to detain me.

"The tie to your robe," I said. "The one that was used as a noose. Did your partner take that, too?"

She frowned and shook her head. "No. I was afraid I wouldn't get it back."

I might have laughed, had the circumstances been different, for I admit to a certain macabre amusement at her reluctance to separate a bathrobe from its matching belt. And never mind that the thing had been used like a hangman's rope.

"Where is it?" I demanded, but I did not wait for her reply. No, I was already homing in on her bedroom, and the closet within it, and the brass hook on its inside wall.

I snatched the robe from its peg and pulled the terrycloth belt through the loops, holding it in my two hands as I might have held a tame snake. Instantly I had a strong impression of Krispin, and I knew, with both elation and despair, that my theories were correct.

I felt his hatred for me in that bit of cloth, I felt his jealousy, his madness, his fury.

I was more afraid for Daisy than ever before, previous lifetimes included. My brother would not hesitate to kill her—indeed, he relished the prospect. He was saving that act for last, the way a child hoards a favorite sweet.

"Why?" I whispered, in case he had linked his mind to mine and could discern my words. "Why?"

Krispin did not choose to answer.

Not then, at least.

I was compelled to hunt, for I had not fed the night before, due to my visit to Dunnett's Head. But I could not bear to leave Daisy alone in that apartment, like bait in a trap, tempting Krispin to punish me with her death.

Even in those silly, oversize pajamas, which had probably been left behind by an earlier lover, Daisy was a vision. Her copper-gold hair tumbled around her shoulders, and her eyes were like antique gems I had once admired in a shop window—impossibly green, but opaque with tension. The smattering of freckles stood out against the creamy paleness of her skin.

"How can I leave you here?" I whispered, stricken to the heart.

She drew a step nearer, and I saw the flash of memories in her mind—she was recalling, of all things, the somewhat one-sided lovemaking session in that tacky motel along the road to Telluride. Her desire for me burned bright, like a flare, and such longing seized me then that I uttered a small cry of protest and need.

"Take me with you," she said. "Let me sleep where you sleep."

I had not consciously cast a spell over Daisy; to do so would have been an abominable liberty, tantamount to rape. No, it was not magic, but plain fear that made her want the scathing comfort only I could give her. "But when we spoke of safety, you said—"

"I said I would not be your prisoner," she interrupted gently, putting her arms around my neck. "But I will be your lover."

I ached to have her, even to make her into my true mate, but of course I could do neither. The recollection of Elisabeth's death, following so soon after our intimate union, was preying upon my mind. Too, the need to hunt was urgent—were I to encounter Krispin or some other enemy before feeding, I would be too weak to protect either Daisy or myself. Once I had taken sustenance, I must immediately resume the search for my brother.

"This is not the night," I told her gently. I am certain that my disappointment was greater than hers.

"Take me with you, then," Daisy urged, running one fingertip down the chilled, pale planes of my cheek and upper jaw. "Please. I can face this killer—this thing—I know I can. But not tonight."

I kissed her forehead and wrapped her in a loose embrace, and she tucked herself against me like a nestling seeking shelter beneath the wing of a larger bird. "Very well," I said and fixed my mind on the lair hidden well outside the city's bright, tattered edge, beneath the desert sands.

We were there in an instant, standing in my gracious living room. Daisy swayed a little, from shock no doubt, and I steadied her.

"You are probably safe here, for the moment at least," I said, aware that time was passing at its usual merciless and inexorable pace. "Vampires are not gregarious creatures, and they are, therefore, most uncomfortable in a stranger's lair." I stepped back, left her teetering there in her pajamas, and moved one arm in a broad gesture intended to take in the whole of my splendid hiding place. "I must go now, Daisy. Explore to your heart's content. I'll be back an hour or so before dawn."

With that, I vanished, carrying with me the look of unadulterated surprise I had glimpsed on her face, smiling a little over it. Mortals have such a difficult time accepting new realities.

Daisy

The Vampire's Lair

Outside Las Vegas, 1995

At first Daisy was so overwhelmed by Valerian's latest flashy disappearance and her own recent introduction to broomstick transport that she sank onto the leather couch and stared blankly into space. Her next coherent thought, coming some time later, was the wish that she'd taken time to change her clothes.

Trust her to show up for the experience of the aeons in the pajamas O'Halloran had given her for Christmas the year before. He'd been making a point about equality between the sexes at the time, but Daisy couldn't quite recall what it was.

She levered herself off the expensive sofa, once she'd recovered the required muscle control, and stood shakily, her knees trembling. Valerian might have spurned her seduction attempt, however politely, but he had flat-out invited her to check out his house, and she wasn't about to miss the opportunity.

Daisy soon realized that the whole place was underground, a gigantic and very luxurious bomb shelter. The light was artificial, of course, but of such clear intensity that it might have sprung from the sun itself. Besides the living room, which appeared to be equipped with every modern electronic plaything in existence, there was a large, lagoonlike swimming pool and smaller hot tub, both surrounded by a jungle of lush plants, and a kitchen containing every conceivable appliance but no dishes, silverware, pots and pans, or food. There was nothing in the giant refrigerator except a lightbulb and a box of baking soda.

Daisy considered calling out for a pizza, just to see if the delivery driver could find the place.

The master bedroom was a suite, decadently appointed with antiques, paintings, and sculptures, all priceless. Besides a huge bed with a canopy and velvet draperies, and a working gas fireplace, there was a marble tub of truly decadent proportions set right into the floor. The faucet and spigots were gold, and the exquisite tiles surrounding the bath were hand-painted and very old.

Daisy found six other bedrooms opening off the same hallway, all sumptuously furnished and obviously unused, all with their own marble-and-gold bathrooms, spectacular enough to suit the most hedonistic guests. She hoped to find clothes to borrow—Daisy took care not to think too much about who might have left such garments behind, and not just because she felt proprietary about Valerian's attentions—but there was nothing.

Finally she returned to Valerian's room and helped herself to one of his pleated dress shirts. The tails reached almost to her knees, and she finished the ensemble off by taking a tie from his vast collection and knotting it loosely around her waist for a belt.

She was just entering the living room again, planning to stretch out on the leather sofa and try to sleep, when the biggest television screen she'd ever seen—and there were some enormous ones in the casinos—slid down out of the ceiling with an electronic purr.

Daisy looked around, thinking she must have touched a button inadvertently, but there was nothing like that in sight. She stared at the screen, and a peculiar sensation of mingled terror and excitement stirred in the pit of her stomach.

She made her way to the sofa as the great expanse of glass flickered and then brightened into light. Sliding both hands along the back of the couch, Daisy made her way to one end and collapsed into the deep cushions.

A field of flowers nodded on the screen, breathtakingly beautiful, bending and bowing gracefully in a twilight breeze. Daisy waited for credits, for any explanation of what was happening, but in some half-conscious part of her brain she'd already grasped the truth.

The image she was seeing wasn't being transmitted from any television station. This was vampire magic, but the trick wasn't Valerian's. He wouldn't have frightened her like that.

She watched the flowers, daisies mostly, bathed in the lavender of approaching night and at the same time reflecting a peculiar crimson glow. When she saw someone in the upper right-hand corner of the screen, she felt tension coil in her stomach, and when that figure drew near enough to see clearly, she gasped aloud.

The woman was a stranger, a tall, brown-eyed blonde, and yet Daisy knew she was looking at herself. Valerian had not told her about this incarnation, and she suspected that was because he hadn't known about it. By some mysterious cosmic fluke, she'd gotten past him that time.

Watching the screen, fascinated and terrified at the same time, Daisy struggled to remember being this person, but not so much as a glimmer came to her.

She stood up, squinting, realizing only then that the living room, so dazzlingly bright before, was now lighted only by the flickering glow of the screen. A chill dripped down the center of her back, like a trickle of icy water, and she shivered, studying the face of that other self.

She sank down onto the cushions again a moment later, when her knees would no longer support her.

She forced herself to stay calm, to watch. Daisy was in danger, and she knew it, but her years of training and police service stood her in good stead. If she panicked, if she failed to pay close attention, she would not survive.

Daisy took careful note of the image on the screen—studied the reflection of this being who was and yet was not herself. The clothes her double wore were ragged and old, garments a peasant woman might have worn in any one of several different centuries.

She scooted forward, gripping the edge of the couch with both hands, heart thrumming, upper lip moist with perspiration.

The woman on the screen began to call out for someone, raising both hands to cup her mouth, scanning the field with worried eyes. There was no sound except for the faintest murmur of circuitry, but Daisy recognized the name on those lips so similar to her own.

Shock rocketed through Daisy, and her heart began to beat painfully fast; she barely overcame an elemental urge to cover her eyes with both hands.

The flowers were wilting, and a garish light had arisen in the background, crimson and orange, leaping, hot to the eye as it would be to the touch.

The fire was drawing nearer.

She watched herself begin to run, and realized that the flowers and grasses, all fainting beneath an undulating, glimmering tide of heat, grew in a graveyard.

Suddenly Daisy was not sitting on Valerian's couch, watching the scene—she was in it. She was the pretty woman-child running between tilting headstones. She felt the heat of the approaching fire scouring the flesh of her back, even through the rough weave of her shift. The earth was rocky and uneven beneath her feet, her lungs burned fit to burst, and she was scared enough to pass water without slowing down.

Between one instant and the next she forgot that she'd ever been called Daisy Chandler, would not have recognized the name except as one she might have heard long ago in a dream.

"Krispin!" she screamed, tripping, falling, and rising again, all in a virtually simultaneous motion. The blaze roared as it ate up cottages and fields and churches behind her, gaining on her like the fleetest of runners.

She ran on, making a whimpering sound when she wasn't choking on the rolling black smoke, until her legs gave out a second time. She toppled to the ground and crawled behind a great huge monument with a French name chiseled into its side.

It was coming on dark now—or was it just the smoke darkening the sky?—but where was her beloved? He'd promised to meet her here, to take her far away from London—perhaps to Paris, he'd said, or Rome or even Istanbul.

"Here's the truth of it, Maddie Goodtree," she whispered to herself, choking on the thick, acrid air between words. "Either he's gone up in flames like a scarecrow, your fancy man, or you've been made the fool."

Maddie leaned around the end of the monument, which felt hot as brimstone to the touch, and peered toward the line of thundering crimson on the horizon. London was gone, that it was. And at the rate the flames were traveling, they would gobble up the rest of England as well. Paris might have gone up, too, if it weren't for the waters of the channel blocking the way.

She tried to rise, to run again, but all the feeling had gone out of her knees. Other folks, fleeing the city, scrambled past, dragging carts, mewling children, and the doddering old behind them.

No one stopped to help.

The fire drew nearer, and Maddie found it more and more difficult to breathe. She managed to gain her feet at last and stumbled after the others. The sun had set, but one would never have known it, with the sky so hellish bright.

Then suddenly he was there beside her. He smiled and took her hand, her beautiful lover, and told her not to be afraid.

There were shrieks puncturing the darkness all around them, cries of terror and of pain, and Maddie would have thought she was lost in hell itself if her beautiful, fair-haired angel hadn't been walking beside her, showing her the way.

Krispin had found her at last.

They escaped the fire in a twinkling, it seemed to Maddie, taking refuge inside cool, dank walls, where there was no light at all. He drew her close, and their lips and bodies seemed to melt into one as they celebrated the darkness…

Slowly, slowly, Daisy returned to herself.

The television screen had disappeared, and every light in the place was blazing, and she heard a soft, seductive voice that should have come from anywhere except within her own head.

"You were mine in that lifetime. Not Valerian's. Mine." There was a pause, no longer than a heartbeat, followed by a throaty chuckle. "He didn't know you were alive, and you belonged to me. As you shall again."

« ^ »

Valerian

Outside Las Vegas, 1995

I returned to my underground lair just before dawn, exhausted and frustrated beyond measure. I had combed the earth, from one pole to the other, over the last few nights, and found no sign, no hair or trace, of my prey. Krispin had hidden himself very cleverly indeed.

Daisy was lying on the couch when I returned, clad in one of my handsewn shirts, artfully belted with a necktie. She was pale as a medieval snow.

I extended a hand and swayed slightly on my feet, for I was already beginning to succumb to the vampire sleep.

I had sought my brother with little regard for the thinning darkness, and dawn was only moments away.

I could barely focus my gaze on her, and speaking was a greater effort than I could manage. I struggled to regain my tenuous grip on consciousness, knowing all the while that the attempt was hopeless. Yes, there had been times in my past when the mysterious slumber had not wrestled me downward, into inner darkness, but this night I would not be spared.

Daisy rushed toward me, and I sagged against her. She supported me with surprising strength, speaking rapidly, but by then her words were no more than an unintelligible murmur. The last thing I was aware of was the couch beneath me, still pulsing with the sweet warmth of her body.

Daisy

The Vampire's Lair, 1995

Daisy knelt on the floor beside Valerian's resting place, holding his cold hand in both of hers, both horrified and fascinated. His flesh, always unusually fair, was white as alabaster, and there was a stillness about him, so absolute that he might have been dead.

She laid her head to his chest and heard no heartbeat, felt no rise and fall of ribs and muscles and flesh. Had she not experienced Valerian's magic for herself, over and over, she would have mourned, believing she'd lost him forever. She remained as she was for a long while, her ear chilling against his hard breast, struggling with the knowledge that she not only knew a vampire personally, she'd fallen in love with one.

She cried softly, silently, her tears wetting the fine fabric of the shirt he wore. Lots of women, even when they happened to be cops, lost their hearts to practicing alcoholics, philanderers, compulsive gamblers, and assorted other losers, but falling for a vampire was carrying dysfunction to a new level.

Here was an idiosyncrasy even Geraldo hadn't encountered before.

After mourning for a time, Daisy raised her head and sat back on her heels, sinking her teeth into her lower lip. She needed to tell Valerian about Krispin, and the episode with the television set, but she dreaded the task to such an extent that she was almost glad for the respite sunrise provided.

She would be reasonably safe in the interim, she supposed, for if Valerian was incapacitated during the daylight hours, then Krispin, being a vampire himself, was surely curled up in a coffin somewhere, motionless as a corpse and temporarily harmless.

She hoped.

Daisy kept her vigil until her knees went numb, then made herself get up and walk around. There wasn't a scrap of food in the house, and she was violently hungry. To keep her mind off the problem for a little while, she went out to the pool, which, like everything else, was underground. Building that place had been a real feat of engineering, and yet Daisy, living all her life in Las Vegas, had never heard so much as a rumor of its existence.

She removed the tie belt and the shirt purloined from Valerian's vast wardrobe and slipped into the warm, sapphire-colored water. The chamber housing the pool and hot tub had a cavernlike ambience, and reflections danced across the dark ceiling, but the air was humid rather than dank and cool.

The water seemed to cradle Daisy as she turned, naked, onto her back, to float. Her hair spilled out around her, and the tips of her breasts hardened, reminding her of how desperately she had wanted—and still wanted—Valerian's lovemaking. The desire was deep-rooted and instinctive, a consuming need beyond explanation or understanding, something so powerful that it frightened her and so compelling that she could not resist.

It was as though some ancient vow would be fulfilled in the act, some promise made before the stars were shaped. For good or ill, they would be joined, if only for a night.

Daisy permitted herself to remember the scene she'd witnessed on the television screen earlier. She'd felt the throbbing heat of the great fire, the rough ground beneath her feet, and with them the terror, somehow her own as well as Maddie Goodtree's. She had known relief at the sight of Krispin—or Maddie had—and experienced every nuance of their tempestuous lovemaking as well.

She blushed, floating there in Valerian's pool, to recall the sheer physical intensity of her satisfaction. And yes, she must claim that glorious, forbidden release as her own, because she had been Maddie Goodtree. As well as Brenna Afton-St. Claire and Elisabeth Saxon. She had vague, gauzy memories of those lifetimes, and she knew they had often touched her dreams.

Daisy sighed, lying still upon the water. As pleasurable as Krispin's intimate attentions had been, in that other life so recently recalled, they paled by comparison to the psychic sex she'd had with Valerian. He had driven her out of herself, the magician had, without even being in the same room.

She kicked her feet and tossed back her wet hair. If Valerian made love to her in person, the pleasure would probably kill her.

It would almost be worth dying young, she decided with a smile, making her way toward the tiled edge of the pool, if the last experience was anything to go by.

Daisy climbed out of the water and found a stack of fragrant white towels on a glistening brass stand next to the wall. Only then did it occur to her to wonder who cleaned this strange, hidden house—surely Valerian, vampire of legend, star of stage if not screen, did not scrub toilets and mop floors.

"Curiouser and curiouser," Daisy muttered, wrapping the towel around herself like a sarong and leaving the borrowed shirt and tie where she'd left them, flung across the back of a lounge chair.

There was a strange freedom in her confinement, though by rights the place was nothing more than a luxurious grave. She could walk about stark naked if she wanted to, and know that no one, including Valerian, would see her.

She dropped the towel at the doorway to the living room and went to stand over the exquisitely handsome vampire sleeping on the sofa. He was beyond a doubt the most beautiful creature, man or woman, she had ever seen, a subject worthy of Michelangelo or any of the masters.

How long, she wondered, had she loved him? A thousand years? Ten thousand?

Daisy turned away, the question heavy in her heart, and wandered into the kitchen, still starved. Maybe she'd overlooked a box of crackers or a can of sardines, kept on hand for that rare visit by a mortal.

The telephone caught her eye as soon as she flipped on the lights, and Daisy went to it and lifted the receiver with a slight smile playing at one corner of her mouth. She dialed O'Halloran's cellular number, knowing he was going to give her a ration for disappearing the way she had. He wouldn't be able to handle the truth—that she was standing naked in a vampire's kitchen. In fact, he'd probably go straight to the chief and have her badge pulled—permanently.

"Yeah!" he barked over the roar of air rushing past an open car window, plainly annoyed at the interruption. O'Halloran carried a cell phone, but not for status. He hated the things and tolerated them only because they helped him stay in touch with his contacts.

"O'Halloran?" Daisy asked sweetly, although she would have known that voice anywhere.

The howl diminished into nothing as O'Halloran rolled up his window. "Chandler? Is that you?" He sounded anxious. "Where the hell are you?"

"I'm staying out of sight for a few days, that's all." She thought of the layers of earth between the cool tiles beneath her feet and the surface of the Nevada desert. "Laying low, you might say. If you've been worrying about me, stop. I'm okay."

"Is somebody forcing you to say that?"

"No, O'Halloran. Nobody is forcing me to do anything. I just need a little time to get my head together, that's all. You were the one who suggested that in the first place, remember?"

"You're really all right?"

Daisy felt a surge of affection for O'Halloran; he and his wife, Eleanor, were like family to her. All she had, except for Nadine. "Yes," she said, blinking back tears because there was so much she couldn't share. "How's the investigation going?"

"No progress," O'Halloran said with a raspy sigh. "We can't find this Valerian character, for one thing. He's let his personal staff and the surviving performers go and closed down the show at the Venetian, but the management says he plans to return soon, so they haven't booked anybody else. His name is still on the marquee, and the press is clamoring for him. If I was a cynical guy, I might just figure it was all a publicity stunt."

"You think he'd murder those women just to get attention?" Daisy demanded, feeling cold all of a sudden in her birthday suit. "You can't be serious, O'Halloran. He has to know he'd be number one on the suspect list." She glanced toward the living room where Valerian was sleeping. "Nobody in his right mind would expect to commit a crime like that and then just go merrily on with his career!"

"That's just it, Chandler. You saw the bodies. We ain't dealing with somebody who's in his right mind."

Daisy wanted to tell him that it was Krispin, not Valerian, who had done the killings, but there was simply no way to explain the realities of the situation. "That's right," she agreed somewhat testily, "we're not. Look beyond the obvious, O'Halloran. Dig deeper. You're missing something."

"I wish you were here to help out," the older cop confessed. "You got good instincts, Chandler."

"I take it I'm still suspended, then?" Daisy asked, unable to hide the sadness and frustration she felt. Her work was such a large part of her identity that she wasn't sure who she was without it. "The chief hasn't blown a brass trumpet and shouted, 'Bring me Chandler, she of the good instincts and negative drug test'?"

O'Halloran was quiet. Too quiet.

"Talk to me," Daisy ordered when she could stand his silence no longer.

"The brass wants you to talk things over with a shrink."

"They think I'm crazy."

"They think you're under a lot of stress, like every other cop in the country."

"Yeah, well, they're not making 'every other cop' see a head doctor, are they?"

"Chandler? Do yourself a favor, take some advice from an old veteran. Don't fight this one. Just do what they ask. It ain't so much, you know—the doc will probably want you to look at a few ink blots and play some word association games, that's all."

Daisy swore.

"More advice," O'Halloran said crisply. "Don't use that word in front of anybody above the rank of lieutenant."

"I'll keep that in mind," Daisy allowed. It was hard, she discovered, to be naked and angry at the same time.

"Okay, Chandler, give me a number where I can reach you, and we'll wrap this conversation up. I'm on my way over to the Venetian—again—to see if I can track down this magician of theirs. I'll say one thing for this Valerian fella—he's got the disappearing act down pat."

Daisy smiled and dashed at her cheek with the back of one hand. All of the sudden she felt vulnerable, rather than free, and she was anxious to put Valerian's shirt back on. In the meantime, though, O'Halloran wanted a number.

She thought quickly. "I'm staying in a lake cabin," she lied, "and I have to use a pay phone whenever I want to make a call. I'll be in touch within a day or two."

"Just give me the name of the resort, then."

"Sorry, partner—that's a secret. I'll call again soon." With that, her stomach twisted into a knot of guilt, Daisy hung up the telephone.

Next she called her apartment. She listened patiently to her own voice, droning the usual spiel about leaving a name and number, and punched the pound sign when it was over. At the other end of the line the tape rewound with a high-pitched squeaking sound, and then the accumulated messages began to play.

The first was from Nadine, saying she was in labor and had checked into the hospital.

The second was from Freddy. Nadine was yelling a lot, he said frantically, and he wished he'd never gotten her into this mess. Could Daisy please come to Telluride as soon as possible?

Fresh tears brimmed in Daisy's eyes. She wanted desperately to be with her sister and lend what support she could, more now than ever, but it was too dangerous for Nadine and Freddy and the baby. She couldn't bear even the thought of what Krispin might do to them, for whatever insane reason of his own.

The next voice was the same painfully slow, inhuman drone she'd heard before, and she knew now that it was some trick of Krispin's—a robot, maybe, or a computer, or his own private brand of magic. "Come out, Daisy. You cannot hide from me forever. If you don't show yourself, I will kill again."

Bile surged into the back of Daisy's throat; she squeezed her eyes shut and struggled to keep her empty stomach from convulsing. "Dear God," she whispered. "Help me."

The line went dead, and then she heard Nadine's voice again. Daisy's sister sounded weary but full of joy. "Daze? The baby came this morning, and mother and daughter are doing great. Freddy suffered so much angst over all the pain I went through that he gave a little ground on the name business. We're calling our daughter Whitney Miranda. Fruit not included. What do you think, Auntie? Call me soon—I'm going to tell you more about childbirth than any sensible woman would want to know."

That was the end of the tape, and Daisy was weeping softly as she hung up the receiver. She had a niece—her only flesh-and-blood relative besides Nadine and the long-lost Jeanine—and she couldn't even make a pilgrimage to Telluride to admire her.

It wasn't fair.

"Not much is fair in this life," a female voice observed.

Daisy was so startled that she whirled and pressed herself to the wall. She had expected some stray fiend; instead, she was faced with an attractive woman of about her own age. The visitor had short dark hair, stylishly cut, and enormous gray eyes. She was sleekly trim and clad in black corduroy slacks, a white poet's shirt, and a vest of charcoal velvet.

"Who are you?" the pixie demanded, taking in Daisy's bare body with a frown of disapproval.

Daisy swallowed. "I was going to ask the same question of you," she said, just resisting a futile urge to cover herself with both arms. "Are you a vampire?"

"Of course not," was the brisk answer. "I couldn't be abroad in the daylight if I were. But I'll give you my name in trade for yours—it's Kristina Holbrook."

The surname was faintly familiar; Daisy thought Valerian might have mentioned it in passing. "Daisy Chandler," she said. "I'm a detective with the Las Vegas Police Department." She regretted that last part the moment the words had tumbled from her mouth—in her present unclothed state, she wasn't exactly a credit to hard-working law enforcement officers everywhere.

Ms. Holbrook's lips twitched. "Perhaps you'd better call for backup, Detective Chandler. It would appear that someone has stolen your clothes."

Daisy flushed with embarrassment. "I was wearing pajamas when I came here," she blurted out. "And then I went swimming, and it just seemed, with Valerian asleep and no one else around or anything—"

"It's okay," Kristina said quickly with a full-fledged and quite dazzling smile. "I'll get you something to wear." She pondered Daisy thoughtfully again, then said with conviction, "I think blue is your color."

With that she closed her eyes, and within the instant Daisy felt cloth against her skin. She looked down, speechless with amazement, to see that she was wearing an indigo silk jumpsuit with a hammered gold belt.

"I was right," Kristina boasted with a good-natured grin. "You look fantastic."

"Who—" Daisy lapsed into incoherence for a few moments, then made another attempt. "Who are you?"

"I told you. I'm Kristina Holbrook."

"And y-you're not a vampire."

Kristina's forehead crumpled slightly as she frowned. "Definitely not. But both my parents are. It's very complicated—my father was still mortal when I was conceived, so I'm human. Mostly."

Daisy swallowed hard. "Mostly?"

Kristina laughed, and the sound was like the peal of distant bells. "I'm mortal, essentially. But I'm not sure when I'll get old, if ever, and I do have certain powers, as I've just illustrated." She paused for a beat or two, then took the conversation in a whole other direction. "Would you like something to eat?"

Daisy was breathless—and surprised to discover that she was still hungry. "Yes—please."

The other woman pointed dramatically at the island in the center of the kitchen, and a picnic basket appeared, accompanied by the tantalizing aromas of fried chicken and freshly baked apple pie.

"Come on and join me," Kristina urged pleasantly, pulling a stool over to the island and sitting down. "You said you were hungry, didn't you?"

Daisy hesitated a moment longer, then approached the food. The fine silk of her jumpsuit brushed softly against her skin as she moved.

"Would you like some jewelry to go with that?" Kristina asked, pulling a drumstick out of the basket and biting into it with relish.

"No, thanks," Daisy said, standing on the other side of the island and helping herself to the food. There were plates inside the elegant basket, along with sterling silver, crystal wine flutes, and a very fine Bordeaux. "The outfit's enough. Is it going to melt at midnight?"

Kristina's grin was puckish. "Are you accusing me of slipshod magic?"

Daisy didn't bother to answer. "Why are you here?" she asked between bites of delicious chicken, potato salad, and coleslaw.

"Mother has been worried about Valerian. She asked me to look in on him."

By now Daisy's head was reeling. Maybe the higher-ups on the force were right, she thought in a brief flurry of hysteria. Perhaps she was losing it, and she needed intensive therapy. But no—deep inside, where it counted, Daisy knew she was all too sane.

Delusions? Hallucinations?

She should be so lucky.

"Is he—family? Valerian, I mean?"

"He's like a godfather, I guess," Kristina answered. "Or a favorite uncle. We're quite close, he and I. He spoiled me outrageously when I was a child—take the dollhouse he gave me, for example. It's a perfect replica of the palace at Versailles, down to the last light fixture."

Daisy had been standing up, but now she groped for a stool, dragged it over, and sort of collapsed onto it. Now that she knew it wasn't romantic, she had no pressing interest in Kristina's relationship with Valerian. "So you just sort of zapped yourself here from somewhere else?"

"Seattle," Kristina said. "I own a small antiques shop there." She frowned at Daisy over the rim of a carton of mashed potatoes. "I'm sorry. We must be quite overwhelming, Valerian and I. Have you met any of the others?" She paused to shudder. "Canaan and Benecia Havermail, for instance? They're little girls, beautiful as dolls, and hardly any bigger than they were five hundred years ago, when they became vampires. What vile little creatures they are—but you needn't worry about them. They wouldn't dare bother anyone Valerian befriends."

Daisy had been left behind, like a piece of luggage tossed from a moving train. "Five hundred years—"

Kristina shrugged. "That's not uncommon," she said. "My mother was born in the eighteenth century, you know, and my father served as a surgeon in the American Civil War when he was mortal. And as for me—"

Daisy held her breath, bracing herself to absorb yet another stunning revelation.

"Well, just between us, I've been around a while myself. How old would you say I am?"

It was the kind of question Daisy hated, but she'd had a lot of experience at gauging such things as a police officer, and she was fairly confident of her abilities. "Twenty-nine or thirty, I'd say."

"Bless you." Kristina beamed. Then she leaned forward to confide in a cheerful whisper, "Lincoln was President when I was born."

"No," Daisy said, but the fall-away sensation in the pit of her stomach told her it was true.

"Yes," Kristina insisted. Then she sighed sadly. "It's hard, when your friends get old and you stay just the same, year after year, decade after decade. Naturally they wonder why."

"Naturally," Daisy croaked, at a loss for anything sensible to say.

"I take it you're completely mortal?"

"Completely," Daisy said.

"I envy you. I'd trade all my magic, you see, for a real home and a family of my own. How lovely to marry and grow old with a man you cherish and respect—"

Daisy pushed away her food. "Don't envy me," she whispered, and then she made the unthinkable confession. "I'm in love with a vampire. And that isn't the worst of it. It would seem we've been together in other lifetimes—"

"Oh, no!" Kristina interrupted, covering her mouth with one hand and widening her already huge gray eyes. "You're Valerian's ladylove—the one he keeps finding and losing, finding and losing!"

Daisy nodded glumly. "I think so, yes."

Tears of sympathy glistened in Kristina's dark lashes. "It's true, then—there is some sort of curse."

Valerian had told her about their star-crossed encounters in various centuries, and she was beginning to remember the odd detail, but he hadn't said anything about a curse.

"Tell me what you know," she pleaded.

Kristina shook her head. "You'll have to ask Valerian, Daisy. This is a personal matter, and I have no business interfering. Besides, the plain truth is I don't know much about it. I've heard whispers through the years, that's all."

Daisy supposed she should have been afraid of Kristina Holbrook, but instead she liked and trusted her. She wanted her for a friend, though it seemed unlikely that they'd have much in common.

"Okay, I can respect that," Daisy said. "Thanks for the food, anyway, and the jumpsuit."

Kristina got off the stool and started toward the kitchen door, and Daisy followed her into the living room. The dark-haired woman went to stand beside the couch and touched Valerian's forehead with such tenderness that Daisy felt an involuntary stab of jealousy.

"Is he all right?" Daisy asked, because it was plain that Kristina knew.

"Valerian is very strong and not a little stubborn," she replied, but there was a small, worried crease between her eyebrows. "We must all be tried and tested in the crucible, mortal or immortal, and it would seem that his time has come."

"What do you mean by that?" Daisy could barely get the words out, she was so stricken by the grisly array of possibilities invading her imagination.

Kristina withdrew her hand from Valerian's opalescent flesh, but did not look away from his face. Her expression was full of sorrow and hope, trust and fear. "Everything changes. Perhaps the curse has finally run its course—perhaps everything can be resolved, one way or the other."

Daisy thought about Krispin, and the murdered women, about the horrible dummy she'd found hanging in her shower, and the scene played out on Valerian's television screen. She'd watched those strange images and, at the same time, been a part of them.

Yes, she reflected, Kristina was right. Events were building toward some sort of crescendo, and she was caught up in it all, not only because of her past lives, but through her growing love for Valerian.

She stayed silent, because there was nothing to say.

Kristina bent again and kissed Valerian's forehead, then straightened and turned to Daisy. "Here," she said, taking a pendant from around her neck and putting it around Daisy's. It was an exquisite golden rosebud suspended from a priceless chain. "This has been in our family since my mother and her twin brother, Aidan, were mortal children. Over the centuries, it has gained power from the love of those who wore it against their hearts. You'll need all your wits, all your love, all your faith to fight the battles ahead, but this talisman will lend you strength."

The necklace felt warm beneath Daisy's fingertips. "Thank you," she said. She was aware that, in giving away the pendant, Kristina was making a sacrifice. Whether that sacrifice was large or small, Daisy could not guess.

Kristina smiled somewhat sadly. Or so it seemed to Daisy. Almost as an afterthought, as she was preparing to leave, the pixie-witch asked, "Do you want to leave here? Or is your vigil a willing one?"

"I want to stay," Daisy said.

Kristina nodded. "Please tell Valerian when he wakes that I was here to look in on him." At Daisy's smile of acquiescence, Kristina raised both hands over her head and vanished with a showy little puff of smoke.

"Wow," Daisy couldn't help remarking. Then she stretched out beside Valerian's still form, there on that roomy leather sofa, cuddled up close, closed her eyes, and drifted into a fairy-tale sleep.

She dreamed she rested in a crumbling castle, its walls obscured by thistles and thorns, its parapets and baileys and courtyards overgrown with vines.

Only the kiss of a certain prince could awaken her.

Valerian

The Vampire's Lair, 1995

I opened my eyes at dusk to find Daisy sleeping beside me. My strength was flagging, despite the rest I'd taken and last night's hasty feeding outside one of my favorite haunts, the Last Ditch Tavern, but I could not leave her. Not yet.

I shifted slightly and brushed her lips with a tender kiss, and her eyes opened, wide and startled and so green that the sight of them made my heart clench like a fist within me.

Then she smiled and put her arms around my neck. She did not need to speak; the invitation reverberated through her supple, warm little body and pierced me like lightning.

"You don't understand," I began. My vampire senses, a thousand times more acute than those of an ordinary man, were leaping to life, pulsing beneath my skin, promising agony if I denied them, ecstasy if I gave in.

I have ever cherished my pleasures.

I made one last attempt, however. "Daisy—" I began, my voice no more than a raspy whisper.

She touched my lips with a fingertip and wriggled beneath me. "I want you," she murmured. "I don't care what comes after that."

I groaned and fell into her kiss, willing to burn in hell for her, to offer myself as a living sacrifice—anything, so long as I could taste again the joy I had mourned these many decades since I had seen her last. And I wanted the joining of our two souls even more, for I was only whole when her spirit and mine were fused by the fire of our lovemaking.

Daisy whimpered beneath my mouth as I opened the front of her garment—a curious thing it was, trousers and a blouse fastened together—and took gentle sustenance at her full breasts, one after the other. Her fingers, buried in my hair, pressed me closer, and I felt her hips arch under mine, wooing and tempting me in the age-old way, tormenting me with the promise of pleasure so intense a mortal could not have endured it, setting my bedazzled senses ablaze.

"Take me," she pleaded, and hers was not one but a chorus of sweet voices—her own, of course, and Brenna's, and Elisabeth's, and Jenny's. And more.

I refused to grant her such easy gratification, sliding down from her quivering, well-suckled breasts, over her smooth belly, damp beneath my lips. There was much I wanted to remind Daisy of, before our joining, and much I wanted to teach her.

« ^ »

Daisy

The Vampire's Lair, 1995

Daisy thrashed beneath Valerian, in a delirium of need, but he withheld satisfaction long after she had begun to plead. He tongued the peaks of her breasts until she felt her heartbeat throbbing in that taut flesh, and kissed her stomach and her hipbones, the insides of her thighs, the backs of her knees. She might have been a goddess, so thoroughly did he worship her, with tenderness and fire for his offerings.

She uttered a primitive, groaning sound when he burrowed through the veil of moist silk to take the hidden nubbin of flesh between his lips and begin to draw upon it, ever so gently. While he teased and nibbled and savored, at his leisure, Daisy writhed, soaked with perspiration, her hair clinging, in wild strands of copper, to her temples, her cheeks, her shoulders, and the upper swell of her breasts.

In desperation, she tore open Valerian's shirt, as brazen and untamed as a she-wolf in her season, and spread her hands over his marble chest. It was as if Michelangelo's David had come to life and was making love to her, so splendid was he, so soul-wrenchingly beautiful.

Mankind, she thought frantically, had never been meant to look as Valerian looked, or feel as he felt. Such magnificence could not be imprisoned in mortal flesh any more than lightning could be confined to a teacup or the music of a symphony to a single seashell.

Valerian groaned at her touch, and she slid her arms around him and stroked his perfectly sculpted back with warm palms. At the same time she murmured to him—softly, insensibly, for she was not capable of reason—and knew that her love was balm to his spirit as well as his body.

His clothes vanished with a mere blink of his hooded, sapphire eyes, and then Daisy's were gone, too.

"May the Fates forgive me," Valerian whispered, and then he found the entrance to her body and took her in a single deep, swift stroke.

Daisy's arousal, already ferocious, convulsed her whole being in cataclysmic release, and she screamed, not from pain, but out of a pleasure that went beyond any conceivable agony or delight. Each time she reached a new peak, she was sent spiraling upward, toward another, until the last measure of response had been wrung from her. Throughout that sweet odyssey, Valerian whispered to her, stroked her face and her breasts, smoothed her hair.

When at last, with a faint whimper, she sank back to the sofa in exhaustion, he gave her a few moments to catch her breath. Then, at long last, Valerian was overwhelmed by his own passions. He reached beneath her to grasp her buttocks in powerful hands and raise her like a sheath to the sword.

Valerian's strokes were long and slow and smooth; he plucked at Daisy's senses, tuned them, like the strings of an exquisite violin, and soon she was playing a fevered rhapsody for him. They reached the crescendo simultaneously, with hoarse shouts of beleaguered triumph, and collapsed into the stillness that lay beneath their passion.

A long time had passed when Valerian broke the mystic silence with a low chuckle. "I didn't plan for us to make love on the living room couch like a pair of teenagers," he said. "Frankly, I had something a little more romantic in mind."

Daisy nuzzled his neck, putting off the moment when she would have to tell him about her message from Krispin and the lifetime as Maddie Goodtree. "Don't give it another thought. If that had been any better, I would have gone up like a campfire doused with kerosene."

He laughed. "It was good, then?"

"It was better than good. It would be an improvement on 'perfect,' in fact."

Valerian kissed her, but lightly, mischievously. He knew, without being told, that she had given him everything she had to give, and that she would need time to recover before they made love again.

"And what secrets are you keeping from me?" he asked.

Deep within Daisy, small muscles continued to contract as the last and strongest orgasm ebbed away, and she tucked her face into his shoulder. "I'm still coming," she whispered.

"I knew that," Valerian said with a smile in his voice. "We are yet joined, in case you've forgotten, and I can feel you tightening around me. What exquisite torture it is."

Daisy whimpered and then gave a little sigh as the resonance grew softer, and more distant. "There aren't any other—secrets."

"Don't lie to me, Daisy." Valerian groaned and shifted his weight slightly, but made no move to withdraw from her. He was still hard, and she was exulted to sense a new tension rising quietly and steadily within him. This time she would be in control.

She taunted him with an almost imperceptible motion of her hips, and he threw back his head, the muscles of his neck corded with the effort of holding back.

"You will pay for that impertinence," he vowed.

Daisy drew him deeper, and his majestic body flexed once, twice upon hers. He moaned, as if in pain, and spilled himself into her a second time.

"You will pay," he repeated, but he was kissing her as he spoke, tasting her eyelids, searching out her mouth with his own.

Daisy toppled back into sleep, so sated was she; her muscles were limp, and it seemed her very bones had melted. When she awakened, she was lying in Valerian's bed in the master suite, and he was standing at its foot, clad in his magician's garb and just donning his cape. He looked gaunt somehow, and she wondered if it was her lovemaking that had sapped his strength, or some experience he'd had the night before.

"Why didn't you dress by magic?" she asked, putting off the moment when she would have to tell him about Krispin.

His smile was slight, distracted. "I sometimes enjoy the mechanics of simple tasks."

She sighed. Now or never, she thought.

"I need to tell you something before you go," Daisy said bluntly, sitting up and drawing the linen bedsheets up to cover her breasts.

Valerian crossed to the bed and uncovered them again, and a shock of fresh desire sizzled through Daisy's system as he looked at her with an expression of wry appreciation. "Your body is far too lovely to hide," he said. "Besides, it's a little late for modesty, don't you think?"

Daisy clung to her resolve, but decided to start small. She would save the news about Krispin for last.

"Kristina was here, while you were sleeping today. She gave me this." She held out the antique pendant for him to see.

"I noticed that, as it happens," Valerian said.

Daisy blushed. He'd been up close and personal—of course he'd noticed. "She's worried about you. Kristina, I mean. So is her mother."

He was straightening his elegant string tie. "She has always been a perceptive child," he replied evenly. "Likewise, Maeve."

Daisy dropped the bomb, blurting out the words in a rush. "There's something else. Krispin's been tampering with your television set. He played a few stirring scenes from what I assume was one of my past lives and said I belonged to him then and I would again."

Valerian's hands fell to his sides, and he stood utterly still. His expression was cold, and his eyes seemed to pierce Daisy's very soul. "Why didn't you tell me this before?" he asked evenly, and with ominous softness.

"We were busy," she reminded him, refusing to be cowed.

"Tell me what you saw."

"Myself, running away from what was probably the London Fire—1666, I think it was. My name was Maddie Goodtree, and I didn't look anything like I do now."

Valerian frowned ever so slightly. "Maddie Goodtree?"

It was as Daisy had feared; Valerian had not known about that particular lifetime. He might even hate her when he learned the truth, and believe she'd betrayed him by loving Krispin.

"I don't know much about her," Daisy said bravely, "except that she was involved with your brother."

There followed a towering silence, much more intimidating to Daisy than any that had gone before it. "She was what?"

Daisy gulped. "In love with Krispin," she said miserably.

He turned away, but his rage was like a swell of heat, filling the room, pushing at the walls and the ceiling, glimmering and undulating all around him, mirage-like.

"There was a message on my machine when I called home, too," Daisy went on, wanting to finish, to get it all out in the open so they could go on from there. "He—Krispin—said he would kill again if I didn't come to him." A decision she had not consciously made rose to the surface of her thoughts. "I can't let that happen, Valerian—I can't let someone else die when it's me he wants."

Valerian turned to her again, and his face, though as beautiful as ever, was terrible to see. "You will not go to him," he decreed in a furious undertone.

"It's my job," Daisy insisted, equally angry. "And blink me up some clothes, will you please? I'm tired of running around naked, like some sultan's personal plaything."

A black formal materialized on her body, fitted, with a pleated flair at the bottom and diamond clasps holding the bodice together.

"Very funny," Daisy said. "I want jeans, damn it, and a T-shirt."

Valerian complied, but grudgingly. The gown disappeared, replaced by Levi's that were two sizes too big and a lime green T-shirt with the name of a fertilizer company emblazoned across the front.

She folded her arms. "You can do better."

Scowling, he made the jeans fit and changed the shirt to a plain red one, tucked in at the waist.

"Thank you," Daisy said wearily, rising at last from the bed and looking down at her magic clothes. "I could have used your help when I was in high school. It took me forever to dress, and I was late for everything."

Valerian was seething, and he glared down at Daisy as she moved close to him and laid her hands lightly on his chest.

"Listen to reason," she pleaded quietly. "I'm a cop. Before I made detective and was assigned to the Homicide Division, I worked Bunko and Vice, and I was the bait in every kind of sting. I was damn good at what I did, too."

Valerian's frown deepened, and Daisy felt his fury and his fear coursing beneath her hands. "Do you honestly think you—or any other mortal—could prevail against a monster such as my brother surely is?"

"Not by myself," Daisy conceded. "I was counting on you to help."

Reluctantly, with a sound like a sigh, but deeper, and seeming to rise from his soul instead of his lungs, he put his arms around her. "I shall deal with Krispin alone, Daisy, and in my own way. With no interference from you. It is hard enough to concentrate now, when you are in such danger. I could not bear to take the risk you are suggesting."

"I might just do it on my own, then. I have the pendant to protect me."

"The pendant," Valerian scoffed, giving her a slight shake within his embrace. "It has no more power than a prize from a second-rate carnival."

"That isn't what Kristina said."

"Kristina is a fanciful sort, given to wild imaginings. Stay out of my way and let me handle this, Daisy, or I vow I will lock you up somewhere."

Daisy knew he meant what he was saying. She also knew she couldn't stand back and let more innocent people fall victim to Krispin's madness. "Take me with you," she begged. "At least that way you'll be able to protect me."

He closed his eyes for a moment. "Daisy, I must feed. And the places I go are unfit for a mortal woman."

"Well, I won't stay here. I don't think I could handle another one of Krispin's impromptu television productions, and besides, I'm not a vampire. I get hungry for real food, and even though I pull my share of late shifts, I'm not used to sleeping during the day."

Valerian smiled sadly. "This has ever been your flaw, Daisy—you are stubborn beyond all reason." He drew her very close, and his black silk cape encircled her like a whisper from another world. "Close your eyes and hold on tightly."

She looked up into his magnificent face. "Could I fall?"

"No," Valerian replied. "The request was strictly lascivious."

Daisy laughed despite her grief, and the sound had barely left her throat when she found herself standing in Valerian's dressing room, behind the stage of the main showroom in the Venetian Hotel. She was still safely cossetted in the magician's cloak, but she was alone.

"Valerian!" she yelled, letting the cape fall into a shimmering, inky pool at her feet and resting her hands on her hips. "You come back here, damn it!"

After fifteen minutes there was still no sign of him. Muttering, Daisy let herself out of the casino by a back way into the warm night, walked around front, and boarded one of the gondolas ferrying tourists back and forth to the hotel.

Although Valerian had eventually provided her with the requested jeans and T-shirt—he'd thoughtfully included a pair of sneakers, too—she didn't have a quarter for the telephone, let alone cab fare back to her apartment.

Once she'd reached the street, Daisy started walking toward home. With a little luck—if it could be called that—Krispin might make an appearance.

Valerian

The Last Ditch, 1995

I grew weaker, it seemed, with every passing moment, as though a cancer had taken root inside me, sapping my strength. I felt unsteady and somewhat disoriented as I made my way through the crowd of warlocks, vampires, and other monsters who filled that wretched bar. The place was outside the normal barriers of time, an anteroom to hell itself, and I despised it for a reminder of my own damnation. I went back only because I knew that, eventually, every rumor found its way there, to circulate among the creatures who sat around the tables, lined the bars, and shuffled on the dance floor.

Sooner or later there would surely be word of Krispin.

I found a place in a shadowy corner and sat down to listen and to watch.

Dathan, a warlock I particularly dislike, immediately made his way through the seedy throng to join me. I had had an impression of his presence, an instant's knowing, but I had shoved it aside, hoping the perception was in error.

With an insolent smile, not waiting for an invitation, he drew back a chair and slipped into it.

He would have made a very striking vampire with his fair hair and cherubic features, I thought, but appearances were indeed deceiving. Dathan was a warlock, with poisoned blood flowing through his veins and a stock of evil tricks comparable to my own.

"You seem sickly, my old friend—as if you've taken a draft of warlock's blood," Dathan remarked with a crooked smile.

I made no effort to hide my contempt. While it was true that Dathan and his followers had been helpful during a recent conflict between Maeve Tremayne and the late, great vampire queen, Lisette, I for one was not prepared either to suggest a truce or to accept one.

Not that the warlock intended to offer an olive branch.

"I am not a fledgling," I said coldly. "I know better than to consume so wretched a substance."

"Do you?" Dathan taunted in a soft voice. His eyes danced with mockery.

I considered my lethargic state, which had subsided temporarily, borne away on a tide of annoyance. Inside of an instant my hands were gripping the lapels of the warlock's finely tailored coat and, without leaving my chair, I had drawn him halfway across the table.

"Have you poisoned me?" I demanded in a whisper audible only to the two of us. "Confess, warlock, or I shall sunder your liver from your chest and burn both parts while they still quiver with life!"

Dathan, to his credit, was unruffled. He made no move to resist my grasp or to answer with a threat of his own. Instead, he sighed, for unlike vampires, warlocks have breath.

"I am not without defenses, blood-drinker," he said cordially. "For both our sakes, I pray you—keep that in mind."

I knew well that Dathan could ignite infernos by the power of his mind, and vampires can be destroyed by fire, as by sunlight and the point of a stake, but I was reckless, caring nothing about my own fate. Daisy's future was all that mattered.

I released Dathan with a summarial unflexing of my fingers, and he sank blithely back into his chair. There was not so much as a flush of irritation pulsing on his high, fine cheekbones, or a twitch at his temple.

Either I had not made him angry, or he was keeping his emotions veiled. I expect it was the latter, for Daman's affection for me was then, and remains, no greater than mine for him.

"You have been searching for a vampire called Krispin, have you not?" he asked, as prim and proper as an English butler.

I regarded him in silence for a few moments, pondering the fortuitousness of his appearance in that place. I had come to the Last Ditch Tavern hoping to hear even a scrap of information concerning my brother's whereabouts, and here was someone very likely to know. Still, I mistrusted all warlocks and indeed most vampires as well. If I stumbled into a trap of some sort, Daisy would be at Krispin's mercy.

"Yes," I allowed at last, offering no more.

"There is an old one who can tell you what you need to know. A vampire called Challes."

I drew back slightly, feeling as if I'd been slapped. "Challes? He was destroyed centuries ago, felled by the hand of Nemesis himself."

Dathan raised his eyebrows. "How certain you seem. And yet you believed your brother to be dead, only to learn that you were wrong. I should think such an oversight would cause even you to think twice thereafter and avoid hasty conclusions."

"Why are you telling me this?"

The warlock's smile was beatific. Had I not known him for a fiend, I might have thought he was an angel. "Rest assured, vampire," he said, laying a hand to his chest, "this heart bears you no love, but only malice, as ever. I bring you this news because I want something in return."

I relaxed a little, for this was a philosophy I understood and subscribed to myself, but with this more temperate mood came a new flagging of my vitality. I could have laid my head down on that scarred, ugly table, closed my eyes, and slept like an ingenuous child, but of course I resisted the compulsion. It would be safer to make my bed among vipers or plague-bearing rats. "Explain," I said.

"You have been careless," he scolded in an indulgent tone, letting me know it was not my curt one-word command that had moved him to reply. He and his kindred are prideful creatures, and vain. "There were warlocks among your victims. Think, twin of Lucifer—do you not recall a faint difference in the blood you've taken these past few nights?"

I did, but I wasn't about to admit it. I simply folded my arms and waited. Dathan sought a favor from me; let him pay for it in advance, in coin of appropriate value.

"Challes, the old one, wishes to talk with you. But he feared your anger with him would be too great, that you would be beyond his control, so he took steps to weaken you. He succeeded, probably because you were distracted by the need to find your brother."

"Where is he?" I demanded. My surroundings were a thunderous void by then, and I could barely keep my head up.

"You have only to wait," Dathan answered implacably. "He will come to you."

The floor seemed to shift and roll beneath me; I feared to rise from my chair, lest I lose consciousness entirely and become yet more vulnerable to my many foes.

"Are you in league with him?"

"No," Dathan said. "Challes is a vampire, after all." He paused, and I could see that he was studying me intently, even though his image seemed to recede to a pinpoint and then rush toward me, looming and huge. "Have you fed this night, blood-drinker?" he demanded.

I had not, and I was glad. Another tainted feeding might have been the end of me—assuming I had not already taken the fatal dose.

I managed to shake my head.

"If I help you save your ladylove," Dathan said, "will you repay me by doing what I ask?"

I gripped the edge of the table with both hands. "I will do anything to break the curse," I whispered, my eyes bedazzled by flashes of bright light inside my head. "Anything."

"I have your word? Heed my warning, vampire—betray me, and I will seek out your Daisy Chandler and exact vengeance even your most rabid enemies would not wish to witness."

"My—word—" I vowed. And then I collapsed and never felt myself strike the floor.

Challes stood over me when I opened my eyes, and I knew we were back in the chamber beneath Colefield Hall. I lay on the slab that had been my bed in my earliest days as a vampire, stripped to the waist, my hands and feet lashed not by ropes or thongs of leather—those could not have held me—but by my tutor's magic.

"Why?" I asked. He had infused me with good blood while I slept; I was stronger, though still not powerful enough to break my bonds, and I felt a vague sting where his fangs had punctured my throat.

He smiled benignly and stroked my forehead and hair with a fond hand. "I have not meant to frighten you," he said in a near croon.

I was very afraid, but not of anything Challes might do to me. No, my terror was for Krispin's unguarded prey—my Daisy. "If it's true that you mean me well," I countered, "then set me free. Now."

Challes set his hands palm to palm, bringing to mind a saint or, at the least, a devout monk, and the noble sorrow in his pretended sigh told me he would refuse.

"I cannot. I am a powerful vampire, in my way, but you are youthful and filled with the passion of rage. Your body is still, but your mind prowls like a panther—do you think I haven't felt it circling, probing, ever seeking an opportunity to strike and rip out my throat?"

I closed my eyes for a moment, subduing an urge to struggle wildly. "What the devil do you want with me?"

He began to stroke my face and my hair again, and I could not hide my shudder of revulsion. "I have come to take you away, sweet child, into that other world where you shall see an end to your suffering. After all, it was I who laid the vampire curse upon your soul. It is my duty to lift the burden from you."

My interest was caught, though not by the promise of an end to pain. Was there indeed a way to change, to be redeemed, to live in the light again? I had seen a blood-drinker made mortal once, but it had been an agonizing, deadly process, and afterward the Old Ones had destroyed the means of transformation forever.

"You are mad," I whispered.

Challes smiled again, briefly, indulgently, as though dealing with a spoiled but basically good-hearted child. "I shall show you."

"Were God to forgive me for all my six hundred years of sin," I told him, "and that, as you know, is not going to happen, I would still refuse to set foot in Paradise without my beloved."

An instant after I'd spoken, I regretted mentioning Daisy, even indirectly.

My ancient tutor raised his brows again and withdrew his hand in a quick, spasmodic motion. "Leave the wench to Krispin," he said, and for the first time since he'd first brought me to Colefield Hall, and begun to train me for the vampire's life, I saw profound anger in his face.

"You made Krispin a blood-drinker," I accused, my whisper as ragged as my hopes, "even before you found me lying in that horse stall, half dead of drink. Why didn't you tell me then that my brother was alive? Why?"

"He begged me not to do that," Challes answered.

"And I, having had an elder brother myself once upon a time, was not unsympathetic to his plight. Krispin yearned to live outside your shadow, and he knew that would be impossible if you learned of his existence."

I was more wounded by these words than I would ever have allowed Challes to see. Had my brother always hated me, then? Even when we were mortal boys, playing and working together? Apparently I had only imagined that Krispin had borne me the same deep affection I had harbored for him.

In the next moment even my illusion that I had hidden my feelings from Challes was dashed.

He leaned over, so that his face was close to mine, and spoke softly. "It was because of Seraphina—she was the reason Krispin loathed you as he did. When the baron pronounced your death sentence, you see, your sweet mother offered up your brother's life in payment for yours. Krispin heard an account of it later from a servant."

"No," I murmured, but the image of Seraphina kneeling and pleading before Brenna's father was vivid in my mind, as if I had witnessed it myself. It might have been only moments past, instead of lying in the far and dusty reaches of long, long ago. "She couldn't have done such a thing."

"Ah, but she did. And there's more. After Seraphina collapsed, and the baron's men carried her home, Krispin tried to comfort her. She spat at him and screamed like a madwoman, imploring her saints one after another to take him instead of you."

No wonder Krispin had abhorred me, I thought. No doubt the other children born of our mother, the doll-like twin girls with the transparent eyelids, the boy called Royal, would have been my enemies, too, had they survived. Oh, I remembered the little ones, the lost ones, with cruel clarity, even after so many centuries, remembered my father's ravings, his insistence that I had robbed them. My cursed soul, Lazarus the bootmaker had snarled, reeling with mead, had been greedy, consuming my mother's strength to weave for its pauper-self a nobleman's body and a demon's mind…

I could not bear to remember.

"Where—where has Krispin been all these centuries?" I managed to ask with difficulty. "Surely he could not have veiled himself so completely—"

"No," Challes said. "Nor could I. You were always quite quick—about most things, if not all. There are other dimensions, pet, other worlds, if you will. Layer upon layer of them, as a matter of fact, on and on into infinity. And passages exist between them, though of course those byways are known to very few."

I was reminded of a conversation I had had with Maeve, concerning experiments her mate, Calder Holbrook, had been performing. He had found evidence of such phenomena, although I had been too concerned about other matters at the time to ask questions.

It is my curse, it would seem, to be either too curious or not curious enough.

"Is it far away, this place where you've been hiding?" I spoke softly, trying to lull Challes a little so that he might relax his mental hold on me. I was regaining my normal powers, quickening inwardly on the sustenance my tutor had given me even as I ached for all the grief my mother's misguided adoration had caused.

Challes extended a hand. "You will know soon enough," he said, dropping his voice to a whisper, as though fearing that we weren't alone in that dank, gloomy crypt under the crumbling floors of Colefield Hall.

"I have no wish to be mortal again," I confessed. The statement was purest truth, I realized, and it was shattering to face. I knew without asking that Daisy would not wish to become the very thing I gloried in being—a vampire. We were doomed, she and I, even if I managed somehow to save her from Krispin's vengeance, to be parted yet again.

"But you would not be mere flesh and bone and blood," Challes exulted quietly, laying a loosely knotted fist to his bosom. "Not you."

I was mystified. "Speak sense, vampire!" I commanded. "I have no patience for your damnable double-talk!"

Challes laughed. "It pleases me to see that you are as arrogant as ever, Valerian Lazarus. Has it escaped your notice that you are a prisoner? It is I who govern the night, not you." He paused and regarded me gently, as though memorizing my features. "Hush, now. Be not afraid. I have returned to fetch you home—we shall enter Paradise together."

« ^ »

Daisy

Las Vegas, 1995

Daisy walked quickly toward home, as though pursued.

The night was hot and dry, thrumming with sound and with silence. Las Vegas twinkled all around her, a bright, gaudy tangle of emeralds and rubies, diamonds and sapphires, tumbling over the desert sands like loot spilled from a treasure chest.

Daisy wondered if Krispin would be waiting for her when she reached her apartment. If he meant to kill her that night, he'd have to be quick about it—dawn was less than an hour away.

Loneliness and fear made a swelling ache in Daisy's throat. If there had ever been a time in her life when she needed someone to talk to, it was then, but there was nobody to confide in really, besides the elusive Valerian. She dared not tell her sister—to do so would worry Nadine and, worse, endanger her, as well as Freddy and the baby. Nor could Daisy open up to O'Halloran. One word about vampires, except in jest, and he'd personally see that she was put on medical leave.

Daisy couldn't blame her partner; if someone had come to her with a wild story like her own, just a few weeks before, she would have recommended long-term therapy, if not shock treatments.

Her apartment building was in plain sight when the shift occurred.

In an instant reality altered itself with a sickening lurch. The sidewalk beneath Daisy's feet turned to cobblestones, and the desert air was suddenly dank and somehow sour. Fog layered the ground, alive with shifting, wraithlike shapes, and Daisy made out old-fashioned street lamps and heard the rattle of carriage wheels and the clatter of horses' hooves on the pavement. The vibrations rose through the soles of her feet.

Daisy sagged against the nearest wall, the brick cold against her back, closed her eyes, and tried to slow her runaway heartbeat and rapid breathing by sheer force of will. It didn't help, knowing this wasn't real, that it was only another "spontaneous regression," as Valerian would say.

Normal, healthy people did not have experiences like this.

When she was sure she wouldn't hyperventilate, or faint dead away, Daisy opened her eyes, cherishing even then the vain hope that she would find herself back in Las Vegas where she belonged.

Nothing had changed—except to become more intense.

The stench of the gutter at her feet swelled and then broke over her in a nauseating wave, and the passersby, clad in rags like fugitives from the cast of Les Miserables, were still more aromatic.

Daisy swallowed a scalding rush of bile and murmured an incoherent sound, meant to be a cry for help, but Valerian did not appear as he had the last time, when she'd found herself waiting tables in a fifteenth-century tavern.

It seemed the noxious fog was seeping through her skin, penetrating her skull, settling heavily into her mind and finally causing her memory to dissipate like steam. She was forgetting things, and remembering others that had never happened.

She clung desperately to the last shredded recollections of the person she'd been only moments before… her name had been Daisy once, in a fever or a dream, but she had no idea who she was now. Or where she was.

It was getting darker and colder by the moment.

She reached out and caught at an old woman's tattered sleeve. "Excuse me—what is this place?" she asked. "Where am I, please?"

The crone jerked free with a fierce and fearful motion and bustled on without answering, grumbling as she went.

"It's London Town, miss," said a small voice at her side. She looked down to see a child gazing up at her, an impossibly thin boy wearing torn clothing and a filthy cap. "You lost?"

She clung to the last memory, the name, repeating it to herself… Daisy, Daisy… though even that was struggling to escape her, squirming in her mind like a greased pig.

"Do you know me?" she whispered, terrified. "Can you tell me who I am?"

The boy shook his head. His enormous gray eyes were at once pitying and shrewd as he regarded her from beneath a fringe of dark, shaggy hair. "The peelers'll take you away that quick," he warned with a snap of his grubby fingers, "if they hear you talkin' such ways as that. You got fine clothes on, so you must be a lady. Here—let me have a look inside that bag you're carryin'—maybe we'll find your name inside."

She extended the bag—a frilly black drawstring affair with fringe and jet beads—but before the street urchin could take it from her, an elegantly gloved hand interceded. She caught a glimpse of a dark waistcoat, a silken vest, the merest impression of pale blue eyes, and then her vision faded completely. Rather than a cruel surprise, this state of blindness seemed somehow a return to the norm, and in its way it was comforting, even empowering, in its very familiarity.

"Away with you, you thieving little wastrel, or I'll drag you off to Newgate myself," the man said in a tone that was at once refined and mildly savage, and she heard the boy's quick steps on the stones as he fled. There was a gentle reprimand in that cultured voice when he went on, and she felt his strong arm slip around her waist. "Jenny," he scolded, and with the name came a torrent of remembrances, almost too many to sort through, and all sense of disorientation left her. "How many times must I warn you not to wander off by yourself?" He paused to emit an elegant sigh. When he went on, there was an edge to his voice. "Perhaps Adela is right in her assertion that you would be better off in an institution of some sort, where allowances could be made for your affliction."

The reference to a hospital sent a little chill skittering along her spine, and she distracted herself by aligning all the things she suddenly knew about herself and the man beside her.

This was Martin, her elder brother and guardian, holding her arm so firmly, ushering her into a waiting carriage. He was a prominent man of business who kept offices in High Street. Her name was Jenny Wade, and she lived with Martin and his wife, Adela, in a spacious town house only a few streets away. She was nineteen years old and a spinster, much to her grievous disappointment, for her greatest ambition was to marry and bear children. Her "affliction," as Martin called it, had come upon her in the course of an illness suffered when she was seven. Their parents were both dead, and the year was 1722.

Jenny heard Martin rap at the wall of the coach, and the sleek and costly vehicle jostled into motion, creaking and smelling of rich leather. "You won't send me to an asylum, so don't threaten," she said cheerfully, acutely aware of so many things—the varied texture of her gown, her gloves, her cloak among them. Over the years Jenny had learned to let her other senses compensate for the loss of her eyesight, and she could determine much from touching, hearing, smelling, and tasting.

She sensed her brother's smile, knew it contained reluctance as well as affection. "No," he confessed, "I wouldn't. But you're a scamp all the same, and I can't think why I put up with you."

"That's easy—it's because you love me," Jenny said. She was not spoiled by her brother, she reflected, but still he often indulged her. Out of affection, it was to be hoped, and not pity.

Martin laughed, but there was sorrow in the sound, and worry. Several moments passed before he spoke, and when he did, his tone was serious. "Why were you handing your bag over to that little street rat back there?"

Jenny squirmed, uneasy. She'd suffered some kind of spell, she supposed, forgetting who she was and where she lived, and behind that realization were other memories, nebulous ones she couldn't quite grasp, so fantastic that they would surely come up in her dreams.

"I was a bit confused, that's all," she said. Jenny seldom lied to Martin, for he was far more perceptive than most sighted people, and he had an almost unerring knack for recognizing an untruth. Deception by omission was another matter, however, and she often employed it. "You were too hard on the child. He only wanted to look in my bag for a name of someone who might come to my aid."

"Piffle. Do you think the little wretch can read? If you'd handed him the bag, he would have run off with it," Martin said with smooth conviction. "The world is a treacherous and deviant place, Jenny. You must be more cautious in future."

"Why?" Jenny teased as the carriage rounded a corner. The swaying sensation was unique to this particular turn in the road, and she knew they'd entered their own street. "Are these coppers all that stand between us and penury?" She gave the handbag a little shake, causing the coins inside to rattle.

Martin's reply was snappish, impatient, but Jenny was not deceived by the show of anger. She'd frightened her brother, and the thought filled her with remorse.

"Don't be silly. Do you think I give a damn about a handful of pocket change? You were in danger, Jenny. And now you're telling me you were 'confused.' I'm summoning the doctor as soon as Mistress Peach has given you supper and put you to bed."

Jenny's regret was swept aside by a rush of impotent fury, though she harbored an abiding affection for Mistress Peach, who had once served as her nanny and was now referred to as her companion. "I'm not a child, Martin, to be tucked up with a dolly, and no one has to 'give' me my supper. I can feed myself!"

Martin's only answer was an exasperated sigh. The carriage stopped, and cold air buffeted Jenny's cheeks when the door was opened from the outside. She descended without waiting for help from her brother, pushing aside the coach driver's hand, and strode toward the house with the certainty of long practice.

She was greatly troubled, though she wouldn't have admitted as much to Martin and certainly not to Adela, who was bound to nag, or Mistress Peach, who would fret herself into a sick headache. Jenny had been blind for twelve years, and yet she'd seen the fog and the boy and even Martin, though only for a moment. Furthermore, there were things she should remember, things she desperately needed to remember, about the moments prior to her fit of forgetfulness, important matters struggling behind a heavy veil at the back of her mind.

Jenny's devoted companion met her in the foyer, muttering, bundling her briskly in a knitted coverlet, while Adela stood by, silent except for the slight, familiar wheezing sound she made when she was irritated.

"Where did you find her?" she demanded sharply of Martin. Adela was a fine woman and good wife to Jenny's brother, considering her somewhat intractable and obstreperous nature, but she collected disappointments, slights, and minor injustices the way some people garnered seashells or buttons or bits of bright ribbon. The habit rendered her tiresome indeed, and pettish.

Jenny stiffened inside the coverlet. "Kindly do not speak as if I were deaf, Adela, as well as blind. If you have a question, then ask it directly!"

"That will be enough, both of you," Martin said wearily, and Jenny's ears caught the faint whisper of kidskin brushing flesh as he removed his gloves—more an impression than a sound, really. She felt a draft as he removed his waistcoat with a habitual flourish that was uniquely his own. "Jenny became distracted while I was doing business with the tailor, that's all. I'm sure she merely stepped out of the carriage to get a breath of air and did not realize how far she'd strayed."

Jenny's face flamed with heat—Martin was as bad as Adela, in his way, making excuses for her behavior as though she were a slow-witted child—but it would be futile to argue. Besides, she was exhausted, and vaguely unwell in the bargain, wanting only to sit by the fire in her room and sip strong tea.

She endured Mistress Peach's seemingly interminable fussing, and when that good woman finally left her alone, Jenny's gratitude was profound. She felt oddly insubstantial, like a character in an oft-told tale, and she was deeply frightened. Pictures flashed inside her head, shifting, jewel-like images of a strange and faraway place, that pulsed with activity and with unaccountable noises. How, she wondered, could such things have found their way into the mind of a sheltered blind woman?

The sense of displacement grew as the hours passed; it was as if she were not entirely real, for all the solidity and substance of her surroundings. Jenny herself might have been a shadow, or a reflection.

Was she the dreamer—or the dream?

The doctor came at nine and was shown to her room by Adela.

Jenny did not confide in the aging physician, but endured his fumbling examinations in silence. She was, by that time, convinced that she was fading, like a figure in an old and weathered portrait, and would soon vanish entirely.

Valerian

Colefield Hall, 1995

I had almost freed myself from the unseen shackles my tutor had used to restrain me. In the meantime, while I continued the struggle I hoped was imperceptible, I spoke moderately to Challes. "Paradise," I murmured in a thoughtful tone while he loomed over me in an avid and singularly unnerving fashion. "The place where there are many mansions."

"Yes," he whispered, his face translucent with some maniacal ecstacy.

"I would not dare to cross the threshold of any one of them," I told him, and while I lent the words a regretful note, the unflattering truth was that I had no desire to be anything other than what I was—not angel or devil, specter or saint, and certainly not a mortal man.

Challes looked as though I'd struck him, and recoiled.

I had broken my bonds and bolted upright on the slab, but before Challes could react or I could get to my feet, the chamber trembled as if the very walls would give way. There was a strange, implosive feeling all around, as if the air had been replaced by a vacuum, and then he was there.

My brother.

Krispin gripped Challes from behind and flung him cruelly aside. "Fool!" he rasped.

I studied him, my head tilted slightly to one side. Krispin was not a large fiend, neither broad through the shoulders nor long of leg, like me; he had, instead, the lithe agility of a trapeze artist or a dancer. His hair was fair as moonlight, his eyes a soft, deceptively fragile blue, his skin so flawless that he appeared to have no pores.

"Enough," I said quietly when Krispin moved to stove in Challes's ribs with one booted foot. Granted, a mortal could not have done a vampire injury by such a blow, but Krispin, of course, was not human. He was plainly much stronger than the blood-drinker who had spawned us both.

Krispin listened—evidently there was still enough of the flesh-and-blood boy in him that his first instinct was to respond to an elder brother's command—and Challes crawled, crablike, into a corner, there to whimper and mewl in a manner that made me want to kick him myself.

Still seated on the slab, I spread my hands. "Here I am, Krispin," I said mildly, belying my true feelings, which were myriad and complicated, bittersweet and excruciatingly painful. "Destroy me if you can."

For a long interval Krispin simply stared at me in silence, and I watched a kaleidoscope of emotions flash across his Dresden face. I saw hatred, along with the ghostly and shimmering reflection of an adoration it shamed him to recall, and finally, a sort of terrified triumph.

He shook his seraphic head. "No, my brother," he said with the vaguest of smiles. "Your death will be neither quick nor merciful. You have much to suffer before the gates of hell swing wide to grant you entrance."

What I felt was more revulsion than fear, more sorrow than hatred. How I despised Challes in those moments for taking that naive, mischievous child Krispin had been and turning him into this monster! Had I not been occupied, perforce, with my brother's presence, I believe I would have carried Challes to a churchyard, laid him at the feet of a holy statue, and driven a stake through his heart.

"Do you think there will be a welcoming parade?" I asked with no trace of guile. "When I finally meet with damnation, I mean?"

Krispin might have flushed, had he been mortal. I saw the anger flood his face, although it did not alter the pristine white of his flesh, but instead rendered it more transparent still, like cloth woven of spun moonlight. "You are in grave trouble, brother," he said quietly. "Pray, do not make light of it."

"You would prefer pathos? Pleading, perhaps, with copious tears? Sorry." I paused for the length of a heartbeat. "I won't be humbling myself in any significant fashion, Krispin. Pride is my curse, as well as your own. We are, after all, begotten of the same dam and sire, God rest their misguided souls."

Krispin flinched, though not, I thought, from the mention of the Supreme Being. No, I believed it was my reference to our mother, however generically, that disturbed him—and his response confirmed my suspicions.

"Do not speak her name," he warned. "Your lips, your tongue, would defile those revered syllables merely by shaping them!"

I rolled my eyes. "Great Zeus," I said on what would have been a long breath, had I been human. "You are fixated—perhaps that good woman kept you too long on the breast. Or, mayhap, not long enough—"

"Be silent!"

I stood at last and crossed the few feet that separated us with an easy, unhurried gait. "Why?" I asked, knowing he saw only the insolence and disdain I willed him to see, and not the heartbreak and confusion churning behind the facade I presented. "Why did you murder those poor women, instead of bringing your rancor straight to me in the first place?"

His lips curled slightly, and I was struck by the realization that any female, mortal or otherwise, would find him vastly appealing. He could seem ingenuous if he so wished, and even virtuous. Perhaps he had not simply killed his victims, but gotten to know them first, methodically seducing their minds…

"I told you before," Krispin said with elegant contempt, "I would not make this easy for you. I want you to pay."

I rested my hands on my hips, realizing only after the fact that it was an old gesture, from our days as corporeal youths, a posture of superior power for me, but a subtly daunting one for him. "Even considering my multitude of sins, mortal and otherwise," I began, "your loathing of me is somewhat disproportionate to reality, don't you think?"

Challes had risen to his feet, and he was no longer making pitiful noises, but he cowered against the wall of the vault, watching Krispin as though he were the Devil incarnate or, far worse from a vampire's perspective,

Nemesis, the angel of sublime vengeance. I began to speculate that my teacher had not been trying to usher me into Paradise at all, but merely to hide me from my brother's madness, which appeared to be even greater and more virulent than his own.

I was touched, and decided not to stake Challes after all. Not immediately, at least.

"It is more than Seraphina's betrayal," Krispin said, and I felt the searing cold of his agony flicker across my spirit, like shadows cast by flames of ice. "You have taken my mate. Over and over again, you have stolen her."

All sympathy deserted me in that moment, for it enraged me that Krispin dared to regard himself as a rival for Daisy's affections. We had been created to live side by side, she and I, through all the ages; had it not been for my transformation from man to vampire, we would have been incarnated together, again and again, until we stepped over the farthest boundary of time.

"Your mate?" I shaped the words softly, insolently, on my tongue. "You were never anything more than an interloper, Krispin. She is mine—now and forever, time without end, amen and amen."

He raised one finely shaped eyebrow, and his mocking expression made me want to close my hands around his polished marble throat and choke him. "Is she?" Krispin paused to feign a luxurious sigh. "Ah, yes—our lady of many names. How lovely she is. You call her Daisy now, but you have known her as Brenna, as Elisabeth—poor whoring little wretch—and as sweet Jenny. Unfortunate how quickly she took sick and died, wasn't it?" Another sigh, still theatrical, if almost inaudible. "And there were other lifetimes, of course—she was the fetching woman who ran the boardinghouse in that little western town, wasn't she?"

Harmony Beaucheau. I closed my eyes against the memory of that particular incarnation—for it remained acutely painful, even after more than a century—and opened them again only out of an instinct for self-preservation. "'What is the point of this?" I whispered. "Are you leading up to telling me that Daisy cared for you once, when her name was Maddie Goodtree and the two of you made love in a gravedigger's cottage, with the Great Fire of London licking at your—heels?"

"So she told you," Krispin said with a self-satisfied and somewhat distant little smile. "I hoped she would, once I'd revived the memory for her."

I felt sick, just to think of Krispin's hands on Daisy's flesh, in this lifetime or any other, but I did not allow the aversion to show. I had no way of reckoning the extent of my brother's powers, but I sensed that they were formidable, and quite different from my own. Whether his abilities were greater or lesser than mine, I could not guess, but they were unquestionably heightened by my ignorance of their nature.

"You could not have her, except by trickery," I said. "So you murdered her, over and over again."

The cherubic mouth twitched with barely contained amusement. "Not the first time, when she was Brenna," he disclaimed blithely. "That happened quite on its own. But I admit to helping justice along a little, now and again, in this or that lifetime. Elisabeth's fever, for example. It's easy, you know, to plant the germ of an illness in mortal flesh. They're so fragile. So vulnerable to any passing malady."

I flung myself upon my brother, knowing all the while it was what he wanted, what he'd goaded me to do, but unable to restrain the poisonous fury swelling within me. I made a sound that was at once a guttural growl and a shriek as I throttled him; I was as frenzied as a wolf in a trap, and as dangerous.

Krispin screamed, but it was a cry of hideous pleasure, even of ecstasy, like some hell-beast in climax. Even the hurt I caused him gave him joy, however heinous; he had surely dreamed of this moment, planned and schemed for it, for nearly the whole of his existence.

He melted in my hands like vapor, and vanished, but we had renewed our brotherly bond, malevolent as it was, and I sensed his destination and pursued him, leaving a disconsolate Challes behind to weep into his palms.

Krispin took me to a high plain, somewhere on the coast of Cornwall, and the sea was within our hearing if not our sight. There were standing stones, garish in the frigid, silvery glow, casting their lengthy shadows toward the moon, instead of away, in an eerie juxtaposition of nature.

His laughter was the keening of a mad creature, and he ran between the stones, his cape trailing absurdly behind him, as if he expected to take wing and fly. I would not have been surprised if he had.

I waited until he had expended some of his demented energy, watching him spin and cavort, now perched crowlike atop the highest of the ancient stones, now pirouetting in the center of the circle, arms outstretched, head tilted back, beautiful face bathed in moonlight.

The pagan revels continued for some time. Then, at long last, Krispin was still, smiling and beckoning for me to join him inside the stones.

I did not hesitate, though I was certain a trap was about to spring. I would have followed him into the very heart of hell, anywhere, because as long as I was with him, watching him, Daisy would be safe. When the time was right, when I had discovered my brother's greatest vulnerability, I meant to destroy him.

"There were countless sacrifices on this spot," he told me when I stood beside him. "So much passion, so much terror—the place reverberates with it even after all this time. Can't you feel it?"

I kept my repugnance to myself. Temporarily. "I have terror and passion enough of my own," I said. "I do not require that of others."

Krispin smiled at me and seemed, for a moment, almost like his old self. That facet of the experience stood out in sharp relief, wholly separate and more frightening somehow than anything that had gone before. "You were always damnably self-reliant, a law unto yourself—Valerian, the archangel made flesh, the saint with fangs."

I ignored the jibe. I would not allow him to glory in my attack again until I was ready to drive a pointed stick through his crumbling, rotted little heart. He could take all the perverted pleasure he wished in that. "You want my life," I said quietly, "and I will give it to you."

He stared at me, plainly baffled, and I was relieved to know he could not read my mind the way some fiends could. "On what condition?" he asked, suspicious.

"That we face our end together," I said in all sincerity. It was, I saw, the only way to put a finish to the curse that had pursued Daisy and me for so long. If I perished, and Krispin with me, the cycle would be broken at long last. Never again would I find Daisy, fall in love with her, hold her in my arms as she gave up the ghost yet another time. She would be left to live out this life, and any others that lay ahead, in relative peace.

Krispin studied me in silence for a long time. I could feel dawn hovering beyond the hills, ready to spill over the horizon and consume us. I wanted that death, although I knew it would be agonizing, and only a prelude to the suffering waiting beyond the veil.

"Suppose there is no judgment and no hell," Krispin reflected. "Would you welcome death? Would you yearn to rest, at long last, in the dark arms of oblivion?"

I felt the sting of impending morning on my cool flesh and wondered if I would die bravely, or in a screaming, writhing frenzy of anguish. I had never seen a vampire burned to cinders by the sun, but I had witnessed other demises—all of them ghastly.

I shivered.

"Oblivion would certainly be preferable to eternal suffering in the flames of Hades," I confessed, "but I have no particular wish to rest forever, either."

"You care for her so much, the lovely Daisy, that you would submit yourself to any fate?" Krispin paused to smile. Then, before I could offer a reply, he went on. "How noble you are. Imagine it—Valerian Lazarus, the bootmaker's whelp, willing to sacrifice his glorious self to save a woman. Why, it's almost Arthurian!"

I hadn't been callow enough to hope that Krispin would fail to guess why I wanted him to die with me. An idiot could have figured it out. Nor had I taken any great risk in letting him see how very great my love for Daisy truly was—he had known all along. He had tormented me with it, without my ever guessing, for hundreds of years.

I glanced uneasily toward the eastern horizon. It was still dark, and yet there was enough light hidden in the gloom to sear my sensitive eyes. For the first time, it occurred to me that one of the differences between Krispin's powers and mine could be the ability to withstand sunlight. "You have made your point," I said irascibly. "I know that you hate me, that you hold me in utter contempt. And I grow weary of your self-pity. Great Scot, to grieve and wail all these centuries over the slights of a vain, selfish, and utterly ignorant woman like Seraphina—to cry over spilt mother's milk—it's madness, Krispin. It's obscene!"

The light was coming closer, getting stronger, burning. Burning.

Krispin glared at me and gave that harrowing animal shriek of rage again, but then he turned to smoke, like a movie vampire, and seeped into the ground, there in the center of the circle, which yawned around us like the jaws of some great beast.

I did the same, and found myself, along with my brother, in a pit of tangled bones covered by the hard, windswept earth. These, no doubt, were the remains of those poor scapegoats who had been sacrificed to ancient, greedy gods. I felt their emotions, especially their fear, and heard the silent, protesting cacophony of their voices.

Krispin burrowed in among them, curled into the same position I'd seen him take as a small child, and, with a beatific smile curving his lips, tumbled abruptly into the vampire sleep. I would have killed him then, despite multitudinous compunctions, using one of the martyr's bones for a stake and another for a mallet, but my own nature betrayed me—I succumbed to the dark waters swamping my mind and slipped down and down, into the valley of the shadow.

« ^ »

Jenny Wade

London, 1722

In her dreams Jenny could see as clearly as she had before her illness, and the images flashing through her mind were alive with clamor and bright, vibrant colors, pulsing and infused with light.

Everything moved at impossible speeds, and she was surrounded by purposeful people clad in odd, abbreviated clothing. They were strangers, and yet, conversely, she felt she knew and understood them, in a general way at least.

When she awakened, with a violent jerk, the scenes and the actors who had played them out vanished into the part of her brain where unremembered things were hidden. Her breathing was rapid and shallow, and she sank back against her pillows, willing herself to be calm. When she had achieved that, she focused her sharpened senses and discerned, by the coolness of the air against the flesh on her arms and by the deep, settled stillness of the house, that it was not yet morning.

She ached with a sudden, terrible loneliness, worse than anything she'd felt before, and was too distraught even to weep. She was young, she was blind, and she would never have a home of her own, or a loving husband to laugh with, or children to tug at her skirts and plead for sweets and stories.

Jenny waited patiently for the familiar sounds that-meant the others were awake. Then she rose and washed, and was seated at her vanity table, brushing and plaiting her waist-length hair, when there came a rapid knock at her bedroom door. Before she could call out in answer, Adela swept in, her scent and the essence of her nature going before her like unseen heralds.

"Good morning, Jenny," she said without warmth.

Jenny felt a stirring of pity for her sister-in-law, for there was no poetry in her, no sunshine or humor. "Good morning," she replied and went on weaving her hair into a single thick braid.

Adela came to stand just behind her. "Martin tells me you suffered an episode yesterday."

A small muscle, hidden somewhere deep in Jenny's heart, seized with the renewed fear of being sent away to some awful place, where madwomen would be her only companions. "It was nothing," she said, hoping she sounded sane, as well as cheerful. "I was just thinking of other things, that's all."

Her sister-in-law was rigidly silent.

Jenny imagined that she could see her reflection in the vanity mirror, but the only image she could recall was that of a scrawny, red-haired girl with green eyes dominating a freckled face. She did not know how she looked now, though she often plagued Peach to describe her, and begged to know if she was beautiful.

Dear, loyal Peach always answered that she was lovely enough to capture and break the heart of any gentleman alive.

"What have I done, Adela?" Jenny asked in a soft voice, "to make you despise me so much? This is a large house—a palace by anyone's standards, and yet I invariably feel as though I'm in the way."

Adela did not answer—perhaps she did not know what to say, or refrained out of kindness—and left the room.

Jenny finished dressing, descended the broad staircase, and made her way into the parlor. There she sat down at the harpsichord and made music while a gentle rain pattered upon the windowpanes, making itself part of the song.

There were callers after luncheon, and Martin came home early from his offices and sat in the parlor with Jenny, reading aloud from a new French novel. It was during that pleasant interlude that the simple truth came to her—Adela was jealous of Martin's affection for his young sister, and no doubt wished for more attention from him.

A great sorrow filled Jenny, and when Martin had finished reading, she ventured a suggestion. "Perhaps you should take Adela to the seaside. It would be romantic, just the two of you."

"And what would become of you?"

Jenny was mildly incensed. "I have Peach to look after me, Martin," she said in a moderate tone. "And don't say you must concentrate on your work, because I know it isn't true. You could manage your business in your sleep—I've heard you complain of it before."

Martin chuckled, but there was an undercurrent of sadness in his mirth. "I must stop buying these damned sentimental novels," he said. "They give you unseemly ideas."

"Adela needs you," Jenny insisted gently. "You neglect her."

"Leave it alone, Jenny," Martin said, and his tone was sharp enough to sting. He set the book aside with a telling thump, got out of his chair, and strode out of the room.

Jenny had dinner alone that evening beside the fire, for Martin had gone off to his club, and Adela had taken to her bed with yet another headache. And still the rain fell, though it wasn't singing now, as before. It was dreary, and Jenny's loneliness was such that she wondered how she could bear a lifetime of such feelings.

After her meal she returned to the harpsichord, closing the great doors behind her to muffle the sound, and sat down to play.

It was that night, in the soft swirling center of her music, that Jenny heard the angel's voice for the first time.

"Jenny," it said softly, almost reverently, from just behind her right shoulder. Whether born of heaven or of hell, the visitor was male. To a disturbing degree.

Jenny was not afraid, but she did wonder if she was having another spell. She craved comfort and reassurance; mayhap her active imagination had conjured a being to meet that need. She knew, because her blindness had made her introspective, and she'd spent a great deal of time exploring the fascinating and mysterious corners, closets, and crevices of her own inner world, learning that the mind was capable of all sorts of trickery, pleasant and otherwise.

She did not move from the little bench, or speak, but simply stopped playing and held out one hand.

"I have found you," said the visitor, and she heard weeping in his voice, as well as joy. Felt the air stir as he bent to kiss her lightly on top of the head.

An exquisite passion swept through her, and she felt herself flush. "You're not real," she said. "You were born of my longing and my need."

His hands rested gently on her shoulders; his grasp was gentle, but not warm as Martin's would have been, or Peach's. His flesh felt as cool and smooth as a polished gem, even through the fabric of her gown, and she reasoned that heaven must of course be a temperate place, the logical opposite of hell.

"No, precious," he said. "I'm not an illusion."

"Are you an angel then?" Jenny managed to ask.

His laugh was low and richly masculine, but contained none of the mockery or mild contempt she sometimes detected in Martin's mirth. His lips brushed the side of her neck, and they were cool, too, and soft like the petals of some exotic flower. "Perish the thought," he said. "But I am not a demon, either, so please do not fear me."

Jenny was convinced now that she must be having a waking dream—she could not hope for such tender attentions in reality, given her affliction—and the realization was a keen stab of sorrow, piercing the heart.

"I can't bear to think I've imagined you," she said wretchedly.

"I'm all too real, my Jenny. And I have loved you for longer than you can imagine."

Something leaped within her, something primitive and treacherous and wildly improper. She wanted to believe, wanted desperately for this phantom lover to be genuine, formed of flesh and blood, loving her, needing her, despite her flaw. A name, she thought, would give him substance, so she asked for his in a quiet, hopeful tone.

"Valerian," he answered somewhat hoarsely, and he squeezed her shoulders with his long fingers, and once again Jenny felt a deep and unholy pleasure slamming through her veins and muscles. At last, after finding its way into every part of her, the sensation shaped itself into a fiery coil and spun, tightening with every turn, just beneath her stomach.

"I've been so lonely," Jenny confessed. It was all right, because she was surely dreaming, and because it wouldn't have done to confide such a stark truth to Martin, or Adela, or Peach. They would have thought it untoward for an innocent young woman to desire an intimacy deeper than the brisk, blithe affection they themselves displayed for her.

"As have I," Valerian replied. In her mind she could picture him—he was tall, as stately and handsome as a prince from a storybook. She imagined his eyes to be blue, intensely so, and his hair to be the warm and rich color of chestnuts—and she was quite sure of these things, though she did not know how she could have discerned them.

Jenny reached up and interlocked her fingers with his. "Will you stay with me?"

He chuckled, though the sound was like a sob, too, and raised her from the seat before the harpsichord to kiss her ever so softly on the mouth. At this contact, an entirely new experience for Jenny, the wicked flame in her depths, only then dwindling, flared once more into a brilliant, consuming blaze.

"I must go," Valerian told her while she was still swaying in his arms, giddy from the kiss. "But I'll return soon, lovely Jenny. I promise."

She put her arms around his neck, perhaps a little desperately. "Stay," she pleaded, unashamed.

He rested a fingertip on her still-tingling, slightly swollen lips. "It is almost morning, beloved—I cannot stay."

Jenny clung, but he seemed to dissolve in her very embrace, as dream people are able to do, and she was alone again, but not so sad. The beginnings of a sweet and fragile hope kindled in her breast, and she hummed softly to herself as she went upstairs, moved confidently along the passageway to her room, and got herself ready for bed.

On the morrow she awakened to the joy and prevailed upon Peach to take special care in arranging her hair, with ribbons and dried flowers woven through the plait before it was wrapped round her crown in a coronet. She donned a cheerful dress of yellow silk, too; Jenny knew the color because of its unique, buttery warmth beneath her practiced fingertips, and could recognize red and blue and green and white, when the need arose, by similar means.

Before tea that afternoon, Adela read to Jenny from a volume of classic Greek poetry, perhaps as a gesture of peace. Dinner was served at eight, and when it was over, Jenny pleaded fatigue and retired to her room, unaccompanied because it was Peach's night to visit her sister.

Jenny had not lied when she'd claimed to be tired, but beneath her weariness flowed a wild, anticipatory emotion she could not define, an elemental, unfettered something, careening along like a river, under no command but its own. Jenny could no more have stopped the rushing torrent than altered the course of the Thames, so she sat down in the chair by the hearth in her room and waited.

The house settled slowly around her—servants shuffled sleepily in the halls, doors opened and closed, floors creaked. She heard Martin's voice, and Adela's, as they said their good-nights and parted in the passage to enter their separate rooms.

Jenny had led a sheltered life, but she was not ignorant of the ways of men and women, thanks to Peach's frankness and the scandalous gossip she sometimes overheard the maids exchanging when they thought no one else was about. It puzzled her that Martin and Adela did not share a bed, and had never done so within her memory. Perhaps, she speculated, they did not wish to have children, like other couples of their age and means.

Guilt washed through Jenny in the wake of the great flood of indefinable excitement that had nearly drowned her moments before. Other couples did not have a blind and indigent relation to look after, she thought with chagrin.

The summons from her angel, when it came, was a trill of silent music, a burst of harp strings too subtle for the ear to catch, but something felt instead, like a feather passed closet to the skin but not quite touching. Jenny moved quietly and competently toward it, unhampered by the darkness that slowed others' steps, responding to the piper's call.

There could be no doubt that she was awake this time, she reflected with a sense of soaring joy, when she entered the misty, fragrant garden and knew that he was there waiting.

"Valerian," she said softly, and he drew her, by some faculty of mind, or perhaps by the shimmering thread of her most private desires, along the brick walk and into his arms.

It was the first of many such visits. Sometimes Valerian told wonderful tales, and on other nights they danced together in the garden, and it was as though Jenny's feet skimmed above the flat stones surrounding the fountain.

Nearly a year passed before they became lovers.

On that eve of sweet surrender Valerian wrapped her in something silken and whispering—a cloak, she thought. Jenny clung to him when they were caught up by the wind and became part of it, and of each other, and were carried away to another place.

"What are you that you can work such tricks?" she asked when Valerian laid her on a soft couch in a room she couldn't see, and she knew by sound and motion that he knelt beside her. At last, after all the courting, all the subtle preparation, she would give herself to her phantom.

It would not have mattered what reply he made to her question—be he devil or fairy prince, Jenny thought, he was the answer to all her longings. She had been waiting for him since before her first memory.

"A fallen angel," Valerian said with tenderness and sorrow mingling in his wonderful voice. He hadn't made the music that had drawn her to the garden so many nights, she realized then—he was that music. "Don't trouble yourself with who I am, sweet. It is enough, isn't it, that we've found each other again at long last?"

Jenny raised trembling fingers to the bodice of her gown, guided by the same inner instinct that made her heart pound and caused a heavy, aching warmth to settle over her. She undid the ribbon ties of her camisole and parted the fabric to reveal her plump breasts, because she knew that he wanted to see and touch them, because she longed to nurture him somehow.

He groaned, and the sound bore her high on fragile wings, and she soared upon it, triumphant, and murmured his beautiful name—Valerian. The utterance itself was a caress, echoing back to her, lodging in deep, forbidden places.

She felt his lips on her nipple, hungry and wet, and cried out, not in fear or in horror, but in that singular, innocent lust at which only virgins can be truly proficient. Her fingers found their way into his thick, silken hair, and she pressed him closer, whimpering, urging him on in his gentle greed.

The pleasure was unspeakable, not to be borne, exceeding even the fitful and licentious fantasies that had caused Jenny to toss restlessly in her bed when she first reached womanhood. She had never even guessed that the mating process could be so fiercely delightful.

Jenny wanted to give herself up to Valerian, wanted it more than the return of her eyesight, more than a husband or a child or a house where she was mistress, and not Adela. These last were, after all, impossible dreams, but this other pleasure was within her grasp. The joy of it would sustain her, even if he should abandon her, through all the bleak years of spinsterhood that might lay ahead.

She could barely speak, so intense was the ecstasy he offered and withdrew and then offered again, with his light, musician's fingers and his seeking mouth. "Valerian—where have we known each other before? I do not—remember—" She paused to give a shuddering sigh as he raised her far enough off the couch to remove her clothes.

To be naked to his gaze was as heady as a surfeit of summer wine. For the first time ever, Jenny felt lushly beautiful and womanly—and whole.

Valerian was nibbling at the delicate flesh on her neck. "Your heart remembers," he said softly. "Look into your heart."

"I can't—think," she protested with a throaty laugh.

He gathered her breasts in his strong, gentle hands, chafing the taut peaks with his thumbs, and she wondered distractedly why she did not feel his breath upon her flesh, for his face was very near to hers. "How like a woman to want to think at such a time," he teased. "The heart does not have thoughts, beloved—only feelings. Search there, among them, and I promise you will find recollection, some shadow, of what we have been to each other."

Such a search could not be made, Jenny knew, while her blood was thundering through her veins and her breathing was racing out of control. Still, she sensed that Valerian was right—they were not strangers, but companions of old; each belonging to the other in some elemental and enigmatic way.

To lie with Valerian was to return home after a long and difficult journey, to be safe after a spell of unrelenting danger.

"Please," she said. "Make love to me."

"Yes," he replied, and after parting her legs tenderly, to either side of the couch, he mounted her. "There may be pain—"

Jenny's slim, supple form arched like a bow, taut and humming. "I don't care," she said, and it was true. Nothing mattered but their joining, the reunion of their bodies and souls.

Valerian lunged into her, and she cried out, in a virgin's distress, yes, but also in profound welcome. She was exultant, alive with sensation. At last, at last, she was truly herself.

In the meantime, Valerian murmured endearments to her, and half-formed prayers of adoration, his magnificent body flexing powerfully, reaching deep inside Jenny, causing her to sob softly even as her spirit took fire and burned.

It ended, finally, as must all joys and all sorrows, and they lay together, entwined, exhausted, reunited after a separation so long that Jenny could not remember their parting. Later, when she'd gathered her scattered wits, she would examine her heart, as Valerian had said she must, and surely she would find him there…

Daisy

Las Vegas, 1995

"Chandler!" The voice was snappish, insistent. "Damn it, Daisy, you gotta come out of it!"

She stirred. Daisy? Who the hell was Daisy?

"Open your eyes, Chandler," her tormentor commanded.

She ached all over, yet a sweet languor possessed her, as though she had just made love, and been thoroughly, skillfully satisfied. She did not want to surface, to leave the sensation behind.

"I ain't got all night, Chandler!"

Was this the man who had been her lover, who had carried her to heights she only faintly remembered?

It couldn't be, she thought. Reluctantly she opened her eyes.

Seeing O'Halloran looming over her brought everything back with all the subtly of a train plunging off a high trestle. He had cookie crumbs on his chin, what hair he had left was standing on end, and there was a rumpled air about him, as if he hadn't changed clothes since the Carter administration.

She sighed and closed her eyes again, just for a moment. At least that much was normal—her partner was the same sweet slob he'd always been.

"Daisy, don't veg out on me now," O'Halloran rasped. "You looked right at me a second ago. I saw you."

"Super-cop," she said, trying on the name he'd called her by—Daisy—in her muddled mind and finding that it fit comfortably, like a favorite T-shirt or a roomy pair of sweat pants. "Nothing gets by you, does it, O'Halloran?" She paused, wanting to cry but too proud to give in to the urge. "Damn it, this is a hospital, isn't it?"

"University Medical Center," O'Halloran confirmed. "But don't get your panties in a wad, Chandler—it ain't the psycho ward. You collapsed on the sidewalk, that's all, and somebody called an ambulance."

Daisy's temples were throbbing, and she thought she might stick her head over the side of the bed and heave all over O'Halloran's shoes. Chances were, nobody would notice if she did.

"Am I hurt?"

"Nope," O'Halloran said proudly, as though he'd participated in her salvation or even engineered it single-handedly. "But you were definitely out of it. Talked about some guy named Martin and twitched a lot."

She raised a hand to her forehead, to push back her hair, and noticed for the first time she was on IV. "What the—?" she said, starting to sit up.

O'Halloran pushed her back onto the pillows. "Take a breath, Chandler," he said. "It's just sugar water. No big deal. And don't even think about getting up, because you ain't going noplace, not tonight."

A tear escaped, despite Daisy's determination, and zigzagged down her cheek. "They think I'm crazy or on drugs, don't they? The brass, I mean."

Her partner smiled, produced a chocolate cookie from somewhere, and bit into it with relish. The crumbs dropped onto Daisy's bedsheet.

"Nobody thinks you're using," he said. "You've already had the necessary blood and urine tests. And you're probably only mildly deranged, which puts you in the normal category."

"I'm not having a breakdown," Daisy said. But she was remembering so many things—being blind, living in her brother and sister-in-law's house in eighteenth-century London, Valerian carrying her away by magic and making love to her, and wondering if she'd imagined all of it. She wouldn't be the first cop to crumble under stress, though that didn't make the idea any easier to deal with.

O'Halloran found her other hand, the one without the needle and tube protruding from the large vein, and gathered it awkwardly between his own. "If you say your head's on straight, Chandler, I believe you," he told her. "You just need to rest for a while, that's all."

"They've suspended me."

'"You're on medical leave," O'Halloran corrected.

Daisy took a few moments to gather her composure. "Permanently?"

The other cop hesitated just a moment too long. "Until further notice," he said finally, still holding her hand. "You'll have to have some counseling and some tests, and then you'll go up before a review board. Happens all the time."

"Not to me, it doesn't."

O'Halloran shrugged in an effort to appear nonchalant, but she saw the concern in his eyes. "Okay, Chandler, so you got stepped on. Things ain't too cool just now. That's reality, and you gotta deal with it. You have sick leave, and some savings, maybe?"

Life with—or without—Jeanine had made Daisy pragmatic at a very young age. She had sick leave, vacation time, and a year's wages tucked away in the bank. "Don't sweat it, O'Halloran," she said. "I won't have to move in with you."

He laughed. "You're still a smartass. That's got to be a good sign."

"How's the case going, hotshot? And before you come back with, 'what case?', let me just say you know damn well which one I'm talking about."

"The vampire thing."

"That's the one."

O'Halloran sighed. "We ain't made a whole hell of a lot of progress with that one, Chandler." A nurse appeared on the other side of Daisy's bed and gave the veteran cop a meaningful look. "Tell you what, Ace. I'll stop by in the morning and fill you in, okay?"

Daisy had neither the strength nor the will to argue. It was late, and she felt as if she'd been trampled by a herd of tap-dancing burros. Besides, once O'Halloran and the nurse had gone and the lights were out, she'd be able to cry in private.

Her partner left, and the nurse, whose nametag read, 'Betty,' gave Daisy a pill to make her sleep, checked the flow of glucose through the tube, switched off the light, and went out.

Daisy lay perfectly still, staring up at the ceiling, trying to make sense of all that had been happening to her since that first fateful night, when she'd shelled out big bucks to watch a magic show at the Venetian Hotel. Everything had gone to hell as soon as she'd met Valerian.

He was a regular sort of guy, if you were willing to overlook the fangs and the fact that he was six hundred years old. Far be it from her to fall in love with a normal human being, somebody with a last name, at least. Oh, no. She had to lose her heart to a vampire.

She was, for a time, so caught up in her private lament that she did not notice the elegant form leaning against the metal rail at the foot of her bed. When she did, her heart spiraled into the back of her throat, blocking the cry of alarm that would have escaped a moment later.

"It's only me," Valerian said.

Daisy's relief was so intense that it seemed to melt her bones and muscles like sunshine on snow. She squinted as he came to stand beside her, his handsome face clearly visible even in the darkness, because of its pale translu-cence.

"For a moment, I thought—"

"That I was Krispin, come to kill you at last?"

She could only nod.

He touched her face, and she was reminded of his lovemaking, as she'd experienced it in this lifetime, and as Jenny Wade, the blind girl. "My precious love," he said in a ragged whisper and bent to kiss her almost fitfully on the forehead. "I've come to bid you farewell."

Once or twice, since the vampire odyssey had begun, Daisy had wished she could have her old, comparatively uncomplicated life back. Now, faced with the prospect of losing Valerian forever, she discovered she was willing to risk almost anything to continue the relationship, weird as it was.

Maybe she had gone over the edge, and the department had been right to pull her badge.

"No," she said, her eyes filling with fresh tears. "I don't want you to go."

"Daisy," he whispered, and there was anguish in the way he said her name. "This is the only way I can protect you, and it's difficult enough—"

"What is the only way? What are you talking about?"

Valerian deflected the questions with a statement. "Krispin won't bother you again."

"Damn it, Valerian, I have to know what you mean. I love you—that alone probably qualifies me for mega-therapy—but there it is. You can't just walk out of here, or turn into a bat and fly away, or dissolve into a mist and seep through the wall—by God, you owe me more than that!"

He regarded her silently for a time, and she saw his pain clearly in those moments, though the room was as dark as ever, and felt the weight of his sorrow descend on her own heart. When he spoke, his voice was only a raspy murmur.

"All right," Valerian said tonelessly. "I've made a bargain with Krispin. We will both perish, together, and the curse will be broken. You'll be free."

Daisy wanted to blurt out a protest, but she stopped the words in her throat and swallowed them. Then she waited until she could trust herself to speak in a rational manner. "How?" She waved her good hand, precluding interruptions. "I'm not asking about the curse. I want to know how you intend to 'perish,' as you put it. What tragic elegance that word has!"

His eyes glistened as though he might be weeping, as she certainly was, but there was no tremor in his voice. "We'll be burned."

Such horror engulfed Daisy that she nearly fainted. She sat up at last and groped for the small stainless-steel pan on the bedside table, certain her stomach would fling up its contents. "Burned? Good God, Valerian, you can't be serious!"

He managed a brief, crooked smile, full of grief. "It's hardly a suitable subject for a joke," he pointed out.

"I won't let you!" Daisy cried and tried to scramble out of bed.

Valerian pinned her to the pillows, as surely as if he'd grasped her shoulders, though he was not physically touching her. "You can't stop this, Daisy," he said reasonably, gently. ''And you wouldn't try if you really understood the situation."

Daisy's face was wet with tears, and they kept coming, as if there were no end to them, and she didn't give a damn. "That's bull, and you know it," she argued furiously. "I do understand the god-damned situation. What I don't get is how you could be such an idiot! Can't you see that this is a trick—that Krispin has no intention of going up in smoke with you?"

In a graceful motion that was at once firm and heartbreakingly tender, Valerian gathered Daisy into his arms and held her close against his chest. "Shhhh," he said, stroking her hair with one hand as she gave way to great, silent, shuddering sobs. For a long time he rocked her gently in his embrace, and when the worst of the storm had passed, he crooked a finger under her quivering chin and made her look at him. "Why are you here, Daisy?"

She laid her head against his chest, listening for a heartbeat that wasn't there. She was kneeling on the mattress now, the IV tube still dangling from her left hand, with one arm around Valerian's neck. Haltingly she answered his question, told him how she'd been walking home from the Venetian Hotel when the second spontaneous regression had overtaken her. Daisy went on to recount her brief experience as Jenny Wade, finishing with, "You were there, too. You carried me away, and we made love. I was a virgin."

She felt him tremble. "Yes," he said.

"Did I travel through time, the way you do?"

"No," Valerian replied at length. "You were only remembering. It was all an illusion."

"Even you?"

"Especially me."

Daisy was disappointed; she'd wanted the experience to be real. "Can vampires make women pregnant?"

He stiffened but did not pull away, as it had seemed for a moment that he would. "I don't know," he answered after another long interval. "Pray that such a thing cannot happen. Any child of mine would surely be a monster."

Daisy turned her wet face into his shirtfront and indulged in a loud sniffle. "Only during the Terrible Twos," she said, because if she spoke seriously, or let go of Valerian, the world would end.

Valerian laid a hand to either side of Daisy's head and tilted it back to look into her eyes. "Stop, Daisy," he pleaded. "I know what you're trying to do, but it won't work. We can't put off the inevitable."

"Please—stay."

"I can't."

"It's a trap—Krispin means to let you die and save himself at the last moment!"

"I know that, Daisy," Valerian said patiently, glancing uneasily toward the window. The darkness seemed to be thinning, losing its depth. "He won't succeed."

"Yes, he will. He'll come back here and carry me off, and there'll be no one to protect me—"

Valerian laid a finger to her lips, effectively stopping the rising tide of hysteria. "I love you," he said, and then he was simply gone. It was as if she'd only imagined him, only dreamed he was there.

Daisy knelt on the bed for a few moments, frantic, her mind full of horrific images of Valerian burning. She reached for the pan again and retched convulsively.

When the spate of illness passed, Daisy switched on her reading lamp and reached for the telephone on the beside stand. She called information in Seattle and asked for Kristina's number.

Ms. Holbrook answered right away, though she sounded sleepy. "This had better be good," she said without preamble.

Daisy had had to make a lot of difficult calls in the course of her work. By comparison, telephoning the daughter of two blood-drinking monsters in the middle of the night was tame. "Valerian is in trouble," she told Kristina. "I need your help."

"Who is this?"

"Daisy Chandler. We met in Las Vegas, at Valerian's house."

"Oh, yes—the naked cop. Tell me—just what kind of fix has my Guardian Vampire gotten himself into this time? He does have a regrettable gift for generating chaos, our Valerian. Not to mention scandal, usually accompanied by high drama."

Daisy closed her eyes, gathered her courage, and began to talk.

« ^ »

Valerian

London, 1875

I found Calder Holbrook in the lab beneath the London house he shared with Maeve, his mate. Like many vampires, he preferred the century of his mortal birth and, having that option, passed much of his time there. "Valerian," the doctor greeted me, with more resignation than affection, when I appeared at his elbow. He was an ideal partner for Maeve, though like a great many doctors he tended to be taciturn to the point of abruptness. He was quiet and steady, providing a perfect counterbalance to her more spectacular personality. Though I had transformed Holbrook from mortal to fiend myself, and was thus, in a manner of speaking, his sire, and although it had been I, and no one else, who had taught him the rudiments of navigating the world of the supernatural, there was, as the saying goes, no love lost between us.

For it was I who made Maeve a vampire, albeit long before he knew her, and he was jealous of that undeniable intimacy.

I stood with my hands clasped behind my back, peering over Calder's shoulder at the concoction bubbling in a bottle heated over a small brazier. "Have you discovered the cure for what ails us?" I inquired, for I knew that was what the doctor sought—a way to circumvent a nightwalker's needs for blood-sustenance and protection from the sun, while retaining the glorious powers we possess. Unhampered by the kind of idealism that plagues men and vampires of Calder's ilk, I envisioned a plethora of such creatures ranging over the earth and, subsequent to that thought, hoped for a resounding failure.

Holbrook turned his head to regard me archly for a moment or two, one eyebrow raised, then uttered a gruff harumph and turned back to his work. "Mysteries, mysteries," he muttered. "Even vampirism cannot explain what ails you, Valerian."

I had just parted from Daisy, probably forever, and I faced an eternity of damnation—unceasing punishment so terrible, so brutal, that only a medieval mind could truly grasp its portent—and I was not in the mood to exchange jibes with the queen's consort. "Please—spare me your hysterical expressions of admiration and tender regard."

The stuff in Calder's glass vial turned to an interesting shade of amber, and he raised it high to peer through it and murmur again.

"What do you want?'" he asked when he'd left me quivering on the hook a little longer.

"I have been told that you've discovered parallel dimensions and passages into those other worlds."

At long last Calder turned and granted me his full, if somewhat grudging, attention. "I have uncovered the existence of such phenomena, yes, but I have only theories as to how they are reached."

I resisted the urge to grasp the doctor's collar and haul him onto his toes as I might have done with a mortal, for I knew Calder wouldn't suffer such an affront lightly. He must have glimpsed the intent in my face before I quelled it, for the shadow of a smile fell across his mouth.

I had amused him. Oh, joy.

"The way must be sealed, whatever and wherever it is," I said at last in an angry rasp. My temper was not helped by the sense of hopelessness that pervaded me being like an unseen vapor, bruising every cell and sinew, even in their atrophy. "Don't you see? That's how he—my brother, Krispin—has been able to hide himself from me all these centuries. Suppose there are others like him? Suppose—"

"What in hell are you talking about?" Calder interrupted.

Dawn was approaching; I could feel it tugging at my consciousness, pulling me downward into a maelstrom of nothingness, although the doctor did not seem to be affected. "There is so little time!" I cried, desperate to make him understand.

"Tell me," he said, this time with a note of gentleness in his voice. I imagined that Dr. Holbrook had been a comfort to his patients, as a mortal physician. He was not generally so delicate with the sensibilities of vampires.

I told the tale, as best I was able, my words faltering and tumbling over each other as I attempted to resist the grasping, smothering darkness rising around me. I explained the danger Krispin represented, or at least I hoped that was what I had done, for it all sounded garbled to me, and disjointed. All the while I was speaking, I wondered vaguely why my fledgling was not succumbing to the great sleep as I was.

Finally the moment came when I could no longer think, or speak, or wonder. I had been dragged under, into the oblivion of my innermost being, there to slumber, witless and unstirring, until the sun sank into westerly seas.

Daisy

Las Vegas, 1995

The sleeping pill must have taken hold soon after Daisy had finished her call to Kristina, for she wakened to full sunlight and a breakfast tray, with no conscious memory of hanging up the receiver.

The ageless Ms. Holbrook was standing by the window, her cap of dark hair gleaming richly in the dazzle of morning, clad in a cream-colored pantsuit of impeccable tailoring, Gucci shoes, and a matching bag of soft, supple leather. Her jewelry, a single heavy golden chain, was real, and Daisy wondered if she'd zapped the outfit out of thin air or simply bought everything in stores, like anyone else.

"Why didn't you awaken me?" Daisy demanded, frowning at the food on her tray and reaching reluctantly for a piece of toast. She had no appetite, but she knew she would need her strength for the challenges ahead, and that meant she had to eat.

Kristina raised one shoulder in a slight, elegant shrug. "There's really no hurry. Valerian is a vampire. He's burrowed down somewhere, sleeping off the day."

Daisy nibbled at the toast. "And Krispin?"

"Who knows? From what you told me on the telephone last night, he may be the proverbial horse of a different color. An unknown quantity, if you will."

A shiver cartwheeled down Daisy's spine, and the words she spoke were born of pure bravado. "Can you take me to him?"

"Oh, that's a brilliant idea," Kristina muttered, ignoring the nurse who came to see if Daisy was eating her breakfast. "If this thing didn't kill us both for our trouble, my mother well might. Or Valerian himself." She shoved a hand through her hair, and it immediately fell back into perfect array, a soft cascade of ebony spun to silk.

In her next life Daisy wanted hair like that.

She settled against her pillow, an unwilling patient, dolefully spooning stewed peaches into her mouth. A nurse had taken the IV needle from her hand; that was some progress, at least. And O'Halloran hadn't been in with any further news flashes on the dismal state of her career. A person had to focus on the positive whenever possible. 'Okay. Then just tell me how to find the creep," she said between bites of spongy fruit, "and I'll go by myself."

"Absolutely not," Kristina said. "I'm taking you to my place in Seattle. You can stay there until all this is settled, one way or another."

Daisy couldn't bear the thought of sitting by passively and leaving everything to fate. She had too much to lose—and besides, there was really no place to hide. Krispin would close in for the kill when he wanted to—up until now, he'd only been toying with Daisy, using her to torment Valerian.

"Hiding out is no solution, Kristina, and you know it," she replied with as much firmness as she could muster under the circumstances. "Some things can't be avoided, and this is one of them. There has to be a confrontation."

"Between Valerian and Krispin, yes," Kristina insisted. "But you should stay out of it. You can't begin to understand what you're dealing with here."

"Would you turn away and pretend nothing was happening? If you were in love with a man—excuse me, a vampire—could you hide out somewhere until it was all over?"

Daisy thought she saw a shadow of sadness move in Kristina's eyes, but the expression was so fleeting that she told herself she'd imagined it.

"Daisy, the important thing here is for you to stay alive. The relationship isn't going to work anyway, because in case you've forgotten, you're a mortal woman and Valerian is a vampire. How could the two of you ever hope to have anything even remotely resembling a normal life? You'll get old and die, for instance, but Valerian, if he survives, will look the same a thousand years from now as he does today." She paused to walk over and close the door on the hustle and bustle of the hospital corridor before continuing. "He wouldn't change back into a mortal, Daisy, even if such a thing were possible. Valerian revels in what he is. Would you be willing to become a vampire?"

Daisy shrank back, repelled by the idea and more than a little stricken because Kristina's points were valid ones. "Of course not," she said.

Kristina spread her hands wide as if to say, "Well, then?"

"I love Valerian," Daisy insisted in a fragile tone. "And I don't care if everybody thinks I'm his mother someday—or if I don't see him in the daytime, or any of that. It would be enough just to be with him."

The other woman raised one delicate eyebrow. Her eyes were an intense shade of silvery gray and so expressive that few words were needed. "Of all vampires, Daisy, Valerian is the most fickle, the most outrageous, the most flamboyant. His passions have a range you cannot begin to appreciate."

Daisy closed her eyes, just briefly, against the keenest ache she had ever felt. "If you are saying he has loved others—"

"He has," Kristina said, though not unkindly.

"Whose side are you on, anyway?" Daisy demanded, regretting that she'd turned to this woman—if indeed she was a woman and not some kind of spook—for help in saving Valerian from himself as well as from his brother.

"Your side, Daisy," Kristina answered sadly. "And Valerian's. Just now my only aim is to keep you both alive. Still, if you're smart, you'll take my advice, forget our splendid friend and find a nice, ordinary mortal to love."

Daisy pushed away her food and folded her arms stubbornly. "I'm afraid knowing Valerian has spoiled me for 'nice, ordinary mortals,'" she said. "Besides, there's something bigger than all of us going on here. It's as if we've come to the crux of it all, the X on the map, after centuries of blunders and near misses. The situation has to be resolved—I feel sure of it. There is something we're supposed to do to make things right."

"No wonder you keep reincarnating as Valerian's lover, over and over again," Kristina remarked with some irritation. "You haven't the sense to learn your lesson."

"Which is?" Daisy asked tartly, swinging her legs over the side of the bed and testing a privately held theory that she could stand on her own if she tried, despite the bone-melting weakness that still afflicted her.

"That you must let go of Valerian, once and for all. And the same goes for him. The two of you are obsessed, following each other from continent to continent and century to century, as if you could thwart karma by mule-headed persistence!"

Daisy stood, wavered, clutched the bed, indulging in a few deep, steadying breaths before replying. "Maybe it's just that we know we belong together," she said. "Damn it, aren't we entitled to one lifetime of happiness, after all we've been through?"

"None of us is entitled to anything," Kristina countered, folding her arms. "We're here on sufferance. Mortal and monster, saint and sinner—we could all be obliterated at the whim of heaven."

"How nice that you came to visit," Daisy said with acid sweetness. "To think I was actually depressed before!"

Kristina smiled tentatively and approached Daisy's bedside. "Sorry—I tend to be a little overrealistic sometimes," she said and laughed a little. "I get that from my father, I think. He's pragmatic to a fault."

Daisy, steadier on her feet now, began to make her way slowly around the bed, with a goal of reaching the closet. She didn't ask Kristina to blink her up an outfit, like before at Valerian's house; it had occurred to her since that the clothes might have been woven of fancy and little else, like those of the fabled emperor. There was also a possibility that the garments could vanish, being magical, like so much smoke, leaving her standing in some public place clad only in her good intentions.

"Nothing wrong with taking a sensible approach to things," she said, because she liked Kristina and because she, being a cop, albeit a suspended one, was inclined toward a practical view herself. Her knuckles whitened where she gripped the steel rail at the foot of the mattress as she inched along. "Are you an only child?" she inquired, sensing that Kristina was about to order her back into bed and anxious to deflect any concern, however well meant, that might be coming her way.

"To say the least," Kristina answered, folding her arms and watching Daisy's slow progress with her head tilted slightly to one side. The expression on her exquisite face was at once pitying and wry. "As far as I know, my mother was the first vampire to give birth in the human fashion. Nightwalkers generally create their 'children' by transforming favorite mortals."

Daisy stopped, trembling with weakness, grasping the footrails as if to keep from dropping over a precipice. She laughed, but the sound was one of pain, not merriment. "I thought I'd heard everything, until I fell in with your crowd. The confessions of serial killers and street hoods pale by comparison."

Kristina moved silently to her side, as lithe and graceful as a cat, and put a strong arm around her. "Back into bed, Daisy," she said with kind insistence. "You're not ready to ride to the rescue quite yet."

Daisy wanted to resist, but there was a hypnotic quality to Kristina's touch, as well as her voice, and besides, she was tired. So unbelievably tired. "Can't just—give up—" she protested, amazed to find that she was already lying down again. Kristina was covering her gently with the sheet and thin blanket.

"I can't imagine you doing that," Kristina said with amusement and a touch of sorrow, too. "In fact, I don't believe you know how to quit—even when it would be the smartest thing to do."

Daisy felt the bed spinning beneath her, felt herself spiraling down and down, like Alice tumbling into the rabbit hole, to land, bouncing, on a dream…

Valerian

London, 1875

I awakened from my enforced rest to find myself sprawled ingloriously on the floor of Holbrook's laboratory, with the good doctor gone. I was not alone, however—Kristina, child of my soul, was sitting nearby, slender legs elegantly crossed and arms folded, awaiting my return to consciousness.

"Bloody hell," I rasped, sitting up and shaking my head. I felt rather like a pugilist felled by a stronger opponent.

Kristina smiled sweetly. "Hello, Lazybones."

I stood shakily, grasping the examination table with one arm to steady myself during the process. "Where the devil is that no-account father of yours?" I demanded.

She sighed. "When I turned a hundred and thirty, I stopped keeping track."

"He didn't sleep," I marveled.

"What?"

"'Calder. Your father—he didn't sleep."

"I know Calder is my father," Kristina said patiently, leaning forward in her chair but not rising, as a more mannerly and respectful child might do. "And how do you know what happened after you dropped off? Papa could have willed himself to some other lair the moment you closed your eyes."

My practiced instincts, coupled with the memory of a wide-wake, completely alert Dr. Holbrook, argued against Kristina's theory. "He's found a way to circumvent the vampire sleep—by all the old gods, he's done it!" Fury scorched through me, consuming the last wisps of insensibility lingering in my brain. "And damn him, Calder means to keep the secret to himself!"

Kristina folded back the slim, tapered fingers of one hand and gazed thoughtfully at her nails. "You aren't being fair," she accused mildly. "Papa does not number among your more ardent admirers—we both know that. But he would never withhold any knowledge that could be used to accomplish something good."

I began to pace, muttering to myself as I moved. Although I had awakened refreshed, my thoughts were again jumbled and fragmentary, and I quite literally did not know which way to turn.

The woman who would, in any other society except our own, be called my goddaughter, rose at last from her chair. "I've seen Daisy," she said, stopping me in midstride. "There's a crazy scheme cooking in the back of that mortal brain, Valerian—she figures she can save you, your Daisy, if she surrenders herself to Krispin before your heroic sacrifice can be made."

The mere idea chilled me. I grasped Kristina's shoulders and hauled her onto her toes, giving her a little shake in the process. "You talked her out of it, of course," I said.

Fire kindled in Kristina's pewter-colored eyes, but she did not use her singular magic to punish me for the effort. "I tried," was her response. "Right now Daisy is too frail to try anything very dramatic, but there can be no question that she's determined. I expect she'll do something stupid the moment she's worked up the necessary stamina. Now, let me go before I turn you into a garden slug and bury you in salt."

I released her, wincing at the image, and at the same time smiling a little. "Not very imaginative," I scolded, bending forward to plant a soft kiss on her forehead. "Help me, Kristina. Please. If you know anything about Calder's experiments, I beg of you, tell me now."

She looked at me with a sheen of tears glimmering in her eyes. "You're asking me to betray my father's trust."

I shook my head. "I'm asking you to save Daisy, and others probably, from Krispin's madness. If I can find the passageway between this world and his, I can find him."

Kristina was silent for a time, obviously torn, but then she turned and crossed the room to a wall lined with neatly arranged volumes on sturdy shelves. She ran an index finger over the spines with affection and finally selected one particular book and took it reverently from its place among the others.

She held the tome against her chest for a moment, then extended it to me.

It was a diary of sorts, a complex record of Calder's most recent explorations of science. In it were all his theories concerning parallel dimensions, and I absorbed the words greedily by running my right hand down every page.

When I was finished, I had a very good idea where to find my brother.

The solution, in fact, was almost ludicrously simple. I might have thought of it myself, or at least asked a certain friend who writes screenplays for horror films to suggest possibilities, if I had been in a calm frame of mind rather than a mild state of hysteria.

"Thank you," I said to Kristina and pressed the volume back into her hands.

I went from there to my favorite part of nineteenth-century London for a hasty feeding, leaving my victim anemic but otherwise ecstatic. Then I proceeded to a certain burial mound not far from modern-day Dunnett's Head, a place where Challes had taken Krispin, Brenna, and me long ago while in the throes of a scholarly passion for antiquities. We were all fascinated by the area, for the bones secreted beneath that manmade hillock of stone and rubble and grass had been ancient even in our medieval time. According to our tutor, the occupants of that underground chamber had lived and died before the Romans came to Britain.

When I reached that bleak, moon-swept monument, it looked so strange, so eerie, that it might have been the landscape of some lesser planet, knowing neither snow nor fire, catching only the chill, straying beams of some wasted star. It was difficult to believe that any cogent being, human or otherwise, had ever trod this hard, unyielding ground, let alone toiled there, and given birth, fought battles, and built small, leaky ships to brave the treacherous seas.

For me, that night, as well fed and strong as I was, it seemed to be the loneliest, most desolate place in the universe. I reminded myself of the information I'd absorbed from Calder's notes—in order to move between our world and the alternate one Krispin apparently frequented, one must undergo another birth, with the grave for a womb.

I was drawn to that particular site by an impulse born in some unexplored region of my being—no doubt there were still bonds linking Krispin and me, however tenuous they might have been. We had been brothers once, after all.

I closed my eyes as an infinite sadness encompassed me, but my resolve was not shaken. If I found Krispin before the appointed time of our mutual destruction, I would destroy him, thus evading the ambush he most assuredly planned for me and, at the same time, making certain that Daisy was safe.

I was willing to risk anything to succeed in that one aim, and with that certainty in mind, I dared to call upon the most fearsome angel in all heaven's uncounted legions.

"Nemesis!" I shouted into the night. "Pay heed to the bargain I offer!"

Even though I had just summoned him, it was still a profound shock when the night was rent by a narrow strip of light, no product of the sun or the moon, but of some inner universe. It broadened, a gleaming doorway to a realm I would never see, and the great warrior angel appeared. He was quite ordinary-looking, was Nemesis, a fact that probably served him very well during his frequent interactions with the mortal race.

The chasm vanished, but Nemesis seemed luminous, as though light flowed through his veins instead of blood. Perhaps it did.

He looked at me with contemptuous interest. "You dare to command me, Vampire, as though I were a genie in a lamp instead of a warrior of the One God? What is your purpose?"

"I seek your assistance."

Nemesis chuckled to himself, and that sound, too, was disdainful. "What perfidy is this?" he demanded after a few moments of silence. "Vampires do not seek favors of angels."

"This vampire is desperate," I replied with resignation, and then I told him my lengthy story, which was also Daisy's, leaving nothing out beyond those things that would offend a celibate creature. Aside from that, I spoke the absolute and unvarnished truth, describing Krispin and all the havoc he could wreak if he wasn't stopped.

The angel listened without interruption, I will give him that, but when I had finished, he was plainly still doubtful of my motives for calling him to that barren place and relating such a tale.

"You would ask me to help destroy this vampire?" Nemesis inquired, after considering my words in silence for a long interval. When I merely nodded, he went on. "If it were up to me," he said, "you may be certain I would put a finish to the lot of you. Abominations, that's what you are. Since I have yet to reduce you to ashes, to be swept away by the wind, it should be plain that the choice is not mine."

"You have a certain autonomy, I suspect," I ventured to insist, though quietly and very, very carefully. "Were that not so, you couldn't have risen to a position of authority."

Nemesis studied me, his eyes narrowed in distrustful curiosity, and I marveled that, for all his terrible power, he clearly could not look into my mind. Had he been able to do so, he would have known that I was sincere, and there was no treachery afoot.

"I cannot destroy any creature, save demons," he said, but with less certainly than before.

"Perhaps," I conceded moderately, "but you are allowed, I trust, to escort surrendering fiends into the welcoming arms of hell."

The statement caught him off guard, I was pleased to see, but only for a moment. "What are you saying?"

"If you will help me to capture the one who bore the name of Krispin Lazarus, as a mortal, then I shall go willingly into the pit."

"You cannot begin to guess what you are suggesting," the angel said, but I knew he was intrigued by my proposal. To rid the world of two troublesome vampires was surely, in his view, a worthy aspiration.

I recalled the things I had been taught about hell as a human child, and shivered involuntarily. "Oh, but I do," I said at last. "I was mortal in the fourteenth century, and the torments awaiting the damned were described to me in vivid detail from the time I could make sense of such matters. I know well what I shall suffer."

"And you are willing to face such punishment for the sake of one woman?"

"Yes," I answered without hesitation, but I was full of dread and sorrow, for there has never been another creature that loved life as I did.

"Remarkable," the angel said, rubbing his chin thoughtfully between a thumb and index finger as he pondered my countenance. "Either you lie, which seems most likely, or you are indeed a rare vampire. It hardly wants saying that your kind is not noted for generosity—especially when the required sacrifice is one of such magnitude." He paused. "It is known that you have made a bargain with your brother, the renegade Krispin. You have agreed to accept the help of a warlock, as well. Why, then, do you come to me?"

I smiled sadly. "You have a remarkable intelligence system."

"The best," Nemesis agreed. "Speak, Vampire. Do you dare attempt to deceive me?"

I shook my head. "No. You are a fierce warrior, Nemesis. You will surely rejoice when I fall into the hands of Lucifer. But unlike Dathan, the warlock, unlike my misguided brother, you can be counted upon to honor any bargain you make. Truth is your nature, and there are no lies in you."

"How beautifully you speak. And what a waste that you have cast your lot with fiends and devils. Yes, Vampire—I would delight in putting an end to your evil, and that of all others like you, but you mistake me in one point. I take no pleasure in the suffering of any creature, no matter how heinous it may be. Why do you think I despise you so much? Because you cause pain and fear, because you make the sweet sanction of darkness, where humankind is meant to take rest, a foul and unholy thing."

I was not armed for a philosophical discussion, nor was I in the mood to undertake an argument. Still, Nemesis had the upper hand in this scenario; his was the power to grant or deny my entreaty, and I was merely the supplicant. "You are misinformed," I answered, maintaining my dignity but giving the words no edge of contempt or sarcasm. "The attentions of a vampire are not painful. They foster only ecstasy. Furthermore, we rarely frighten a mortal deliberately—they manage to scare themselves nicely, with their silly legends and superstitions."

Nemesis was still, measuring me with his eyes, and I could not discern from his expression whether I had roused his ire or his sympathy. Common sense caused me to dismiss the latter possibility entirely.

I waited, having said my piece, gazing back at the great angel in silence, using all my strength to veil the terror I felt. Yes, I loved Daisy—enough not only to surrender the myriad pleasures and powers of my existence, but to consign myself to eternal torment as well. And yet everything within me, every instinct, every mental pulse, clamored for life.

"Very well," the angel agreed after a long while. After a moment's hesitation, during which his distaste showed clearly in his face, Nemesis laid a hand to my shoulder.

"The covenant is made. I confer upon you the power to capture and bind your enemy, and I warn you—do not abuse this gift, for it will turn on you like a viper if you attempt such a thing. When your quest is achieved, I will come for you."

« ^ »

Valerian

New York, 1995

After taking my leave of Nemesis, there on that cold and empty plain, I traveled immediately to New York, a favorite city of mine, to feed. I was greedy that night, and perhaps a bit less delicate with my "victims" than I would normally have been. The ordeal ahead, the covenant I had made with the warrior angel notwithstanding, would require the fullest use of all my powers. Proper preparation demanded that I take more blood than ever before.

I did not kill; indeed, I was not even unkind. Furthermore, knowing how Challes had tricked me into taking the wine of warlocks before, I was unusually cautious in selecting my prey.

It was an intoxicating feast—I imbibed the blood of a teenage gang member, a hot and heady brew, vibrant with youthful anger, passion, and frustration. I took sustenance from a baglady and left her swooning in the warm night, remembering me as a generous and tender lover rather than a fiend. The roll of bills I tucked into the pocket of her ragged coat would provide for her needs from then on.

There were others, too—I don't recall exactly how many, for after the youth and the old woman, I was in something of a frenzy. When the first light of dawn rimmed the New York skyline with gold and apricot and crimson, I was still bursting with energy and power.

I would not sleep this day away, I knew, and yet I dared not let the sun find me. Beneath the ebullience I could not seem to quell was the grim and ironic awareness that perdition itself, Dante's hell and my own, awaited my surrender. There I would know fires that burned eternally, but never consumed the anguished, screaming creatures writhing within their flames.

It seemed pointless, in the face of such suffering, to avoid the light of one minor star, whirling through space with nine odd and insignificant planets in its thrall.

Nonetheless, I was a prudent monster when the situation called for the virtue of circumspection. I took myself to the center of the stone circle, where Krispin had danced and reeled with such demented abandon, drunk on moonlight and evil, and I became mist, slipping into the ground only moments ahead of Old Sol's fiery fingers.

I scrabbled through the bones I found there—strong and wakeful, I was—but Krispin was nowhere to be found. Even through some twelve feet of earth and rubble, roots and bones, rodents and worms, I could feel the clawing warmth of the sun, seeking and groping and prodding. Searching me out.

I had once seen a vampire who had been caught abroad in daylight, shortly after Challes transformed me, and the recollection still causes me to shudder. It was a living monstrosity, a blackened skeleton, ludicrous and pathetic. I wondered what had happened to the poor wretch in the centuries since, but only briefly. I reminded myself that I must focus and find Krispin.

I closed my eyes and concentrated on my brother. In my mind I saw him in the same way I always had: as a fragile, eager boy, forever following me about, admiring me despite my arrogance, desperately tolerant of my impatience with him. A tear slipped down my face as I mourned that child, lost to me for all time, and the remorse I felt for the way I'd treated him made me heartsore.

My musings took me to Krispin's side, as I had hoped they would. Imagine my amazement in finding him not only awake, but standing on the darkened stage of the showroom in the Venetian Hotel, examining the carriage I used in my magic act.

He did not seem surprised by my appearance, but then, he wouldn't have been, would he, for he had surely expected me. I had a peculiar idea that, indeed, he might actually have summoned me there somehow.

"Did you think to find me lying on a slab somewhere, Valerian?" he asked with amusement, running an artist's hand over the fancy gilded cupids and flowers carved into the coach door. "Just waiting for you to plunge a stake through my heart and put an end to me for all time?"

"Yes," I said, for there was utterly no point in lying. "How is it that you, a vampire, are up and about while the sun shines?"

"I took a great deal of blood over the past night or two, as you undoubtedly did," Krispin replied, sounding almost bored. He crouched beside a wheel now, touching it with those white minstrel's fingers and tipped his head back briefly to gaze upward into the rigging for the stage lights. "It's so dark and cool here," he mused. "One wouldn't guess that the morning has come."

I did not take a step closer to him, as reflex bade me to do, but instead folded my arms. My posture was idle, shoulders at a slight slant, head tilted to one side, but I doubt Krispin was fooled by these mannerisms. Being my sibling, he knew all my ruses, shams, and affectations.

"Tell me about this place where you've been hiding all these centuries."

Krispin smiled, met my eyes for a moment, then returned to his thoughtful examination of the carriage. Such things had fascinated him as a lad, I remembered with a vague pang; he'd loved carts and coaches and wagons as a mortal, as well as ships.

"It's a world almost indiscernible from this one. Rather like passing through Alice's looking glass. Everything here has a counterpart there."

"You have no special powers, then?"

Krispin laughed, stroking the ornate spokes of one wheel as a mortal lover might stroke a shapely limb. "I have many unique qualities, Valerian, as you do. Like most vampires, I sleep during the day and cannot bear the light of the sun. I must take blood or perish of a truly agonizing hunger. I can travel through time, change my shape, veil myself from all but the most discerning eyes—the usual."

"And move between dimensions."

He feigned a sigh and straightened, hands in the pockets of his impeccably tailored tuxedo slacks. There was a look of the 1920s about him, a certain dissolute elegance. With his slicked-back blond hair and lithe figure, he resembled a character from one of F. Scott Fitzgerald's novels.

"Yes," he said, "I can move between dimensions. Even a mortal can do that, albeit usually by accident. Many of your so-called missing persons have merely slipped over onto our side." Krispin paused to smile indulgently, reminding me of a fond uncle recalling an outing with a precocious niece or nephew. "Their reactions are interesting—oft-times they don't realize they've made a transition and try to return home as if nothing had happened. They make odd little discoveries along the way. Their house is suddenly to be found on the opposite side of the street from where it was before, that sort of thing. Of course, that's nothing compared to the shock of opening the front door and encountering their equally bewildered double on the other side."

I was fascinated, in spite of myself. I was also vigilant, expecting treachery at any moment and, I admit, watching for any opportunity to execute a trick of my own. "Interesting," I said. "When someone dies in this dimension, does his counterpart in the other world perish as well?"

"Not necessarily. The two planes are quite separate, even though they seem to reflect each other. If that weren't the case, then a person who disappears here would immediately vanish there, too."

"Do immortals have counterparts, as humans do?"

Again Krispin smiled. He kicked the carriage wheel lightly with the toe of one gleaming shoe, as if testing a tire. "Not exactly. Your reflection died some five hundred and sixty-eight years ago, as well he should have, being mere flesh and blood. You might be interested to know that he lived quite a saintly life, for his time. He was all you might have been, without your greed and arrogance."

I felt an empathy with that long-gone Valerian Lazarus, a soft but poignant wrenching sensation, as if we had shared a soul, he and I. The two of us, I knew, had been one being, even though we had never guessed at the other's existence, and it gave me a certain comfort to know he had been a force for good in his world. Perhaps some mercy would be extended to me, when I presented myself to Lucifer for punishment, on account of that other Valerian's fruitful life.

"And your counterpart?" I inquired.

Another sigh. "I'm afraid he died as a small child. His elder brother—your other self, if you will—was strong and smart and very healthy, like you. And like you, he left his mother with little or nothing for the children who came after him." Krispin stiffened, and his eyes glinted with a hatred he took no trouble to disguise. "You took it all, Valerian. You sapped the very marrow of Mother's bones. You had her complete devotion—by the gods, it was unholy the way she cared for you!"

"Stop,"' I warned quietly, "before you say too much."

He swayed slightly, as though buffeted from within by the sheer force of his emotions, and covered his eyes for a moment. When he looked at me again, however, he seemed strong again and utterly defiant, thriving on some poison of the soul even as it consumed his sanity. "If she could have rid herself of our father and me, and lived only with and for you, she would have done it."

Disgust raised a scalding gorge to the back of my throat. "Enough," I reiterated. "There can be no profit in such talk."

"No profit?" Krispin came nearer, moving as silently and sinuously as a cat. When he was within my reach, he stopped and gave a hoarse, harrowing cry of laughter. "May Apollo and Zeus and all the old gods of Olympus forbid! No profit, indeed!"

"You are mad." I could not keep the contempt from my tone. Among our kind, madness is a choice, not a sentence conferred by a random fate or an illness, as it is with humankind. This particular aberration requires careful, vigilant nurturing, for our wounds, be they emotional or physical, are quick to heal. Barring blood-starvation, sunlight, fire, or the point of a stake, wooden or otherwise, driven through its heart, a vampire cannot be killed.

Krispin reached out to straighten my lapel, as any brother might do, and his hand lingered lightly on my chest. I felt the hard chill of it even through my clothes. "Alas," he said, "I have not been able to put the grief of Seraphina's negligence behind me. Do you realize that she never kissed me good night, or ruffled my hair as she passed, or told me she loved me? Not even once?"

I recalled many instances when our mother had shown me those simple affections, and I knew that Krispin did, too. In a way, I understood his obsession with that deluded woman—fiend or mortal, we always long for that which is withheld from us.

"I'm sorry," I said, and I meant it. I regretted all he had suffered, on my account and on that of our mother. "If I could change things, Krispin, so that you were the favored one, the beloved, I would. But even we cannot go back that far, as you know. It is done. Over."

For the merest flicker of a moment I saw Krispin's true self in his pale blue eyes and knew the cosmic extent of his loneliness and his yearning for a time and a love that would unknot the ancient, ever-tightening ache inside him. "That's the worst irony of all, you know," he said in a voice so soft it might have been a breath or the faintest of sighs. "For all Seraphina's adoration of you, you never loved her at all. I think, in fact, that she amused you, with her foolish fascination and never-ending attempts to please you."

Krispin's words were close enough to the truth to wound me a little, but he was not entirely correct in his assumptions. "I did love our mother," I said quietly, and it was true. "But she expected too much of me. I was her son, not her husband or her lover. Her fixation with me was tantamount to emotional incest!"

Although my brother had implied this very thing himself, he clearly could not bear to hear the words spoken aloud. He drew back one of those slim, ethereal hands and struck me a blow that sent pain trammeling through me.

I did not move to retaliate; indeed, I did not move at all. Nor did I speak. I felt a grinding pity for Krispin, but it was not sympathy that motivated me then. I knew my brother's weakness lay in his volatile emotions, and I sought, God forgive me, to undermine him further.

The offending fist knotted at his side now, Krispin gazed up at me, weeping silently and without shame, porcelain flesh aflame with color. Like me, he had fed well in preparation for this skirmish, and the blush beneath his skin was not truly his own, but that of his most recent victims.

"It wasn't enough," he went on after a long time, "that Mother worshiped you. You had to have Brenna, too."

My voice, when I spoke, was hoarse with disuse and with sorrow. "Yes," I agreed. "Of all creatures, on earth or in hell or heaven, I love Brenna best. It has ever been so."

"You would die for her, in fact."

I smiled, though there was no mirth in me. It was a reflex, I think, a grimace masquerading as a grin. "Dying would be a merciful end, in comparison to what I would—and will—do for milady."

"Daisy," Krispin mused distractedly. "She's called Daisy now."

I did not reply, knowing as I did that Krispin was not communicating, but simply thinking aloud.

"I'm going to kill her, you know," he announced presently in a conversational tone. We might have been discussing the prospect of snow or the price of a good cigar for all the animation he displayed in those moments.

I shook my head. "I won't allow it, Krispin," I said. And then I put my right hand to his throat, at first caressing, regretting what I must do. My fingers tightened, however, when I thought of Daisy dying by his whim, and of those other women—Jillie, Janet, and Susan. Their only crime had been working for and with me.

Again Krispin gave that ghastly shriek of mingled pleasure and pain, seeming to enjoy the punishment I meted out. I felt his throat crumple like papier-mâché beneath the pressure of my fingers, and yet he did not collapse, or even struggle. His mad, glistening eyes were fixed upon my face as I crushed his windpipe, at once adoring and despising me.

I let him go, shaken and revolted, and he sank, coughing, onto the floor, there to kneel like some forlorn supplicant.

"You forget," he said after several seconds had passed, "that we are not mortal. I cannot be killed by strangling."

Violence surged up within me; I yearned to kick Krispin, to stab and tear and pummel him. I suppressed my rage, but it quaked and burned within me, like lava roiling deep in the bowels and belly of a mountain, and I knew it would rise soon and spew out of me, destroying everything in its path.

My brother half reclined on the floor now, supported by one elbow, his mouth bleeding, his right cheekbone bruised purple, watching me.

"You're right," I said at last. ''As much as I enjoyed the exercise, any attempt to choke you is, of course, futile." I crossed to a chest standing in the shadows, raised the lid, and took out the jeweled sword I used in the performance of one of my favorite illusions. The blade made a whispering sound as I pulled it from its scabbard and went back to stand over Krispin.

Even in my state of agitation I found his calm attitude remarkable. It wasn't like him simply to lie there, like a concubine on a sultan's couch, awaiting his fate. Which meant, of course, that he was up to something.

I raised the sword, clasping the handle in both hands, so that the point was suspended an inch or so above Krispin's chest.

"Go ahead," he chided softly. "Kill me."

I cannot explain my hesitation even now. By that time, all filial sentiment had been exorcised from me; I neither loved nor hated Krispin. I was as coldly indifferent as if he'd been a snake, writhing beneath the tip of my blade.

He laughed suddenly, and then to my amazement the sword turned to silvery flames in my hands. I gasped at the pain, and the flames became sparks, showering the floor. My weapon was gone.

Krispin was on his feet in an instant. "Does it hurt, Big Brother?" he crooned. "Oh, I do hope it does."

The injury had been excruciating, but it is the nature of vampire flesh to heal rapidly, as I have already recorded, and the wounds were little more than memories by then. Likewise, Krispin's throat, crushed in my hands only minutes before, was whole again. Neither was he bleeding any longer, and the bruise that had marred his perfect face was gone as well.

"No, Krispin," I said quietly. "The flames did me no lasting harm. It is your hatred that hurts most."

He laid splayed fingers to his bosom in a theatrical gesture of chagrin, truly meant, of course, as mockery. "And yet you would take me to hell with you, if you could, and endure that loathing, along with the unceasing torment, for eternity? And all to save your ladylove?"

"Yes," I answered.

He laughed again. "So noble," he said. "And so vain a notion. You will go to hell, Valerian, but alone. That will be part of your punishment, won't it? Knowing that I'm with your beloved—bedding her and finally dispensing just punishment for her betrayals?" Krispin paused to reflect. "Who knows? Perhaps your Daisy-Brenna has been a bad girl and will end up burning beside you. It's a romantic picture, isn't it?"

I might have been ill, had I been mortal, so vile was the image of Daisy suffering that way. I had earned my damnation, even before the bargain with Nemesis, but she was an innocent and deserved none of what I had brought upon her.

"Your jealousy has made you ugly, Krispin," I said moderately. "You've wasted your life, your looks, your power, everything. You could have known such pleasures, and yet you threw it all away in order to spin your petty plots and schemes of vengeance."

Krispin's fine features contorted for a moment, and I knew that I'd been right. Even in that shining other world, the one where Challes expected to find salvation for us both, my brother had nursed his grievances and counted the injustices he'd suffered. Thus he had squandered six centuries that might have been given over to adventure, to beauty, to laughter, to love.

"Damn you," he rasped. "Do not presume to pity me!"

"I cannot help it. You are the most wretched of beings." I took the lapels of his fine coat in my hands and raised him slightly. "We shall both spend eternity in hell," I told my brother in a furious whisper, "but I, at least, will have the comfort of knowing that I have lived! I have loved, sometimes unwisely, but always with verve and passion. I have explored the world, known angels and warlocks, felt agony and ecstasy and everything in between. I used the gifts that were given me. I drank the wine."

When I released him, Krispin straightened his clothes and produced a crooked, cocky grin. "As I shall do, when you have gone to reap the harvest you have sown. But never fear, cherished brother—I will send pretty Daisy along to you, probably somewhat the worse for wear, when I am through with her."

I moved to advance upon him again, but before I could cross even the small distance between us, he raised both hands, palms out. The words he said rendered me as stiff and still as a mastodon surprised by the first Ice Age.

"Before you make another of your hasty and awkward attempts, Valerian," he said, "allow me to tell you that I have already visited Daisy, during the night just past. She was released from the hospital in the afternoon, you know. Unfortunately our lady of the badge has, as they say, taken a turn for the worse."

I could not speak.

Krispin smiled, pleased by my paralysis, temporary though it was. Hands clasped behind his back, he rocked on his heels and watched me like a mischievous child who has just played an exceedingly clever prank.

We passed several moments thus, before I found my voice.

"What have you done?" I demanded.

"Do you recall the fable about the sleeping princess?" he countered. "Daisy is—asleep. In her apartment, I mean. The doctors, of course, will think she's in a coma."

I whirled away from him, ready to will myself to Daisy's quaint little home, realizing only at the last instant that I could not take the risk. After all, the sun could reach me there, and a shrieking vampire, wreathed in flames, would hardly improve matters.

I have rarely felt more desperate.

Alas, when I remembered my brother's presence and turned again to confront him, he had vanished.

Daisy

Las Vegas, 1995

Daisy had known him, of course, when he entered her apartment with no more fanfare than a summer breeze ruffling the curtains. He had come to kill her at last.

She waited, expecting to hear herself scream, oddly detached from the situation, and found that she wasn't even especially afraid. She did, however, reach for her thirty-eight, which was lying loaded on the bedside table.

Krispin chuckled, folding his arms. Moonlight glimmered in his hair and flashed from his strange, pale eyes as if they were mirrors. "That won't do anything but alarm the neighbors," he said, nodding toward the pistol wavering in Daisy's hands.

"Get out of here. Right now."

He stood still in the middle of her bedroom floor, smiling. "What a splendidly audacious thing you are. No wonder my brother finds you so endlessly fascinating."

"I've been wanting to speak with you anyway," she said, as if Krispin hadn't spoken, amazed by the steadiness of her voice. "I guess now's as good a time as any."

"How interesting," Krispin responded smoothly, taking something small from the pocket of his vest and tossing it once, triumphantly, before tucking it away again. "I do hope you aren't trying to trick me, though. There's no forestalling the inevitable. I shall have to put you out of commission, just temporarily, while I settle things with Valerian."

Daisy lowered the pistol to her lap. "You want me, don't you?" she asked in a matter-of-fact tone.

"Oh, yes," Krispin admitted. Although Daisy had not actually seen him move, he was no longer standing, but sitting on the foot of her bed.

"Then why don't you take me away with you—to your den or lair or whatever it is?"

There was a barely discernible but very frightening change in Krispin's face; too late, Daisy realized she'd made a mistake. In the next instant he lunged at her, and she managed nothing more than a single hoarse gasp before he was upon her.

"Whore!" he growled, hurting her everywhere, crushing her beneath him. "You would sacrifice anything to save my wretch of a brother!"

Daisy struggled fiercely, and she was strong, but her efforts to fling the vampire off were in vain. Her last conscious emotion was fury, the final physical sensation that of sharp teeth puncturing her throat…

Daisy sank down and down, deeper and deeper into herself, and found shelter and sanction in the memories tucked away there, like keepsakes…

She was that other woman again, standing at a window, gazing out on a vista her blind eyes could not see. She had the ruby ring he'd sent her a fortnight before; surely it meant he would return…

Jenny Wade

London, 1722

Jenny had no more than formed the thought when she heard his voice, heard him whisper her name.

Joy surged through her. Her angel had returned to her, her Valerian. She did not need her eyes to recognize him, or any of her other senses, either, for her heart knew him as its own. She turned to face him, unconcerned by his sudden arrival in her room. He had always come and gone like a ghost.

Jenny had almost succumbed to despair in days past, but now that he was here, everything would surely be all right. He would take her away with him, marry her, give their child a name.

There need be no scandal now, as Martin and Adela feared.

She turned to face her beloved, realizing only as he took her into his arms that something was very different. Instead of discerning him by her own senses, as she usually did, it seemed that impressions were being forced upon her mind.

"You've been unfaithful," he murmured, stroking her hair. "That was very foolish indeed. What possessed you to betray me the way you did?"

Jenny trembled, too stricken by the accusations to speak. It didn't occur to her to call for help, for a part of her still believed that this was her beloved, the mate of her soul. He would never do her harm.

He drew her head back, very gently, and kissed her with a heartrending tenderness. "Do you love me, my Jenny?" he whispered.

"Y-Yes," she replied. Her strength had drained away, and she felt as though she might swoon, and that was quite unlike her. Jenny prided herself on her vigor and resilience; she was not given to spells of fainting and weeping, like so many females of her acquaintance. "Of course I love you, Valerian. How can you say—how can you even think—?"

"Then why did you do it? Why did you lie with another?"

Jenny's heart was racing, though not in the pleasant way it usually did when her lover held her close, and she was wildly dizzy. "I did no such thing," she managed to say.

"You did." His voice was so quiet, so calm, the same one she knew so well, and yet so terrifyingly different. "You're carrying someone's child. And it isn't mine."

She wanted to thrust herself away from him, for she was angry, but although she had the will to do it, she did not have the strength. Instead, to her horror, she found herself clutching his coat to keep from sinking to the floor. "That's reprehensible," Jenny said. "Leave me, please. And don't ever come back."

He did not release her. "You don't mean that."

Jenny was trembling, and the despised tears were threatening. It was not in her nature to love a man who was cruel to her, but she mourned the beautiful feelings she'd once had for him, the dreams she'd cherished… All her hopes for a home and children and simple happiness lay in pieces at her feet, like shards of stained glass from a church window.

"I do mean it," she insisted, struggling now to pull away from him. "I don't need you, nor does our child. Go away now, before I call my brother in to give you a thrashing and hand you over to the police."

He laughed. "Call for him, it will do you no good. This night, at least, your dear Martin is as deaf as the fabled post, and so are Peach and that irritating sister-in-law of yours. We have business to settle, Jenny-love, and we will not be interrupted."

She began to be terribly afraid. She was barely conscious, such was her mental state, and yet she found a scream within her brave heart and released it. Her lover was amused by the effort, and as he'd predicted, it brought no one rushing to her aid.

He swept her up into his arms, and though his embrace felt like the one she knew so well, she had a curious feeling that the perception was not her own, that it had been suggested to her somehow.

"Such a pity, a beautiful, intelligent young woman like yourself, hurling herself from an upstairs window," he said calmly. "Of course, everyone will be sorely grieved, and the gossips will say it's no wonder, is it, considering the shame and scandal the poor girl was facing."

Jenny stiffened and tried again to free herself, but it was no use. He was too strong.

"Don't do this," she whispered, barely conscious, wanting desperately to stay alive, to protect the unborn child nestled within her. "Please—"

She heard the window creak on its hinges, felt the cool night air touch her.

"Don't beg, my sweet. It's demeaning, and altogether futile in the bargain."

Jenny felt her nightgown brush the window ledge, felt the yawning space beneath her, and uttered a sob, clutching at his coat. He kissed her once, very lightly, and then, with considerable reluctance, flung her from him.

She fell, flailing her arms and legs, and struck the cobblestones in the courtyard below with an impact that shattered her bones. Her death was instantaneous, but she perished with a name quivering in her heart like an arrow.

Valerian.

Her lover. Her murderer.

It was Peach who found the body lying broken and bloody on the stones of the courtyard, early the next morning when she went out for the master's newspaper. Her screams were heard all over the neighborhood, shrill as fire-bells, and brought a passing constable through the front gate on a run.

Martin was the next to arrive on the scene, followed by a pale Adela. She stayed back a little distance, one bony hand pressed to her throat, while Martin let out a low, plaintive groan of sorrow and dropped to his knees beside Jenny. He gripped her shoulders in both hands, as if he expected to awaken her.

The constable looked up and saw the second-story window, still open. He'd seen such things often enough in his line of work, and he had an idea or two about what might drive the daughter of a wealthy household to take her own life. Probably she'd had a dalliance with a groom or a footman, and nature had taken its course.

Poor girl.

"It's a shame, that's what it is," he said, for he was not without compassion, nor was he a man inclined toward the judgment of others.

Peach continued to shriek and wail and blubber, while Martin, seemingly aware of nothing and no one else, gathered his dead sister into his arms and, holding her close against his breast, carried her into the house without a word to anyone.

The funeral was held two days later, and the church was brimming with mourners, for Jenny had been a kindly, cheerful girl, well liked by those who knew her.

Rain fell hard all that morning, and well into the afternoon, too, and Mistress Peach said it was only fitting that the very heavens should weep when an angel was put into the ground to molder away to nothing. Adela stayed at home, taking to her bed with a violent headache, but Martin went doggedly from home to the church to the cemetery, heedless of the downpour, and would not leave his sister, even when the coffin had been lowered into the earth on ropes.

Several concerned gentlemen from his club had to lead him away in the end, so that the gravediggers might finish their labors.

They shoveled hastily, these unwashed and unsavory men. for they were superstitious, and despite their vocation, they had no wish to be found among the dead, recently passed-on and otherwise, when darkness fell. They'd heard so many stories, and made up a few to give their friends a turn, that they no longer knew which were fable and which might possibly be true.

It was just as well, for their sakes and for his own, that the vampire did not arrive until they'd gone, to grieve in solitude for the woman he had loved and lost, again.

Through discreet inquiries over the coming nights, he learned that Jenny Wade had disgraced herself by taking a lover. He'd given her a fine ruby ring, so he must have been a man of means, but it had disappeared before the poor girl was even buried.

« ^ »

Valerian

Las Vegas, 1995

I hurried to Daisy the instant the last feeble rays of sunlight had faded into darkness, and found her sprawled, unconscious, on the floor of her bedroom. Kristina's pendant, intended as a talisman of protection, lay coiled on the carpet beside her, offering mute testimony that my brother would not be thwarted by such fragile magic.

Krispin's ring was upon her finger; I removed it and cast it aside.

"Daisy, sweetheart—" I gathered her up and held her close, breathing in the scent of her. She was alive, but pale as wax and deeply unconscious. It would require more than a kiss of a prince to awaken my sleeping beauty, for Krispin had taken blood from her, as vampires do before transformation. He had only to infuse Daisy with that same fluid, which had surely undergone the mysterious change while flowing through his veins, to make her a fiend.

I stroked her hair back from her gray-white face with a gentle motion of one hand. He planned to turn her into one of us, thus consigning her to the eternal damnation that awaited all our race. Perhaps, I concluded in my despondency, we vampires were in reality no less fragile than humans, but merely a little better at staving off the inevitable.

Carefully I lifted my beloved into my arms and stood. She was clad only in an oversize shirt, and fearing that she might catch a chill, I wrapped her in my cloak and pressed her close against my chest. How I wished in those moments that I had a mortal's warmth to offer her, but my flesh was as cold and ungiving as that of a statue.

Closing my eyes, I took myself, and Daisy, to the only vampire I knew who might be able to help. Calder Holbrook.

His laboratory was empty when I reached it, for this was modern-day London, and Calder, of course, favored the nineteenth-century. I would not have risked taking Daisy back through time, for mortals have yet to evolve the ability to make such journeys in safety, and I might have lost her somewhere along the way.

I laid her tenderly on the examination table, still cossetted in my cloak, and began rummaging for blankets.

Calder sensed my presence in his domain, as I had hoped he would, and appeared posthaste, wearing a scowl that would surely have intimidated a lesser vampire than myself. "What the—?"

"I've brought you a patient," I interrupted, finding a covering that looked like a relic from the American Civil War and giving it a shake before draping it over Daisy's motionless form. "I'd like you to save her."

The good doctor flung an irritated glance in my direction, but his attention was soon centered on the slender nymph lying, near death, on his table. I saw what I had hoped for in his face—a physician's compassion. "What happened?" Calder asked, though he must have guessed some of the tale, for he had already laid gentle fingers to the marks of Krispin's fangs defiling her throat.

I told him what my brother had done, and why, sparing no detail.

Calder worked on Daisy as he listened, examining her for other injuries, listening to her heart through a stethoscope, taking her blood pressure. This laboratory, unlike its counterpart in the last century, of course, was equipped with a number of modern medical implements.

While I watched, in vigilant silence, Calder took plasma from a refrigerator in the corner and administered the initial transfusion. For the first time since I had found her, Daisy made a sound and stirred slightly.

My eyes blurred with tears, for I knew it was pain that had moved her, and finding myself powerless to spare her this suffering, however subliminal, was agony.

I tried to mask my emotions with words, for I was not at ease in Calder's company, nor he in mine. I could not wail and sob in despair, as I needed to do, as I might have done in Maeve's presence, or even Kristina's. "Human plasma," I observed as the precious liquid dripped slowly through a tube and into Daisy's veins. "Do you keep it around for those nights when you just don't feel like hunting?"

Calder did not look at me; he had produced a small penlight from his pocket and was peering into one of Daisy's glazed and sightless eyes. "Hardly," he replied with quiet disdain. "I have a supply on hand because I am a doctor, and because the occasional hapless human being finds his or her way here and has need of it."

"How did you know her blood type?"

Now he did meet my eyes. With a scathing glare. "Being a vampire, I am an expert on the stuff," he said pointedly and with intolerance. "If you must blather to distract yourself from your worries, Valerian, at least find something worthwhile to say."

I swallowed a cry of grief and fear and fury. "Will she die?" I asked when I felt I could speak coherently.

"Perhaps," Calder said, going back to the refrigerator and rummaging through a number of clear plastic pouches filled with blood. "We know the alternative—allowing your brother to finish the process he began—and somehow I don't think that's what you want for her. Or what she would wish for herself." He turned to look at me curiously. "Could it be, Valerian, that for once in your debauched and utterly self-serving life, you are actually putting the desires of another before your own?"

I did not refute his assessment of my character; it was, after all, accurate. "'Daisy has never wanted to become a vampire," I said, defeated. The multiple feedings I have taken in New York were beginning to wear off. and my strength was flagging. "And while I would like nothing better than to have her at my side forever, as you have your glorious Maeve, and show her all the wonders we are heir to, I won't change Daisy against her will."

Calder made a sighlike sound. "Suppose that is your only choice? Would she prefer a mortal's death to the everlasting life of a vampire?"

I found a stool and perched upon it, lowering my face to one hand. "Yes," I said. "I have offered her the gift before, in other incarnations. I cannot think her wishes have changed. Daisy's is a pure and noble spirit, unwilling to be counted among the damned."

The doctor said nothing, but simply stood beside the table, watching his patient with a solemn and thoughtful expression. I would have given all the considerable wealth I had accrued over the centuries to know what he believed Daisy's true prognosis to be.

We kept our vigil in silence after that, with Calder giving Daisy more blood at intervals. Slowly her color began to improve, and she stirred more often beneath her blanket, and made soft, disconsolate sounds that wounded me as nothing else could have done.

I had to feed, for Calder's store of plasma, while life-giving for Daisy, was but thin gruel in relation to my hunger. With the greatest reluctance I left her in the doctor's care and went out to hunt.

As before in New York, I was gluttonous, prowling the dark streets of London and filling myself, like a leech, until my tissues were swollen with the stuff.

When I returned to Calder's laboratory to resume my watch at Daisy's side, I found her virtually restored and sleeping soundly. The doctor had gone, probably to take his rest in some dark vault in the bowels of that very house, as dawn would soon be upon us, but Kristina was there, the talisman pendant clutched in one hand.

The last time I'd fed so copiously, I had not succumbed to the vampire slumber, but this occasion was different. I felt myself fading, losing my grip on consciousness. Stubbornly I lay down on the table beside Daisy and drew her into my arms, flinging Kristina a glance that dared her to protest.

"Sleep, Valerian," Maeve's child said quietly. "I will keep watch for you."

I struggled to remain awake those few extra moments, nodding toward the pendant Kristina grasped. "A fat lot of help that was," I complained. "Why didn't you just make her a necklace of garlic?"

"Don't be tiresome," Kristina said. "The pendant would have protected Daisy if she'd been wearing it."

It was then that Daisy opened her wonderful, fathomless eyes and looked straight into my hell-bound soul.

"You," she said in an odd voice. "You killed me." I had no chance to reply before the darkness overtook me.

Daisy

Seattle, 1995

The room where Daisy awakened was filled with light and color. She did not know where she was, nor did she have any idea how she'd gotten there.

She sat up in the strange bed, with its linen sheets and exquisite lace spread, and looked around in amazement. There were six floor-to-ceiling windows opposite, affording a stunning view of dark blue waters and snow-draped mountains, and the furniture was light, lacquered stuff, painted with flowers. Italian antiques, probably, and beyond expensive.

Before Daisy could toss back the covers and rise, Kristina appeared in the doorway. She was wearing jeans and a loose white shirt with flowing sleeves and a cut-work collar.

"Welcome to Seattle," she said with a smile.

"How did I—what—?"

"I brought you here, from my father's lab in London. How are you feeling?"

Daisy settled back against the pillows, reassured by the presence of her friend and the normality of her surroundings. "Confused, light-headed, and hungry."

Kristina laughed. "I can't do much about the confusion and the dizziness, I'm afraid. But food I've got. Sit tight, and I'll bring you a tray."

"You're not going to zap it up out of nowhere?" Daisy asked, a little disappointed.

Her hostess sighed. "I only do that in emergencies. I like to cook, and besides, I try to live as normal a life as my predicament allows." She nodded toward another door. "The guest bath is that way."

Fifteen minutes later, when Daisy had used the facilities, washed her face and hands, and made her somewhat shaky way back to bed, Kristina returned with the promised food.

The dishes were heavy squares of brightly colored pottery, painted with whimsical flowers and checks and stripes. There was a tiny pot of steaming tea, along with pasta, warm bread, and green salad.

While Daisy ate, Kristina pulled up a large blue hassock, imprinted with smiling golden suns sporting pointed rays, and sat down.

"Papa and I discussed the situation and decided you would be better off here, in a more familiar environment."

Daisy poured tea with a somewhat unsteady hand and raised the cup to her lips. The brew was strong and sweet, laced with milk. Just the way she liked it. "He can still get to me here, you know," she said after several bracing sips. "Krispin, I mean."

"Yes," Kristina answered. "I'm sure he can. But he won't find you alone and defenseless, like before."

"No," Daisy said with a mild note of irony. "This time he'll be able to attack you, as well as me." She shuddered, remembering Krispin's assault in her apartment. She'd honestly thought, in those moments of violence just before losing consciousness, that she was about to die.

Seeing that Daisy didn't intend to eat any more of her meal, Kristina rose from her perch on the hassock, took the tray, and carried it out of the room. She returned almost immediately, this time taking a seat on the edge of Daisy's bed.

"I'll do everything I can to keep you safe," she promised.

"Why? Why would you put yourself in so much danger?"

"Because I care about Valerian, and about you, Daisy. Do you realize you're the only friend I have who knows who and what I am? How do you think my neighbors and business associates would react if I suddenly announced that my parents are vampires, for instance? Imagine me confiding, say at a chamber of commerce luncheon, that I'm well into my second century." She paused to smile sadly. "You're not going to bail out on me now, are you, Daisy? Just when I've started to think I might have run across somebody I can really talk to?"

Daisy's heart warmed, despite the mess she was in. She'd never had a close female friend, except for Nadine and their late grandmother, and she found the prospect appealing. "No," she said. "I'm not going to 'bail out,' as you put it. If you want to talk, I'm ready to listen."

Kristina smiled and squeezed Daisy's hand briefly. "Thanks, friend, but even listening is work, and right now you need to rest. Go back to sleep."

There were a lot of questions Daisy wanted to ask Kristina, but she had apparently lost a lot of blood during the incident with Krispin, and she was exhausted. She stretched out, closed her eyes, and tumbled into a waiting memory…

Her name was Harmony Beaucheau, and she was twenty-three years old. The year was 1878, and the town was called Poplar Hill, though it stood in a dusty corner of the Arizona Territory and boasted neither poplar nor hill.

Oh, damn it, thought that part of her that was still Daisy. Here we go again.

Harmony was standing in front of a cracked mirror, and with some relief Daisy saw herself looking back from the glass. She was wearing a worn dress of brown calico with a high neck, and her reddish-brown hair was pinned up in a loose, fluffy style. Stubborn tendrils trailed at her neck and on her temples and cheeks.

She turned away from the mirror and from all consciousness of herself as Daisy Chandler. Reluctantly Harmony left her small, sparsely furnished room and made her way down the narrow passageway leading to the stairs. The saloon below was filled with swirling blue-gray smoke, tinny music from the piano, which was missing a few vital parts, and the raucous, vulgar talk of cowboys, drifters, and various locals. There were a handful of tawdry women, too—they entertained men in private, and Harmony herself paid their wages.

She hesitated on the stairs, one hand resting on the crude rail, and sighed. Harmony was not a whore, and never would be, for she'd been raised in Boston by a maiden aunt and educated to be a lady. Before she could marry, however, her elderly guardian had passed away, and when dear Aunt Millicent had been properly buried, and all accounts settled, there was a small but respectable sum of money remaining.

Harmony had barely recovered from Millicent Beaucheau's death when an old friend of the family appeared, bearing a packet of old letters. In them was irrefutable proof that Millicent had been Harmony's mother, and not her aunt, and in staid Boston to be illegitimate was hardly a social advantage.

Despite her fine looks, cultivated mind, and more than adequate dowry, no one who knew the truth was going to marry the likes of Harmony Beaucheau. She was tainted forever.

A resilient sort, Harmony had taken herself to an establishment dealing in properties. These were the very people who had sold Millicent's house, which, it turned out, had been bought for her by her lover and not bequeathed by a doting father, as she'd always maintained, and Harmony had no reason to mistrust them.

She had inquired about the West and promptly purchased a hotel, sight unseen, in the Arizona Territory. On her arrival, Harmony discovered that she'd bought a brothel, not an inn, and used her last nickel in the process. The place was thriving—that was one consolation.

Still lingering on the stairs, Harmony scanned the saloon with eyes squinted against the smoke, and a smile broke over her face. He was there again, playing faro at the table nearest the door, the handsome gambler with the fancy name.

Valerian, he called himself. Harmony was already half in love with him, and practical as she was, she'd had no success in disabusing herself of the fancy. Men like him never stayed in one place long; they dallied a while, drank and gambled and told lies, and then moved on.

He was wearing a long duster made of soft leather, high black boots, well-cut trousers, and the kind of shirt only a man like him could get away with. His hat was pushed to the back of his head, and he sensed Harmony's presence somehow, for all the hubbub between them, and raised his fathomless indigo eyes slowly to her face.

She felt a charge of emotion go through her, feelings so complicated, so tangled and interwoven with each other, that she could not begin to sort them through. She had never seen Valerian before his appearance in Poplar Hill one night a month or so before, and yet it was as though she'd always known him. She knew, for instance, how his hands would feel on her body, and his mouth on hers. She, who was a virgin despite her spoiled reputation, knew the powerful flex of his hips as he took her, and the tug of his lips on her nipples…

Harmony went to him, like a creature enthralled, and her life began that very night. He vanished often, her lover, often for days at a time, and she never once saw him when the sun came up. When he was with her, in her ugly little room, they made love, but he told her stories, too, about other countries and other times in history, and he was full of poetry.

She knew he loved her truly—he admired her strong spirit and asked her opinion on important things, something no man had ever done before. And although his lovemaking transported her, she suspected its absence would not have changed her feelings or his. There was an old bond between them, as though their souls had been fused by some ancient and forgotten god, and if there were many mysteries about her Valerian, she didn't care.

He had been away nearly a month when the ruby ring arrived by stage with three weeks' worth of mail. It was wrapped in gold foil and tied with a scarlet ribbon trimmed in lace, and Harmony's heart brimmed with happiness as she slid it onto the ring finger of her left hand. Surely this was his pledge that they would be together, ever after…

But Valerian did not return, although Harmony watched for him every night on the tiny balcony outside one of the upstairs rooms, anxiously scanning the moonlit trail that snaked away into the desert.

It had been two more weeks, and she was beginning to despair. Perhaps the wonderful ring had not been a promise, after all, but a farewell.

That night three men rode into town, liquored up and shooting. Harmony got her shotgun out from behind the bar and stepped out onto the sidewalk, her jaw set and her eyes narrowed. There was no law in Poplar Hill, not yet, and folks had to look after their own property and their own hide, whether they were women or men.

The drunks howled and carried on, firing their six guns and spurring their terrified horses onto the sidewalk. They were headed for Harmony's saloon, and she was ready for them…

Daisy sat bolt upright, gasping and drenched in perspiration, clutching her chest. A bullet had struck Harmony, exploding in the center of her heart, and Daisy had felt it as though it had penetrated her own flesh.

"Oh, God," she whispered, falling back against the pillows, her face wet with tears of sorrow and fear. She was strong, though, and presently the trembling stopped and she drifted back to sleep, this time finding only sweet oblivion.

She did not awaken again until sometime after the moon had risen.

The house was quiet, except for a low murmur of conversation in a nearby room and the soft strains of a Mozart concerto flowing from the stereo system.

Daisy rose, relieved to find herself stronger, and donned the terrycloth robe she found lying across the foot of the bed. She walked slowly out of the bedroom and found herself in a well-lit hallway with a shining oak floor.

Kristina and Valerian were in the living room. The vampire stood, imperious and grim, beside the cold fireplace. Kristina sat cross-legged on an overstuffed sofa, a glass of wine in her hands. Their quiet but earnest exchange ended abruptly when they realized that Daisy had joined them.

Valerian came slowly toward her, took her hands in his, and gazed down into her eyes. "Kristina told me you were better," he said hoarsely, "but it is good to see for myself."

Daisy wanted to hurl her arms around him and cling in a very un-Daisy-like way, but she resisted the urge. "Yes," she said, thinking how well she had loved him, not only in the present, but during her lifetimes as Brenna and Elisabeth and Jenny and Harmony as well. "I'm almost myself again, if you'll forgive the expression."

He smiled and cupped a hand under her chin, and Daisy closed her eyes for a moment, against a rush of emotion. He brushed her lips with his thumb, and sent liquid fire surging through her system.

"I must know, Daisy," Valerian said with tender sorrow, "what you meant in Dr. Holbrook's lab when you said I killed you. Come, sit down and talk to me."

Daisy nodded, for suddenly she recalled uttering those words, recalled the experience that had made her speak them. She knew now, too, that it had been Krispin who had murdered Jenny Wade, Krispin pretending to be Valerian. And he had been behind Harmony's shooting, too, and Elisabeth's fever.

Kristina left the room, and Valerian settled Daisy into a comfortable chair and carefully covered her legs with a knitted afghan. How could she have believed, in this lifetime or the one lived as Jenny Wade, that this tender creature would ever do her deliberate harm?

Daisy spoke softly, hesitantly, as she related what she knew of Jenny's story. Valerian, seated on the arm of her chair, listened in absorbed silence.

When she'd finished the tale, he did not speak for a long time. The expression on his aristocratic face was one of quiet torment.

"I'm sorry," Valerian said at last. "I should have guessed that you were in danger, and been there to protect you."

Daisy rested her head against his arm. "Did you believe the stories? That Jenny ended her own life, I mean?"

He met her gaze. "Yes," he replied. "I was unable to visit her—you—for a considerable length of time. She—forgive me, but I find I cannot say 'you' when we are speaking of death—she was a porcelain rose, my Jenny, though she fancied herself to be as sturdy as a summer weed. I was convinced that she had sunk into despair because of my neglect."

Daisy bit her lower lip, then spoke quickly before she could lose her courage. At the same time, though, she touched Valerian's hand in an effort to reassure him a little. "There was something else. Something Krispin knew, but you apparently did not."

Valerian did not speak, but simply waited for her to go on, one eyebrow slightly elevated.

"There was to be a baby," she blurted. "You and Jenny—you and I, Valerian—conceived a child together."

"No," he said, quickly, gruffly. It was a plea, that solitary word, echoing with regret and incomprehensible pain. "That couldn't be—" He stopped, glancing in the direction of the doorway through which Kristina had disappeared minutes before. Obviously he was recalling the circumstances of another birth—Maeve Tremayne, a vampire, and Calder Holbrook, still mortal then, had had a daughter.

Daisy gave Valerian a few moments to collect himself before going on. "Times being what they were," she said quietly, "Jenny's family feared there would be a ruinous scandal. They were going to send her away somewhere, I think, but she never doubted that you would come back for her."

"And she died thinking I had murdered her. Along with our child." The controlled agony, so visible in Valerian's face as he spoke, found its way into Daisy's heart and burrowed down deep.

"Jenny sensed that something was wrong," Daisy said, for that flimsy assurance was all the solace she had to offer him just then. "I think she knew, on some level at least, that it wasn't you who visited her that awful night."

Valerian threaded his fingers through hers, and his attempt at a smile was even more painful to look upon than his stark grief had been before it. "Krispin," he muttered, making a curse of the name by his tone and manner. His gaze, as he stared into the fireplace contained such sulphurous fury that Daisy fully expected flames to leap from the ashes in the grate. "Flesh of my flesh, bone of my bone, soul of my soul—Krispin, Krispin. What have you done?"

Daisy shivered. An unspoken vow coursed beneath the anger and despair of the vampire's words. Valerian meant to destroy Krispin—but at what cost?

Before she could give voice to her concerns, however, another visitor joined them, nearly startling Daisy out of her skin.

He appeared in the middle of the room, with no smoke or fire to herald his coming, but for all the strange experiences she'd had since meeting Valerian, Daisy still wasn't used to such surprises. She longed for the company of other mortals, human beings who knocked on doors and telephoned and wrote letters but never, never simply materialized out of the ether!

Valerian stood, but he seemed annoyed, rather than afraid. Daisy was touched—and irritated at the same time—by the way he put himself between her and the unexpected guest, like a barrier.

"Explain yourself," he snapped.

Daisy leaned out over the arm of her chair to get a better look at the new arrival. He was remarkably good-looking, she decided, with his golden hair and soft brown eyes. His clothes were courtly and old-fashioned, and formidably expensive, like Valerian's—he wore a splendid cape of dark blue wool, high boots, breeches, and a frilly shirt. In one gloved hand he grasped the handle of a carved walking stick—a weapon, Daisy decided, not merely an addition to his costume.

He smiled at her, and at the watchful Kristina, and bowed, ever so slightly and ever so gracefully to each, pointedly ignoring the seething Valerian.

"Allow me to introduce myself. I am called Dathan, and I do apologize for making an unannounced entrance. I trust I am forgiven?"

Kristina replied with a brief, tentative smile, but Daisy was too fascinated to respond to him at all—except, of course, to stare.

"You left out your title, Dathan," Valerian interceded in an acidic tone. "Warlock."

Daisy was now so far out over the chair arm that she nearly fell. At her quick, scrambling motion of self-rescue, Valerian turned to glower down at her over one shoulder. The look was unmistakably a warning, and it both angered and intimidated Daisy.

She subsided a little, though only temporarily.

"Yes," Dathan allowed, only then acknowledging the vampire looming within pouncing distance. "I am indeed a warlock." The twinkling brown gaze found Daisy's face, despite Valerian, and lingered for a moment, admiring. When he looked at Valerian, however, there was no gentleness anywhere in his countenance, and the mischievous, cherubic eyes were suddenly hard. "I grow weary, blood-drinker, of waiting. Did we not speak of a bargain?"

Valerian glanced back at Daisy again, then returned his gaze to the warlock. "I will not discuss this here."

"Oh, yes, you will," Daisy argued, tugging at the back of his coat. "I want to know what's going on."

"We don't always get what we want, do we?" Valerian retorted, frowning again, this time with such heat that she felt like paraffin going soft in the sun. "Stay out of this, Daisy, or I swear by all the old gods that I will stop up your ears and still your tongue for a fortnight!"

Daisy was furious, but she was still too tired to wage a proper battle, verbal or otherwise, so she sank back in the chair, trembling. Kristina flung her a sympathetic look but contributed nothing to the conversation.

It was Dathan who broke the oppressive silence. "You know where to find me," he told Valerian cheerfully, tugging at his elegant gloves and then bowing once more to the ladies. "I shall expect you forthwith."

With that, he vanished without sound or flurry, just as he had appeared.

Valerian did not bid Daisy farewell or even look at her again. In the blink of an eye he was simply gone.

Valerian

Last Ditch Tavern, 1995

I arrived in the back room of the Last Ditch Tavern a fraction of a second after Dathan, and found him seated at one of the felt-covered poker tables, hat and cloak tossed onto a chair, feet up and crossed at the ankle.

"What took you so long?" he asked with a grin.

I overcame a whimsical desire to kick his chair over. I had not wanted him to see Daisy, to know her, for he represented yet another danger to her. Too, warlocks are notorious seducers, and while I held Daisy's personal scruples in high esteem, I wondered what use they could be against the charm of such a fetching monster.

"How dare you intrude that way?" I rasped.

Dathan cocked an eyebrow. "Intrude? I'm trying to do you a favor, Vampire. But it seems you no longer want my help."

I drew up a chair, probably with more clatter than necessary, and dropped into it. I didn't want the warlock's help, had never wanted it, but I was in this instance a beggar, not a chooser. I could no longer afford to indulge my dislike of this particular antagonist.

"What can you do?" I asked with a dismal lack of faith in Dathan's powers. "After all, if you could destroy vampires, you would have wiped out every blood-drinker in the universe by this time."

Dathan chuckled fondly at the image. "Yes," he agreed. "With the possible exception of Maeve Tremayne. Splendid female. Her daughter is very like her—beautiful, brave, intelligent—"

"Leave Kristina alone," I warned. The warlock now had my undivided attention. "If you go near her, I'll drain every drop of your poisoned blood into the nearest gutter!"

He took a glass of whiskey from the table, without putting his feet down, and indulged in a thoughtful sip before replying. "Let us confine ourselves, for the moment, to the business at hand. The two of us, I fear, are prone to endless disagreement on an infinite number of points. Do you still want my help in destroying your brother?"

I did, but the very necessity of the act struck me like a blow to the solar plexus. Would I never get used to it? Would I grieve for Krispin even as I burned among the very coals and embers of hell?

"Yes," I said in a miserable whisper.

"Then let us lay a plan."

My eyes were narrowed, for I was recalling the previous encounter with Dathan, there in the Last Ditch. He wanted something in return for his assistance, of course, but he had yet to say what it was he meant to require of me, in the event of our success. "First," I said, "tell me what you hope to gain by this."

He took another draft of the whiskey, and I envied him the warlock's ability to eat and drink like a mortal, momentarily at least. A glass of wine—nay, a tubful of the stuff—would have been a blessed comfort just then.

"It is time," he said at considerable length, "to join our two races. To produce a being that is part vampire and part warlock."

I was so horrified that I forgot the craving for wine that had been clawing at my core only a moment ago. "Great Zeus—it's an unspeakable thing you're suggesting!"

"Is it? Consider a creature with your powers and mine. A vampire able to walk in daylight, for instance. A warlock with the propensity for time-travel. The possibilities are truly staggering."

"You've lost your mind, such as it was!"

Dathan laughed and raised his glass in a mocking toast. "There are those of both our species who will hasten to agree. To hell with them all." He drank again and made a sound of satisfaction afterward that grated on my every nerve. "Here's the bargain, blood-drinker: take it or leave it, as the mortals say. Inventive, these humans, and oft-times amusing, though given to the odd cliche. In any case, as payment for my help, I want a vampire for a mate."

I shot to my feet. "What blood-drinker would have a warlock?" I demanded. Alas, tact, even in situations where it was crucial, had never been my forte.

Dathan's brown eyes, which could shine with a saintly glow when he looked upon a woman, flashed with restrained temper. "Sit down and listen, you incredible fool. My own kind isn't going to rejoice over the union, either, after all. But it must be done."

"Why?"

"Because I want it."

This, for better or worse, was an attitude I understood. I sat down again despondently, reminded that I had no choice in the matter. With Dathan's assistance I might succeed in tracking down and destroying Krispin. Without it, though it galled me to acknowledge the fact even to myself, I could very well lose the battle.

And Daisy.

"So I am to become a matchmaker," I muttered. "By the gods, though, I don't know how I'll manage it."

Dathan laughed. "Am I so wretched, so offensive, as all that?"

"Yes," I answered.

The warlock smiled. "Never fear. You are the most persuasive of creatures—and you have so very much at stake, don't you?"

Again I thought of Daisy. "Oh, yes," I replied, reaching for a deck of cards that lay in the center of the table, among neat pillars of blue, white and red poker chips. "Everything, in fact."

"You also have an agreement with Nemesis, I understand."

I began to deal. "You've done your homework," I said. "He promised me the power to put an end to Krispin, though I must admit I haven't seen any sign of it yet. Which, of course, accounts for my willingness to cooperate with the likes of you." The warlock took up his cards, and I gathered mine, frowning as I pondered the possibilities they presented. "Our bargain, warlock, will not hold good unless you are instrumental in my brother's destruction. And I believe you can be, or I would not be sitting here now."

"I'll take two cards," Dathan replied. "And none of your tricks."

I smiled. "You expect too much of a mere vampire," I replied. And while I systematically divested him of two castles, a horse, and a pocket watch, we discussed our strategy.

« ^ »

Valerian

Colefield Hall, 1995

The warlock and I found Challes at Colefield Hall, half buried by the stacks of musty books he had left to me so many years before, along with the property itself. At his side sat a magnificent white wolf with pale blue eyes.

Upon our appearance, the beast raised himself to his haunches and growled.

"Be still, Barabbas," Challes said with firm affection, and the wolf whimpered once and dropped at his master's feet, resting his muzzle on his paws. "These are friends."

I did not correct Challes on this point, though I certainly wouldn't have counted myself among his friends just then, and I felt no fear of the great wolf, only admiration. Had my business not been so urgent, in fact, I think I might have envied my tutor the company of such a fantastic creature and wanted Barabbas for my own.

"It is time to make restitution," I said without expression in voice or in manner. "We know from Calder Holbrook's experiments that it is possible to track Krispin into the other dimension through a grave. You will show me where that particular tomb is, please. Now."

Still seated, with the wolf lying watchful at his side, Challes looked up at me with mingled sorrow and amusement. "Still the same officious, haughty brat you always were. Ah, but what—or who—could ever have changed you? Nothing and no one, that is certain. And I think I should not have wanted you to be different—you would have been so much less interesting."

An ancient clock ticked loudly on the mantel, reminding me of the need for haste, and I was mindful, too, of Dathan's impatience. "Please," I said again. I would kneel to him if I had to, and beg, but of course I hoped to be spared that humiliation.

"At one time I wanted to take you through the looking glass, Valerian, and show you the other world. You refused—quite adamantly, as I recall."

"I was afraid."

"Poppycock. You've never been truly afraid in your life. But you will be. Your bowels will turn to water, beautiful one, when you see what awaits you beyond the veil, where Nemesis will take you." He spoke without rancor, and he took no pleasure, it seemed, in my fate. He was, however, resigned, and he made that sighlike sound that I had learned from him long before. "I am so tired, Valerian. So very tired."

I went to Challes's chair and crouched beside it, opposite the wolf. The animal raised his head, then lowered it again, having decided, apparently, that I represented no significant threat to his master. "Will you make me plead?" I asked softly. "Is that what you want?"

Challes's face, once beloved, crumpled with some emotion I could not recognize. "No." He reached down to pat the wolf's huge, silvery head. "It is wrong to humble such creatures as you, and as Barabbas here."

"Take me to Krispin's hiding place. Or simply direct me there. I implore you."

He put aside the volume that had been resting in his lap and stood at long last. A muttered command kept the wolf from springing up with him, but the beast gave a low, chilling whine to declare his displeasure.

"It is day in that other world," Challes warned. "Krispin lies resting in a vault, deep beneath the earth, but I cannot promise the light will not reach you there."

I was willing to take that chance—to take any chance. My smile, I fear, was on the rueful side. "Do not worry, Master," I said. "I cannot be destroyed. I must survive to endure my damnation, remember?"

Tears glittered in Challes's eyes, and I remembered when I had loved and admired him. "Nemesis is to have the both of us, then."

"Both of us?"

Challes smiled, though the tears had not lessened. "I made a bargain of my own long ago with the great Warrior Angel. I have eluded him, thus far, by trickery, but I daresay he will prevail." He took one of my hands in both of his. "Forgive me, Valerian, for making you what you are."

"Forgive you? I will always be grateful, Challes. Even in hell."

"Come, then," he said with another sigh. And we were gone from that place in an instant, leaving the wolf to snooze placidly on the hearth.

When we materialized again, we were inside a tomb whose headstone had long since crumbled to dust. Still, I was chagrined to recognize the place, for I sensed immediately that it was at Dunnett's Head, on the grounds where the baron's keep had once stood.

"By Apollo," Dathan grumbled, making a fruitless and disgruntled attempt to shake the dust from his costly cape. "Who but a vampire would pass even a moment in such a place?"

"Feel free to leave at any time," I offered with biting politeness.

"We must make of ourselves a single mist," Challes said, taking no notice of the tension between Dathan and me.

"Is the warlock capable of such a trick?" I asked of my teacher, not to bait Dathan, but merely because I was curious.

"The warlock," Dathan interjected in an angry whisper, "is quite capable!"

I said nothing further, but simply concentrated on Challes's instructions. We became as one entity, we three, in the moments that followed, and solidified again, mercifully separate once more, in a vast dark chamber beneath a great castle or fortress of some sort.

"Where are we?" Dathan asked, sounding for the first time in our acquaintance as though he might be suffering a few doubts where his conviction of eminent superiority was concerned.

"Second Earth," Challes replied in a weary tone. For one who had once wanted so badly to bring me to this place that he would hold me prisoner and try to force me to accompany him, my tutor seemed reticent.

I offered no response, for I was drawn to the dusty silver outline of a large mirror covering the whole of a nearby wall. I crossed to it, touched the glass with splayed fingers, and gave a cry of alarm when, in the length of a heartbeat, it was filled with dazzling light.

"This looking glass once graced the ballroom on the third level of the castle," Challes said, standing beside me. As he spoke, the light faded a little, and I saw dancers beyond the smooth surface. Women in colorful, full-skirted frocks whose hems swept the floor, men in waistcoats and breeches and ascots. I could almost hear the music to which they whirled, smiling, talking, full of joy.

"They are of this world—Second Earth?" I wondered aloud, somehow stricken by the tableau, and sorrowing that I was not among those happy dancers, with Daisy beaming in my arms. Oh, to be mortal, for just one lifetime!

Challes touched my shoulder, as if to console a mourner. "No, lovely one. They are of the world we just left. Come—we must reach Krispin before he awakens."

Although I was as intent on the task ahead as ever, I found I did not wish to leave that mirror. I wanted to go on looking at those people, sharing vicariously in their innocent felicity.

Challes led the way out of the chamber, with Dathan following after him. I brought up the rear, reluctantly, gazing back often at the fading images in the glass.

It was remarkably easy to find Krispin's resting place.

Too easy.

He was lying, like a slain statesman in the rotunda of some great government edifice, with his arms crossed over his breast and candles burning all around. He wore a white suit, reminiscent of The Great Gatsby, and his golden head gleamed in the dim light.

I stood over him, remembering so many things.

"Make haste, Valerian!" Challes muttered. "If Krispin awakens, he will make a formidable foe."

I was trembling as I held out my hand for the stake and mallet Dathan provided. Whether the warlock had carried those implements with him, conjured them, or simply found them along the way, I shall never know. Never care to know.

I took the stake first and placed the point over my brother's heart, holding it there with my left hand. In my right I held the mallet.

"Do it," Dathan said. "Kill him!"

We had underestimated Krispin's cleverness, for beneath my stake and raised hammer, he suddenly became the little fair-haired boy I had known as a mortal. He looked as peaceful as a sleeping cherub, the child of angels.

"Do not be fooled," Challes warned quietly.

I was weeping now, though in silence. I prepared myself to drive in the stake, and Krispin changed shape again. This time he took on the image of our mother, Seraphina. I had forgotten how lovely she was, how fragile and small.

"Valerian!" Challes spoke more sternly this time. "Can't you see what's happening? He is a chameleon—there is no end to the forms he can take! In the names of all the old gods, destroy him before—"

I was about to wield the mallet at last when Krispin took on still another guise. This time he was the perfect image of Daisy, and he had awakened to gaze up at me, imploring, with her emerald eyes.

I gave a roar of rage and torment. I could not plunge a stake through Daisy's heart—I could not!

Dathan spoke. "This is not your beloved," he said with uncommon gentleness. "If you cannot kill the dragon, then pray, step aside and allow me."

I dropped the stake and the mallet, though I had made no conscious decision to do so. I was beginning to feel the first biting sting of the sun, despite the thick walls and floors that sheltered us, just as Challes had warned I might. I was, however, oblivious to the pain; it was nothing beside my horror and grief.

"Stand back," Dathan commanded, and Challes grasped my arms and pulled me away from the high marble slab where Krispin lay, posing as Daisy, pleading with me now, in her voice, to save her.

I had seen the warlock work his magic before, but nothing could have prepared me for what happened next. He glared down at the lovely monster, still prone on the slab, and murmured some kind of incantation.

Fire seemed to explode in that chamber, to leap from the candles and catch on Daisy's—Krispin's—clothes. He shrieked, did Krispin, more in fury than in pain, as the fire enveloped him, leaping, crackling, consuming. He abandoned Daisy's shape, and became himself again, but the spectacle was still torture to watch.

I felt a scream of my own swell, shrill and sharp-edged, in my throat, and I struggled, compelled by some animal instinct to go to my brother's aid, but Dathan and Challes restrained me.

Krispin writhed and shrieked upon his pyre, his gaze fixed on me all the while, hating, using even his agony to taunt me.

I cried out again, hoarsely, and fought to free myself, but my tutor and my unlikely ally were stronger. I sank at last to my knees, sobbing, as the warlock's fire devoured the monster in flames of ever-changing colors.

And there were other flames, too—the invisible ones, spawned by the sun around which Second Earth revolved. I, too, was burning, and it was an unspeakable agony, but I did not care. I wanted to suffer, to atone for the anguish my brother had endured.

I was soon to have the opportunity, as it happened.

Daisy

Seattle, 1995

After three days at Kristina's house, being spoiled, coddled, and overfed, Daisy was, for all practical intents and purposes, completely recovered. There had been no sign of Krispin, and she had not seen Valerian since he and the warlock, Dathan, had vanished in tandem from Kristina's living room.

"I'm going back to Las Vegas," Daisy announced that sunny morning, finding her friend on the large deck overlooking the waters of Puget Sound, a magazine resting in her lap. "I've got some loose ends to tie up there, but then I'd like to come back."

Kristina looked surprised and pleased, then solemn. "You've felt it, then. That Krispin is gone?"

Daisy nodded, fighting back tears. "Yes. Valerian is gone, too, in a different way. I don't know how to explain it, but—it's as though he has died."

"I know," Kristina said. She had less success in suppressing her tears; her silver eyes glistened with them. "Maybe he's only resting somewhere."

"And maybe not," Daisy replied. She supposed she was in shock—she'd dreamed a horrid death scene in the night and watched Krispin burn, twisting and turning like a twig, but the cries of torment she had heard had been Valerian's…

Kristina stood facing her. "What made you decide you want to live here in Seattle?" she asked. Gulls squawked in the sky, and in the distance a ferry horn sounded.

"I need a change," Daisy said, moving to stand at the rail. She'd regained most of her strength, but it helped to lean on something. "I figured out one thing, at least. I don't want to be a cop anymore."

Kristina was beside her, looking at the view. "What then?" she asked.

"You'll laugh."

"I promise I won't."

Daisy sighed. "I've got some money saved, and it would be a shame to let my talents and all that training and experience go to waste. I'm going to rent an office somewhere and hire myself out as a private investigator."

Kristina grinned. "I can see you doing that," she said. "You know you're welcome to stay here until you find a place to live."

Daisy shook her head. "Thanks, Kris, but I don't want to wear out my welcome. After all, you're the only friend I've got in Seattle, and I'm going to need somebody to talk to. Somebody who believes in vampires, for instance."

Kristina slipped a friendly arm around Daisy's shoulders. "I also believe in ghosts, werewolves, warlocks, and a few other dysfunctional types, but I don't suppose you're up to hearing all of that just yet."

Daisy smiled, though she wanted more than ever to cry. "Save it until I get back," she said. "Unless, of course, you're going to tell me that Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, and the Easter Bunny really exist?"

"Sorry," Kristina said, and they both laughed.

Valerian

Colefield Hall, 1995

"Remember," Dathan told me the instant I opened my eyes, "you owe me."

I was lying on a cool slab in that familiar cellar where I had spent many nights, following my transformation. I lifted my arms, and that gesture raised a storm of pain that reached deep into my flesh like the white-hot claws of a million ravening rats. My hands were scarred and misshapen, and I must have made a pitiful sound at this discovery, for Challes appeared, fussing like an obsessed nanny, to give me blood in a silver cup.

"Don't fret," Dathan taunted me as I drew the desperately needed fluid in through my fangs. "You look like the ugliest of Lon Chaney's thousand faces, but you'll be your usual pretty self again soon enough, I vow."

I might have spat at him if I hadn't needed the blood so badly. The worst of my ordeal—an eternity in hell—still lay ahead of me. I spared no grief over my lost beauty.

"Krispin—?" I spoke to Challes when the cup had been taken away.

"His body was destroyed," my tutor replied. He looked shrunken, did Challes, as though he were dissolving from the inside, caving in upon himself like an ancient mummy, disturbed by some bumbling archaeologist, callously subjected to sunlight and air. "Krispin's soul, on the other hand, surely awaits us both in hell."

"Yes," I said. I would have given much to see Daisy then, but I knew I would only grieve her, especially in my present repugnant state. I wanted her love, not her pity. "Nemesis will be here soon, no doubt."

"You can't go to hell without keeping your end of the bargain," Dathan protested vigorously. He'd been leaning against the wall, but with these words he sprang at me like a wire coil released from a matchbox. "Damn you, vampire, you must pay this debt!"

I smiled at him and saw in his pitying eyes what a ludicrous picture I made, with my distorted face and hairless head. "Very well," I said. "There is a vampire—Roxanne Havermail is her name. Her mate has left her for a fledgling, I hear—and I think she'd grown weary of him anyway, given the number of times she's tried to seduce me. Go to her, warlock, and make your monster children—if you can."

He looked as though he might stretch out his hands and strangle me for a moment, but then he must have realized the futility of such a gesture, for he whirled away with a curse, and struck the wall with one fist.

I laughed—there were so few pleasures left to me at that juncture that I could not spare even one—and the warlock came back to my side, seething with fury.

"You'd damn well better go to hell, vampire," he spat, "for no other place will hide you from my revenge!"

"Tut-tut," I scolded, groaning a little as the tide of pain rose up within me again. "You have no one to blame but yourself. 'Never trust a vampire.' Was that not your motto, your credo, the very litany of your black heart? Besides, I gave you the female you requested. It is not my fault if poor Roxanne is not to your liking."

Dathan did not reply, for he was too angry—with himself, I suspect, as well as me—but simply shoved splayed fingers through his hair and turned away again.

I groped for Challes's hand. I was weakening again, slipping into sleep, but even there I could not escape the relentless pain of my burns. "The murders—in Las Vegas—the police will never understand about Krispin—must be some resolution—"

My tutor smiled and smoothed my scarred forehead with gentle fingers. "A few memories erased, a few changes made in the department's central computer, an idea planted here and there—"

I nodded, murmured a few disjointed suggestions of my own, and gave myself up, once again, to the ravenous, tearing teeth of torment.

Daisy

Las Vegas, 1995

Daisy arrived in Las Vegas at five-thirty in the afternoon, climbed into a cab at the airport, and headed straight for the police department. Do not pass Go, she thought, do not collect two hundred dollars.

O'Halloran was in his office, laboring over a stack of paperwork, when she walked in. He beamed at the sight of her, shot out of his chair like a dolphin going for a hoop at Sea World, and threw both arms around her. "Chandler! Damn, it's good to see you." Daisy gave him an awkward kiss on the cheek, and they stepped apart. "How's the vampire case going?"

O'Halloran's smile grew broader, if that was possible. He gestured for Daisy to take a seat and sat down in his desk chair, making a steeple of his plump, unmanicured fingers. "Don't you read the papers no more, Chandler? We got the psycho, dead to rights. Already arraigned."

Daisy knew the man behind bars wasn't the real killer—Krispin had gone on to his reward—but she had a hunch that he was guilty of other murders, whoever he was. The situation smacked of vampire justice, but there was no point in trying to tell O'Halloran that, of course.

More important, if her theory was right, it meant Valerian was around somewhere. Didn't it? The tricks would be simple to him—a memory or two wiped clean of certain facts, a couple of strokes to a computer keyboard, linked by modem to the department's mainframe, a deserving criminal to take the rap for a certain renegade vampire. Easy stuff.

Don't risk it, Chandler. Don't let yourself hope.

"That was good police work," she said with a purposeful smile of congratulations and admiration. "I wish I'd been part of it."

"So do I," O'Halloran said. "I missed you, partner."

Daisy's smile faded. She hadn't thought it would be so hard, explaining her change of plans. "I've turned in my letter of resignation," she said. "I need to do other things—have a change of scene. You know."

"Yeah," O'Halloran replied sadly. "I know. Sometimes I wonder why I hang around myself. For every creep we nail, it seems like there's fifty who get off on a technicality or something."

Daisy told him about her plans to open a detective agency in Seattle and finished with, "I can always use a good partner. If you get burned out on the beat, give me a call."

O'Halloran grinned, and his chair creaked as he sat back, hands clasped behind his head. "You know, Chandler, I can see myself as a gumshoe. The question is, can my Eleanor? She's been after me to retire for a long time, but I don't think living with Sam Spade is exactly what she had in mind."

Daisy stood, ready to leave, and O'Halloran stood, too, offering his hand across the cluttered desk.

"Why don't you ask her?" she retorted as they shook hands. It was as close as they came to saying good-bye.

Valerian

Colefield Hall, 1995

There was no fanfare when Nemesis came to collect me, no bolts of lightning, no crashing thunder, and certainly no trumpet. He simply appeared in the vault at Colefield Hall one night, standing patiently beside the bolted door until I took note of his presence. Or, more properly, until I ceased pretending I didn't know he was there.

I was quite alone, as are we all, I daresay, when we face our unique doom.

Challes, having brought me blood like a mother bird nurturing a nestling and flown off again, on some errand of my invention, would not return for many hours.

Dathan, for his part, had decamped sometime before, I think to pursue the deceitful Roxanne Havermail. It was a great comfort, knowing that those two, who deserved each other so richly, were very likely careening, even then, along a collision course. My deepest solace naturally came from the knowledge that I had broken the curse and saved Daisy from Krispin and his madness.

She might mourn me for a while, my Daisy… Brenna—I would surely grieve the loss of her throughout eternity—but our tragic dance through the corridors of time had ended forever, and the orchestra was silent.

Alas, I digress. I was recounting Nemesis's arrival.

The most feared of all angels found me reading peacefully in my underground chamber, and looked at me with obvious pity, though I was by that time quite myself again. My hair had grown back, and my flesh and features were as flawless as ever, except for a stubborn scar here and there.

I closed the book. "It is time to go?" I said. It was an observation, a statement, more than a question.

"Yes," Nemesis replied. I thought I saw regret in his unremarkable face, then dismissed the idea as pure fancy. There would be no reprieve for me.

I rose from my chair, and the angel reached out and touched my forehead, very lightly. I remember that his fingertips felt cool, and that the contact was strangely soothing, considering all that lay ahead.

We were transported, the two of us, in a way much like the means I had employed since my transformation in the fourteenth century, except that it was somehow swifter and more graceful.

We stood on a dark ledge, looking down upon a pit of fire that seemed to have no bottom and no borders, but to be infinite. I felt its heat and heard the screams and shrieks of its inhabitants, and I admit that my very heart quailed with fear. I recall a sense of mild hysteria, and a flurry of meaningless thoughts bursting from my head like a flock of crows. I know I told myself it was good that, as a vampire, I had no bladder.

Nemesis gestured toward the inferno. "Hell," he said, raising his voice a little, to be heard over the hideous din, "is what each man or woman decides it should be. This, Valerian Lazarus, is your hell. It is an illusion, in truth, but it will be no less real for that."

I thought of Daisy and took a faltering step toward the fires, ready to hurl myself in, but Nemesis caught my arm in one hand and stopped me. I felt his great strength and knew then that neither Challes nor I had ever deceived or eluded him; he had merely been biding his time until the appointed moment.

"You would truly suffer torment, throughout eternity, for the love of one mortal woman?"

I did not hesitate. "Yes," I replied.

Nemesis did not release me but instead stared deep into my eyes. I felt him probing my very soul, exploring every corner and shadow, seeking I knew not what. The only thing that was really plain to me, besides the terrible fear gnawing at my gut, was the fact that I could hide nothing from him.

"You speak the truth," he said, marveling. He raised his free arm, still gazing at me, and in one gesture caused my spectacular medieval hell to vanish in a twinkling. We were back in the vault, at Colefield Hall, before I could quite credit that I had been spared.

"Why?" I whispered, trembling, when I realized I was safe. The memory of that dreadful place we'd visited together would haunt me for all I knew of time. "Why did you bring me here instead of—?"

"There is truth in you," Nemesis said. "For all your evil, there is an element of good, though I confess I like you no better than I ever did."

I could not contain my joy, my relief. But my delight was quick to fade as I felt again the unceasing heat of hell, heard the shrieks of the damned, saw the hungry flames leaping against the darkness.

"That place—will I have to go back there someday?"

Nemesis gave me another searching look. "Perhaps. Perhaps not. What really matters, vampire, is the moment at hand. Nothing else is real."

Having made this pronouncement, the angel vanished, and I was alone once more.

I wanted to will myself to Daisy's side, but I was far too shaken. After all, I'd just had a close call, one of truly cosmic proportions, and the next few minutes were given over to gratitude.

Valerian

Las Vegas, 1995

Jerry Grover, assistant manager of the Venetian Hotel and Casino, trembled in his expensive leather shoes as the magician loomed over him. "What the devil do you mean?" Valerian demanded in a lethal undertone, looking damned scary in those Count Dracula clothes of his. "How could she have left town without telling me?"

Grover swallowed. All around, slot machines whirred and clinked, swallowing tokens with melodic greed. Bells clamored and lights flashed, and Jerry wished he didn't have to dance attendance like a flunky, but Valerian was a headliner, and the board of directors wanted to keep him happy. Nobody packed in the paying customers like this guy, and what the star wanted, the star got. Or somebody's head, specifically Jerry's, was going to roll.

"I checked on Miss Chandler, as you asked me to do, sir," Grover said in a squeaky voice. God, he hated it when he sounded weak and effeminate like that. "My contact in the police department told me she's resigned and moved to Seattle."

The magician glowered down at him for a long moment, during which time Jerry honestly thought his best suit might spontaneously combust, then whirled and stormed off through the casino, his black cape trailing majestically behind him. As he passed, every slot machine in the place suddenly went berserk, clanking like old-fashioned fire bells and spewing coins into the trays and onto the floor. Happy gamblers shouted for joy, scooping up their winnings with both hands.

It was the damnedest thing Jerry Grover had ever seen, and he didn't even want to think about trying to explain it to the corporation.

« ^

Daisy

Seattle, 1995

The ancient elevator in Daisy's office building clanked and jerked as it made its dogged climb to the twelfth floor. It was late, and there was probably nobody else on the premises except the janitor, but that didn't matter. Since coming to Seattle two weeks before, it seemed to Daisy that she did her best work at night.

That, she thought, with a pang and a rueful smile, was what she got for hanging around with vampires.

The cage lurched ominously, and Daisy looked up at the numbers above the ornate iron bars, feeling the first flicker of fear. If the cables were to snap…

She gave herself a mental shake. Since encountering Valerian and some of his crowd, she'd become fanciful, even skittish. If she wanted to succeed as a private investigator, and she most assuredly did, then she would have to put all that behind her and get back her old pragmatic nature.

The lights blinked off, then came right back on again. The needle on the indicator above the door bounced between two brass digits—seven and eight.

Daisy bit her lip. After arranging the move from Las Vegas, she'd driven to Nadine and Freddy's place in Telluride and spent a week there, fussing over the baby and playing Auntie Mame to the hilt. All the while, she admitted to herself in the privacy of that antique elevator, she'd been waiting to hear from Valerian, to see him again.

He was alive and well and back at the Venetian Hotel, drawing crowds like never before—the newspapers and magazines were full of him. Daisy could only conclude that, after dealing with Krispin he had decided a mortal lover was a troublesome lover. Perhaps he had taken up with one of his many old flames, some splendid monster like himself.

There was a grinding sound, and then the elevator stopped completely, and the lights went out.

"Shit," Daisy muttered.

"Not very ladylike," Valerian's voice responded.

Daisy's heart stopped, much as the elevator had, then started again. Valerian. Had she only imagined hearing him speak to her? The cubicle was dark, but she could see well enough to know that she was still alone.

She felt a sweet heat stir in the depths of her femininity. She'd been alone in that motel room, too, midway between Las Vegas and Telluride.

"Do you love me, Daisy?"

There was no mistaking it. Valerian was speaking to her, if only inside her head.

The stress of the past few weeks had finally caught up with her.

"Yes," she murmured nonetheless. "Do you love me in return?"

"Let me show you," he responded.

The files fluttered to the floor as Daisy felt his lips touch hers, lightly at first, and then with passion. His hands caressed her everywhere at once, stroking her back, cupping her buttocks, weighing her breasts, teasing the nubbin of flesh between her legs.

"Damn you," she whispered when he'd freed her mouth to let her take a breath. "Why can't you make love to me in person?"

"Do you want me to stop?"

Daisy's pride battled needs too long unfulfilled, and suffered a resounding defeat. "No—please—don't stop."

She felt her clothes dissolve like smoke, felt the heat of her desire in every tissue and fiber and pore, and sobbed for joy when he entered her in a single powerful thrust. He was neither tentative nor gentle, seeming to sense that Daisy needed a primal mating.

Satisfaction came swiftly, tumultuous and fierce, and left Daisy clinging to the handrail in the elevator with all ten fingers, barely able to breathe. The lights came back on, and the lumbering box resumed its climb to the twelfth floor with a shuddering jerk.

Daisy was still alone and frankly surprised to find her jeans and T-shirt on her body instead of in a crumpled heap on the floor. She knelt, blushing, and hastily gathered up the files scattered at her feet. All the while, satisfaction thrummed within her, deep and abiding and utterly undeniable.

Reaching her office, she was forced to lie down on the couch where clients were meant to sit, for small, sweet explosions were still rocking her from within, and she could not trust her knees to support her.

She fell asleep, bathed in silver light and feeling the lack of her lover's presence, and was awakened sometime later by a shadow crossing the moon.

Daisy sat bolt upright with a little cry, for seated on the edge of her desk, resplendent in his magician's garb, was Valerian himself.

"You should have been here for the lovemaking," she said. "It was pretty good."

He smiled and raised one aristocratic eyebrow. "Only 'pretty good'? Maybe I'd better try again."

"No!" Daisy said quickly and with conviction. "Another session like that, and I'll be stimulated to death."

Valerian laughed and opened his arms, and against her better judgment Daisy went to him.

"Where the hell have you been?" she whispered. It was safe to be angry within his embrace.

He laughed again. "Exactly," he said.

Daisy reared back to look into his eyes. "What—?"

He laid a finger to her lips. "Shh," he whispered. "It's over now, and we can be together. If you still want me, that is."

"I was thinking you didn't want me," Daisy said, stiffening a bit but making no move to withdraw from his arms. "What kept you so long, damn it?"

Valerian smiled and kissed her forehead lightly. "I had a few scars that I didn't want you to see, and I thought we both needed a little time to regain our balance."

Daisy nodded. "I'd gotten mine back, but you just threw me off again. Now what?"

"Now we go about making some sort of life together."

"I'm going to get old," Daisy reminded him. "And when I'm ninety, you'll still look just as you do tonight. People will think I'm your great-grandmother."

"I have never cared, overmuch, what mortals think. Or immortals, either, come to that. Such things don't matter, Daisy, when two lovers have been torn apart as often as we have in the past several centuries."

Daisy rested her forehead against his chin. "Okay. But how exactly are we going to work this? I like it here, and you like Las Vegas—"

"In case you haven't noticed, I find it easy enough to commute."

This time it was Daisy who laughed, but there were tears blurring her vision when she looked up at him again. "What about that guy the Las Vegas police department arrested for the murders Krispin committed? Isn't he a scapegoat, of sorts?"

Valerian shrugged elegantly. "I guess that depends on your perspective. The fellow has killed eight people, three of them children, and he's always prided himself on pulling off the perfect crimes. Some might say that justice was done here, however indirectly."

Daisy accepted that reply, although she knew it could have been debated for a long time to come, and returned to the original subject. "I don't see how we're going to manage a relationship," she fretted. "Do vampires even marry?"

"They mate, though to a much more profound degree than you probably think. Ours would be an eternal pledge, understand. Yes, you will grow old and eventually die. Then you will be born again, and I will be nearby, waiting for you to grow up and rejoin me."

The idea was bittersweet. "What about kids? What about a house and a dog and all that?"

Valerian feigned a sigh. "Any natural child of mine, Daisy love, would be a monster in both the subjective and literal senses of the word. Still, there are plenty of children alone in the world who would be happy enough to join our unconventional little family. As for a house, you have only to tell me what you want, and I will provide it." He paused. "The pet can be managed, too. It just so happens that an old friend has recently given me a splendid animal as a gift. You'll like him—his name is Barabbas."

Daisy considered her beloved's checkered past and the multitude of romantic involvements he readily admitted he'd enjoyed. "You won't get—restless? I should think a mortal might be pretty dull, over the long haul, when a guy's used to lady vampires."

He brushed her lips with his own. "If you knew what I have been through, just to be with you, you would never doubt my fidelity," he answered at his leisure. "One day—or one night, rather—I shall tell you all about it. Furthermore, while usually beautiful and always fascinating, 'lady vampires,' as you so generously describe them, can be the coldest and most heartless beings in all creation."

Daisy didn't reply, but simply slid her arms around his neck and raised her face in the shimmering moonlight to invite the vampire's kiss.

"Remember this night," she whispered.

"Because we can be together at long last?"

She smiled. "And because it's the beginning of always."

New York Times Bestselling Author

Laura Kinsale

"A true storyteller…"-San Diego Tribune

__FOR MY LADY'S HEART 0-425-l4004-0/$5.99

A young English knight faces certain death until the Princess Melanthe takes pity on him, bestowing two precious emeralds upon the handsome stranger to aid his escape. Yet Melanthe cannot help herself so easily.

Then a champion takes up his sword in her name and for her honor—the very man she'd rescued. As the legendary Green Knight, he will gladly brave any danger to protect Melanthe, the sworn lady of his heart.

__THE DREAM HUNTER 0-425-14494-1/$5.99

Lord Winter is a restless wanderer who keeps his heart's passions well hidden. While traveling alone in the desert in scorch of a legendary mare, he has discovered a far more precious gem: Zenia Stanhope, daughter of an extraordinary English woman.

Zenia yearns to return to England, but in realizing her dream, she may have to relinquish the love of the man who conquered her heart and changed her life.

LINDA LAEL MILLER

is the award-winning author of many bestselling novels. A favorite of romance readers, Ms. Miller has expanded the scope of the traditional love story with her unique vampire romances, Forever and the Night and For All Eternity, and has contributed a time-travel story for the romance anthology Timeless. She is currently writing the next novel in her bestselling vampire series.

TIME WITHOUT END

By

Linda Lael Miller

CONTENTS

Prologue

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21

Readers from coast to coast have fallen in love with

Linda Lael Miller's extraordinary vampires!

FOREVER AND THE NIGHT

FOR ALL ETERNITY

New York Times Bestselling Author

Laura Kinsale

LINDA LAEL MILLER