Leaning back in his chair, Nicholas crossed his arms over his chest and looked at the ceiling, letting his breath out slowly.

"So she only needs a one-to-four ratio of Julian's blood, but nearly a one-to-one ratio of mine."

"That's right."

Julian grinned, his expression not at all friendly. "She'll have to d.a.m.n near bleed you dry, Nicky, if she wants to live."

Dr. Greene cleared his throat. "Since you're a man, though, you have a slightly larger blood volume-"

"Bulls.h.i.t," said Nicholas mildly. "There won't be enough left to keep me going, and I'll be too weak to feed." He leaned 100 forward again. "Can we set up a transfusion process so my blood will be replaced as soon as it leaves?"

Dr. Greene exchanged a glance with Julian. "No. The transfused blood will mix with yours. If this is to save Dina's life, your blood has to be in a completely pure state."

He nodded. Immortality, he'd thought. But it would only last three years. What a p.i.s.ser. He might have done better with the cancer.

"We'll do whatever we can," Dr. Greene went on, "to save your life as soon as Dina's recovery is a.s.sured."

"It doesn't matter." He pushed out of the chair, went to stand by the wall. He wished there were a window. Not so he could die, but just so he could see out, look at the world one more time before he left it. "I did this to her. I have to fix it."

He turned back to the others. "When do we start?"

"As soon as possible," said the doctor.

"Dina needs to decide," Julian added. "Lorelei's with her.

As soon as we hear from her, we can begin."

"I want to talk to her," said Nicholas. He looked at Julian.

"Get her to talk to me."

Julian smiled, some of the ice gone from his eyes. "I'll do what I can."

She wasn't hard to convince. Nicholas stood outside the door and heard Julian say, "He wants to talk to you." Dina answered, "Then let him in."

Nicholas entered the room carefully, wary eyes on Lorelei, who seemed omnipresent lately. "Alone," he said to her.

"No," said Lorelei.

He started to contradict her, but Dina interrupted. "It's all right, Lor. Leave us alone so we can talk."

He knew Lorelei wanted to protest, but she didn't. Instead she went to the door while he sat on the bed next to Dina.

"Dina-" he began, reaching for her hand.

"No." She drew her hand away from his questing fingers.

"I want you to talk to me first. I want to hear your side of the story."

"Which story?" 101 "The whole thing. All of it. From the beginning."

It seemed fair. He looked at her white hands where they lay folded in her lap, like small birds dying.

"When you're thirty, you don't think much about cancer,"

he began, then slid Dina an apologetic look. "But you know that, don't you?"

She nodded, too tired to take offense. Closing her eyes, she sank into the pillow, letting his words swirl around her, trying to accept their picture of who he was.

"It was this never-ending gastrointestinal thing, then G.o.d awful back pain. I finally gave in and went to the doctor . . ."

Tests had revealed a pancreatic tumor. It had lurked there long enough to begin to press against the nerves of his back and invade his liver. It was inoperable, and the outlook was poor.

He would beat this, he'd decided. But months later, after chemo and radiation, after macrobiotic diets, homeopathy and acupuncture, the outlook had been even poorer. He was dying.

He knew it, refused to accept it, couldn't face it.

There'd been a night nurse at the hospital, a beautiful woman with dark hair and violet eyes. Nicholas had flirted with her when he'd had the strength, convinced himself he'd get better if for no other reason than to give her the good tumble he thought she deserved.

One Halloween night, weeks after he'd checked himself out of the hospital, sick of tubes and fluids and toxic chemicals that weren't helping him, she appeared at his apartment door and invited him to a party. She took him to her house, a strange place in a weird part of town where even stranger guests had gathered. There she took him to her bedroom.

"I have a gift for you," she said. "You don't have to take it if you don't want it."

He hadn't believed her at first. That she could offer him a peaceful death in her arms seemed likely-but eternal life?

But she kept talking, talked all night. As the sky began to change from black to deep indigo, Nicholas had finally agreed.

"Do it," he said, only half-believing. Whatever happened, it would be better to die in her arms than in the stench of the 102 hospital. He had no family-his parents and sister had been gone for years, victims of a drunk driver, and he'd never had much contact with any other relatives. It was one of the first questions the bewitching nurse had asked him, testing him, he thought, to see who might miss him. His bandmates were all he'd had left, and they'd blissfully moved on with another lead guitarist when he'd ended up in the hospital. He had no one.

So, with only hours left before sunrise, Vivian had taken and remade him. He'd left his apartment that night for the last time. To the outside world, he had to be dead now, until anyone who would have known him was gone.

In New York City, becoming someone else was an easy thing. So he'd done it, under Vivian's guidance. As time pa.s.sed, on some days, he wished he'd just let the cancer devour him.

He'd worked out his own bargain with the world, with his need to feed. He watched people along society's fringes, and if they killed or abused the innocent, if they branded themselves animals in his eyes, he fed from them.

Then had come the first incident, when an innocent had drawn him so strongly he couldn't resist the call of blood. She'd come back from what he'd been certain was death. He'd tried to kill her again and nearly died himself in the process. By the time he recovered, she'd died again.

It made sense to him now, the call of cancerous cells to his own vampiric blood, made of Vivian's centuries of feeding on cancer victims. But the call hadn't been there when he'd first met Dina.

"I'd just finished treatment," she told him as he paused in his story. "Most of my cancer cells were dead."

He nodded, the picture becoming clearer if not easier for either of them to take. "It wasn't until the cancer began to regenerate that I felt the compulsion. It came so gradually I didn't notice it, until that night at the party, where there was blood everywhere. I looked at you and I didn't see you anymore, didn't hear you. All I knew was your blood, that it called me and I needed it."

Dina blinked tear-filled eyes. "There was something between us, before...before all this." 103 "Yes. Yes, I think there was."

"Can there be something again? If I live through this?"

"That's up to you." It occurred to him that he was more likely to die now than she was, but he said nothing. He was certain Julian had withheld that information, and he thought he knew why. If Dina knew her cure could kill him, would she refuse to let him heal her? He had a feeling she might. He couldn't allow that. It wouldn't be the right decision for anyone.

"I remember what you did to me now, because you made me remember it. But I remember something else, too. When I looked into your eyes that night, right before-it wasn't you."

He nodded. "It was the blood, the compulsion. If I'd been in control, it never would have happened."

She moved closer, touching his chest with her white hands.

"Nicky, I forgive you."

He laid a hand over hers. "Thank you." Her skin was cold, and he sensed the slow, sluggish struggle of her blood. "Will you let me try to fix this?"

"Yes."

Looking into the softness of her eyes, he knew she didn't understand the risk he took. He didn't care. "Then I'll do it," he said.

He wanted to touch her then, to kiss her, caress her, let his body show her what he'd begun to feel for her. But even his fingers, gentle on her hands, left them shaded with bruising blue. He didn't want to hurt her-he'd hurt her enough already.

Gently, he kissed her lips, withdrew before anything else could grow from the touch.

"I'll get Julian." 104

SIX.

Dina had expected a hospital room, or at least something similar. Instead Julian took them to a prettily appointed bedroom where a rose-pink quilt tumbled over a high bed.

"No needles?" she said. Nicholas sat on the bed, strangely quiet.

"No," said Julian. "This is best done the natural way."

"You mean...with teeth?" A tendril of fear curled low in her stomach.

"Yes." This from Dr. Greene. "Scientifically, I'd have to say we could administer the blood through an IV tube. But when it comes to this kind of thing, I'd feel safer for you if we follow Julian's instincts." He smiled at her surprised expression.

"I may be a hematologist, but these folks know more about blood than any expert I've ever met."

So the doctor's recommendation was to trust the vampires.

An odd turn of events, to say the least. She looked at the bed and Nicholas, who now half-lay across it, leaning against the rose-colored pillows, legs crossed at the ankles. A seductive pose, to put it mildly.

They make it like s.e.x. Lorelei's words suddenly came back to Dina. "Well," she said, still afraid, "I guess it can't be any worse than chemo."

She lay on the bed and suddenly found herself aware of the presence of the others in the room-Lorelei, Dr. Greene, Julian, Vivian. Then, as Nicholas' arms went around her, drawing her down next to him, her world shrunk to the green-brown of his eyes.

His hands moved gently, easing her down on the bed, encouraging her to stretch out next to him on the soft quilt. He drew her close while his eyes held hers, his hands tracing her body. She forgot to flinch when fingers brushed her flat chest and the scars where b.r.e.a.s.t.s had once been. He smoothed his hand over her, over her shirt, tracing her contours, rubbing the scars through the cloth. He said nothing, while his eyes took 105 her in.

Her world had become green and gold, full of his eyes and nothing else. No one else existed. His eyes were full of silence and light. He lifted his wrist to his own mouth, then to hers.

Until the taste of blood touched her tongue, she didn't realize what he'd done. But when he offered her his wrist, her mouth latched to it greedily, drawing blood from the veins he'd opened with his own teeth. Thick, sweet, coppery, the blood flowed down her throat, warming her.

Her own heartbeat became a sudden presence in the room, pounding like a deep-toned drum. She felt her pulse shake down to her fingertips, felt the movement of precious cells through each capillary. It was strange-not quite painful, but so deep within her it could not be escaped. She seemed surrounded by the woolly thickness of the trance Nicholas' eyes had put on her, though his eyes now were closed, his mouth slack and his head rolling back on the pillow.

She was hurting him. The realization came to her suddenly, as coherence lanced through the trance. She pulled back from his wrist, seeing suddenly the flow of blood that seemed too slow.

"No," she said through the blood in her mouth.

"Don't stop." Julian's voice, vibrating through the air. She had no choice but to put her mouth back to the flowing blood and drink.

For a long time, then, there was nothing but that, the hot blood flowing down her throat, making her heart beat, making all the veins in her body pulse, flowing through her arteries, bringing her skin back to life.

"Take him." Julian's voice again, and Nicholas' wrist was pulled away from her mouth to be quickly replaced with another, again flowing with blood. "Drink this."

She drank, and Julian's voice went on above her. He shifted her, easing her off Nicholas while hands took him from the bed.

He hung limp in Vivian's arms as she lifted him and took him from the room, followed by Dr. Greene. They both moved quickly.

He was too still. She tried to ask about him, but Julian pressed her face back against the bleeding wrist, which Dina only then 106 realized was his. Julian's blood tasted different, cooler, thicker, smokier. She took a long, hot drink- "Julian..." This was Lorelei, her voice soft and concerned.

"Yes," he said. "Stop. It's enough."

Dina drew away. And the pain began.

She woke some time later, after the worst of the pain had burned itself out, and sleep had dragged her into forgetfulness for an eternity of hours. She lay alone now in the rose-pink bed. She felt alive.

Pain still haunted her arms and legs and a spot just below the beating of her heart. But it was a shadow of what had burned through her before. From what little she remembered of her death, this had been worse. But now it was over.

Birth must hurt like that, she thought. Not giving birth, but experiencing it. Because she felt as if she'd been born, as if everything within her had been remade and restored.

"Nick," she said suddenly, and sat up.

Her head swam, but only a little, and she heard her heartbeat in her ears. At the same time, she realized she hadn't heard that sound in several days.

"He's not here."

She looked toward the voice. Lorelei sat in a chair by the door. Dark circles arced under her gray-tired eyes. "How do you feel?" she asked.

"Better, I think," Dina answered. "No, I'm sure I feel better."

Lorelei smiled. "That's good. I'm sure it wasn't very pleasant for a while there."

"No, it wasn't." She paused, letting herself feel. "I feel different."