"Pick one."

"Adam. Belial. Corbin once, I think. Lucien most recently.

Take your pick."

They stared at each other a moment, Julian and the many- named stranger, and Dina wondered how Julian could meet those endless eyes without losing himself. Then, suddenly, he nodded.

"All right then, Lucien most recently. Show me." 113 Lucien knelt next to Nick's bed and took Julian's hand.

"Touch him. Take his hand and see what you feel."

Julian glanced at Lucien, then lifted Nick's limp, white hand.

He closed his eyes.

There was a long moment of silence in the room, so deep it made Dina's head swim. Julian bent over Nicholas, eyes closed.

Nothing happened. Silence rained down on the room, filling every corner.

Suddenly Nicholas took a deep, shuddering breath and opened his eyes. His white skin flushed pink, and he moaned with his breathing, which seemed to have taken him over until he could do nothing else. Julian, still holding his hand, cupped his face with the other, until his breathing eased. Then he cradled Nicholas' head against his chest while he plucked the IV tube from his arm.

"No more of this," he said. "He won't need it."

"What did you do?" asked the doctor.

Julian combed long fingers through Nicholas' dark hair, while Nicholas closed his eyes and breathed. The sound brought tears to Dina's eyes as his breathing settled into a soft, normal rhythm.

"I don't know." He turned to Lucien and Dina saw his face, full-on. Something had changed. His eyes had become heavier, as if his soul had aged a century in those few seconds.

"Can you tell me?"

"I can. But it will take time."

Julian nodded, his gaze going back to Nicholas. "Later, then." He stood, staggered. Lucien caught him. "I need to sleep."

"You do."

They left, the two of them and Lorelei with Dr. Greene.

Vivian stood staring, then looked at Dina.

"I think the world just came to an end."

Before Dina could ask what she meant, Vivian had followed the others out the door. Dina settled back in her chair and put her chin on her knees to wait for Nicholas. 114

SEVEN.

How many times, Nicholas wondered, drifting out of black haze, must a person die before he gets it right? At least twice, the answer must be, because he'd botched it this time as well as the last.

Either that, or h.e.l.l was a clean white hospital room in the Vampire Underworld, with Dr. Greene standing next to him muttering at a chart.

He remembered little after he'd opened his own wrist, offering it to Dina. His whole world had become a shuddering heartbeat after that, a life-rhythm slowing around him until it disappeared. Then nothing, until his body had filled suddenly with warmth. He hadn't awakened, not really, but he'd dreamed.

Odors, mostly, a strange smell like a vampire's smell, but older, stranger. And warmth, someone holding him perhaps.

He must have made a sound because the doctor turned to look at him. "You're awake."

Nicholas nodded. "Yes."

"How do you feel?"

"I'm not sure."

The doctor nodded. "You're still down two pints of blood, but you'll be fine."

"I need to feed." But the hunger wasn't there.

"No. Your blood's reproducing itself."

Nicholas stared. His blood hadn't reproduced itself in three years. "I don't understand."

The doctor smiled wryly. "n.o.body does." He opened the door. "You have a visitor waiting. Shall I let her in?"

"Vivian?"

"No. Dina."

He swallowed, dumbfounded again. Slowly, he nodded.

She walked into the room, and he felt dizzy looking at her.

Smiling, she sat, not on the available chair, but on the edge of the bed right next to him, where her warmth reached him through the blankets. 115 "How are you?" she asked.

"Better than I'd expected. I expected to be dead."

Her hand reached up and came to his forehead, brushing his hair back gently. He closed his eyes a moment, lost in the beauty of the simple caress.

"It wasn't supposed to be like this," he murmured.

"How was it supposed to be?"

"I was supposed to die, and then you'd remember me forever as the one who gave up his life to save yours." His head spun. He didn't feel quite right, as if he were dreaming, or heavily medicated. "It would have been nice, I think, to have been remembered that way."

"I would have missed you."

"Why?"

"You still saved my life, whether you died to do it or not."

"But it wouldn't have been necessary if I hadn't killed you first."

She yanked gently at his forelock, then let her hand fall back to her lap. Wooziness filled him again. It wasn't a sick feeling, more like an overload of his system. He wondered if it had to do with the blood, living blood pumping through his veins for the first time in three years.

"I was dying when you met me," she was saying. He focused, listened hard to hear her over his own pulses. "I had a few months to live, maybe a year if I was lucky. Now-" She took a long breath. The look on her face told him she still couldn't quite believe what she was about to say. "Now Dr. Greene tells me the cancer's gone."

"Wow." He couldn't think of anything else to say.

She smiled. "'Wow' is right." Again her hands came up, this time closing around one of his, her fingers kneading his palms, the back of his hand. "I think it's why you had the compulsion. Somehow, your body-no, your hunger-knew you could cure me. It just didn't know how."

"But the others. There were others before you, who died after I fed on them. I couldn't have cured them, not if Julian's blood was a necessary component."

"You carried the first catalyst, and that's what drove you." 116 Her hand tightened on his, hard, and he heard tears in her voice.

"I'm alive, Nick. And so are you. We should make something good out of that."

"So, would I have to die, then, for you to love me?"

She smiled. "I don't think that will be necessary."

He tried to sit up, thinking he might lean forward and kiss

her, but his head spun, and he clutched at her hand.

"Take it easy," she said, standing to help him lie back down.

She settled him against the pillows, then climbed back into the bed. Smiling, he put his arms around her.

"You make me dizzy."

"I don't think it's me."

"No." Moving carefully, he managed to meet her lips with

his. "Not just you, anyway. My heart's beating, my blood's moving-I don't think I was this alive when I was alive."

"What did he do to you?"

"I don't know. But whatever Julian is now-" He broke off.

"What?"

"It's amazing. It scares me."

"Vivian said she thought the world had just ended."

"She might be right." Julian, Lucien-they were both something so new, yet Lucien's version was apparently unimaginably old. It made no sense. It would change everything.

He drew Dina closer. The strange dizziness had faded, his system adjusting to the living, growing blood, and all he could think about was her warmth, her life, so close to him. He pressed his lips against her throat, feeling the blood move and desiring it not at all.

"Are you hungry?" she whispered.

"Just for you."

She let herself melt against him while his hands explored.

It didn't even occur to her to flinch or draw away as his fingers slid under the tails of her shirt, up her stomach, as his hands moved against the long, sickle-shaped scars on her chest. He touched them, drew his fingers over and down them, tracing the long, angry lines, and suddenly they weren't angry. They were part of her. They had, at one time, saved her life. 117 But he paused then, suddenly, and said in her ear, "Is it all right? Does it bother you?"

"Of course it does," she answered, surprised at the half- laugh in her voice. "I'm a freak."

He laughed, more surely. "You're a freak?"

"Okay, you win." How could she have imagined merely a week ago that she could be lying in bed with a man while he shimmied off her shirt, laughing about her scars? It was a sweet and lovely thing, and she was glad she'd lived to experience it.

Whatever had made Nick dizzy and unsure before, it seemed not to bother him now as he slid her out of her jeans.

With her face against his warm shoulder, she wriggled against him as his wide, bare body slid against her and pressed her down. Feeling his arousal against her, she tipped up her hips to meet him, and he came hard inside her. A sharp rhythm brought him pounding deep, and his hand between them cupped her into a hard, wet fire. It rose, spiraled, and her heart seemed to lift within her to meet his until they beat together, as if they shared a body, shared blood, shared the deep, flooding power of o.r.g.a.s.m.

Her world turned to brilliant, opalescent fire.

They came down together, and his lips moved against her ear. "G.o.d," he breathed.

"No," she said. "Just Dina."

He laughed, nuzzling her. "I can smell your blood, but I don't want it. I can hear it, but I'm not hungry." A hot, deeply felt sigh ruffled her hair. "It's amazing."