"What punishment?" Valerian rasped, furious. He held tightly to his anger, knowing he would give way to utter despair if he loosened his grip for even a moment.

"Poor Aidan. He was confined in a small s.p.a.ce and subsequently starved." Roxanne spoke matter-of-factly, making her way around to the opposite side of the bed and taking one of Aidan's limp hands into her own. She ran the pad of her thumb thoughtfully over the protruding knuckles. "It was his own fault that he nearly perished for want of feeding-he refused the rats they offered."

In that moment Valerian felt such contempt, not only for Roxanne, but also for the Brotherhood, that he could barely contain it. "Rats," he rasped. "They gave him rats?"

Roxanne shrugged. "It's not such a terrible shame. Most of us have subsisted on vermin at one time or another," she said. "If anything destroys our Aidan, Valerian, it will be his own stubborn refusal to follow the rules."

Valerian sensed that dawn was nearing; they would all be safe from sunlight in this dark cellar chamber, but he did not want to sink into the near-coma of sleep in that place. He didn't trust any of the Havermails, including the children.

He wrapped Aidan's inert form carefully in the bedclothes and lifted him into his arms. "What do you think you're doing?" Roxanne cried, incensed. "I found Aidan, and I fed him and brought him home. He's mine!"

Valerian held out one hand, fingers splayed, and pressed it to Roxanne's morbidly beautiful face. "Sleep," she said in a sort of crooning drawl, and she dropped to the floor with a thumping sound.

The fiend would succ.u.mb to her vampire slumber, there on the cold stones, and awaken just a little the worse for wear when night came again. Only her dress and her temper would be ruffled.

Valerian lowered his magnificent head, until his forehead touched Aidan's fevered one, and together they vanished.

Aidan dreamed that he was a Viking, that he'd died bravely in battle, and his comrades had arranged his body in the curving belly of a dragon ship. He was covered with straw, which someone set ablaze with a torch, and the small, flaming craft was pushed out onto the still blue sea. It burned brightly, a majestic pyre, and Aidan burned with it, but he felt no pain, only joy and the most poignant sense of freedom...

When he opened his eyes, realized that he'd only been dreaming, that he was still trapped in the immortal, marble-cold body of a fiend, the disappointment was crushing.

He was lying on a flat surface, in a dark place that he didn't recognize, and he was so thirsty that he felt raw inside. "Neely," he whispered, the word sc.r.a.ping painfully from his throat.

Then he saw Valerian looming over him, his face twisted with anguish. He started to say something, this enigmatic ghoul with the looks and countenance of a favored angel, then stopped himself. Instead Valerian bent, gently plunged his fangs through the skin of Aidan's neck, and gave him blood.

Aidan moaned in a combination of ecstasy and revulsion; he wanted to resist this macabre salvation, but his will to survive, which seemed a wholly separate ent.i.ty at the time, refused to surrender itself. He felt Valerian's tears on his flesh but decided fitfully that he must have imagined that.

"Where-what is this place?" he managed as the new blood surged through him, vital and warm, as intoxicating as the finest brandy on a cold night.

"Never mind that," Valerian answered shortly, his voice gruff. "Your thoughts are generally written in neon letters five feet high. If you don't mind, I'd prefer that every other vampire between here and the gates of Hades wasn't able to pinpoint us by reading them."

Aidan chuckled, but the indulgence cost him dearly. "You saved me," he said. "Shall I thank you for that, Valerian, or call you cursed?"

"Neither. I didn't truly save you, except from the wiles of that witches' sp.a.w.n, Roxanne Havermail."

Aidan's laugh was soblike. "Thank you for protecting my virtue," he said. "You'll understand if I consider the gesture a little dubious."

Valerian scowled down at him, but the expression didn't hold. He gave a throaty chuckle, wholly involuntary, and then turned away-ostensibly to compose himself. When he met Aidan's gaze again, his manner was as coldly remote as that of the Grim Reaper. "Fool!" he spat. "Do you realize how close you came to being destroyed?" "Not close enough, evidently," Aidan reflected, looking past Valerian to the ceiling, which was lined with dusty beams. "What can you tell me of Neely? Is she safe and well?"

Valerian's jawline tightened for a moment, then he bit out, "I wouldn't know. I have only one use for humans, and the fascinating Miss Wallace's a.s.sociation with you puts her off limits. For the moment."

" "For the moment," is it?" Aidan asked, reaching up, clasping the front of Valerian's flowing linen shirt in one fist.

Valerian slapped Aidan's hand away. "What an arrogant pup you are," he snarled, "issuing challenges to me- me?" He paused to thump his own chest angrily. "If I desired the delectable Neely, I would have her, and no force on earth could stand in my way, including-especially not-you!"

Aidan's strength, so temporal, was waning again, but he found enough to press the argument. "Get a grasp on your emotions," he said. "I grow impatient .with your constant histrionics."

The great vampire gave a snarling shriek of frustration and rage and disappeared completely.

Inwardly Aidan sighed. He'd probably just offended the only friend he had, besides Maeve, but fruitless acts of impulse seemed to be a part of his nature of late.

He'd failed miserably with the Brotherhood, he reflected, absorbing the knowledge like a series of painful blows. He'd found out nothing and had managed to infuriate the elders in the process. It probably wouldn't be long before they came for him, he supposed, and dispensed their vampire justice.

Valerian had obviously been right in refusing to tell him where they were. Aidan's mental state was such that he probably would have broadcast the information for any pa.s.sing ogre to pick up on.

Neely shrieked and sent the magazine she'd been reading fluttering into the air like some ungainly bird. Valerian stood between her and the television set, glorious in the usual fine evening clothes, his arms folded, his big head tilted to one side.

"Are you quite through?" he inquired scathingly, retrieving the magazine and setting it neatly on the coffee table.

Neely's gasps slowly slackened into regular breaths. She gave one violent hiccough, in a spasm of residual terror, and Valerian rolled his violet eyes disdainfully.

"Well, you scared me!" Neely said, more angry, all of a sudden, than afraid. Then even the anger faded away, and she got awkwardly to her bare feet, pulling Wendy's pink robe close around her, like chenille armor. "This is about Aidan, isn't it? What's happened to him?"

Valerian looked down his perfect nose at her for a long interval, then answered, "You have happened to him, more's the pity. He loves you, and that foolhardy affection may well cost him his very existence."

"Where is he?"

"I wouldn't dream of telling you that," Valerian said sharply. "Like all humans, and some vampires as well, unfortunately, you have a billboard for a mind-complete with loudspeakers and sweeping searchlights. Suffice it to say that Aidan needs comforting very much just now. Besides, you are probably the only being in the world who can cause him to see reason at this point." "You'll take me to him, then?" Neely's heart was wedged into her throat. She clutched the lapels of the borrowed bathrobe in one trembling hand.

Valerian nodded grudgingly. "Put on some decent clothes."

Neely turned and hurried into the cottage's closet-size bedroom, where she hastily donned jeans, sneakers, a pink bulky sweater, and her coat. Back in the living room, she looked up into Valerian's face with wide eyes. "Is this going to be a Superman sort of thing?

I mean, are you planning to tuck me under one arm and just-fly?"

Valerian only shook his head, came a step closer, and swirled his cape around Neely like some whispering, perfumed coc.o.o.n. She fainted, only to revive seconds later and find herself in a place so dark she thought she had gone stone blind.

"Just a moment," Valerian barked impatiently, as if she'd complained aloud. A match was struck, a tallow candle lit.

Neely was taken aback to find herself inside a crypt, an old one, judging by the looks of the disintegrating caskets and random bones lying about.

In the center of it all, on a high Roman couch upholstered in ugly maroon velvet, lay Aidan, as white and still as a corpse.

"He will awaken soon," Valerian said, his voice pa.s.sing Neely's ear from behind, like a fall breeze moving through dry leaves. "If you love Aidan, then make him see that there can be no future for the two of you. Should you fail to reach him, he will continue on his present course, careening toward destruction. He will be executed, Neely, as an example to all vampires-staked out in the sun and left to die in the most horrible agony imaginable. Do you want that for him?"

Neely forgot her surroundings and stumbled forward, her white-knuckled hands clasped together. She would rather suffer the death Valerian had just described herself, she thought, than see Aidan endure such torture.

She touched her beloved's still face. "Aidan?"

He opened his eyes, and she felt a sweet seizing in her heart as he looked at her, apparently dismissed her as an illusion, and then realized she was truly there. "Neely," he said and groped for her hand.

She pressed her palm to his, and their fingers interlocked. "What's happened?" she whispered.

Aidan stared up at her, mute, clearly bursting with a sorrow he could not begin to articulate.

She kissed him lightly on the forehead, and then on the mouth, and felt his fever sear her own skin. She laid her head against his chest then, but heard no heartbeat thumping away beneath her ear, no breath flowing in and out of his lungs.

He entangled his fingers in her short hair, holding her close. They were simply together in those moments; it was as simple, and as complicated, as that.

After a long interval had pa.s.sed, Neely raised her head and looked into Aidan's soul, her vision glittery and blurred, as though she were seeing the world through melted diamonds.

She could not leave him now when he was so broken, but deep inside Neely knew Valerian was right. By loving Aidan, by dreaming an impossible dream, she could only destroy him.

And that was unthinkable.Resigned, heartbroken, Neely climbed onto the Roman couch with Aidan, stretched out beside him, held him close in her arms. Soon enough, they would be parted, for all of time- alpha to omega, world without end, amen.

Amen.

For now, though, nothing would put them asunder.

Valerian's grief howled within him, like a storm wind, but he dared not release it there in the crypt, however oblivious Aidan and Neely might seem. Brashly, too driven by pain to think, Valerian fled to an earlier century, the eighteenth, and hid himself in an isolated lair.

It was little more than a mouse's nest, really, a hollow place in the wall of an ancient abbey, mortared over so long ago that there was no demarcation between the old stonework and the new.

Now he curled up in that s.p.a.ce, as fragile as an unborn chick still cosseted in its sh.e.l.l, and he wept.

It wasn't as though Aidan hadn't warned him, more than once, that there was no hope.

Still, Valerian had heard what he wanted to hear and forgotten the rest. But now he had seen the true state of matters between Aidan and Neely, and he could no longer ignore the evidence.

Somehow, even without the sacred exchange of blood, the pair had forged that most intimate and unbreakable of all bonds.

Valerian sobbed like a stricken child, his anguish as deep and unbridled as his devotion.

What he felt for Aidan was indescribably sensual, and yet it transcended gender and completely overshadowed the simple animal gratification humans know. No, it was communion with the other vampire that Valerian craved, something far more profound than mere s.e.x, for he loved Aidan as he had never loved another creature.

Save one.

He threw back his head and cried out in torment, the sound as shrill as the cry of a wolf on a clear winter's night. When that wail had died away, he loosed another, hoa.r.s.er this time, and full of despair. Finally, when he could weep no more, when he had purged himself of all emotion, Valerian closed his eyes and slept.

Twelve hours later he awakened and wafted through the cracks and c.h.i.n.ks in the old abbey wall like so much pale smoke.

Inside the crypt where he had left Aidan and the woman, Valerian a.s.sembled himself again.

Neely was asleep, curled up against Aidan's side like a kitten. Her pale skin was flushed from some dream, and Valerian could hear her heart beating, and he wanted so desperately to drink of her warmth and vitality.

He must not indulge, he told himself. It would be a poisoned victory and, thus, a defeat.

Aidan opened his eyes and spoke to his friend, but with his mind instead of his voice.

Take her away from this place, he pleaded. If you ever cared for me, Valerian, put Neely back where you found her and make sure she's safe. Now, before she awakens.

Valerian nodded, but he could not answer, not even silently. He laid his hand over Neely's face, and her breathing deepened, and she was pulled by her own inner forces into that shadowed place well below simple sleep. That done, Valerian lifted her into his arms and thought grimly of the little cottage on the coast of Maine.The television set was still on when Neely opened her eyes to find herself lying chilled and cramped on the couch in the cottage living room, an open magazine spread under her cheek. She was wearing her nightshirt and Wendy's chenille robe, and there was a blizzard blowing up outside.

Neely tossed the magazine aside, and her fingers were smudged with ink after she rubbed her cheek. She rolled onto her back and stared up at the ceiling, mourning. It had all seemed so real-Valerian, practically giving her a heart attack by appearing from out of nowhere, in all his intimidating splendor. Aidan, lying helpless and sick in that terrible place.

It couldn't have been a dream.

They'd been so close, she and Aidan, so connected, as they lay innocently in each other's arms, their souls fused. She would have given him her very blood, had he asked, and willingly, as a mother gives breast milk to an infant. Such sharing could not have been a travesty, for in those precious hours they were as one being, with but one heart and a single soul, and all their veins were interconnected.

Neely was too numb and too stricken to weep. She rolled off the sofa and raised herself drunkenly to her feet. She went to the thermostat, sent heat booming through the vents with a dusty whoosh. Then, shoving her fingers through her sleep-rumpled hair, she made her way into the kitchen and put coffee on to perk. Maybe a jolt of caffeine would get her confused brain back on track, and she would be able to untangle dreams from reality.

Valerian had definitely paid her a visit the night before, she a.s.sured herself later as she sipped hot coffee at the window and watched the snowstorm obliterate the ocean from view.

She had put on jeans and a sweater, and he had taken her to Aidan...

Neely hurried into her bedroom and opened her dresser drawers, one by one.

The pink sweater was neatly folded and tucked away in one section, the jeans in another.

She unfolded the jeans, felt a whisper of relief when she saw that the denim was embedded with white dust. She made a face and, conversely, held the garment close against her chest, glad of the proof it offered.

She had been with Aidan the night before, and for a moment she was joyous.

Then Neely remembered what Valerian had said: Other vampires viewed Aidan as a threat. They might well tie him down in the night and leave him for the brutal sun to find with the morning. He would suffer horribly, devoured by the same light that nurtured virtually every other living thing on earth, and the fault for this would lie, at least partially, with Neely herself.

Desperate for some distraction from her thoughts, she went into the living room and switched on the TV again. The news channel came up immediately.

There was no word of a scandal involving Senator Hargrove and his friends in the drug cartel, and Neely's uneasiness, already considerable, grew significantly. Once before, she'd tried to right a wrong, to stop a gross misuse of authority, and her contact inside the FBI had betrayed her trust. Suppose Melody Ling did the same thing?

Neely glanced at the telephone, but she was afraid to try contacting the network from the cabin. Technology being what it was, the call could probably be traced right back through the circuits to the cottage, and she certainly wasn't ready for that.

She dressed, put on her warm coat and some rubber snow boots she'd found on the floor of the laundry room, and took the keys to Aidan's Spitfire from the hook beside the back door. She might have worn the wig and sungla.s.ses again, but she'd dropped them into a trash bin the previous night, just before catching a ride back to Timber Cove with the good-natured trucker.

Snow had been falling all night, and it was deep enough to make the tires of the sports car spin helplessly in the driveway. The sky was clear by then, however, a soft blue dusted with wispy clouds, and the sun shone brightly.

Neely fetched a wide shovel from the shed and worked industriously to clear a path to the road, which had, fortunately, been plowed and sanded. She went back inside the cottage for her purse and keys, and when she did, she found herself paralyzed by what should have been a very ordinary sound.

The telephone was ringing.

Neely had not given the number to anyone, and she hadn't even contacted Wendy in London to let her know the cottage was in use. No one-besides Valerian and Aidan, who had no use for telephones anyway-was supposed to know she was there.

She hesitated, her hand poised over the receiver. The jangling continued, and Neely thought frantically. Had she given the number to Ben, or to Melody Ling, and simply forgotten? No. A person didn't let things like that slip her mind, not when her very life depended on secrecy.

Finally Neely s.n.a.t.c.hed up the receiver, to end the terrible ringing if nothing else, and said, "h.e.l.lo?" She hoped she sounded like a man, annoyed at the disturbance.

"Neely?"

Her blood turned to small, jagged shards of ice, piercing her veins in a thousand tender places. The voice was feminine and vaguely familiar, but Neely couldn't match it with a face or a name.

"Neely, are you there?"

She closed her eyes and let out a long breath. She'd already given herself away by staying on the line so long, even though she hadn't admitted to her ident.i.ty. "Who is this?"

she asked.

"My name is Lisa Nelson-I'm Senator Hargrove's personal secretary-"