The children did not sleep for long.

Three.

Helman saw the whole, impossible thing, but denied it when the RCMP officers questioned the passengers on the plane. The officers were simply the security force for Vancouver International Airport. They had no knowledge of what had recently happened to their more highly placed colleagues in Toronto. They had no reason not to believe Helman's story. He was free to go with the other passengers an hour after the plane had landed. From the corridor windows he watched as the searchlights played across the tarmac, looking for the body. No one had believed the one passenger who had seen the woman run away. Helman had a hard time believing it himself. But he knew it had to be true.

Vancouver, January 19 The plane had been descending. Seatbelts were fastened and all the passengers, frightened or not, had been holding the seat arms just a little more tightly than usual as they waited for the first impact of the tires on the runway. All the passengers except one.

Adrienne St. Clair had gotten up from her seat moments before landing. She had held on to both her head and her stomach, as if sick and confused, and staggered down the aisle. Helman had heard the attendants shouting to her to return to her seat. Adrienne had continued.

Helman had slipped off his seatbelt and raised himself off his seat enough to turn his head and see what was going on. The senior flight attendant had unbuckled herself and gone after Adrienne. By this time, Adrienne was right were she wanted to be. The plane hit the runway with a jolt. Adrienne lashed out her arm and caught the unbalanced attendant across her midsection. The attendant went flying backward into the galley. Adrienne spun around to the emergency escape door and pulled and twisted on the large yellow handle. More attendants shouted.

Then the door popped open and Adrienne jumped out and hit the runway at one hundred and forty miles an hour.

She was safe.

Helman was impressed. Whatever was waiting for them in Vancouver had just been avoided by Adrienne. There did not appear to be anyone interested in him. Perhaps the yber watchers, if there had been any, had heard about the crazy woman on the Toronto flight who had committed suicide, realised what had happened, and were now scouring the areas beyond the runways.

Helman had not known what was going to happen. He continued on the way that they had planned. She had found him before in his Toronto hotel room. He had no doubt she would find him again.

The Ford LTD he had reserved from Toronto was waiting for him and he drove into the wet Vancouver night.

Adrienne waved him down two miles from the airport. Before they drove on, she had him take the suitcase from the trunk of the car so she could put on new clothes. The ones she had worn in her jump from the plane were almost completely torn away by the force of the impact. Helman saw several dark ripples running along the pale skin that showed as she changed in the car. He asked her about them.

"That's the healing process," she explained. "Small wounds close up in seconds. If you can watch carefully, you may be able to see a thin dark line, almost as if a hair had been laid across the skin. More major wounds take a few minutes longer. Some can take hours, depending on the extent of the damage. The dark colour is a type of antibody reaction we haven't been able to analyse yet."

Helman considered what Adrienne had said. Perhaps she would have an answer to his question.

"How can yber be so impervious to bullets and so fatally vulnerable to arrows or wooden stakes?"

Adrienne smiled. "Jeffery and I spent a considerable amount of time on that one, Granger. Essentially, despite the fact that there are so few outward manifestations of the changes from human to yber, inside the changes are extensive.

What it comes down to is that yber, six months or so after Communion, experience a fusing of their internal organs.

Instead of the dozens of specialised organs that humans have, each one prone to its own disorders, many capable of destroying the entire organism because of their own malfunction, yber possess a generalised organ. That's really about the only way I can think to describe it."

"One organ to do the work of all the others?"

"Essentially. It's like the brain. Certain areas of the brain, while they have no observable structural difference, serve as control centres for specialised functions. There's the speech centre, sight centre, tactile response, all of them with a more or less specific control point in the brain. But if one of those centres is damaged or destroyed, providing it's not one of the important ones that governs heartbeat or breathing, the organism is not destroyed. Almost every part of the brain has the capability of taking over control from any other part of the brain. Burn out the sight centre of a chimpanzee. Leave the optical nerve structure intact so that the signals still can enter the brain, and within a few months you'll have a sighted chimpanzee back. It's the same way that, stroke victims can recover. The brain tissue can't grow back, but as long as the signals can get to some area of the brain, there's a good chance that some form of recovery will take place as new areas take over."

"So if a bullet goes through the part of this generalised organ that is the centre for, let's say the pancreas, some other part of the organ will begin the production of insulin?"

Adrienne nodded. "Other than the factt that yber don't produce and don't need insulin, that's the idea. And unlike the brain of a stroke victim, our generalised organ, which fills the chest and abdominal cavities, can regenerate itself.

Incredibly rapidly. Just like these." She held out one arm and rolled back the sleeve of her sweater. The dark ripples Helman had seen when she changed were little more than a light discoloration.

"So if that system makes you impervious to bullets, why doesn't it work on arrows and stakes?"

Adrienne rolled down her sleeve.

"Size is what it comes down to. Yber bodies are less dense than humans'. The tensile strength of the skin is less.

Bullets, even the kind designed to mushroom on contact, don't meet much resistance when they pass through us. It's like throwing a stone through water. A stake or an arrow doesn't pass through the body as readily and instead of causing less than a cubic inch of internal displacement as a bullet does, it creates a permanent tunnel into the yber body that can't be instantly healed. The heart is one part of the yber body that is not absorbed into the generalised organ.

There's only one. If a shaft of some sort impales it, stops its beating, our blood stops circulating, and our rapid metabolism almost instantly depletes our muscles of strength. We die. Same thing would happen if a powerful enough explosion hit us in the chest or if an enormous burst of bullets tore into our heart faster than the body could heal itself.

Other than that, and barring massive destruction of the brain, yber are almost indestructible."

"Makes it handy when you have to leave a plane in a hurry," he said.

They drove south on 99. With the change in time zones, there were still several hours of night remaining. They planned to be outside of Seattle by sunrise. At the very worst, if no sanctuary were available, Adrienne would be protected in the trunk of whatever car they stole to drive across the border. Helman could continue to drive through the day. If sanctuary were found, Helman could make arrangements for them to 'fly from Seattle to San Luis Obispo in California the next night. The Father's estate would be less than an hour's drive away.

Helman had many more questions, but for now he had to concentrate on a plan for getting them into the United States without delay. He would not like to be sitting in a small, American customs interview room when the sun came up.

He drove toward the border.

The couple in White Rock, walking out of the restaurant into the parking lot, was perfect. They were middle-aged, obviously married, and moving as though they had had just a bit too much to drink. They were completely stunned when Adrienne stepped in front of them and told them that the man standing behind them had a gun. If they tried to run or scream, they were dead.

Helman closed in behind them. He held his hand menacingly in an empty coat pocket. He linked his arm with the woman's. Adrienne took the man's.

Helman smiled as he walked. "Just look straight ahead and keep walking to the blue LTD over there. Nothing bad is going to happen. We won't hurt you. Won't take any jewels or cash. Just need your car. Keep walking."

The man had rehearsed a hundred times what he would do if his wife and he were threatened in just this way, and all his plans evaporated. The shock of actually being in that situation made him incapable of doing anything except following the reasonable suggestions made by the reassuring voice of the man with the gun. Maybe it won't be so bad he kept telling himself. Helman could tell what was going through the man's mind. He didn't tell the man how many people had gone quietly to their deaths thinking just those thoughts. He was just pleased that the man hadn't tried anything to cause a scene. It would have been unpleasant for everyone.

Helman got into the back seat of the LTD with the wife; Adrienne in the front with the husband. If the husband should try anything now, Adrienne could drop him instantly. Helman, however, was sure he would stay calm because of the threatening position his wife was apparently in. For people not used to it, violence was rarely necessary. The implied threat of violence, usually more vicious in their imagination than in reality, was generally all that was needed to keep those people in line. The type of people Helman hated dealing with were the type who thought they understood violence. By thinking they understood it, they somehow couldn't believe it could actually happen to them. That idea had given several people the incentive to attack Helman in similar situations. Helman was an expert. He had taught some painful lessons.

But this couple was co-operating. Both Helman and Adrienne were relieved.

Constantly reassured, the couple handed over their identification, car registration, insurance forms, keys, and even offered their cash. Helman turned it down. He still had more than $3000 left from the cash Rice had given him in Toronto. It could be easily exchanged for American cash in Seattle. And he still had the charge cards of his Osgood identity.

The LTD was angled away from the parking lot lights and not visible from any of the restaurant's windows.

Helman slipped out of the back seat and opened the trunk of the car. He asked the man to follow him. Helman assisted him into the trunk. Then Adrienne brought the woman.

"Stay close because it's cold," Helman said. "And don't bother screaming because the lot is almost deserted and no one can hear you. When we get to Vancouver," he lied, "well call the police and they'll come and get you. Well take good care of your car and leave it in a parking lot where they'll be sure to find it. All right?"

The man nodded. Fear was in his eyes and Helman knew what he must feel like being crammed in a trunk with his wife, completely out of control. Helman reached down to the edge of the trunk and ripped out the two wires leading to the trunk courtesy light switch. He twisted the bare ends together.

"The light will stay on when I shut the lid." He looked into the man's eyes. "Sir, I have a gun and I was ready to use it. You did exactly what you should have done. If you had done anything else, you both would be dead. There's nothing to be ashamed of. Do you understand?"

The man nodded.

Helman lowered the trunk lid.

"Stay close. The police will be here within an hour."

The trunk clicked shut. Adrienne and Helman walked quickly to the car the man had pointed out as being his; a white Buick Riviera from the days before downsizing. It started on the second try and they were at the border within twenty minutes. Within thirty minutes they were at an American service stop calling the White Rock police about a couple locked in the trunk of a car. Helman knew that by the time the police had gotten the story out of the couple and the Vancouver police had decided that the Riviera wasn't going to be found and perhaps the Washington State Police should be notified, two days of bureaucracy would have passed and the car would be long abandoned.

By the time the sun rose, they had checked into a small hotel north of Seattle and Adrienne was being protected from the light in a well-sealed, windowless bathroom.

As she stretched out on the mattress they had dragged into the bathroom for her, she looked up at him with a puzzled expression.

"I know it sounds odd, but you were very considerate with that couple in the parking lot," she said.

"None of this is their concern. They were in the wrong place, wrong time. Probably scared to death. The poor guy's going to feel worthless enough about not trying to fight for his wife. I didn't have to make it any worse for them."

"Not the sort of behaviour I'd expect from a contract killer." She saw an incredibly sad expression flicker over Helman's face. "I'm sorry, Granger. I only meant-"

"It's okay," he shrugged. "You're not what I expect of a vampire. See you tonight." He shut the door. But despite what she had said, somehow he wanted to be in there with her.

From one of Adrienne's flight bags he took a large roll of black cloth tape and began to seal up the edges of the bathroom door. Adrienne had kept the other flight bag in with her. It contained what was left of the nutrient solution-the blood substitute-that she and Leung had developed. It wasn't yet adequate, she had told him, but it would support her for a few more nights at least. She had not wanted to discuss it further, as if the very topic of feeding were repugnant to her. Helman did not press her. But he felt both uneasy and, in a way, excited about what might happen when the artificial nutrient was used up.

After he had finished with the bathroom door, he taped the bedspread from the double bed in the room to the doorframe. He folded a blanket lengthwise and ran it across the top of the curtain track to keep light from reflecting up onto the ceiling. He followed the instructions she had given him precisely. It made him feel good to be her protector, but he didn't allow himself to dwell on the feeling. It made him think of his sister. And Weston and the Conclave and the Jesuits. And death.

When the sun had finally risen and the time of the yber had passed, Helman went to the lobby pay phone and dialled the first contact number Weston had given him. It had been a long night but he and Adrienne had survived it.

He was afraid to learn if there were others who hadn't.

Four.

Weston's chest was on fire with the pain of his coughing spasm. He was shocked by the ferocity of it. Time couldn't be running out this quickly for him. It couldn't. His mind flew back to the patterns of his childhood. It's just not fair, he thought. Not fair. He struggled to control the spasm. Fairness has nothing to do with it, he argued back at himself.

The cancer is eating my lungs. It is neither right nor wrong, fair nor unfair. It is what cancer does.

"Now do what you're supposed to do," he said to himself, out loud. His voice was weak, but he didn't begin to cough again. A small victory on the way to total defeat.

Toronto, January 19 A buzzer by his bed sounded. Weston reached out to touch the intercom bar. He and his men were staying in a safe house maintained by the American government in Toronto. It was made up of three apartments in an expensive condominium development on the shore of Lake Ontario to the west of the city. Most of the regular tenants of the complex spent half their time travelling so there were few familiar faces around to become concerned as a continual passage of intent-looking men arrived to debrief returning friendly agents or interrogate captured foreign ones, usually with extreme prejudice.

At this time, the place was quiet and Weston and his men were able to enjoy a few hours of rest while waiting for Helman's first call back. The voice on the intercom said that it had come.

"Where's he calling from?" Weston asked.

"Seattle. Holiday Inn north of the city. St. Clair is with him. No sign's of surveillance," said the voice.

"Good," said Weston. "Get the details and tell him I'll arrive this evening."

"He wants to talk to you. Wants to know about his sister."

Weston's voice hardened. "Did you tell him?"

"Negative."

The tension relaxed again. For a moment, Weston had feared that he had lost Helman.

"Tell him everything is as we anticipated. I'll join him this evening."

"He's stubborn," the voice said.

"So am I." Weston took his hand off the intercom bar. Silence returned. He fought with the pain in his chest for another few minutes before he was able to instruct his aide to arrange for a charter jet to Seattle-Tacoma International He thought again about the description of the condition of Miriam Helman's body as it had been found by his agents in the early morning. He shuddered. Eventually he would have to tell Helman that they had been too late. There was still a chance he could lose it all. One way or another.

The coughing started again and he had to be sedated for his flight.

His agents didn't know whether to be embarrassed for him, or terrified for themselves.

For the most part, they were terrified.

Five.

Outside the snow-swollen clouds of the past few days had finally moved away and the sun shone brilliantly in the clear, winter blue sky. All the yber across the eastern seaboard were safely in their sanctuaries, except in the unassuming Scarsdale estate of the Eastern Meeting. Secure in the meeting room in the third basement where Helman had first been brought, and trained to resist the torpor of the day, Lord Diego beamed in satisfaction. His fangs were moist with the saliva of expectation as he contemplated the treat that at that moment awaited him from the hills of New Hampshire.

New York, January 19 "Excellent, excellent," he said into the phone. "From Seattle to San Francisco. Transferring to a new flight arriving at San Luis Obispo at 11:27. I shall commend your industry to your mentor."

Across the continent, an eager young familiar trembled in the praise from a Lord of the Conclave. He worked for American Airlines and all he had done was monitor the reservation computers, as his mentor had instructed him, for the list of names and airports he had been given. Luckily, one combination had come up. And now Lord Diego himself was taking note of his work. The familiar did not think he could wait until sunset for his mentor to hear the praise being lavished upon him. He did not know that even as Diego talked to him, the Lord's own familiars were on their way to him to inflict upon him his First Death without benefit of Communion. Thus the information of the woman and her human assassin would be kept safely in Diego's hands. And in the hands of those he chose to share it with.

When the final confrontation at Nacimiento took place, Diego wanted no doubt to be raised that he and his emissaries and familiars took part only after the Jesuits had made their initial attack. The blame for the outrage must rest with the Jesuits until the Final Plan was well underway. And by that time, it wouldn't matter who knew the truth because the Conclave would rule the world of humans, and Diego would rule the Conclave.

Diego broke the connection with the doomed familiar on the west coast. He pressed a button on a console on the ornately carved table he worked at. A familiar appeared at the door to the meeting room.

"Yes, my Lord."

"Send the message to Father Clement. Prepare my familiars for the meeting. It shall be tonight."

"Yes, my Lord."

The familiar shut the door behind him. Diego took no notice. Already that familiar had joined the growing list of those who must be killed to keep their silence. Two hundred years ago, Diego would have thought of the murder of such well-trained familiars as regrettable. But the centuries had changed him. Now, he didn't think of it at all.