She stood just inside the doorway, watching the wavering light of the sacred oil lamps play over the babies. Which was hers?

She took a few more steps, until she stood next to the sleeping babies. Then, strength departing, she sank to the dirt floor.

Darkness took her for a moment, a soft, welcoming wave.

This was death, she knew, waiting for her. It didn't seem so bad. Soft, gentle. A warm place.

But it let her go. She opened her eyes, and she was still in the small room with the babies. One stirred a little in his sleep.

They all slept peacefully, the sound of breathing soft in the small room.

But not all. At another, sharper sound, she looked up and saw a small pair of eyes fixed on her. Returning the startlingly clear gaze, she pulled herself along the floor.

This was the one. Her child. He knew-she could see it in his bright, gray-blue eyes. She reached out, and his hand came out from under the soft blankets to meet hers. Small fingers 127 touched hers, the contact no more than a breath.

Suddenly the room seemed lighter, the darkness more distant. The soft touch of death receded. Mylie moved, just a little, and took her son's hand in her own.

And he, only hours old, smiled.

She lived, which was unexpected. The shamans murmured to each other about it as the other three girls were buried deep within the cave. She heard murmurs, too, that one of the children had fallen into a deep sleep, and that they were concerned about him, afraid he might die.

He didn't die, though. She'd known he wouldn't, and when he woke a day later she knew it instantly though the shamans still kept her separate from him, where she rested and continued to heal.

She sat up in her small bed, amazed at the lack of pain, and looked toward the door leading toward the children's beds. As she looked, a small voice sounded in her head, wordless but somehow communicative. Be well, it seemed to say. Sleep and heal.

She smiled to herself and lay back down, and slept.

When she woke that evening the pain was gone, and so were the shamans. Darkness filled the room, ebbing and flowing with the light of a small torch near the door where the shamans came and went. She sat up, then stood, and walked to the room where her baby slept.

A thrill of fear pa.s.sed through her as she opened the door.

Last time, she'd known she would die if she was caught, but then she'd had nothing to lose. Now she had life again and the possibility of losing it if the shamans found her treading on what they had declared to be sacred ground. But the sacred child had lived within her sacred womb, so why should she not be able to approach him?

Again her gaze went directly to him, the small bundle with piercing blue-gray eyes that looked at her from a round infant's face. More than an infant's soul moved behind those eyes, though. He smiled when he saw her, and his hands struggled 128 beneath the layers of swaddling.

She came to him and knelt on the ground. For a moment she only looked at him, then gently she picked him up and cuddled him against her. Her heart pounded in her throat as she unwrapped the layers of blankets to free the tiny hands. They reached toward her, seeking her face. She let them touch her, held a finger out for them to grasp. Then, with a quick look over her shoulder at the silent, closed door, she drew the child tight against her and gave him her breast.

She already ached with the milk beginning to build up within her, and when the tiny, hungry mouth latched onto her, both b.r.e.a.s.t.s poured, soaking her tunic. She bit back a small laugh, afraid someone might hear.

There was no one to hear, though, and for what seemed a very long time she sat there on the dirt floor with her half- divine son, watching him drift into sleep, until his mouth went slack and fell away from her nipple, and the milk dribbled white upon his round cheek. Smiling, she wiped his face dry, laid him back in the bed, and went back to her pallet on the floor.

The next morning, the shamans declared her well enough to leave the sacred cave and return to her father's house. She didn't want to go, and her family was wary of her, as if they feared her. When that night her father neglected to ask for her help with the goats, she knew nothing would ever be the same again. 129

ONE.

"...still there was famine for a long time. After the drought came floods, and men began to kill each other. It hadn't happened before, at least not there."

Vivian shifted in her seat as Lucien paused. He seemed unaware of his audience, staring off into far-distant memory.

Across the room, Julian tapped ash from his cigarette into an ashtray. Lorelei gently took the b.u.t.t from his fingers and snubbed it out. Nicholas, on the love seat next to Vivian, drew lines on his sneakers with a black pen. No one seemed bored, but it had been a long story.

"We, of course, were blamed for it. Our births were supposed to have appeased the G.o.ds, and instead it seemed we had angered them. They tried to sacrifice us to their G.o.d, but we wouldn't die. One of us they hacked to pieces and sent floating down the River. Someone found the pieces and stuck them back together, and they lived again."

"Except no p.e.n.i.s," put in Vivian, then shut up, shocked at the sound of her own voice.

Lucien turned slowly to her, dragging himself back from the story. "Pardon?"

"The G.o.d was hacked to pieces, and they found everything but his p.e.n.i.s. It's Egyptian myth. Osiris and Isis. Osiris got chopped up by Seth, Isis put him back together."

Lucien nodded slowly. "Interesting. I can't say I've heard that one." He swiveled his chair around to face them more fully. "But none of this happened in Egypt. Maybe the story got picked up later-"

"Or you're just confused." Again, Vivian surprised herself.

She was being remarkably b.i.t.c.hy. Maybe because outside daylight approached, and Lucien was still going on and on and on...

"Viv-" said Julian softly, warning.

But Lucien laughed. "That's entirely possible. Some days I can't remember s.h.i.t." He pushed himself to his feet. "I forget 130 my manners. Some of you need to sleep."

Nicholas yawned. "That would be me."

"And me," Vivian admitted reluctantly.

"What happened then?" said Julian. "If you and the other three were the first of us, what happened after that?"

"We bred," said Lucien simply. "We pa.s.sed along a genetic marker than enabled Julian to become what he is. And we created others much as you do, through exchange of blood.

The result was sterile creatures who live on blood and hide from daylight."

"The father of the first children-of you and the three others-was he a G.o.d or a demon?"

Lucien shrugged. "Both. Neither. Who can say now?"

Julian snorted. "As always, you've been less than enlightening." He took out another cigarette, and Lorelei deftly plucked it from his hand. "We'll talk more."

Lucien gave him an indulgent smile. "Yes. We will."

Vivian stood and stretched. "I'll have to excuse myself, I'm afraid. The sun's coming up."

Lucien rose from his chair in an easy, fluid movement, and lifted Vivian's hand in his. "We shall talk later, as well."

He kissed the back of her hand softly. Vivian stared at the top of his head as he did it, surprised at the tremor of feeling that pa.s.sed up her arm from the place his lips had touched. And when he looked up, and his gaze met hers, she had the strangest feeling she knew him. Not from a few days ago, when he'd arrived to help Julian save Nicholas's life. From before. Long before.

"Yes," she said, barely aware she spoke. "Yes, I'd like that." 131

TWO.

Lucien watched as everyone but Julian filed out of the office, Nicholas stifling a yawn. It surprised him he'd talked so long. It hadn't seemed like more than a few minutes.

It was a hard story for him to tell, though, and he wasn't even sure all of it was true. Those parts that had happened before his own birth he'd gleaned from stolen conversations with his mother, Mylie, and from various lectures the shamans had given him while he was growing up, usually after they dragged him back to the sacred caves after those stolen conversations. The shamans had probably exaggerated. Mylie had probably downplayed her accounts. She'd been that kind of person.

He missed her even now, sometimes. She'd lived a good life but a lonely one, feared by everyone she knew. But she'd dealt with it well, even found humor in it. And she'd had the last laugh by outliving every one of them. By the primitive reckonings of the time she'd lived nearly 125 years. Whether her long life had been the result of her congress with the G.o.d, or Lucien's healing, he had never known.

Julian spoke suddenly, breaking through Lucien's musings.

"If you're going to be around for a while this time, I'd appreciate it if you could take a look at this." He'd been tapping at his keyboard and now swiveled his computer monitor so Lucien could see it. It displayed an Internet navigator window, filled with lists of e-mails. "The messages come from everywhere, all over the world."

Lucien bent forward to look. It was a ma.s.sive leap from the story of his infancy in prehistoric Europe to an Internet navigator, but he'd learned to deal with such things a long time ago. Julian went on. "The Senior before me had been collecting them for centuries. He thought they were parts of the Book of Changing Blood. I believe Vivian and Nicholas catalogued most of them."

Lucien nodded. It seemed strange, looking at not-quite 132 familiar words he hadn't seen in at least a millennium. "Yes,"

he said.

Julian seemed to expect a longer answer. "Okay...I have two questions for you, then. Is there such a thing as the Book of Changing Blood? And are these parts of it?"

"Yes," said Lucien. His smile went unanswered. He cleared his throat. "These categories-I a.s.sume the Senior a.s.signed them?" The messages were sorted into folders by region- Asia, Polynesia, Western Europe, Eastern Europe and a dozen others representing Africa and North and South America, then were subdivided from there into "Book," "Not Book," "Maybe Book," and an intriguing folder ent.i.tled "Bulls.h.i.t."

"I think so. You'd have to check that with Vivian."

"How old was he? The Senior?"

Julian shrugged. "I don't know. He remembered aurochs."

Lucien lifted an eyebrow in surprise. "He must have been one of the first, then. Surprising. I actually didn't think any of the Bloodmade Children were that old."

"I saw the memories when he died. I still have some of them. They're fuzzy, though. Like dreams."

Julian's eyes had gone distant. Lucien waited for him to come back. A few seconds' delay, a few hours-it mattered little to him. He could barely tell the difference between a week and a decade anymore. After twelve thousand years it hardly mattered.

"There are patterns," Julian said after a time. "Particularly if you read all the messages within a group. You start to see certain things emphasized, certain phrases appearing over and over. Would you recognize them, if they were part of the Book?"

Lucien snorted. "I wrote the Book. Well, not by myself.

Aanu and I found each other coming out of the ground I don't know how many years after the Black Sea-I think it was the Black Sea-flooded. We'd dreamed the same dreams, under the mud." He paused, remembering the flood and the years he'd spent dead, then slowly reviving, in the deep layers of mud. n.o.body had bothered to tell him to build an ark. Too bad- it would have come in handy. "We put the Book together by transcribing the dreams, hoping it would guide the Children. 133 Later, in Egypt, the Dark Children destroyed it. We were supposed to be demons, always and forever. Any suggestion we might be able to change was blasphemy to them."

Julian's eyes went distant again as he digested this. "Do you think there's a hope of piecing it back together?"

Lucien had opened one of the messages and was scanning the contents. Many phrases here did, indeed, seem familiar.

The Book, yes, but corrupted from the original. "There's a hope.

If I could remember it all, I'd write it down for you from memory.

Unfortunately, my brain doesn't work that way. I'll need as many pieces as I can collect."

"I think you'll find a good starting point here."

"It appears that way." He leaned back in his chair, studying Julian's quiet face. His woman, Lorelei, had gone to bed a few hours ago, leaving Julian to smoke in peace. Lucien didn't mind.

He enjoyed the sweet smell of the cigarettes. "However, more important than the words of the Book are the changes you've undergone. You'll discover more about the Book from inside yourself than you'll ever understand simply by rea.s.sembling and reading it."

"The Book could tell me about myself. How can I tell myself about the Book?"

"You are the Book." Lucien laughed at the obvious irritation on Julian's face. "Rea.s.sembly of the Book has been a quest of the Children for a long time. There is certainly some value in it."

"Then you'll help me?"

"As much as I can."

"And will it make sense when we're done?"

Lucien snorted. "Don't expect miracles." 134

THREE.

Yawning, Vivian slid into her bed, under the cool cotton blankets. Tucking the quilt around her, she wondered again why she'd treated Lucien so sharply. It wasn't in her nature to lash out at people. She'd been more the Ice Queen type, closing herself off as much as possible. Emotions hurt too much, especially when you had to carry them around for an eternity.

When she brought death to those who asked her for it, sometimes she hurt, but not for very long.

In the back of her mind she still felt Nicholas fluttering there, full of his love for Dina. It was all he could think about these days, and it had stepped up a notch since he'd left the meeting. Perhaps they were making love now, or maybe just being in the same room with her did this to him. She envied him.

Or maybe not. After all, he had his Maker eavesdropping on him. Her own Maker had disappeared without a word of explanation, without even telling her what he'd caused her to become, over six hundred years ago.

It didn't seem right that she should infringe on Nicholas like that. If he'd been one of her intractable and annoying earlier Children, she wouldn't have cared one way or the other, but Nick deserved better. He was the only one left, too. The intractable, annoying Children had managed to annoy themselves into an early loss of immortality. She couldn't say she missed them.

Outside, day approached inexorably. She could feel it in her bones, in her slowing blood. As sleep eased over her, she played with the thread connecting her to Nick. And suddenly she knew she could break it.