"Blood," he whispered. "I need blood."

He smelled it everywhere. His own, others'. The intruders who'd come to kill him. He thought he smelled death, too, but not his own. But the blood he smelled was vampiric. He couldn't take that-it was wrong, the most basic taboo of the vampire.

There was Lorelei-but Lorelei was human, and that was his own taboo.

He closed his eyes. It was over, then. After eight hundred 29 odd years, it was over.

His mind drifted away, his body left behind. Some vague piece of awareness remained, to sense what happened next, but not enough to stop it.

He'd been drained to the most basic instinct-survival. His body, dead once, didn't want to repeat the experience. His hands found a living body. His fangs came forward, locked, sank into a throat, and blood flowed.

Burning. Fire, like the sensation of sunlight on his skin, but devouring him from the inside. The hot, fresh blood pumped through him, refilling him where he had been emptied. But it had never felt like this before-like liquid cauterization, the fire of a kiln, remaking him, changing him, healing him.

After a long time, the flow of blood slowed, then stopped.

Julian slept.

He woke slowly, his body sluggish as it always was when waking. His chest felt hot and compressed, as if a heavy weight lay on it. When he opened his eyes, though, he lay in a bed, pale pink sheets drawn up to his chin. He was naked. Something smelled like lavender.

He remembered. He had fed last night.

Lorelei.

He bolted from the bed. What had he done when reason had left him?

The bedroom door was closed. He flung it open and stared into the living room.

Lorelei knelt on the floor with rubber gloves and a sponge, scrubbing blood off the wooden floors. Her brilliant blue eyes were bloodshot, puffy underneath, mascara streaked down her cheeks.

She looked up at him with a disconcerting calmness.

"Go get some clothes on," she said. "I brought some up from the boutique. They're on the bed. Maybe not your style, but they'll keep you decent."

Baffled, he went back into the bedroom. She'd laid out black cotton pants, a black T-shirt. He put them on and came 30 back out to her.

She was scrubbing again, frowning at the blood on her floor.

There was a great deal of it still. A big job, Julian thought. He should help. There were no other sponges.

"I didn't kill you," he said, because the fact amazed him.

He couldn't get his brain around it.

"No," she said matter-of-factly. "I think you wanted to, though."

He stared at her, at the smooth, white line of her neck. Her skin, pale and unbroken except for the marks, still red, from the Halloween party.

"Then what ... who ... What happened?"

"The guy who tried to kill you. He was lying next to you.

You did it to him."

Julian sat down. Right on the floor in a spot which, luckily, had no blood on it. The man who'd slit his throat had been a vampire.

She looked at him quizzically. "Are you all right?"

"No. No, really, I'm not."

"Good. Because I'm sure as h.e.l.l not." She pushed hair away from her face with the back of her wrist. "Now, get up off your a.s.s and help me get this G.o.dd.a.m.n blood off my floor."

He went into the kitchen, looking for a sponge. He found one under the sink. The room was decorated in bright yellows and greens, and sun streamed in through a small window above the sink.

Julian stood gaping at the golden window. He reached out his hands slowly, letting the wash of sunlight touch his skin. A faint tingle, no more, but as he held them there, it grew stronger until the sensation approached pain. He watched, fascinated, as a soft pink invaded the paleness of his skin. The beginnings of a burn, but it was taking a good long time.

"Julian?" Lorelei's voice broke his reverie. He jerked his hands back, as if what he'd done was forbidden. "Did you find a sponge? They should be under the sink."

He looked at her as she stood in the doorway, a question on her face.

"What did you see last night?" Had it been last night? It 31 must have been. And now was today. Today. He wondered if he could go outside and walk in the full sun. Eight hundred years ago, he'd enjoyed the sun.

"Too d.a.m.n much," Lorelei replied bitterly. She started to turn away from him, then turned back. "How much of it was real?"

He met her gaze squarely. "Probably all of it."

She shook her head. "I never should have gone to that f.u.c.king party."

He followed her into the living room and sat next to her, dipped his sponge in the bucket and helped her scrub. "What happened to the bodies?"

"I dumped them out the window into the alley, then I called the cops and reported a disturbance. They came and took them away."

"Why didn't you tell them what happened?"

"Because they were vampires, you idiot!" She turned on him, eyes sparking blue flame. "They had fangs. Real ones. I looked. And you-" She broke off, some of the fire leaving her. "You're one of them, aren't you?"

He looked at the floor, at the blood where it had soaked into the grain of the wood. "I honestly don't know what I am anymore." The pink had faded from the backs of his hands.

"But whatever I am, I'm not one of them."

It was a hard job, scrubbing the blood off the wood floors, working the brown flakes out of the grain. She'd tossed two gorgeous Oriental rugs out the window with the bodies-it had broken her heart but there was no way she could get them clean. Now she was left with the job of cleaning up the blood.

It was a hard job, but not as hard as sitting there looking at Julian, understanding what he was, trying to deny it and accept it at the same time. She wanted only to put it out of her mind.

Except he wouldn't shut up about it.

"Over two hundred years without human blood, and now this. Something's changed. I was changing before, but this is different, and I don't know what it is."

Lorelei tossed her sponge down in exasperation and glared 32 at him. "Then find out."

Julian blinked. "Find out? How?"

"This Senior Vampire-person-has this Call out for you.

He must have some idea about what's happening to you, or he wouldn't perceive it as a threat."

Julian was silent for a moment, scrubbing thoughtfully at the stained floor. "You're right." He'd had the same thought himself. Did he want to look for the answer?

"Of course I'm right. Just because you come in here and go off with all this vampire s.h.i.t doesn't mean I can't figure it out even though it doesn't make any sense, and everybody knows there's no such thing as vampires except those crazy razor-freaks at the party. But you had real fangs, and those people-my G.o.d, he cut your throat seven times. My G.o.d, a lot of this blood is probably yours-"

She stopped. Her hands were shaking so hard she dropped the sponge. Julian stared at her. Aware of his gaze, Lorelei fought the gabbling panic trying to drag its way up her throat.

"Lorelei?" he said gently. "Are you all right?"

She threw the sponge at him. It hit him in the face. He caught it as it fell.

"No, I'm not all right! Why in G.o.d's name would I be all right?"

"I should go."

"Don't you dare go. This is your G.o.dd.a.m.n blood, and you're d.a.m.n well going to clean it up!"

He laughed. He laughed and she wanted to hit him, then suddenly she laughed, too. It was a hysterical laugh, though, and she brought up a hand to cover it.

"It's too much," she said.

"I know." He reached out to her, cupped her elbows in his hands and drew her gently to her feet. "Go sit down and have some tea. I've cleaned up more than my share of blood in my time. I'll take care of it."

She sat in the kitchen for an hour, sipping tea and listening to Julian splash in the other room. Finally he came into the kitchen carrying the sponge, which he put in the sink. He looked 33 out the window at the daylight, held his hand out to the sunlight and kept it there for a moment while his skin turned pink.

"How did it happen?" Lorelei asked quietly.

"The usual way," he said, a bit dryly.

"Why did you stop feeding on humans?" An ordinary kitchen, an ordinary cup of tea-it couldn't balance the conversation.

"I'd loved three women and killed them all." He shook his head as he turned to her. "I couldn't take it anymore."

"Do I need to buy you a carton of cigarettes to keep you from ripping my throat out?"

He smiled. She noted again the slight cant to his eyes and wondered where he'd been born. "Since I took the other vampire's blood, I haven't felt a need to feed."

"Maybe that's why you're not supposed to feed on other vampires. Because it changes you."

Julian nodded. He stood in silence for a long minute, then finally said, "You're right about finding the answer. If there's a Call out for me, I'll answer it myself, and find out what's happening to me, and why the Senior doesn't want it to happen."

"You'll go see him, then?"

"I see no other choice." Except to run, and he could only run so long.

In his dark eyes she saw something warm, something human, if she dared think that way. He was right-whatever he was, he wasn't one of the killers who'd invaded her apartment.

What he was, she thought, was compelling. Something in her stirred when she looked at him, listened to his voice. Had her late-night TV viewing really corrupted her so much she could sit here and feel l.u.s.t for a vampire? The thought made her smile.

"I'll go with you." 34

FOUR.

They couldn't go anywhere until nightfall. The deepest levels of the vampire city were closed off during the day, so thoroughly sealed not even a fly could get through.

"How do they do it?" Lorelei asked. No lock, no barricade, could be completely unbreachable.

"Human servants, dogs, electricity." Julian rubbed his eyes.

He looked tired, she thought, and wondered if he might need to sleep before night fell. "I don't really know. I've never been during the day."

"But you've been?"

"Once. A long time ago. The Senior called for me when I first came to the City, and I went." He stood, walked to the window where he watched the light outside with a frown on his face. "It's not exactly as I remember it," he said after a time.

"What?"

"The light." He sounded disappointed. He stepped back again, and Lorelei watched as the pink on his face slowly faded.

He pressed his fingers to his face.

"Does it hurt?" she asked.

"A little."

She stepped up to him and laid a hand on his face, feeling the heat leave his skin.

He looked at her, surprise in his eyes, and she suddenly realized she stood there with her hand on a vampire. As the sun-heat faded, his skin cooled, but didn't feel strange. She let her fingers shift, matching the contours of his face.

"You're not afraid," he said, the breath of his voice brushing the edge of her hand.