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Chapter Eight

When I first met Deirdre, nearly a year before, she was fully human.

She and her vampire lover Damien had befriended me when I was abducted and brought to the Seattle demesne. They were very much in love and troubled by Damien's inability to "bring her over." Forget the books and movies, making vampires is more like making babies than you might think—sometimes it happens on the first attempt, sometimes it never happens at all. When it comes to reproduction, there's no such thing as a sure thing.

They had exchanged all of the requisite bodily fluids and Damien had carefully taken her right up to the point where the virus should have caught hold—more than once, in fact. But it didn't happen. And, although she was willing to risk death—final and irrevocable—to truly be one with her vampire paramour, he wasn't willing to push the chance of losing her eternally.

Tragedy enough, but Fate had a crueler twist up its bony sleeve: it was the powerful and all but invulnerable Damien who preceded his mortal lover into the eternal darkness, staked by assassins from the New York demesne trying to get to me.

In an act that was equal parts compassion, grief, and madness, Deirdre had come to me as I lay helpless, recovering from what should have been mortal wounds. She comforted me, healed me.

First, with her body.

Then, with her blood.

And finally, while I slept in her soft embrace, she took the deadly dental appliance that Liz Bachman had given me and used it to take her own life.

When I escaped the Seattle demesne, Deirdre was a lifeless corpse on a drawer in the morgue.

Now, a year later, stretched out in my bed, she looked very lively.

And, except for a small corner of the rumpled top sheet covering practically nothing of consequence, she looked very naked.

"Hello, Deirdre," I said.

"Hello, Chris," she said with a slow smile. "Or should I call you 'Master'?" Her smile dimpled, revealing sly fangs.

It wasn't hard to figure out—even without Deirdre's fill-in-the-blanks account of her subsequent awakening. The virus, long dormant in her bloodstream, had been activated with her death. It took longer for her to rise—probably because Damien's gift had been diluted in the time that had passed since their last exchange. And by the time she had sundered her sarcophagus and emerged like a great and fearsome Luna moth, I was long gone down the road to Kansas and about to drop off the radar altogether.

"And now I've found you," she concluded happily.

"Why?" I asked.

"You are my Master."

I shook my head. That was a mistake: something seemed to tear loose behind my left eye and went rattling around inside my skull. "Ground Control to Major Tom . . ." I said, leaning heavily against the doorframe, " . . . or is that Major Nelson?" I felt my legs start to buckle. "Somebody send for Dr. Bellows . . ."

She was across the room with inhuman speed, catching me as the floor tilted toward my face. I felt myself lifted by slender but impossibly strong arms and carried into a roaring vortex of darkness.

Being dead was bad enough. The unrelieved blackness was worse. But being interred in a frost-free meat freezer was way past cruel and seriously starting to piss me off. I shuddered and gasped, fighting to orient my sludgy brain in the lightless void.

Something touched me.

Something cold.

But it was soft and not nearly as cold as I was.

"You fool!" said a voice.

=How long have you gone without?=  

Without what? Adrift in the black infinity of this starless space there were eternities of emptiness: loss, loneliness, regret. And what had I not gone without of late?

=You can't resist The Hunger with this!=  

Something was ripped from my numbed, nerveless fingers.

=Here . . .=   

Pressure was applied to the back of my head.

My face pressed into yielding softness.

A trickle of warmth touched my lips.

=Drink.=  

A thread of heat stung the tip of my tongue.

=Drink! Swallow!=  

My throat convulsed but my mouth remained dry.

=Suck! Have you forgotten what every infant knows from the womb? Pull at it!=  

A bare half-swallow and I felt a nudge of strength.

=More! I have fed recently but you will need something warmer than that which already grows cool in my breast.=  

A bit of tepid warmth eased into my throat and the pain receded. I moved and felt the press of the mattress along my side. My hand glided to my face and found wetness. Found . . . 

I opened my eyes. "Oh, God," I moaned softly.

Deirdre drew away. "I should hunt something for you before the sun comes up."

I tried to shake my head. Not good. "You mean someone," I whispered.

"You will suffer if I don't."

"I'm good at it . . . lots of practice . . ."

"The sun will be rising soon," she said.

"Stay. More blood downstairs—"

"Yes, I saw. It's cold."

"Boil water. Heat—"

"It's not fresh," she said like some fussy produce shopper. "But it will have to do until tonight," she finally decided.

I started to relax and slide back down that murky chute into the total dark.

"But first a little more to anchor you," she said, reaching down and reopening her self-inflicted wound. She pulled me to the freshet of gore once more. I was powerless to resist.

Finally I surrendered, feeling like a total boob.

Like they say: you are what you eat.

I awoke to the vague glimmer of sunlight behind the heavy bedroom drapes: the embroidered, dark green leaves glowed against the black fabric like a phosphorescent jungle. I looked at the bedside clock: five twenty-seven in the p.m. I looked at the rest of the rumpled bed: empty. A few drops of dried blood were the only tangible evidence of her presence last night.

So where had she gone?

I rolled to the edge of the bed and tried to sit up. Flashbulbs went off behind my eyes.

I made it on the third attempt and stared down at the carpet, about a mile or so below. "I can do this," I whispered. "There's nothing wrong with my legs, there's nothing wrong with my eyes; I'm just a little tired."

Never mind points for proper form, the will triumphed: five minutes later I crawled out of the bedroom and made my way down the hall on my hands and knees. The stairs were a bit of a challenge but I managed to go down feet first—and butt second. As Deirdre had wrestled me out of my clothes during the night, I picked up a wicked carpet burn by the time I reached the (ahem) bottom.

By the time I staggered into the kitchen I was wobbling erect, on my own two feet. Think Weebles! I kept telling myself. Weebles wobble, but they don't fall down. 

I pulled on the refrigerator door. It resisted. I pulled harder. Reluctantly the magnetic and rubber seals gave way and I retrieved a couple of blood bags. I started back to the stove but the idea of going through the process of boiling the water and then cooling the contents back to an approximate ninety-nine degrees just wore me out thinking about it. Grabbing a paring knife out of the kitchen drawer, I ambled to the dining table and prepared the plastic tubing like an overlong silly straw.

The cold hemoglobin hit the back of my mouth like chilled Tabasco sauce. Halfway down my throat it started to burn then exploded in my stomach like cold fusion. My nerve endings started to tingle and strength returned to my arms and legs. The trembling in my extremities died down from a series of quivers and quakes to a mild vibration, then ceased altogether. My head began to settle and my mind started switching on the internal lights again.

I felt better. Not great, mind you, but almost human again.

Almost.

But probably never quite ever again.

I sat slumped against the table long after the pouch was empty whispering the old mantra: I am not a monster, I am still a man; I am not a monster, I am still a man— 

I am not . . . 

I felt even better after a long shower and some clean clothes. I stripped the sheets off the bed and dropped them down the laundry chute. Clean sheets from the linen closet and shortly thereafter I had a pristine bed to sleep in.

The question was how long would it stay that way?

Lupé, when (if) she came back, would not appreciate finding out that another woman had shared my bed in her absence. Never mind that we hadn't had sex, what Deirdre had done was more intimate than sex for a vampire.

And more complicated for me.

If Deirdre was calling me "Master" and sharing blood with me, it indicated that she considered me her "Sire."

But I hadn't "created" her.

It was Damien's blood, not mine, that had sown half of the combinant virae in her bloodstream, Damien's saliva that had injected the other half with his "love-bites." Had he still walked the earth when she resurrected, Damien would have been her Sire, her Master. Apparently she considered the fact that she had died in my bed, with her blood upon my lips, sufficient involvement in her turning to nominate me for the vacancy.

If true, I held the power of life and death over her. Or the power of "unlife" to be technically pure.

I could tell her when and where she could and could not hunt. Of course, she had apparently been hunting and feeding for the better part of a year without my input so dictating boundaries might prove a little difficult.

Especially since I wasn't fully undead. And could be considered peripherally responsible for Damien's death.

Now I faced two disturbing questions. One: how had she found me? If Deirdre had been able to hunt me down seven months later and a half continent away, who else might find me in time? And two: if I could not dissuade her from hunting human prey, how complicit would I become in the suffering and death of her victims? Could I stake her—essentially murder her—in the name of protecting humankind as the greater good?

I was just realizing that maybe that constituted "four" questions when the doorbell rang.

I pulled the drapes back and tried to check the driveway without standing in direct light. Whoever was on my doorstep was hidden under the first-story eaves and there was no vehicle in my driveway. There were, however, flashing blue lights strobing down at the end of my lawn by the woods. I glanced around the bedroom and then scanned the hall and the stairs as I hurried down to answer the door. Nothing suggested anything but a normal house with normal occupant(s) but I crossed my fingers, hoping that Deirdre wouldn't suddenly show up ahead of schedule.

I opened the front door and took in the tall skinny guy with long brown hair and a jutting, curly beard to match. The hair was topped by a small porkpie hat with a tiny feather peeking over the headband on the side. His sports jacket clashed with his pants and his tie seemed to be an attempt to catalog all the colors that didn't naturally occur in nature. A detective's shield was displayed on a leather flap that hung from the pocket of his jacket.

"Mr. Haim?"

For a moment I thought he was a ventriloquist, then realized the voice originated near my diaphragm. I looked down at a small Hispanic woman in a brown pants suit. She had a similar badge in her hand.

"Yes?" I said, standing back from the light but not so far as to indicate an unspoken invitation to enter.

"Detective Ruiz," she elaborated. "This is Detective Murray."

I nodded. "What can I do for you, Detectives?"

"We'd like to ask you a few questions if you have a moment." She smiled almost as an afterthought.

"Would you like to come in?" I asked reluctantly.

Ruiz looked back and up at Murray. Murray didn't look at anything in particular; he just maintained his own pleasant half-smile and waited.

"Well—" she prevaricated, "—I'm afraid we can't right now. We're waiting for the coroner's wagon and need to keep the area under surveillance until they arrive."

I glanced meaningfully at the tall, skinny guy with marked lack of fashion sense. I noticed he was wearing sneakers with mismatched socks.

"Murray is on loan from Vice," Ruiz said as if that explained everything.

"Ah," I said as though I completely understood.

"Would you be willing to take a walk down to your property-line with us, sir?"

I looked past her shoulder: the sun floated just a little ways above the tree line and threw a dim golden haze over the land. Maybe I could endure about ten minutes of it without protection.

"If you'll give me a moment," I said, "I need to apply some sunblock. I—"

Ruiz held up her hand. "I understand, Mr. Haim. We're aware of your sun sensitivity. Come down and join us when you're ready." She turned and started down the lawn. After a moment, the still-smiling Murray nodded to me and followed along behind.

I slathered on two coats of sunblock and selected another hat from my closet shelf, a buff-colored Stetson with a low crown. I popped in the polarized contact lenses but skipped the sunglasses for this outing.

As I walked back down the stairs, I heard something stirring up in the attic.

The coroner had arrived while I was primping. As I walked down the slope of my front yard I wondered about Ruiz's awareness regarding my sun sensitivity.

I wondered what else she knew.

And I wondered what had happened to the salt someone had spilled on my driveway last night: it was gone.

Two men wrestled a stretcher up from the midst of the trees with a black body bag strapped atop it. Ruiz motioned me over as it reached the back of the coroner's wagon. "I'd like you to have a look at this," she said, motioning me closer. She nodded to Murray, who unzipped the top of the bag.

I stared at a familiar face—if you could still call it that—while Ruiz and Murray stared at mine. It belonged to the young woman who had dropped by the night before—the one missing her hands and wrists. She appeared to be very dead. Even more so than last night.

"Well, Mr. Haim?" Ruiz asked after a long pause.

"Well," I said indignantly, "this was not a boating accident!"

"What?" Her eyes grew large.

Murray's smile expanded.

"And it wasn't any propeller, it wasn't any coral reef, and it wasn't Jack the Ripper!" I continued. "It was a shark!"

"All right," Ruiz said, jerking her head.

It sounded like Murray mumbled "Thank you, Mr. Hooper" as he closed the bag. We stepped back as the coroner's team wrestled the stretcher into the back of the van.

"No," I said.

"No, what?" Ruiz wanted to know.

"Depends on which question." I watched them close the doors on the van. They clanged like the gates on a steel sarcophagus. " 'No,' I didn't kill her or 'no,' I've never seen her before in my life."

"No one's accusing you of anything, Mr. Haim."

"And nobody's confessing here, either, Detective." I smiled at her, trying to approximate Murray's pleasant, laid-back demeanor. "I'm not personally offended that you just tried one of the oldest tricks in the book, Sergeant . . ."

"Lieutenant."

I knew that. But if she could trot out one of police-work's hoariest old clichés, so could I. " . . . but I can be offended that it is one of the oldest tricks in the book." I smiled a little more. "So, what other questions would you like to ask me?"

Her smile grew in turn. "Well, we thought it couldn't hurt to run some things past a fellow professional."

I looked for the note of sarcasm but the diminutive detective was making every effort to be friendly. Which really set off the alarms in the back of my head. I would have preferred sarcasm to insincere flattery.

Plus it meant I was still in the suspect column on her list.

"I need to get back inside," I said. "Will this take long?"

"No," she said pleasantly. No snarl, no "we can haul your sorry ass downtown and question you there . . ." Instead, she gestured back toward the house and said, "Let's get you back inside."

As we walked back up the lawn she asked the basics: Had I noticed any activity in the woods in the last few days? Or nights? Had I seen any strangers or unusual people in the neighborhood? Had any vehicles caught my attention in the past few days—maybe driving past slowly? Or come by more than once? What hours did I keep? Or, rather, when was I away for work or teaching and when was I home when I might observe any unusual comings and goings? Was I light sleeper?

And so on.

When she was done, I asked her about the body.

A couple of kids had found it in the woods this afternoon, she told me. The grave was shallow and they saw the toes of one foot protruding above the ground.

How long did they think she had been buried there?

Ruiz and Murray exchanged a look and I pushed.

"The victim has been tentatively identified as Kandi Fenoli," Ruiz said. "Believed to have been abducted while hitching. The cops in Winn Parish described ligature marks and so we're assuming strangulation. We think the perp removed her hands so she couldn't be traced via fingerprints. Makes no sense, though . . ."

"Winn Parish?" I asked.

"That's where the body was found," Ruiz said.

Murray finally spoke. "The first time."

"The first time?"

He nodded. "A little over a week ago."

"How did it get over here?"

"That's what we'd like to know," Ruiz said, looking me square in the eye. "The body disappeared from the morgue the night before the autopsy was scheduled. So tell me, Mr. Haim: do you honestly think it got up on its own and walked nearly a hundred miles cross-country to seek a shallow grave in those woods down there?"

I have a fundamental rule: never, ever lie to the police—you'll just end up making things worse.

I looked the feisty detective right back in the eye and unhesitatingly broke that rule with no compunction.

"No," I said.

Ten minutes after the Ruiz and Murray show departed, I was on the phone to Chalice Delacroix. When I told her that I wanted to visit her at BioWeb tonight she agreed without hesitation. I didn't even have to push. Maybe my luck was starting to turn.

Maybe not: as I hung up the receiver, I heard the door to the attic slide open and saw Deirdre come floating down like some heavenly creature from an ethereal plane—an ethereal plane whose inhabitants just happened to have pointy, sharp teeth and iridescent, red eyes.

Still, Deirdre's angel face and crimson hair made her scarlet eyes more haunting than horrifying. As in life, she was somewhere beyond beautiful, and her undead form was seemingly enhanced in ways I could not immediately fathom. The sweet, young woman I had met a year ago was somehow more—compelling—now that she had become an inhuman predator. I had to wonder: was it something in her?

Or in me?

"Sire," she said softly, "you are recovered." Her smile was almost better than sex.

You could find out so easily, said the voice (mine? hers?) inside my head.

"Deirdre, I'm not big on formalities. Let's just drop this 'Master' and 'Sire' business and call me Chris. Okay?"

Her smile expanded and she adjusted her big blue bathrobe where it threatened to do the same. "I'm not surprised that you're uncomfortable with 'Master' but you are my Sire."

While that could be debated on more than one technicality, I thought it best to let it lie for now. "Just call me Chris."

"Yes Chris," she said with amused obedience.

"Well . . . did you sleep well?"

She waggled her hand. "You have squirrels."

"I have squirrels?"

"And you have light leaks."

"Ah, the attic."

"And I am rather dusty. I need a shower."

I gave her a choice of bathrooms, upstairs or down, each outfitted with unused guest towels.

"Wash my back?" she asked, untying the sash of her robe.

"There's a loofah on a cord inside the shower stall."

Then she suggested a way to conserve water to which I pointed out that I had already had my shower. Clearly, this was going to be even more complicated than I had initially expected.

While she was in the shower, I went through the luggage I found stashed in one of the spare bedrooms: clothes, quite a bit of cash, fake IDs, otherwise nothing suspicious or very telling.

I moved the luggage so any settling of contents would seem natural and opened dresser drawers and the closet to prepare the room for occupancy. Deirdre appeared at the door as I was tidying up.

Taking in the change in sleeping arrangements, she said: "It's Lupé, isn't it?"

"Lupé?"

"You're monogamous, aren't you?"

I nodded.

"Monogamous, monotonous—it's not the natural state of our kind."

"Your kind," I corrected. "I have no 'kind.' "

She stared at me then looked around the room. "Where is she?"

"Away." I suspected California but there was no way of knowing for sure. She might have found stunt work for some movie being shot on location. "Working."

"When will she be back?"

I shrugged. "The fewer who know, the better."

"You don't trust me?" Her attention was back on me, now. Her eyes narrowed and she brushed blood-red tendrils of hair away from her face. "Or you don't know when, yourself?"

I shrugged again. "Her schedule changes from week to week."

"So you don't know when. Maybe it's more a matter of you don't know if."

I folded my arms. "If I am your Sire and Master, you should show me a little more respect. Especially in the matters of my personal life."

"It's my life, too," she said. The water from her hair seemed to have trickled down into her eyes: she blinked furiously.

"How did you find me?" I wanted to know but, even more, I thought it prudent to change the subject.

"It wasn't easy," she answered, unwrapping the towel.

My first impulse was to turn away or at least be gentleman enough to avert my eyes. But Deirdre had "thrown down" so to speak and looking away would be tantamount to a flinch on my part. I didn't want to lose points so I kept her in my field of vision as she searched for something to wear. It wasn't just social gamesmanship. We were both predators, now, and Deirdre was the more dangerous. While I had no desire to be her Master, any alternative could well be worse. And any sign of weakness could shift the ground under our feet in a heartbeat.

Besides, bitching and moaning about having to gaze upon unclothed perfection is hardly my style.

"Had we formed a true blood-bond, I probably would have found you months ago," she continued, selecting a simple green sheath dress. "There were days when I could hear the whisper of my mortal blood in my dreams, nights when I could hear it murmur in your veins. Had I tasted yours then, the whisper would have become a song. You've now taken my immortal essence into yourself. You were too weak last night, but once we have exchanged heart's blood, the bond will become a shout."

"And then you will be able to find me anywhere." Another reason I wasn't particularly keen on the process. "So what about you? With whom else do you share a blood-bond?" I noted as she wriggled into the dress that she wasn't wearing underwear. Come to think of it, I hadn't noticed any lingerie while rummaging through her luggage.

Her head reappeared and she gazed at me under half-lidded eyes. "Are you jealous, my Sire?"

"Just practical."

"Oh," a hint of disappointment in her voice, "oh, I see. You're worried that someone could use a blood-bond with me to find you."

I nodded. "Something like that."

"Well, they won't. There was pressure but I rejected every offer back in Seattle. I knew, once you were declared rogue, that I would follow you into exile." She slipped on a pair of green, snakeskin slingback heels that looked positively dangerous. "I think some of the others thought so, too. I told them I was mourning Damien, that I would enter no blood-bond for at least a year. I was very careful, when I slipped away, to leave no trail. There is no way that anyone could trace you through me: I spent two months just doubling back to see if I had picked up any tails. I did not seek you out until I was sure my back trail was clear. Trust me: you are absolutely safe."

The doorbell chimed.

I went downstairs, glad of the interruption and fearful that Detectives Ruiz and Murray had returned with a search warrant.

They hadn't.

Stefan Pagelovitch, vampire Doman of the Seattle demesne was standing on my front porch. "Hello, Christopher," he said pleasantly. He nodded, looking past my shoulder: "Deirdre . . ."

Beyond him, standing out in the yard, were another five undead foot soldiers from the Pacific Northwest.

Pagelovitch smiled, showing inch-long canines. "Aren't you going to invite me in?"

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Framed

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Chapter Eight

When I first met Deirdre, nearly a year before, she was fully human.

She and her vampire lover Damien had befriended me when I was abducted and brought to the Seattle demesne. They were very much in love and troubled by Damien's inability to "bring her over." Forget the books and movies, making vampires is more like making babies than you might think—sometimes it happens on the first attempt, sometimes it never happens at all. When it comes to reproduction, there's no such thing as a sure thing.

They had exchanged all of the requisite bodily fluids and Damien had carefully taken her right up to the point where the virus should have caught hold—more than once, in fact. But it didn't happen. And, although she was willing to risk death—final and irrevocable—to truly be one with her vampire paramour, he wasn't willing to push the chance of losing her eternally.

Tragedy enough, but Fate had a crueler twist up its bony sleeve: it was the powerful and all but invulnerable Damien who preceded his mortal lover into the eternal darkness, staked by assassins from the New York demesne trying to get to me.

In an act that was equal parts compassion, grief, and madness, Deirdre had come to me as I lay helpless, recovering from what should have been mortal wounds. She comforted me, healed me.

First, with her body.

Then, with her blood.

And finally, while I slept in her soft embrace, she took the deadly dental appliance that Liz Bachman had given me and used it to take her own life.

When I escaped the Seattle demesne, Deirdre was a lifeless corpse on a drawer in the morgue.

Now, a year later, stretched out in my bed, she looked very lively.

And, except for a small corner of the rumpled top sheet covering practically nothing of consequence, she looked very naked.

"Hello, Deirdre," I said.

"Hello, Chris," she said with a slow smile. "Or should I call you 'Master'?" Her smile dimpled, revealing sly fangs.

It wasn't hard to figure out—even without Deirdre's fill-in-the-blanks account of her subsequent awakening. The virus, long dormant in her bloodstream, had been activated with her death. It took longer for her to rise—probably because Damien's gift had been diluted in the time that had passed since their last exchange. And by the time she had sundered her sarcophagus and emerged like a great and fearsome Luna moth, I was long gone down the road to Kansas and about to drop off the radar altogether.

"And now I've found you," she concluded happily.

"Why?" I asked.

"You are my Master."

I shook my head. That was a mistake: something seemed to tear loose behind my left eye and went rattling around inside my skull. "Ground Control to Major Tom . . ." I said, leaning heavily against the doorframe, " . . . or is that Major Nelson?" I felt my legs start to buckle. "Somebody send for Dr. Bellows . . ."

She was across the room with inhuman speed, catching me as the floor tilted toward my face. I felt myself lifted by slender but impossibly strong arms and carried into a roaring vortex of darkness.

Being dead was bad enough. The unrelieved blackness was worse. But being interred in a frost-free meat freezer was way past cruel and seriously starting to piss me off. I shuddered and gasped, fighting to orient my sludgy brain in the lightless void.

Something touched me.

Something cold.

But it was soft and not nearly as cold as I was.

"You fool!" said a voice.

=How long have you gone without?=  

Without what? Adrift in the black infinity of this starless space there were eternities of emptiness: loss, loneliness, regret. And what had I not gone without of late?

=You can't resist The Hunger with this!=  

Something was ripped from my numbed, nerveless fingers.

=Here . . .=   

Pressure was applied to the back of my head.

My face pressed into yielding softness.

A trickle of warmth touched my lips.

=Drink.=  

A thread of heat stung the tip of my tongue.

=Drink! Swallow!=  

My throat convulsed but my mouth remained dry.

=Suck! Have you forgotten what every infant knows from the womb? Pull at it!=  

A bare half-swallow and I felt a nudge of strength.

=More! I have fed recently but you will need something warmer than that which already grows cool in my breast.=  

A bit of tepid warmth eased into my throat and the pain receded. I moved and felt the press of the mattress along my side. My hand glided to my face and found wetness. Found . . . 

I opened my eyes. "Oh, God," I moaned softly.

Deirdre drew away. "I should hunt something for you before the sun comes up."

I tried to shake my head. Not good. "You mean someone," I whispered.

"You will suffer if I don't."

"I'm good at it . . . lots of practice . . ."

"The sun will be rising soon," she said.

"Stay. More blood downstairs—"

"Yes, I saw. It's cold."

"Boil water. Heat—"

"It's not fresh," she said like some fussy produce shopper. "But it will have to do until tonight," she finally decided.

I started to relax and slide back down that murky chute into the total dark.

"But first a little more to anchor you," she said, reaching down and reopening her self-inflicted wound. She pulled me to the freshet of gore once more. I was powerless to resist.

Finally I surrendered, feeling like a total boob.

Like they say: you are what you eat.

I awoke to the vague glimmer of sunlight behind the heavy bedroom drapes: the embroidered, dark green leaves glowed against the black fabric like a phosphorescent jungle. I looked at the bedside clock: five twenty-seven in the p.m. I looked at the rest of the rumpled bed: empty. A few drops of dried blood were the only tangible evidence of her presence last night.

So where had she gone?

I rolled to the edge of the bed and tried to sit up. Flashbulbs went off behind my eyes.

I made it on the third attempt and stared down at the carpet, about a mile or so below. "I can do this," I whispered. "There's nothing wrong with my legs, there's nothing wrong with my eyes; I'm just a little tired."

Never mind points for proper form, the will triumphed: five minutes later I crawled out of the bedroom and made my way down the hall on my hands and knees. The stairs were a bit of a challenge but I managed to go down feet first—and butt second. As Deirdre had wrestled me out of my clothes during the night, I picked up a wicked carpet burn by the time I reached the (ahem) bottom.

By the time I staggered into the kitchen I was wobbling erect, on my own two feet. Think Weebles! I kept telling myself. Weebles wobble, but they don't fall down. 

I pulled on the refrigerator door. It resisted. I pulled harder. Reluctantly the magnetic and rubber seals gave way and I retrieved a couple of blood bags. I started back to the stove but the idea of going through the process of boiling the water and then cooling the contents back to an approximate ninety-nine degrees just wore me out thinking about it. Grabbing a paring knife out of the kitchen drawer, I ambled to the dining table and prepared the plastic tubing like an overlong silly straw.

The cold hemoglobin hit the back of my mouth like chilled Tabasco sauce. Halfway down my throat it started to burn then exploded in my stomach like cold fusion. My nerve endings started to tingle and strength returned to my arms and legs. The trembling in my extremities died down from a series of quivers and quakes to a mild vibration, then ceased altogether. My head began to settle and my mind started switching on the internal lights again.

I felt better. Not great, mind you, but almost human again.

Almost.

But probably never quite ever again.

I sat slumped against the table long after the pouch was empty whispering the old mantra: I am not a monster, I am still a man; I am not a monster, I am still a man— 

I am not . . . 

I felt even better after a long shower and some clean clothes. I stripped the sheets off the bed and dropped them down the laundry chute. Clean sheets from the linen closet and shortly thereafter I had a pristine bed to sleep in.

The question was how long would it stay that way?

Lupé, when (if) she came back, would not appreciate finding out that another woman had shared my bed in her absence. Never mind that we hadn't had sex, what Deirdre had done was more intimate than sex for a vampire.

And more complicated for me.

If Deirdre was calling me "Master" and sharing blood with me, it indicated that she considered me her "Sire."

But I hadn't "created" her.

It was Damien's blood, not mine, that had sown half of the combinant virae in her bloodstream, Damien's saliva that had injected the other half with his "love-bites." Had he still walked the earth when she resurrected, Damien would have been her Sire, her Master. Apparently she considered the fact that she had died in my bed, with her blood upon my lips, sufficient involvement in her turning to nominate me for the vacancy.

If true, I held the power of life and death over her. Or the power of "unlife" to be technically pure.

I could tell her when and where she could and could not hunt. Of course, she had apparently been hunting and feeding for the better part of a year without my input so dictating boundaries might prove a little difficult.

Especially since I wasn't fully undead. And could be considered peripherally responsible for Damien's death.

Now I faced two disturbing questions. One: how had she found me? If Deirdre had been able to hunt me down seven months later and a half continent away, who else might find me in time? And two: if I could not dissuade her from hunting human prey, how complicit would I become in the suffering and death of her victims? Could I stake her—essentially murder her—in the name of protecting humankind as the greater good?

I was just realizing that maybe that constituted "four" questions when the doorbell rang.

I pulled the drapes back and tried to check the driveway without standing in direct light. Whoever was on my doorstep was hidden under the first-story eaves and there was no vehicle in my driveway. There were, however, flashing blue lights strobing down at the end of my lawn by the woods. I glanced around the bedroom and then scanned the hall and the stairs as I hurried down to answer the door. Nothing suggested anything but a normal house with normal occupant(s) but I crossed my fingers, hoping that Deirdre wouldn't suddenly show up ahead of schedule.

I opened the front door and took in the tall skinny guy with long brown hair and a jutting, curly beard to match. The hair was topped by a small porkpie hat with a tiny feather peeking over the headband on the side. His sports jacket clashed with his pants and his tie seemed to be an attempt to catalog all the colors that didn't naturally occur in nature. A detective's shield was displayed on a leather flap that hung from the pocket of his jacket.

"Mr. Haim?"

For a moment I thought he was a ventriloquist, then realized the voice originated near my diaphragm. I looked down at a small Hispanic woman in a brown pants suit. She had a similar badge in her hand.

"Yes?" I said, standing back from the light but not so far as to indicate an unspoken invitation to enter.

"Detective Ruiz," she elaborated. "This is Detective Murray."

I nodded. "What can I do for you, Detectives?"

"We'd like to ask you a few questions if you have a moment." She smiled almost as an afterthought.

"Would you like to come in?" I asked reluctantly.

Ruiz looked back and up at Murray. Murray didn't look at anything in particular; he just maintained his own pleasant half-smile and waited.

"Well—" she prevaricated, "—I'm afraid we can't right now. We're waiting for the coroner's wagon and need to keep the area under surveillance until they arrive."

I glanced meaningfully at the tall, skinny guy with marked lack of fashion sense. I noticed he was wearing sneakers with mismatched socks.

"Murray is on loan from Vice," Ruiz said as if that explained everything.

"Ah," I said as though I completely understood.

"Would you be willing to take a walk down to your property-line with us, sir?"

I looked past her shoulder: the sun floated just a little ways above the tree line and threw a dim golden haze over the land. Maybe I could endure about ten minutes of it without protection.

"If you'll give me a moment," I said, "I need to apply some sunblock. I—"

Ruiz held up her hand. "I understand, Mr. Haim. We're aware of your sun sensitivity. Come down and join us when you're ready." She turned and started down the lawn. After a moment, the still-smiling Murray nodded to me and followed along behind.

I slathered on two coats of sunblock and selected another hat from my closet shelf, a buff-colored Stetson with a low crown. I popped in the polarized contact lenses but skipped the sunglasses for this outing.

As I walked back down the stairs, I heard something stirring up in the attic.

The coroner had arrived while I was primping. As I walked down the slope of my front yard I wondered about Ruiz's awareness regarding my sun sensitivity.

I wondered what else she knew.

And I wondered what had happened to the salt someone had spilled on my driveway last night: it was gone.

Two men wrestled a stretcher up from the midst of the trees with a black body bag strapped atop it. Ruiz motioned me over as it reached the back of the coroner's wagon. "I'd like you to have a look at this," she said, motioning me closer. She nodded to Murray, who unzipped the top of the bag.

I stared at a familiar face—if you could still call it that—while Ruiz and Murray stared at mine. It belonged to the young woman who had dropped by the night before—the one missing her hands and wrists. She appeared to be very dead. Even more so than last night.

"Well, Mr. Haim?" Ruiz asked after a long pause.

"Well," I said indignantly, "this was not a boating accident!"

"What?" Her eyes grew large.

Murray's smile expanded.

"And it wasn't any propeller, it wasn't any coral reef, and it wasn't Jack the Ripper!" I continued. "It was a shark!"

"All right," Ruiz said, jerking her head.

It sounded like Murray mumbled "Thank you, Mr. Hooper" as he closed the bag. We stepped back as the coroner's team wrestled the stretcher into the back of the van.

"No," I said.

"No, what?" Ruiz wanted to know.

"Depends on which question." I watched them close the doors on the van. They clanged like the gates on a steel sarcophagus. " 'No,' I didn't kill her or 'no,' I've never seen her before in my life."

"No one's accusing you of anything, Mr. Haim."

"And nobody's confessing here, either, Detective." I smiled at her, trying to approximate Murray's pleasant, laid-back demeanor. "I'm not personally offended that you just tried one of the oldest tricks in the book, Sergeant . . ."

"Lieutenant."

I knew that. But if she could trot out one of police-work's hoariest old clichés, so could I. " . . . but I can be offended that it is one of the oldest tricks in the book." I smiled a little more. "So, what other questions would you like to ask me?"

Her smile grew in turn. "Well, we thought it couldn't hurt to run some things past a fellow professional."

I looked for the note of sarcasm but the diminutive detective was making every effort to be friendly. Which really set off the alarms in the back of my head. I would have preferred sarcasm to insincere flattery.

Plus it meant I was still in the suspect column on her list.

"I need to get back inside," I said. "Will this take long?"

"No," she said pleasantly. No snarl, no "we can haul your sorry ass downtown and question you there . . ." Instead, she gestured back toward the house and said, "Let's get you back inside."

As we walked back up the lawn she asked the basics: Had I noticed any activity in the woods in the last few days? Or nights? Had I seen any strangers or unusual people in the neighborhood? Had any vehicles caught my attention in the past few days—maybe driving past slowly? Or come by more than once? What hours did I keep? Or, rather, when was I away for work or teaching and when was I home when I might observe any unusual comings and goings? Was I light sleeper?

And so on.

When she was done, I asked her about the body.

A couple of kids had found it in the woods this afternoon, she told me. The grave was shallow and they saw the toes of one foot protruding above the ground.

How long did they think she had been buried there?

Ruiz and Murray exchanged a look and I pushed.

"The victim has been tentatively identified as Kandi Fenoli," Ruiz said. "Believed to have been abducted while hitching. The cops in Winn Parish described ligature marks and so we're assuming strangulation. We think the perp removed her hands so she couldn't be traced via fingerprints. Makes no sense, though . . ."

"Winn Parish?" I asked.

"That's where the body was found," Ruiz said.

Murray finally spoke. "The first time."

"The first time?"

He nodded. "A little over a week ago."

"How did it get over here?"

"That's what we'd like to know," Ruiz said, looking me square in the eye. "The body disappeared from the morgue the night before the autopsy was scheduled. So tell me, Mr. Haim: do you honestly think it got up on its own and walked nearly a hundred miles cross-country to seek a shallow grave in those woods down there?"

I have a fundamental rule: never, ever lie to the police—you'll just end up making things worse.

I looked the feisty detective right back in the eye and unhesitatingly broke that rule with no compunction.

"No," I said.

Ten minutes after the Ruiz and Murray show departed, I was on the phone to Chalice Delacroix. When I told her that I wanted to visit her at BioWeb tonight she agreed without hesitation. I didn't even have to push. Maybe my luck was starting to turn.

Maybe not: as I hung up the receiver, I heard the door to the attic slide open and saw Deirdre come floating down like some heavenly creature from an ethereal plane—an ethereal plane whose inhabitants just happened to have pointy, sharp teeth and iridescent, red eyes.

Still, Deirdre's angel face and crimson hair made her scarlet eyes more haunting than horrifying. As in life, she was somewhere beyond beautiful, and her undead form was seemingly enhanced in ways I could not immediately fathom. The sweet, young woman I had met a year ago was somehow more—compelling—now that she had become an inhuman predator. I had to wonder: was it something in her?

Or in me?

"Sire," she said softly, "you are recovered." Her smile was almost better than sex.

You could find out so easily, said the voice (mine? hers?) inside my head.

"Deirdre, I'm not big on formalities. Let's just drop this 'Master' and 'Sire' business and call me Chris. Okay?"

Her smile expanded and she adjusted her big blue bathrobe where it threatened to do the same. "I'm not surprised that you're uncomfortable with 'Master' but you are my Sire."

While that could be debated on more than one technicality, I thought it best to let it lie for now. "Just call me Chris."

"Yes Chris," she said with amused obedience.

"Well . . . did you sleep well?"

She waggled her hand. "You have squirrels."

"I have squirrels?"

"And you have light leaks."

"Ah, the attic."

"And I am rather dusty. I need a shower."

I gave her a choice of bathrooms, upstairs or down, each outfitted with unused guest towels.

"Wash my back?" she asked, untying the sash of her robe.

"There's a loofah on a cord inside the shower stall."

Then she suggested a way to conserve water to which I pointed out that I had already had my shower. Clearly, this was going to be even more complicated than I had initially expected.

While she was in the shower, I went through the luggage I found stashed in one of the spare bedrooms: clothes, quite a bit of cash, fake IDs, otherwise nothing suspicious or very telling.

I moved the luggage so any settling of contents would seem natural and opened dresser drawers and the closet to prepare the room for occupancy. Deirdre appeared at the door as I was tidying up.

Taking in the change in sleeping arrangements, she said: "It's Lupé, isn't it?"

"Lupé?"

"You're monogamous, aren't you?"

I nodded.

"Monogamous, monotonous—it's not the natural state of our kind."

"Your kind," I corrected. "I have no 'kind.' "

She stared at me then looked around the room. "Where is she?"

"Away." I suspected California but there was no way of knowing for sure. She might have found stunt work for some movie being shot on location. "Working."

"When will she be back?"

I shrugged. "The fewer who know, the better."

"You don't trust me?" Her attention was back on me, now. Her eyes narrowed and she brushed blood-red tendrils of hair away from her face. "Or you don't know when, yourself?"

I shrugged again. "Her schedule changes from week to week."

"So you don't know when. Maybe it's more a matter of you don't know if."

I folded my arms. "If I am your Sire and Master, you should show me a little more respect. Especially in the matters of my personal life."

"It's my life, too," she said. The water from her hair seemed to have trickled down into her eyes: she blinked furiously.

"How did you find me?" I wanted to know but, even more, I thought it prudent to change the subject.

"It wasn't easy," she answered, unwrapping the towel.

My first impulse was to turn away or at least be gentleman enough to avert my eyes. But Deirdre had "thrown down" so to speak and looking away would be tantamount to a flinch on my part. I didn't want to lose points so I kept her in my field of vision as she searched for something to wear. It wasn't just social gamesmanship. We were both predators, now, and Deirdre was the more dangerous. While I had no desire to be her Master, any alternative could well be worse. And any sign of weakness could shift the ground under our feet in a heartbeat.

Besides, bitching and moaning about having to gaze upon unclothed perfection is hardly my style.

"Had we formed a true blood-bond, I probably would have found you months ago," she continued, selecting a simple green sheath dress. "There were days when I could hear the whisper of my mortal blood in my dreams, nights when I could hear it murmur in your veins. Had I tasted yours then, the whisper would have become a song. You've now taken my immortal essence into yourself. You were too weak last night, but once we have exchanged heart's blood, the bond will become a shout."

"And then you will be able to find me anywhere." Another reason I wasn't particularly keen on the process. "So what about you? With whom else do you share a blood-bond?" I noted as she wriggled into the dress that she wasn't wearing underwear. Come to think of it, I hadn't noticed any lingerie while rummaging through her luggage.

Her head reappeared and she gazed at me under half-lidded eyes. "Are you jealous, my Sire?"

"Just practical."

"Oh," a hint of disappointment in her voice, "oh, I see. You're worried that someone could use a blood-bond with me to find you."

I nodded. "Something like that."

"Well, they won't. There was pressure but I rejected every offer back in Seattle. I knew, once you were declared rogue, that I would follow you into exile." She slipped on a pair of green, snakeskin slingback heels that looked positively dangerous. "I think some of the others thought so, too. I told them I was mourning Damien, that I would enter no blood-bond for at least a year. I was very careful, when I slipped away, to leave no trail. There is no way that anyone could trace you through me: I spent two months just doubling back to see if I had picked up any tails. I did not seek you out until I was sure my back trail was clear. Trust me: you are absolutely safe."

The doorbell chimed.

I went downstairs, glad of the interruption and fearful that Detectives Ruiz and Murray had returned with a search warrant.

They hadn't.

Stefan Pagelovitch, vampire Doman of the Seattle demesne was standing on my front porch. "Hello, Christopher," he said pleasantly. He nodded, looking past my shoulder: "Deirdre . . ."

Beyond him, standing out in the yard, were another five undead foot soldiers from the Pacific Northwest.

Pagelovitch smiled, showing inch-long canines. "Aren't you going to invite me in?"

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