Holding her, he allowed himself to sink into oblivion. The release of tension freed the deeper layers of his mind to process the data that his earlier anxiety had buried.

Hours later, he dreamed again. This time he stood in the back yard of the Kovaks' house, with Peter's gun trained on him. When Peter glanced toward the woods, Roger followed that look. The garage caught his attention. In the dream, he noticed what hadn't registered in real time. The windows in the front of the large door were covered by dark curtains.

The dream-landscape showed him something that hadn't been there at all, before. He glimpsed a red gleam under the trees at the rear of the lot. The dim shape surrounding the twin points of crimson expanded, darkened, until it became the outline of huge, batlike wings.

Roger woke more smoothly this time. Sitting up, he gazed down at Britt. She stirred and opened her eyes. "I remember what Peter said," she murmured.

"Yes," Roger said."He explained what happened to Alice.He taught Peter how to deal with me."

"It seemed farfetched that Peter would suddenly start believing in vampires, didn't it?" said Britt, leaning on one elbow. "Sandor got to him. Sandor has been watching that family for weeks-Alice said he 'called' her. I think he's taken to sleeping in their garage.

Isolated, protected from sunlight, perfect for a homeless vampire. And Peter's parents were so distraught he could've easily kept them from discovering him."

"Yes, he's old enough to have at least that much control." Roger visualized the renegade lurking under the trees, watching Peter imprison both of them. "He manipulated the boy into dealing with us. Punish me by hurting you, possibly killing you-" He choked down his anger. This was no time to let emotion cloud his intellect. "Then disable me, after which Sandor could take his time finishing me off." Britt's eyes shone with dawning excitement. "Yes, I think that's exactly what happened."

"If he went dormant at sunrise, slept out the day in the garage," said Roger, "he may be there at this moment."

Chapter 22

ROGER ROLLED OUT of bed and started pulling on his discarded clothes. "It's not full dark yet. If I hurry, I have a chance to catch him off guard."

"You mean 'we,' don't you?" said Britt, dangerously quiet.

"I don't want you anywhere near him!"

"Roger, you aren't thinking straight." She covered her face in a gesture of mock despair. "And why should that surprise me? Look, if we separate, you can't protect me. Suppose he decides this is the perfect time to pay me a visit?"

Roger paused in b.u.t.toning his shirt. "d.a.m.n, you have a valid point."

"Thanks ever so much." She threw back the covers and reached for her underwear. "All for one and one for all, remember?" She scrambled into her clothes, hanging the emerald cross pendant around her neck.

Minutes later, they were in the Citroen heading for the Kovaks' place. The predicted snow flurries had begun, without enough acc.u.mulation yet to make the roads slippery. Roger wore only a light jacket, while Britt was bundled in the full regalia of winter coat, scarf, fur-topped boots, and gloves.

"At least promise you won't take any idiotic chances," he said as they drove across the South River bridge. "If I ask you to stay out of the way, for G.o.d's sake listen to me."

"I'll use my best judgment," she said. "I won't do anything dumb." He had to be content with that much of a concession.

At the Kovaks' he again parked around the curve out of sight of the house. Dusk was already deepening to nightfall as they walked up the driveway. Roger considered activating his psychic veil, but since he couldn't shroud Britt as well, he decided not to bother.

The snow, he hoped, would keep traffic to a minimum, so no one would notice their trespa.s.sing.

The house was dark, the forensic team long since finished. Yellow crime scene tape stretched across the front porch. Britt stared at the garage, a dim hulk to her human eyes. "You think he'll still be there?" she silently asked.

"The police wouldn't have any reason to search the garage, so he may well be." Roger guided Britt to the shelter of a tree at the edge of the yard. "I'm going to check for signs of life. Stand here and don't move. Please."

Britt conveyed reluctant a.s.sent. Stepping off the gravel driveway, he stalked silently around the garage. The windows in front were still curtained. The small side door, too, had a dark cloth over its grimy window. Roger stood motionless and listened. Holding his breath, he heard a slight breeze in the branches, Britt's lungs inhaling and exhaling the frosted air, and the nervous racing of her heart. He filtered out those sounds and focused on the garage. There-another set of lungs and the ponderous rhythm of a slower heartbeat.

He doesn't sound dormant.Roger eased closer to the side door. A rustle of movement within alerted him just in time. He backed up several rapid paces. He heard Britt's feet on the gravel, tiptoeing across the driveway to stand just behind him. "d.a.m.n it, I thought we agreed-"

The door flew open, and Neil Sandor leaped out. Catching sight of Roger, he slammed to a halt on the threshold.

His eyes smoldered. With a teeth-baring grimace he said, "What's my line here? 'We meet again, Doctor'? And about time, too."

Roger felt the outlaw's eyes crawl over him and linger on Britt. "Come inside and sit down, both of you. We need to talk."

Conscious of Britt behind him, so close her breath warmed the back of his neck, Roger said, "We can talk here. You come out."

He'd be a fool to give up his maneuvering s.p.a.ce.

Grinning as if he guessed Roger's thoughts, Sandor swaggered to within two yards of the couple. He wore jeans and a red plaid flannel shirt, to which clung the odor of decomposed blood. A sign of mental deterioration, Roger thought; healthy predators practiced fastidious cleanliness. The outlaw's hair and beard had grown into a wild tangle. His eyebrows formed a single bristling thatch; his fingernails were long, curved talons.

Roger's stomach lurched.So this is what a feral vampire looks like! He swallowed hard.

Sandor noticed the reaction. "Don't like what you see? Masks off-this is what we really are. This is what you are, half-breed."

"No. I am not like you." He took an involuntary step backward. "We do not have to be ravening beasts."

"Why so timid?" said the other. "The way you're guarding your pet, I'd think you're expecting me to do something-impulsive."

"Considering your treatment of Alice, what should I expect?" Roger said. "Not to mention Sylvia, one of your own kind."

Sandor's derisive smile vanished. "I had good reasons. One of which was to get your attention. I don't stand for any young cub s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g around with me."

"After living over a century, you haven't learned any more refined language than that?" said Roger. Why didn't Sandor attack? If he was stalling in hopes of getting Roger to lower his guard, two could practice that strategy.

"Why, Doctor, you sound downright hostile. You're expecting me to start a fight, aren't you? That's not what I want."

"Oh? What do you want?"

"To give you one more chance." Sandor, bold as always, made no attempt to shield his emotions. He radiated no anger, yet below the surface simmered impatience-and something else? Hunger?

Yes. As far as they knew, he'd gone weeks without a violent kill, which he seemed to require for satisfaction. Britt, also sensing the vampire's need, projected hope. Could they use that urgency against him, Roger speculated? Unlikely that Sandor would fall for another mock seduction, nor would Roger allow Britt to risk herself that way.

"Allow, h.e.l.l!" she silently retorted. "I guess you're right, though. Still, he's hungry and you're well-fed; that should give you some advantage."

The outlaw, watching them and apparently encouraged by their silent attention, continued, "Join me, Doctor-oh, h.e.l.l, let's dispense with the t.i.tles and surnames. They're human conventions, anyway. I'm Neil, you're Roger. Help me hit back at the Council. You don't owe any more to Volnar's pack than I do."

An unwilling surge of sympathy rippled through Roger. "Rejecting them was your own choice."

Neil a.s.sumed a relaxed stance, his hands stretched out, palms up, in a parody of appeal. "Do you mean to say youlike rolling over and playing dead for the elders, bowing your neck to those stupid rules?" Every word evoked an answering spark in Roger. "They accommodate the ephemerals' culture too much. They expect us to act human, instead of claiming our rightful heritage."

The last sentence shredded the tenuous web of sympathy he'd begun to weave. "You forget, Iam human," Roger said.

"No, you're not!" Neil's voice dripped contempt. "You just happen to look like one. But you're not a real vampire yet, either.

Volnar won't let you be one. Face it, how much has he actually taught you?"

Roger's resentment of Volnar boiled to the surface. He struggled to recall the positive dimensions of their telepathic exchange.

"There wasn't time. He transmitted as much as he could. I recognize his motives, even if I have-problems-with his methods."

Neil shook his head in disgust. "Roger, you're so b.l.o.o.d.y naive. Did Volnar give you one solid reason to trust him? Didn't he keep that mental shield of his locked and barred every second, except when it suitedhis purposes?" Roger couldn't deny that argument. Young and inexperienced as he was, Volnar could have deceived him with impunity.

Britt's thoughts entwined with his, like a firm handclasp. "Careful, Roger, don't let him confuse you. To him you're just a weapon against the others. He wants to warp their prize genetic experiment."

"Let me teach you." Neil's coaxing tone would have fooled anyone who couldn't sense the cynical manipulation beneath it. "Let me show you what our life should really be like."

"Oh, like yours? Lurking in the shadows, lairing in holes like a wild animal?"

"Freedom, Roger." Neil grinned, running his tongue over his lips. "Do you enjoy being domesticated all that much? You had a taste of the real thing recently, didn't you? You killed that boy."

"You influenced him, didn't you?"

"Sure, I've been watching him. Who do you think convinced him Alice was right about you being a vampire? I tried to make him forget our conversation, think it was his own idea to scrag you and the lady doc."

"You should have tried harder," Roger said. "He remembered enough to betray your presence here."

Neil waved away that fact as irrelevant. "So how did you like it-the kill?"

The image of Peter's lifeless body twisted Roger's guts. He kept his voice even. "Not at all."

"Because you aren't used to it. Come on, admit you got high on it. For a few seconds, didn't you feel that ultimate thrill?"

A rush of heat suffused Roger. The taste of that instant when he had cast aside his human veneer, let his darker self possess him, flooded his senses. For a moment he yielded to the delirium, a crimson mist gathering before his eyes.

Britt's hand on his shoulder cleared his brain. Neil's pleasure in that momentary weakness struck him like a poisoned arrow. "I reject that," said Roger. "That is not what I choose to be."

Neil edged closer. "Get thee behind me, Satan?" he mocked. "Have you considered that maybe you can't transform because you've never let go, never immersed yourself in your true nature? Come with me, Roger-let me teach you to shed those human limitations and glory in feeding the way you were meant to feed-and you can learn to fly."

Ambushed by the memory of Sylvia soaring over the tree-tops, Roger felt a pang of yearning as sharp as blood-thirst.No, it's impossible; Volnar said I had no trace of that talent . But why a.s.sume Volnar told the truth?Even if he didn't, would I change myself into a rabid wolf, exiled from human and vampire society both, just for the power to fly? Such considerations felt arid in contrast to the promised reward. Neil's eyes scorched him like live coals.

For an instant Roger had actually forgotten Britt. Now she edged around him to stand at his side, facing the renegade. "My, how altruistic you're becoming, all of a sudden." Her voice sounded unnaturally loud in the snow-m.u.f.fled darkness. "So you just want to help Roger claim his true heritage? You want to help him grow into a proud, wild animal, roaming free under the moon, a lord of the night?" The melodramatic words rang with scorn. "Horse feathers! You're running scared. You don't like having to sleep with both ears p.r.i.c.ked, waiting for someone to sever your head from your body. You want a companion to share the risk."

The shot hit home. Neil bared his teeth in a snarl.

Unafraid, Britt pulled the cross out of her coat and clutched it. "Not only that, you're getting lonely. Your recent behavior pattern makes that obvious. You need somebody you can dominate, so you don't have to admit to yourself how badly you need companionship. First you tried Sylvia, a young woman barely mature. And now you're trying to suck in Roger. You think he's a pushover because he's not only young, he's half human. Well, if you think that-"

In the midst of this speech, the outlaw's aura deepened to a lurid violet-red. Rage emanated from him like hard radiation. His face shed its human facade, dark velvet fuzz sprouting on the cheeks, the ears elongating to points, the teeth sharpening. "Shut up!" he cut her off in a thick growl. He swayed toward Britt, then rocked back on his heels. "Can't you see what she's done to you?" he said to Roger, the words barely comprehensible. "She's weakened you. She's prey, d.a.m.n it-share her with me-"

Neil's involuntary transformation shook Roger to the depths. A vampire out of control, submerged in madness, posed a more frightful threat than one simply driven by l.u.s.t and malice.

Britt held up her cross, which seemed to shine from within. "Think again, Neil. You can't touch me while I have this, can you?"

Fury overwhelmed the vampire's fear of the cross. Emitting a howl devoid of any trace of rationality, he lunged at Britt. Roger blocked him.

The renegade's claws dug into his shoulders, shredding his jacket. Neil panted in his face, sickening him with a stench like decayed meat. Roger threw his weight against the other vampire. They slipped on the light coating of snow and rolled together on the gravel of the driveway.

Roger shifted his grip to claw at Neil's throat. His opponent fended him off. Roger heard the grinding of the other's teeth. Flipping Roger onto his back, Neil snapped at his throat. Roger flinched away, rammed a knee into his adversary's groin. With the whiplike dart of a striking snake, Neil scored a gash on Roger's neck. Only Roger's instinctive recoil kept the wound superficial.

Taking advantage of Neil's instant of complacency at this achievement, he raked his nails across Neil's cheek, then shoved the other vampire off him. Roger sprang to his feet. The scent of blood, his own and the other's, made his head reel. He felt drunk. With a roar he charged at Neil.

In a blur of flailing limbs, the enemy grappled with him. Somehow they kept their footing as they struggled. Again and again Neil's teeth sc.r.a.ped Roger's neck and collarbone. In a second of clarity, Roger thought,I taste almost human-and he likes it! He let his arms go limp, throwing Neil off guard. When the purebred vampire closed with him once more, he dodged, then bit into Neil's throat.

The chilled-metal flavor scalded Roger's mouth like acid. Gagging, he didn't antic.i.p.ate the blow that rammed into the pit of his stomach. Neil followed up with a swipe of his talons down Roger's chest.

Staggering, Roger glanced down at his ripped shirt, the red slashes across his ribcage. Neil drove a fist into his jaw. Roger fell to the ground, pain screaming through his nerves.As if his claws were tipped with poison!

No, that searing pain wasn't wholly physical. He was feeling the other vampire's agony, too, amplified by the berserker rage. Roger slammed down his mental barrier.d.a.m.n b.l.o.o.d.y monster, stay out of my head!

Neil landed on him with crushing force. Roger's skull hit the ground so hard he almost blacked out. The grip of Neil's hands around his neck jolted him to full awareness.He's going to kill me, like Sylvia. In some corner of his mind Roger knew he should be able to control the pain that left him writhing helplessly, the blood flow that drained his strength. But he couldn't summon up that power.

He needed all his energy to bar Neil's sensations from his consciousness.

Blackness thickened before his eyes.G.o.d! Is this death? Through a crack in his barrier he felt a gentle probe.Get out! Then a fragment of awareness returned. It was Britt whose touch he felt.

"Roger, don't let him do this to you. If you fight the contact, you're playing his game. He's more terrified of the bond than you are!

Use that!"

Britt's strength flowed into him. Though he knew she stood several yards away, through some doubled vision he saw her kneeling beside him, pressing the luminous cross into his hands.Yes! Neil enjoys pain-let him experience what real pain is!

Roger grabbed tightly onto the burning agony in his chest and channeled it into the renegade vampire's clutching fingers. The cross Britt held, which Roger mentally grasped in union with her, blazed with their shared love and pain. He drove that energy up Neil's nerves and veins to the vampire's heart. Momentarily their three hearts throbbed in unison, racked by the same torture. Then Neil, his limbs twitching with convulsions, collapsed on Roger.Roger heaved the quivering body off him. Rolling Neil on his back, Roger knelt on the vampire's chest. Out of the corner of his eye Roger glimpsed Britt crouched on the ground, hugging the cross to her breast. To his heightened senses the symbol radiated a green glow that bathed all three of them in a halo of palpable light.

Roger charged into Neil's mind, smashing the remnants of the other vampire's shield like a house of cards. "So you like to feed on pain? You don't know what you're talking about! You're a coward; you've never opened yourself to the full range of your victims'

emotions. You picked and chose what you wanted, as if humanity were a buffet. Well, you're about to find out what you've been missing!"

Whatever fragment of rationality Neil still possessed cringed in terror. Roger ignored it. Instead he laid himself wide open to memories he'd tried to annihilate. First he embraced the image of Sylvia begging him to merge with her. He flung at Neil the panic of her mind invading his, the anguish she'd felt when he'd cast her out. Like a raw wound, worse than the gash in his chest, Roger relived her sorrow for Rico, her sadness at leaving her home, wandering as a fugitive. He opened himself to her yearning to mate with him and her distress when he'd refused, abandoning her to Neil's violation. Roger then disgorged his own sick horror at discovering her mangled corpse.

Whimpering like a maimed animal, the vestigial sc.r.a.p of Neil's consciousness curled into a ball in the center of his skull. The feedback of the pain tormented Roger almost beyond endurance. An electric current of renewed energy flowed into him. Britt. He resumed the attack.

"Neil Sandor, you're the one who doesn't know what it's like to be a fully functioning vampire. Our relationship with our donors is meant to be symbiotic. You've cut yourself off from half of what you were created for-crippled yourself!"

A gasp of resistance: "So you think you do know?"

Do I? Didn't I trap myself in a stereotype of vampirism as rigid as his? G.o.d, what a fool I've been!

"Yes. Brought up as human, I can look at our existence from a fresh viewpoint. I can see what it ought to be." Roger cast himself back to the night when Alice had collapsed at his door, on the verge of death. He drowned Neil in the terror she'd felt that night.