"Is it done?" she whispered.

He nodded. "For better or for worse."

She smiled. There would be no "poorer." Gian had seemingly limitless money. Any sickness would be fleeting. And with luck, death would never part them. "So be it," she said, and pulled him into her. He adjusted her so that his lovely c.o.c.k thrust against that spot inside her that felt so wonderful. She squeezed her eyes shut in ecstasy. He was controlling the pace and he quickened it. Her panting breaths began to have small yips of pleasure mixed in with them.

Just as she began to contract, she heard him say, "The blood is the life, my love." And then the universe shattered.

Gian held her up to drink. "Kate," he whispered. "Wake up. You need water."

Her eyes swam up to dulled awareness. It was all he could do not to cry and rock her in his arms, but he had to be strong for her. Just a little while more to watch her suffer, surely.

But his Companion was still weakened. Perhaps he wasn't giving her enough immunity. What if he had killed her? He put down the cup of water, but he still clutched her against his chest. He took the knife he had bought from one of the villagers and sliced his neck. The carotid was the strongest artery he could find, and he wanted to get the maximum amount of his blood into her before the cut sealed. He held her lips to his neck.

She sucked convulsively. The Companion had firm hold of her now and it knew what to do. He only hoped her body could withstand the fever storms. His cut closed and he laid her back onto the pallet. He wiped her naked body with the cloth dipped in water from a bucket. He had taken care of all her needs for the past three days. He had fed her blood a score of times or more. That weakened him. It didn't matter. He would live. If Kate did not, his life would be intolerable.

He sat on the packed-earth floor and leaned his back against the bed, head drooping. He hadn't slept for three days, but nightmares had been invading even his waking state in the last hours. They weren't flashes of the war, anymore. Those had no power over him. They were dreams of Kate, dead in his amis, or Kate calling to him across a dark river.

Kate opened her eyes. Something was different. The weakness, the pain in every joint, the fire in her veins; all were just... gone.

She felt strong. Alive. Whole. She had been a portion of who she could be all her life. And now, the thing swimming in her veins gave her a sense of... enlargement.

The ceiling of the hut was made of palm fronds over coa.r.s.e peeled poles. She could see every frond in excruciating detail. She heard the villagers moving about in their own huts, a lamb bleating far away, even the rustle of a rat somewhere outside the hut.

She could smell the dust, and the oil in the lamp and the remains of lamb stew, and... Gian.

Ambergris. That's what the sweet undertone of his scent was. She had smelled it once in a lady's boudoir when she was eight.

How had she never recognized it as the aroma that accompanied his cinnamon?

She turned her head. He sat beside her bed, his head resting on her thigh.

"h.e.l.lo."

His head jerked up. He frowned, examining her. Then his brow cleared. "Welcome. How do you feel?"

She thought about that. "Whole, I think." She sat up. He scrambled to sit beside her, supporting her back with his arm. "If you had told me how wonderful it was, I would have insisted on doing this earlier."

"Is it wonderful?"

"The only reason you don't know that is because you've never known anything else. Trust me." She looked around. Each detail of the hut stood out, even though it was dark. She felt the sun set. Startling. She turned to him. "Do you always know just where the sun is?"

He nodded, and the most tender expression came over his face. "Part of the package."

Tears welled in her eyes and spilled over her cheeks. She hadn't cried in twenty years. Surprising. He leaned in and kissed her wet cheek. It was the one with the scar. "I don't suppose the Companion healed my scar."

He shook his head. "But if you are looking to add to your collection, that won't be possible."

She sighed and shrugged. "Oh, well. That would have been too good to be true."

"I should have missed it. I know that sounds strange. It's part of who you are, though.""But only part." It felt good to be able to say that.

"Where to?" he asked. "Do you still want a cottage in England?"

She shook her head. "Whatever made me think I could be happy there?" She thought a moment. "First we go back and make certain the contessa has recovered. Then... I don't know."

"I think I should like to see Italy united against their oppressors." His tone was tentative. "The Carbonari could use some leadership, or so my mother says."

She smiled. "Ahhhh. Are you creating a new duty for yourself?"

He considered. "Duty has its place and honor. But they aren't as important as purpose."

Like her need to get enough money to buy a cottage. That had kept her at least marginally sane for years. "Very well. I can't say I care much who rules Italy. I have no morals, you know. You shall have to provide that part."

"Agreed." His eyes were soft.

"And I need some adventure. I wonder if the Carbonari could use any spying? I'd make an excellent spy now. Especially if I can occasionally see people's future."

He looked alarmed. "Spying would be dangerous."

"Tosh. My companion makes me strong." She crinkled her eyes at him. "I won't need you to protect me."

A wash of regret bathed his face.

"Are you sorry you changed me?" Maybe he didn't like her strength.

His expression once again dissolved in tenderness. "I suppose I am about to find out what poor Rufford has to put up with," he complained.

That gave her confidence again. After all, was she really changed? She'd always been strong-willed. And he had fallen in love with her in spite of that. "And Rufford looked like he regretted every minute of it, didn't he?"

"I suppose you need some interest as well." His grudging tone was so dear.

"What I'm interested in," she said, taking his face between her two hands and bringing him close, "is finding out what all these heightened senses can be used for."

He grinned. "Ahhhh. Let me give you the guided tour."

He kissed her. His tongue probed her mouth. And sensation flooded her, almost overwhelming, sending fire burning down her veins and into her most secret parts. She gasped.

He pulled away and grinned that devilish, boyish grin. "Did not I warn you that we have a heightened s.e.xuality? And that was just the beginning."

She pulled him back to her. That's just what this felt like. The beginning.

Read on for an excerpt from the next book bySUSAN SQUIRES One with the Darkness Coming soon from St. Martin's Paperbacks The City-State of Firenze, Tuscany, 1821 He had more courage than she did. Didn't one always want that for one's child?

Contessa Donatella Margherita Luch.e.l.la di Poliziano looked into the startling green eyes of her handsome son and saw his father's eyes looking back at her. Children were so rare for their kind. She was incredibly lucky to have borne him. His face had a softness she had not seen there in centuries. He took her shoulders and touched his cheek to each of hers.

"I'm glad you're feeling better, Mother," he said softly.

And Gian meant it. But he didn't want to stay with her. She understood that. It was natural. So why were her eyes filling? She was being nonsensical.

"You and Kate be off. You're wasting precious darkness." The doors open to the balcony of the Palazzo Vecchio showed twilight deepening into indigo. Summer in Italy gave precious little darkness, an inconvenience to ones such as they were. In the courtyard below, the horses were snorting in antic.i.p.ation, their shoes clattering on the cobblestones.

He smiled, so like his father it broke her heart, and turned away to the beautiful young woman with a scarred face who had captured his heart after he had spent over a thousand years guarding it from love. Donnatella had done that to him; made him afraid of loving a human. But he had had the courage in the end to reject her road, and now his life was richer for it. The way Kate smiled up at him and took his hand washed Donnatella with both joy for Gian and regret that she had not had his courage once, at the moment when it mattered most.

"We'll be back within a year," Gian promised. "We have much to do to bolster the fortunes of the Carbonari if we want a united Italy." A year was short in the scheme of things.

"They can wait," she said.

"Thank you, Contessa, for everything," Kate murmured, and came to hug Donnatella.

And then they were gone. Donnatella listened to the shush of Kate's slippers and the tap of Gian's boot heels on the grand staircase into the audience hall, the mutter of servants. She moved into the warm night air of the balcony as the carriage clattered away into the night below her. The scent of star jasmine hung heavy in the air. Gian and Kate had forever now. What was it the English marriage ceremony said? "'Til death do us part?" Only death never would part them, barring some bizarre accident of decapitation.

Donnatella felt tears run hot down her cheeks, surprised. She hadn't cried in centuries. She wasn't crying because her son was leaving. No. She was crying because she hadn't had the courage to do for his father what Gian had done for Kate. She hadn't made Jergan vampire because the Rules forbade it. And she had watched her love grow old and die. So short a time! Half a century only she had had with him.

And since? Lovers, yes. But not love. Not love like she had with Jergan.She shook herself and turned inside to the softly lighted library that was part of her suite of rooms on the second floor overlooking the Piazza della Signoria. The Palazzo Vecchio had not been modernized, but that did not mean it was not luxurious.

Faded tapestries lined one wall. Paintings dark with age showed their creators' genius in the human quality of their subjects' eyes and the glow of the painted skin. Turkish carpets covered the wood floors. The room smelled of the lemon oil used to polish the heavy, dark furniture. The click of the pendulum of the great clock standing in the corner marked the pa.s.sing of time.

It was better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all. Wasn't that what they said? They obviously didn't know what regret could do to one.

She sat down at her great desk, covered in ledgers and papers. She'd tried to drown herself in work. She'd pushed the world forward into enlightenment and watched it step back into darkness over and over again. She'd had such hope during the Renaissance. She had started it all right here in Firenze, only to see the Church re-inst.i.tute the Inquisition in recent years. She'd always taken defeat in stride. It was always temporary.

But she was tired. Work couldn't mask the regret anymore. She picked up her pen and opened the bottle of ink. It didn't matter.

What else was there but work? What else could make her life worth having lived but to leave a legacy to the world through her work? She'd started the oldest bank in Europe to finance building projects. She'd supported artists like Buonarroti and scientists like da Vinci. Though he was an artist too, of course. She, a vampire, had fought superst.i.tion and fear at every turn. That meant something.

Didn't it?

Then why couldn't she shake her regret?

Because it would have meant so much more if she and Jergan had done it together. Perhaps she could have made faster progress if she'd had his strength, his wisdom, his stubbornness to guide her. She smiled. He was stubborn.

If only she could take back the instant when she'd decided not to make Jergan vampire! He'd been wounded. She wasn't certain he would live. It would have been the perfect time to infect him with the parasite in her blood, her Companion, who gave her all her powers, made her more alive and whole than any human was. And exacted the cost of drinking human blood. If she'd infected him and he'd survived the infection with the immunity she could give him with continued infusions of her blood... they would have had forever together, like Gian and Kate.

If.

Of course, if he'd died from the infection, then she'd have had no time with him at all.

And it was against the Elders' Rules. If one made a vampire every time one fell in love...

She threw down the pen. So they all gave up even the remote chance of happiness?

She was glad Gian had broken the Rules and made Kate vampire. And he and Kate would go on breaking the Rules, because the Rules said their kind could only live one to a city. To be constantly apart, different from everyone around you, bred loneliness. It made it easier to think of humans as lesser beings, not worth using the senses, the powers of compulsion and translocation, and all the wisdom forever gave you, on their behalf. No wonder so many vampires went mad and careened out of control.

The Elders were wrong. Gian would be stronger for having one by his side who understood him, loved him.

She would have been stronger for having Jergan.

She sighed and rubbed her temples.

What use these self-recriminations? What was done was done. She found herself staring at the painting of Triton rising from the waves. Botticelli had painted Jergan as Triton, from Donatella's description. It was remarkably correct for the artist never having seen the man. Green eyes. Dark hair. That air of confidence. The painting was all she had left of Jergan.

The clock chimed ten. She was promised to the opera tonight, and already she had missed the first act. It would do her good to get out of the house. She pushed herself out of her chair and went into her boudoir, pulling the bellpull for Maria. The rust silk, perhaps. It made her complexion of pale olive glow. And her garnets. She took out the carved puzzle box containing her jewels from the secret compartment in the wall beside her bed and sat down at her dressing table. The bas relief on the box was carved by Buonarroti, showing Adam and Eve in the garden. It had been a special gift from the artist after she had commissioned the statue of Gian as David that now stood in the Piazza below. Buonarroti always had a better feel for the nude male figure than the female, for obvious reasons.

She pressed open the box as she had a thousand, thousand times before, twisting just the right way. The box popped open as it had a thousand, thousand times before.

But this time a tiny drawer in the edge popped open too.

Donnatella blinked. What was this?

She pulled open the tiny drawer. A folded piece of paper lay inside. A note? But who could have put it here? Had one of her maids learned to open the box? But even Donatella didn't know how she had sprung open this special little drawer...

She set the box down and unfolded the paper. Holding it to the light, she recognized Buonorroti's spidery hand. Really, how could such a brilliant artist write so badly?

"Go to the catacombs under Il Duomo. Take the corridor at the north end. Behind the end wall is something that will make you happy, Donnatella, I promise." It was signed '"Michelangelo" in just the scribble one could still see on the base of the Pi eta.

Whatever could he mean?

And why leave a note for... for more than three hundred years inside a puzzle box? Why, she might never have opened the little secret drawer. He'd never showed her how when he demonstrated the box back in 1501.

Maria knocked discreetly and let herself in. She bustled about opening the wardrobe. "Which dress would you like tonight, your ladyship?"

"The rust silk," Donnatella murmured, still staring at the note. Behind the wall is something that will make you happy... Not likely. Only one thing would make her happy, and it was eighteen hundred years too late to get it. Buonarroti hadn't even known what it was.

Still...

She rose so suddenly the chair toppled over. "Never mind the rust silk, Maria. Get out the dress I wore when we reorganized the wine cellar."

The maid's eyes widened, "Your ladyship is never going to wear that dress to the opera!"

"No, I am not. And find my st.u.r.diest half-boots." She rang the bell again. It sounded as though she'd need a tool for demolition.

A blacksmith's sledgehammer perhaps. Bucarro, her faithful majordomo, would know where to procure one. A footman peeped into the room.

"Get Bucarro," she ordered. This was insane. But she was going to the catacombs.

Donnatella stood alone in her rooms, the sledgehammer and a lantern concealed under her cloak. She dared not meet any late-returning revelers in the streets. So she called on the Companion in her blood. Power surged up her veins, trembling like the threat of sheet lightning in the air around her. A red film dropped over her field of vision. Companion, more! she thought. And that being that was the other half of her answered with a surge. A whirling blackness rose up around her, obscuring all. She pictured the Baptistery of the Duomo in her mind. Not many living knew about the catacombs beneath it anymore. But she did.

The familiar pain seared through her just as the blackness overwhelmed her. She gasped.

The blackness drained away, leaving only the dim interior of the octagonal Baptistery. She did not bother with the lamp. To humans the mosaics of the dome above her would be lost in shadows, but she saw well in darkness. The place felt like the crossroads of the world. The building itself was clearly Roman, almost like the Pantheon, but the sarcophagi on display were Egyptian, the frescoes Germanic in flavor. The floor, with its Islamic inlay, stretched ahead to the baptismal font. Her boots clicked across the marble. Behind the font was a staircase. She skipped down into the darkness without hesitation. Below, the walls of the vast chamber were of plain stone, the floor above supported with round columns and arches. Marble tombs of cardinals and saints lined the edges. It smelled of damp stone and, ever so faintly, decay.

But this was not her destination. A large rectangular stone carved in an ornate medieval style lay in the middle of the floor. It was perhaps four feet across and six long, six inches thick. Setting down her sledgehammer, she stooped and lifted. Thank the G.o.ds for vampire strength.

She dragged the stone aside so that it only partially covered the opening. A black maw revealed rough stone stairs leading down.

The smell of human dust a.s.sailed her. Rats skittered somewhere. Now she took out her flint and striker, and lit the lamp.

Stepping into the darkness, she turned and lifted the stone above her once again. It dropped into place with a resounding thud, concealing the stairs. Holding the lamp high in one hand, she started down. Light flickered on the stone walls on either side of the staircase. Catacombs at night were the stuff of nightmares for most of the world. But she was not afraid. She was the stuff of nightmares too.