Drew felt as though he'd been punched in the gut. "Don't make jokes about this, Freya."

She raised her brows. She was right. She didn't joke.

"The b.l.o.o.d.y man went and died before I could give him back his own?" Drew heard his own voice crack. Not fair! Not fair in a long line of things that were not fair. "Then I'll have my revenge on his son."

"No you won't, Drew, not when you think about it. That poor creature has suffered enough, with that man for a father."

The air went out of him, along with something else. It was as if the energy he'd expended in that flash of vengeful rage had used up whatever he had left. He looked away. "You're right." His life stretched ahead, without purpose. He took in the heavy wood furniture in the Tudor style that littered the room, now gleaming with wax instead of dust. Why was he here? It wasn't his house. It had no meaning now that Melaphont was dead. It had only been a means to an end, like Emily.

He staggered out the salon door toward the stairs. Freya moved to help him but he pushed her hand away. "Leave me alone," he growled, and pulled himself up the stairs by the banister.

Freya sat in her room on the window seat, looking out over the night garden. Things had not changed much after all. Oh, the gardens were being slowly pruned into shape. And the dust covers were gone. She was no longer alone in the house. But the distance from herself she had felt for over a year had come back to nest in her heart, as though it had never left.

It had been two days since she'd seen the horrified look on Drew's face when he heard his nemesis was dead. Last night he'd tried to leave. She'd stopped him, of course. He was too weak to travel and he knew it. But his eyes were dead. He didn't see any reason to go on, now that the vengeance he'd been planning for so long was useless. It was only a matter of time until he went. She didn't want him to go this way, drifting and half-alive like she was.

For a week or two she had felt . . . connected again, interested in living.

It was because of Drew Carlowe. Her tragedy was that she . . . cared for him. The way she had never cared for anyone in her long, long life. Vampires did not fall in love. That's what her father always told her. Especially not with humans who lived for only a flicker of time.

Not long enough to love, he said. And Drew would be horrified if he knew what she was. So he would never know. So there could be nothing between them but that lie.

But if she cared for him, she couldn't let him suffer. How to prevent the emptiness from consuming him? She remembered the feeling of wholeness their s.e.xual union had produced.

Maybe she could bring him back from the brink. The very thought of leaving herself open to his rejection was alarming. But she had to try.

She rose from the window seat and drifted through the dark room to the doorway. Light leaked from behind the closed room of his door. She turned the k.n.o.b. The lock was still broken. He sat at his desk, just as she had seen him that other night, writing a letter. Only this time he wasn't naked. He looked up. The pain in his eyes was startling. He quickly masked it with indifference.

"I. . ." He was casting about for a lie. His shoulders slumped. He was deciding to tell her the truth. "I was just writing you a letter."

"Perhaps you should say your message in person."

He looked away. "It was mostly 'thank you.'"

"Was it?" He had lied again. That had her curiosity up.

He nodded. He wasn't going to tell her what it really said. She noted that there were several crumpled drafts around the carpet. Whatever it was, apparently it was not easy to say. Dread suffused her. You have to try, she reminded herself.

She stood behind him and rubbed his shoulders, kneading the knotted muscles there. It wasn't just the shock of attraction that shot through her. Something deeper flashed inside her that she'd never felt with a man before. It warmed her heart as well as her loins. His shoulders relaxed and he rolled his head, giving a satisfied growl. She ran her hands under his shirt collar to the silken skin on the nape of his neck.

Then he was standing. He had her by the shoulders. "I'm so weak," he whispered, angry.

"I. . . I am sorry. I shouldn't have . . . You've been sick. I know that."

"I mean I'm weak to want you so." He took her in his arms and kissed her fiercely as she turned up her mouth to his. Kisses were so intimate. "I shouldn't give in," he said, between kisses. "You don't even care enough to tell me what you are." He was panting now. He dragged her to the bed by one arm. "But I want you, Freya, just once more."

She ripped his shirt getting it off him. He popped b.u.t.tons on his breeches as she unbuckled her girdle and let her dress drop in a pool at her feet. Naked, he picked her up and laid her on the bed. He was already erect. The lingering effects of influenza were not enough to cool his ardor, apparently. She stroked his c.o.c.k as she sidled up beside him. One of his hands covered her breast as he held her to him and kissed her thoroughly. Her b.r.e.a.s.t.s felt swollen and tender. When he bent to suckle, she arched up into his mouth, moaning.

"Forgive me, my love, but I must feel you around me right now."

She opened to him, nothing loath. She wanted him to plunge himself inside her, pry open her most secret parts and fill them with his strong c.o.c.k. She wanted to be demanded of, not to demand. They took the simplest of positions, and somehow the most satisfying. She would not ask him to control himself. He had been sick, and probably had little stamina. And if they did not achieve the closeness of the first time, well, that was as it may be.

Wait. What had he called her?

He hung above her, and his eyes were hungry. "My love." It was a figure of speech, no more. He wanted her skills at s.e.x, and she would give them to him, as long as his strength held.

Drew lay back and drew Freya down with him to cradle her in his arms. Not bad for an invalid. He'd brought her to ecstasy three times, and even come twice himself. Now he should be lethargic, but he was consumed by a strange energy, vibrating in sympathy with her energy, as she lolled against his chest, her curtain of hair covering her face. It didn't matter that they hadn't played her Tantric games. He felt just as close to her as he had the first time they made love all night. That's what it was. Making love. It wasn't just s.e.x. Just s.e.x was what he'd had with every other woman.

The letter he'd written her told her that he loved her, though he knew she didn't love him in return. She didn't even trust him enough to tell him what she was. And she was something all right. He remembered her lifting him bodily into bed when he was fainting as he tried to use the chamber pot. She carried him as if he was a child. No ordinary woman could do that. He had told Henley that first night in the tavern that vampires drank blood, not ghosts. Perhaps that was what she was. It was an ugly word. His stomach churned. His head said vampires didn't exist. His heart said it didn't matter to him what she was. She had not hurt him. On the contrary. She had cared for him and set him free in a way he had never imagined possible.

He wouldn't burden her with his presence. A partner who lingered on after he was no longer wanted was annoying. His eyes filled. He lay there, thinking about the emptiness ahead. His revenge on Melaphont was thwarted. But that didn't matter any more. In the last days, Melaphont had seemed to shrink in importance. Drew had been consumed by his past, but now his eyes were on the future, a future without Freya in it.

He was a coward. He couldn't face a future like that. All his resolve to go washed out of him. She didn't love him. He would be rejected. But he had to try.

"Freya?"

She lifted her head. Her great dark eyes were soft. She smiled an inquiry, waiting.

He swallowed once. His mouth had gone dry. "Marry me."

Her eyes widened in shock. "What?" It was a frightened whisper.

He was at least as frightened as she was. "I love you. I haven't the courage to leave you. I know you don't love me. But if. . . if you let me stay, I could . . . I could take care of everything for you. You wouldn't have to deal with the servants, or. . ." He tried to think of how he could make himself useful to her.

"I can't." Her voice broke.

There it was. He gathered her into his arms. He wouldn't let her know that something inside him had just shattered. "It's all right. I knew it was a long shot. Had to try, though."

He felt the convulsion of a sob shake her. He stroked her hair. "Don't cry. I won't importune you. You could never love a man like me." He tried a laugh. "And I told you I'd make a d.a.m.nable husband."

"I do love you, you stupid man," she choked.

"You . . . you what?"

"I love you." She jerked her head up, apparently angry. "I love you past all sense."

"My G.o.d." His heart swelled. He frowned. "Then why won't you marry me? That is the customary thing when two people love each other."

She sat up, her lovely b.r.e.a.s.t.s hanging above him. She set her lips. "I am going to tell you what I am sworn not to tell anyone, so that you may know why I cannot marry you." She took a breath and let it out. "I am vampire." She watched for his reaction.

He swallowed carefully. He'd guessed. But to have it confirmed was . . . horrifying. He hoped it didn't show on his face. He had to get past the word itself to Freya. He needed to buy time. "So you did drink my blood that first night."

She nodded.

"Tell me about it. Being vampire, I mean."

She looked wary. "Well. I have a parasite in my blood. We call it our Companion. It gives us certain . . . qualities." "The sensitivity to sunlight." He could start there. That wasn't so bad.

"Strength. Heightened senses."

He could deal with that. "Red eyes?"

She chewed her lips. "This thing in our blood has power we can use. The red eyes happen when we call the power."

"And what does the power do?"

She gave a tiny shrug. "I can . . . influence minds." Her voice was small.

And he had though she was a proponent of "animal magnetism," like Dr. Mesmer.

"And if I draw enough power, the field collapses in on itself in a whirl of darkness and I pop out into another place."

"I . . . guess I. . . saw that once."

She nodded. "And if I die, the parasite dies with me. It has a keen urge to life. So it rebuilds its host. Forever."

Drew closed his mouth to prevent his jaw from dropping. "Immortal?" he managed.

"Unless I am decapitated." She looked down at her hands. "I am very old."

"How old?"

"Nine hundred years, or thereabouts. So you see why I couldn't marry you."

"I'd get old. And you wouldn't." He shook his head. "You must think me a baby, naive, uninteresting."

She reached out for his hands. "No, no. You make me see that I have not been living at all.

You . . . you showed me how to make love."

"I showed you? You're the most skilled pract.i.tioner of the art of love I can imagine."

She straightened her shoulders. "That's because s.e.x was my job. It wasn't love." She must have seen his shocked expression. "The Companion gives us a heightened s.e.xuality. By using our s.e.xuality, increasing it, we can increase our power as well. My job was to use Tantric teachings to train selected men of our kind to increase their power. They became Harriers, the weapons my father sent against those who threatened our kind by making other vampires." She looked down at her hands. "He used them against those who threatened his power, too."

He had to go slowly here. There was so much. "Your father made you have s.e.x with these apprentices?"

"I wanted to serve our kind. It was a kind of s.e.xual torture in some ways, this training. But I did it to them, for the greater good. But then he sent my sister and me to kill one we had made. I came to understand that what we were doing was wrong." She stared out the open window directly across from the bed into the night. "I realize now that she had gone a little insane with the power we had over the Aspirants. She liked the torture. It was dangerous, the training. And when I wouldn't help her with it, it killed her."

"So it wasn't your fault she died."

"Oh yes it was. I knew it could happen. But she had to be stopped. I carry the guilt of stopping her." She turned back to him. "So never think I knew love. I didn't even know ten- derness and s.e.x could exist together until I met you."

She hadn't known love in more ways than one. What father could do that to his daughter?

"But," she said, making her tone light. "You see why marrying me would be a bad idea.

One can't marry a vampire who lives forever."

A little thought darted through his brain. He pushed it down. He sat up and put his arms across his knees. "What about the blood?" She looked down. "I need about a cup every fortnight or so. That must seem horrible to you. But I don't kill anyone. And I can erase their memory, or supplant it with some better one; that they had wonderful s.e.x, for instance, or that they are handsome."

So far, so good. He could live with that. "And do they become vampires?" If they did, he might already be one.

She gave a weary chuckle. "Of course not, else the world would be littered with vampires.

No, our kind survives in a delicate balance with humans. It is strictly forbidden to make a human vampire."

"And how does one do that?" He made his voice as neutral as he could.

"Well, you have to get some of my blood in your system somehow-an open wound, for instance." She tried on a smile. It came out lopsided. "I've been very careful, though. You're not infected. You'd know because you get sick immediately, and you'd die without infusions of a vampire's blood for the first three days, to give you immunity to the effects of the parasite on the human system."

"So, let me get this straight. Strength. Heightened senses. Heightened s.e.xuality. The ability to compel others. You can disappear, and you're immortal. And the blood. Anything else I should know about?"

She raised her brows. "That is all, I think."

"And you love me. And you believe I love you."

She nodded slowly.

He took a breath. In for a penny in for a pound. He couldn't imagine life without her. And if she stayed with him and left him human, the differences between them would drive them apart. "So why not make me vampire?"

She hugged herself, covering her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. "I told you, it is forbidden."

"We're not talking about making hundreds here. Just one."

"If you covet eternity, let me tell you, it is a terrible burden, not a benefit."

It was as though she had slapped him. But he forged ahead. "Do you really think that of me?"

She shook her head, but she was growing more agitated by the moment.

"It would be easier with two facing eternity together."

"You don't understand." She was almost pleading with him. "When love dies you'd be left a vampire. Did I mention it is impossible for us to commit suicide? The Companion's urge to life doesn't allow that kind of escape."

"And what if the love doesn't die, Freya? If I'm not vampire, our differences will stand between us. It might be better if we parted now."

"I know," she whispered. Her eyes were big with pain.

She was giving up. Tears rose to her eyes.

It was up to him, then. He reached out and took her shoulders. "Be bold, Freya. Seize what we might make of this. Take back your life from your father, and all these rules you've been forced to live by. Let's carve our own place, make our own rules." He couldn't keep the pleading out of his voice.

Drew felt a hum of life against his spine. There was a new energy in the room, more powerful by far than Freya's. They both turned. A whirling blackness, darker than the dim room, spun in the corner. Drew set his jaw. This could be bad.

6.