FIVE.

Gently, Vivian hung up the phone. She'd expected this news, but it was never easy. Wishing she were alone, she turned to face Nick and Lucien, who in some misguided sense of duty had followed her.

"What is it?" Lucien asked.

"I have to go," she answered. "Evelyn needs me."

"She's dying," Nicholas explained. Vivian tossed him a hard look.

"And you're going to help her?" Lucien's voice was gentle.

"Yes. It's what she wants."

"I could save her."

The words startled her. She hadn't thought of that. Then reality returned. "She's eighty years old."

"Still. You might want to ask her."

"Fine. Come on, then."

Vivian checked the time before they left, though her internal clock told her what she needed to know. They had enough time to make the trip and be back before sunrise. Barely. She made her preparations quickly, ignoring Lucien as he shadowed her.

She didn't want him along. What she had to do was best done in private. But he was right. Evelyn had to make an informed choice.

Evelyn lived in a bad part of town easily accessible from the Underground. Most bad parts of town were easily accessible from the Underground. It had been designed that way, or perhaps made that way by the combined will of the vampires who currently inhabited it. Bad parts of town had always been easier for their kind to move through and find nourishment from.

Vivian moved through the world differently, though. She met her "victims" at hospitals throughout the City, where she presented herself as a night nurse. She'd never been a nurse in any official capacity, but it was easy to slip under the radar in a place as big and impersonal as a New York City hospital, 150 especially at night, especially when your talents involved a certain amount of subtle mind control.

In the hospitals she looked for people like Evelyn, people like Nicholas had been. Suffering souls facing their last years or months or days of life. Modern medicine could do little for them but let them die, often painfully. Vivian could do little more, but at least she could eliminate the pain when patients were ready to move on. Or, in rare cases-Nicholas had been one such-she could offer immortality.

Evelyn had no interest in immortality, though Vivian had offered as she always did. She would have made a terrible vampire, Vivian was certain. Entering the old woman's small apartment, Lucien a shadow at her heels, she faced once again the dark solitude that reigned there.

Evelyn lay stretched out on the couch, wrapped in a cream- colored afghan she'd crocheted herself a half-century ago. A small black-and-white TV played a few feet away, the bent antenna on top supplying a snowy, distorted signal. An infomercial, ubiquitous at this time of night.

The old woman didn't move as Vivian entered, and for a moment she thought she might be too late. Then Evelyn's chest rose in a soft sigh, and her head turned.

"h.e.l.lo." Her ghostly blue, watery gaze drifted over Vivian's shoulder. "A guest?"

"A friend," Vivian explained hastily. "I came to carry out your wishes as we discussed, but he wants to make another offer."

Lucien stepped forward. "I could heal you," he said simply.

To Vivian's surprise, Evelyn laughed. "Whatever for? I'm eighty years old. Even if you could heal the cancer, how much time would it buy me? Five or ten years?" She laughed again, the sound surprisingly cheerful in the dismal room. "I've got no one to live for, anyway. It's time to let go."

Lucien knelt next to the couch. Evelyn looked into his face with a soft smile as he laid a big hand on her white forehead.

"I envy you," he said, then kissed her softly on the mouth.

He stepped back, leaving Evelyn with a surprised look on her face. Vivian stepped forward then. 151 From the shadows near the doorway, Lucien watched.

Vivian had knelt next to the couch and held the old woman's hand, caressing it with both of hers. They talked softly for a time, but he couldn't hear what either of them said. The light from the television fell on them like a benediction.

He looked around the dark room. Like the TV, it seemed to be all in black and white. There were a few pictures here and there, old photographs of a handsome man in military garb. On a table near the couch was a triangular wooden box with a gla.s.s top. An American flag was folded inside.

A life lived alone, he thought. His awareness swirled around the room, gathering sensations. This man, in the old photographs, was the only man she'd ever loved. They'd been engaged before he'd left for Europe, and he'd died before he could return.

There had been no wedding, no children, no future.

She'd had happiness in her life, though. He was certain of that. She was ready to die, but he felt no despair. Only acceptance. She knew she would see him again, her young man who'd been lost to the war.

A long and quiet life, alone but somehow not lonely. He gathered the sense of it from the air, from the memories layered on the trinkets in the house, from the energy the old woman had left behind on everything she owned. He smiled to himself, thinking how much he envied her ability to die.

Vivian had bent over her now, her mouth against the old woman's throat. Evelyn smiled as the soft throb of her life faded, then disappeared.

Vivian straightened, tears glistening on her face. Lucien started to move toward her, then stopped, knowing his interference, however well-meant, wouldn't be accepted at the moment.

Instead he stepped back a little more, until his back touched the door, leaving Vivian as much to herself as he could. After a few minutes she straightened, pressed a hand to her mouth and stood.

"Vivian-" he began, but she lifted her free hand to gesture him to silence. She found a phone on a table and picked it up, dialing 911 to report the discovery of a body in the apartment. 152 She refused to give her name.

Hanging up, she gestured to Lucien. "Let's go."

He followed her out of the small apartment and back out into the dingy streets. She wasn't well, he realized, sensing it in the downward flow of her energy and seeing it in the paleness of her face.

"Let me help," he said.

"I'm fine."

She led the way back to the warehouse that connected to the Underground, and not until they were safely out of the human realm did she let herself sink to the floor. No humans could follow them here, not even the gang of probable drug dealers who'd been following them, likely with intent to hold them up.

And here, when the sun came up, Vivian could sleep safely, even if she had to do it there on the wooden floor.

He wouldn't let it come to that, though. The floor was dirty, and she'd wake up with wood grain patterns embedded on her face. Kneeling next to her, he brushed hair out of her eyes. Her face was twisted in pain.

"What?"

"It was too much. I had the plasma drink before-I can't hold all the blood."

She convulsed around the pain. Lucien could feel it in his own body, something worse than nausea as her body tried to expel the excess she'd consumed. He lifted her half from the floor, cradling her in his lap.

"Let me."

"No," she said weakly.

"I know what I'm doing this time." He held her closer, and she moved against him in tacit agreement. "Besides, so what if you have another o.r.g.a.s.m?"

She almost laughed, then fell limp in his arms as he embraced her shoulders with one arm, the other hand pressing into her stomach. Threading bits of her life energy into his own, he absorbed the pain, then moved enough of his own energy back into her to burn away the extra blood pooled in her stomach.

He felt the pain ease, then her pleasure began to build as their energies twined together. 153 She opened her eyes just as he backed away. "Was it good for you?" he asked.

She did laugh then, a full, round laugh. Then, just as suddenly, she pushed her face into his chest and began to cry.

"Is it always like this?" he asked as her sobs began to subside.

She moved back and rubbed the tears away. "No. But what was I supposed to do? Tell her I'm sorry, but I can't help you right now, I just ate?"

He laughed softly. "I didn't mean that. I meant this." He caught a tear on his finger and looked at it a moment before brushing it off on his shirt.

Her face stilled, eyes darkening with memory. "Usually worse. Usually they're so much sadder."

"She was ready to go."

"Yes. She was at peace. But I saw-" She stopped, her eyes closing hard.

"What?"

"At the last. I saw the light, and her fiance. He was there for her. They don't always let me hold on that long." New tears welled, and she dashed them away, more harshly this time. "It was her gift to me, I think."

"And you're thinking you may never get to see that light in person, because of what you let yourself become."

She looked away, her eyes distant now. "I'll see it eventually.

I'll die someday, even if I have to trot myself out into the sun to do it."

He cupped her face in one hand, turning it back toward him. "Not today."

"No. Not today."

He bent forward, and his mouth found hers, gently at first, then he could no longer hold himself back and pressed hard into her, taking whatever he could. He would have stopped if she'd drawn away, but she didn't. Her arms went around his neck, and she returned his kiss with as much pa.s.sion as he gave, so much more than he'd expected.

Then, suddenly, her hands were under his shirt and she had taken control, urging him to more than he'd imagined ever taking 154 from her, but she gave it to him and then took from him.

It wasn't a good place, but he had his big coat, and he spread it on the floor as she twisted it off him. For a moment he thought he should stop her, then he saw her eyes. She knew what she was doing.

Vivian knew exactly what she was doing. It was the same thing that drove mortals to s.e.x after a funeral, but more so.

Faced with the reality of the final completion her soul might never find, she had to reach out for the greatest completion she could give her body. Lucien had just gotten in the way.

It was more than that, though. She had to admit that to herself as she took the final step and slid him inside her. He was big and ready and, she suddenly realized, as fertile as any mortal. The thought made her ride him harder, fighting tears as she remembered the other, primal thing she'd given up.

And she hadn't even given it up willingly. Not really. The one who'd Turned her hadn't explained anything, and then he'd disappeared, leaving her to find her way all on her own. Leaving her to forget how to feel anything but disgust for herself and for the thing who had made her. It had taken her centuries to discover a way back to some portion of her humanity, and even that had proved a long and painful road.

She was striking him, she suddenly realized, beating his chest with her fists as she crested and shuddered on him. His hands closed around her wrists, stopping her a.s.sault, then he closed his eyes, and she felt him come hot inside her. Alive, she reminded herself, everything pouring into her was alive. And everything it met within her was cold and sterile.

She collapsed forward onto his chest, sobbing, and he held her as she wept out her heart, wept out six hundred years of pain, until finally he said softly into her ear, "It's almost daylight, love. We have to go."

But she couldn't stop, and the tears kept coming as he wrapped her in his big coat, picked her up, and carried her down into the Underground. 155

SIX.

When the Sleep took her she went back to the place in her dreams where she'd left off the last time. After the healing.

Why did her subconscious keep dragging her back there? This was all right, this part, but there were other places she didn't want to go.

Helpless, she followed the tide.

England, 1390 When she woke she felt weak, but much of the pain had gone. Her breath came more easily. When the monks brought her food, she ate it carefully, and when it was gone she felt stronger.

Her healer came to visit her later that afternoon. Seeing her sitting up on her pallet, he smiled, though she could barely see the smile through the shadows of his cowl.

"You're feeling better," he said.

"Yes." Tears suddenly clogged her throat as she realized the magnitude of what he'd done for her. Had he not come to her yesterday, she would be dead now. "Thank you," she managed.

He reached out, his rough-woven sleeve falling away from his big hand, and touched her cheek. The ridges of scars felt harsh against her skin. "It's what I do."

He smiled again and left her.

She didn't speak to him again for weeks, though she saw him often as she wandered the walkways and attended the services. He would watch her from across the room, his eyes bright under his hood. His regard made her warm-she didn't know why.

Though she grew stronger every day, she had no desire to leave the cloister to rejoin the dying city below. What was left for her there? Her whole family was dead, most of her friends 156 either dying or dead. In the cloister it was quiet, without the smell of death and the dark, overhanging atmosphere of doom.

She was a woman, though, and so couldn't stay forever.

After a month the Senior Abbott took her aside.

"You were welcome to stay here to heal, but I think it's time you must let us go," he said gently. "This place was not meant for women."

"What is there for me?" She asked him the question, since she hadn't come up with her own answer.