He tried to throw her off, for the sudden ferocity of her attack had unnerved him, but to his annoyance he discovered that she was far stronger than he was.

"Soon," she kept murmuring, over and over, like a mother comforting a fitful child, "soon, darling, all the earth will belong to us-"

Aidan felt her teeth puncture his neck, and his heart raced with fresh horror. He fought to free himself, but Lisette was like a marble statue, crushing him, breaking his bones. At that point he began to recede into unconsciousness; he was going to die, never see Maeve again, never laugh or paint or drink wine and ale with his friends.

He renewed his efforts, struggling to return to full awareness, even though there was pain and fear, mortal fear so intense that his very soul throbbed with it.

"Now, now," Lisette whispered, lifting her head to look into his eyes. "Your friends will think you're dead, poor fools, but you will only be sleeping. I will return for you, my darling, before they bury you." Aidan was appalled and wildly confused. He felt strange; his body was weak to the point of death, and he could barely keep his eyes open, yet his soul seemed to soar on the wings of some dark euphoria. "Oh, G.o.d," he whispered, ""what's happening to me?"

Lisette rose from the bed, but it made no difference that she'd finally freed him, for Aidan could not move so much as a muscle.

"You'll see, my darling," she said, "but don't trouble yourself by calling out to G.o.d. He turns a deaf ear to our sort."

Aidan fought desperately to raise himself, but he still had no strength. He could only watch in terrified disbelief as Lisette's form disintegrated into a swirling, sparkling mist. She was gone, and even though Aidan was conscious, he knew full well that she had murdered him.

He could not speak, could not move. His heart had stopped beating, he wasn't breathing, and as the room filled with sunlight, his sight faded. His flesh burned as surely as if he'd been laid out on a funeral pyre, and yet Aidan knew the pain wasn't physical. He was dead, as Lisette had said, yet only too aware of all that happened around him.

A wench, probably come to fill the water jug and tidy the bed, found him later that morning. Her shrieks stabbed his mind; he tried to move, to speak, to show her he was conscious, but it was all for naught. Aidan was a living soul trapped inside a corpse.

He was aware of the others, when they came, for it was as though the conscious part of him had risen to a corner of the ceiling to look down on the lot of them. There were two men, the tavern owner and his burly, stupid son, but a priest soon arrived as well.

The boy took the door from its hinges, and they laid Aidan's helpless body out on that wooden panel. He could do nothing to resist them.

"Poor soul," said the priest, grasping the large crucifix he wore around his neck on a plain cord and making the sign of the cross over Aidan's mortal remains. "What do you suppose happened to him?"

"He died a happy man," the idiot-boy replied, leering. It didn't seem to bother him that he was addressing a man of G.o.d. "That's if the lady I saw him with and the sounds I heard comin" from this here room meant anything!"

Aidan returned to his wasted body from his vantage point near the ceiling, struggled to move something, anything- an ear, an eyelash, one of the tiny muscles at the corners of his mouth. Nothing. Blackness covered him, swallowed him up, mind and soul, and he was no one, nowhere.

When Aidan wakened, he still could not move. He knew, with that peculiar extra sense he'd acquired soon after Lisette's attack, that he was in the back of the undertaker's shop, laid out on a slab, with coins on his eyes. At first light he'd be closed up in a coffin and probably sent home to Ireland in the back of a wagon, no longer a troublesome responsibility to his prosperous English father. His mother, a dark-haired tavern maid, a woman of light laughter and even lighter skirts, would mourn him for a while, but Maeve would suffer the sorest grief. Maeve, his twin sister, his childhood companion, the counterpart of his personality.

Hope stirred in Aidan's being when he felt a cool hand come to rest on his forehead; his hope died when he heard his murderess's voice. "There now, I told you I'd come back for you," she said, placing a frigid kiss where her fingers had been. "Sweet darling, have you been afraid? Perhaps you'll remember, after this, what it means to defy me."

Aidan knew a pure anguish of emotion, but he could say nothing. He cried out inwardly when she bent over him again, when he felt her teeth puncture the skin of his throat like pointed quills thrust through dry parchment. In the next instant, liquid ecstasy seemed to flow into every part of him; he could see clearly again and hear with crystal clarity, even though he still had no breath or heartbeat. An unearthly and wholly incredible power was sp.a.w.ning inside him, growing, grumbling, surging upward like lava thrusting at the inside of a mountain.

His muscles were flexible again; he sat bolt upright on the slab and thrust Lisette aside with a motion of his arm.

"What have you done?" he rasped, for the joy that seemed to crush him from the inside was the sort denied to mere men. It was dark and rich and evil, and he yearned to throw it off even as he embraced it. "In the name of G.o.d, Lisette, what manner of creature are you and what have you done to me?"

Lisette thrust her arms up, as if he'd attempted to strike her again. "Do not speak of the Holy One again-it is forbidden!"

"Tell me!" Aidan bellowed.

There was a clamor beyond the door of the morgue, the sounds of rushing feet and m.u.f.fled voices.

Lisette came to Aidan's side. Her mind filled the room, swirled around his like an invisible storm, swallowed it whole. When his awareness returned, when he knew that he was a separate ent.i.ty, they were hiding together in a damp place with cold stone walls.

He was lying down once again, this time on an altar of sorts. In the flickering light of a half dozen candles, he saw Lisette, looming at his feet like some horrible angel of darkness.

"Please," he said, his voice a raw whisper. "Tell me what I am."

She smiled and came to stand beside him, smoothing his hair back from his forehead. He wasn't bound, as far as he could tell, and yet she must have been restraining him somehow, for he was utterly powerless once more.

"Don't be so anxious, my darling," Lisette scolded. "You are a most wonderful creature now, with powers others only dream of. You are a vampire."

"No," he protested. "No! It's impossible-such things do not happen!"

"Shhh," said Lisette, laying an index finger to her lovely, lethal mouth. "Soon you will adjust to the change, my darling. Once you've felt the true scope of your talents, you'll thank me for what I've done."

"Thank you?" Aidan trembled, so great was his effort to rise and confront her, and so fruitless. "If what you say is true-and I cannot credit that it is-then I shall curse you. But I will never, never thank you!"

Lisette's beautiful face became a mask of controlled rage. "Ingrate! You don't know what you're saying. If I thought you did, I would toss you out into the sunlight to burn in the sort of agony only a vampire can know! Count yourself fortunate, Aidan Tremayne, that I am mercifully inclined toward you!" She stopped, seemed to gather herself in from all directions, then favored Aidan with a smile made brutal by its sweet sacrilege. "Sleep now, darling. Rest. When darkness comes again, I will show you places and things you've never imagined..."

In the nights to come, Lisette had kept her promise.

She had taught Aidan to hunt, and despise it though he did, he had learned his lessons well. She had shown him how to move as easily between eras and continents as a mortal travels from room to room. From Lisette, Aidan learned to find a safe lair and to veil his presence from the awareness of human beings.

From Lisette, Aidan learned pure, enduring, singular hatred, and all of it was directed at her.

He pitied his victims and often starved himself to the point of collapse to avoid taking blood. Then, one foggy winter night not so long after Lisette had changed him from a man into a beast, while sitting alone in a country tavern, pretending to drink ale, he'd been approached by another vampire... Valerian.

"Reminiscing about me? How touching."

Aidan started in his chair by the fire in his Connecticut house and muttered a curse. His unannounced and quite unquestionably arrogant caller leaned against the mantel, indolently regal in creased trousers and tails. He was even wearing the signature gold medallion, which meant he was in a mischievous mood.

Like Aidan, Valerian held the stereotypical media vampire in unwavering contempt.

"This is the second time in as many nights that I've taken you unawares," Valerian scolded, tugging at his immaculate white gloves. "You've become careless, my friend. Tell me, have you fed so well that your senses are dulled?"

Aidan raised himself from the chair and faced his visitor squarely. Valerian was ancient, by vampire standards, having been changed sometime in the fourteenth century. He was a magnificent monster, given to sweeping displays of power, but only the stupid showed fear in his presence.

When Valerian sensed cowardice, he turned dangerously playful, like a cat with a mouse between its paws.

"I am allowed some introspection," Aidan said, pouring a snifter of brandy and raising it to Valerian in an impudent toast even though he could not drink. "I was remembering how I came to join the ranks of demons, if you must know."

Valerian chuckled, took the gla.s.s from Aidan's hand, and flung the contents into the fire.

A furious roar preceded his reply. " "The ranks of demons," is it? Do you hate us so much as that, Aidan?"

"Yes," Aidan spat. "Yes! I despise you, I despise Lisette, and most of all, I despise myself."

Valerian yawned. "You have become something of a bore, my friend, always whining about what you are. When are you going to accept the fact that you will be exactly this until the crack of doom and get on with it?"

Aidan turned his back on his companion to stand facing one of the bookshelves, running one hand lightly over the spines of the leather-bound volumes he cherished. "There is a way to end the curse," he said with despairing certainty. "There has to be."

"Oh, indeed, there is," Valerian said cheerfully. "You have only to tell some crusading human where your lair is and let him drive a stake through your heart while you sleep. Or you could find a silver bullet somewhere and shoot yourself." He shuddered, and his tone took on a note of condescension as he finished. "Neither fate is at all pleasant, I'm afraid.

Both are truly terrible deaths, and what lies beyond is even worse, for us if not for mortals."

Aidan did not turn from his inspection of the journals he had written himself, by hand, over the course of two centuries. His musings had kept him from losing his mind and, he hoped, given some perspective on history. He had written a full account of his vampirism as well.

"I don't need your lectures, Valerian. If you have no other business with me, then kindly leave."

Valerian sighed philosophically, a sure sign that he was about to pontificate. He surprised Aidan this time, however, by speaking simply. "Lisette stirs again, my friend. Have a care."

Aidan turned slowly to study his companion. When he'd grown beyond the needs of a fledgling vampire, and spurned her affections, Lisette had first raged, then sulked, then gone into seclusion in some hidden den. She had emerged on occasion and busied herself with her usual dalliances, but she had not troubled Aidan in years. In fact, he seldom worried about her, although Valerian and Maeve constantly chided him for his carelessness.

"She has long since forgotten me," he said. "Kam but one of many conquests, after all."

"You delude yourself," Valerian replied tersely. "Lisette has indeed taken many lovers, and made many vampires. But you were the only one who dared to resist her advances. It's a miracle you haven't perished long before this, and I honestly can't say why I keep trying to save you when you seem determined to die."

Aidan clutched Valerian's silk lapels in both hands. He was not afraid for himself, but he did fear for Maeve, and the human woman, Neely. "Have you seen Lisette?" he demanded.

"d.a.m.n you, stop your prattling and tell me!"

Valerian shrugged free of Aidan's grasp and seemed to settle his garments closer to his skin, the way a raven might do with its feathers. "I have not been so unfortunate as to encounter Lisette," he said with ominous dignity, "but certain of the others have. She is weak and feeds only sporadically, according to my sources. Nevertheless, she has roused herself, and sooner or later, as mortals so colorfully put it, there will be h.e.l.l to pay."

Aidan shoved splayed fingers through his hair, his mind racing. "Where? Where was she seen?"

"Spain, I think," Valerian answered. He'd shifted his attention to a mechanical music box on Aidan's desk; Valerian loved gadgets. He turned the key, and the tinkling notes of a long- forgotten tune echoed in the room. "If you say you're going there to look for her," he said distractedly, "I swear I'll wash my hands of you."

"You've made that vow often enough," Aidan said tersely. "What a pity you never keep it."

Valerian chuckled, but the snap with which he closed the music box lid was a more accurate measure of his mood. "What an insolent whelp you are. Who but Lisette would change such a difficult human into an immortal, thereby subjecting us all to an eternity of pathos?"

"Who, indeed?" Aidan replied. He sighed, and his shoulders slumped slightly. He was faint with the need for sustenance, but the dawn was too close now. There was no time for a proper hunt. "I'm sorry," he said, even though he wasn't, not entirely, and they both knew it. "If you see Lisette, will you let me know?"

The older vampire regarded him coldly for a long time, then said, "You may encounter the creature before I do, Aidan." He frowned, adjusted his gloves, and set his top hat at a dashing angle. "And now, adieu. Dawn is nearing. Sleep soundly, my friend, and in safety."

With that, Valerian vanished. He often indulged in dramatic exits.

Aidan banked the fire on the hearth, put the screen in place, and left the house, moving through the silent, snowy woods as noisily as a man, instead of with a vampire's stealth. Maybe Valerian was right; maybe he was courting destruction, in the unconscious hope that there was no heaven or h.e.l.l beyond death, but only oblivion.

In oblivion would lie peace.

Aidan's hunger tore at him as he moved closer and closer to the long-forgotten mine shaft that was his lair. He glanced toward the sky, reasoned that he had about fifteen minutes before the sun would top the horizon. There was time to go to Neely, time for one look to sustain him in the deathlike sleep that awaited him.

He shook his head. No. He dared not approach her now, when he needed to feed.

He wended his way toward his hiding place, lowered himself inside, crouched against one dank wall, and folded his arms atop his knees. Then he yawned, lowered his head, and slept.

The mansion had looked spooky to Neely on Halloween night, but now that she stood before it in the dazzling sunshine of that November afternoon, it seemed very ordinary and innocuous, except for its size.

She wasn't sure why she'd come; Mr. Tremayne certainly hadn't invited her to drop by.

All Neely really knew was that she was drawn to that house and even more so to its owner.

It was as if she'd always known Aidan Tremayne, as if they'd been close once, very close, and then cruelly separated. Encountering him had been a reunion of sorts, a restoration of something stolen long before.

Wedging her hands into the pockets of her coat, Neely proceeded up the walk and climbed the steps onto the gracious old porch. Then, after drawing a deep breath, she rang the bell.

There was no answer, so she tried a second time. Again, no one came.

Neely walked around the large house once, thinking she might encounter the owner in the yard, but she didn't catch so much as a glimpse of him.

Finally, feeling both relieved and disappointed, Neely turned and walked back along the driveway toward the highway. She had already cleaned the motel rooms that had been rented the night before, and she wasn't due back at the cafe until the supper shift. Danny would be in school until three o'clock, and Ben was busy repairing a water pipe under one of the trailers.

Neely was a free woman, and she was at loose ends.

She decided to borrow Ben's battered old Toyota and head into Bright River. Her emotions were churning; she tried to put Tremayne out of her mind and failed.

She would stop by the local library, she decided. There she would surely find back copies of the Bright River Clarion; she intended to scan the microfilm records for interesting references to Aidan Tremayne or his family. After all, she rationalized as she b.u.mped along Route 7 in her brother's car, she needed to keep up her professional skills-especially in research. G.o.d knew, she couldn't work as a waitress and maid all her life; her feet would never withstand the strain.

Besides, the project gave her a legitimate reason to think about Aidan on a more practical level, and it would distract her from the riot of emotions and needs that had been bedeviling her ever since their first encounter.

Neely adjusted the car's temperamental heater and shivered in spite of the blast of hot air that buffeted her. Aidan was going to change her life, and she was going to change his; she knew it as well as if an angel had whispered the fact in her ear. There was a magical mystery afoot here, and she yearned to learn its secrets.The trick would be to stay alive long enough to investigate.

She sighed and silently reminded herself that she knew too much about her ex-boss's source of campaign funds, among other things. Five years working in the nation's capital had cured Neely of starry-eyed illusion-even though Hargrove was an easygoing sort who would not relish the prospect of ordering her death or anyone else's, he loved the power of his office, and the status it gave him. The senator would never sacrifice money, position, and his marriage, much less his personal freedom, for Neely's sake.

She must be more careful now and stop pretending to herself that all was right with the world.

Chapter 3.

When Aidan awakened, he was dangerously weak, a state that rendered him vulnerable to all manner of enemies. He had no choice but to hunt.

He rose slowly and stretched, this last being an unnecessary habit lingering from his days as a mortal. Aidan's muscles had long since atrophied to a stonelike condition beneath his skin. Even that was changed, he thought, extending his arms and gazing at his hands. The once-living flesh was now as cold and smooth and hard as marble.

Aidan did not stay long in his lair, for the hunger had grown merciless in its intensity, biting into his middle, sapping his strength, threatening his very reason. He climbed deftly up the smooth dirt wall to the surface of the ground. There, the moon shed a silvery light over a new layer of snow.

He thought first of Neely, and ached to be mortal and thoroughly ordinary so that he could be close to her, learn how her mind and heart worked, walk in sunlight with her. Most of all, he wanted to make love to her, feeling his own flesh warm and supple against hers, but that seemed the most impossible of all his dreams.

It was dangerous to think in such a fashion, he reminded himself. He would never be human again, and he would die at the hands of his enemies before he would turn Neely into what he was.

Aidan knew his vampire powers well, despise them though he did, and he feared that the fervor of his emotions would draw Neely to him. If he were to encounter her now, when he was so desperate to feed, when his vile hunger for blood would be coupled with the elemental physical and emotional pa.s.sion he felt for her, he could not be sure of restraining himself.

As it happened, thrusting Neely from his mind was not enough, for she clung tenaciously to the innermost cords and fibers of his heart.

Maeve hid herself in the chilly mists of the evening and waited. Through the foggy windows of the Lakeview Cafe, she could see Neely Wallace, the woman Valerian was so concerned about.

Valerian was Maeve's mentor, after a fashion, and he had made her an immortal when Aidan refused. Thus, she trusted Valerian, as much as one vampire ever trusts another, and since he saw the Wallace woman as a threat to Aidan, so had she. Maeve had come to this backward country, this century she heartily disliked, prepared to confront and destroy an enemy. Instead she found herself drifting with the breeze in a parking lot, like so much smoke, and questioning Valerian's judgment.

Miss Wallace was an attractive young woman, between twenty-five and thirty, Maeve guessed, with short, shiny brown hair and large gamine eyes. She smiled a lot, and the cafe customers seemed to like her, but she was clearly an ordinary mortal with no special powers of any sort.