He held her there for a long time, until the pain faded, then gently he let her go. She slid away from him, sat on the ground next to him, her blue eyes wide and questioning.

"Are you all right?" she said.

"For the moment," he answered, marveling that she could be concerned for him. He sat up, then stood. "We have to go on."

They went deeper, as the ceiling grew higher and the floor descended, until they walked in a cave with vaulted ceilings so high they couldn't be seen in the murky darkness.

Lorelei clung to Julian, afraid of what might lurk in the shadows. Finally she took his hand, clinging to it. A pulse beat 43 hard through his fingers, the hand warmer than it had been only a few hours ago when they'd made love.

"How much farther?" she asked. Her voice slithered cold up the high, high walls and came back to her a million times, amplified, softened, transformed-ch ... ch ... far ... far ... ther ... ther ... The sound touched her skin, and she cringed.

"Not far," said Julian, and his soft voice fell dead into dead air and stopped.

Afraid to speak again, Lorelei just followed.

After a time, she realized a light had grown far ahead of them. Greenish-white, like cave-light. The very color of it nauseated her. Julian's hand tightened on hers, as if he sensed her discomfort.

"He'll be there," he said softly in his voice that didn't echo, "in the light."

"That's what I'm afraid of."

He smiled a little. The white, sharp tips of his fangs protruded from behind his upper lip. He didn't tell her not to be afraid.

They went on.

The light grew. Soon the world was full of it. Lorelei couldn't tell where it came from. It seemed to spill down the walls, onto the floor. The air had become cool, still, and utterly odorless.

She'd stopped holding Julian's hand and now clung to his arm. Fear crawled through her, but he seemed centered, composed. Sometimes his arm came around her, to circle her and hold her for a moment or a minute. His calm radiated into her, and she held onto it as well as she could. The green light fell and fell, and she blinked against it.

How had she come to this place? How had she come to be walking through the unknown bowels of the earth, through caves and tunnels no human could possibly know of, her only guide and protection a vampire? It was too much. So much that she could only keep going, keep following him.

Suddenly they were no longer alone. A pale escort flitted through the falling light, hovering just out of sight. Lorelei sensed his presence, could almost see him if she looked away. Presently, he was joined by another and another, until they were trailed by 44 a half-dozen or more vague figures.

"Children," Julian murmured.

Lorelei wasn't certain what he meant. Then, turning her head, she caught sight of the face of one of their entourage. A child's face with a demon's eyes-a boy or girl of no more than ten, the face pale, small kitten fangs flashing against the lower lip.

"Many of them can't hunt on their own," Julian explained, his voice still a pale murmur, "so the Senior keeps them here."

"At least he takes care of his own." But as she said it, she saw the demon eyes and wondered what price these children paid to be "taken care of."

Julian must have seen the realization on her face, for he said no more about it.

An archway appeared ahead of them. She couldn't estimate its age, but it was easily as old as anything she'd ever seen.

Runes in the stone resonated with unbelievable age. Strangely, Lorelei felt like she should be able to read them-as if they stirred some primal memory within her.

"This would be the place," said Julian softly.

"That's what I was afraid of."

He gave her a rueful smile, then pa.s.sed under the arch.

Lorelei didn't know what she'd expected, but it certainly wasn't this. Beauty, pure, crystalline, filled the room, stalact.i.tes and stalagmites that seemed to be made of gla.s.s, like the inside of a geode. The strange green light seemed purified here as it was taken in and reflected back a hundred thousand times, from facet to facet and back again. She could barely breathe for the beauty of it. How could something like this exist, and no human being ever know of it?

"This way," Julian said. He seemed to know his way through the maze of corridors, and she followed him. Behind them, the strange, demon-eyed children disappeared into the reflections of light, making their own way.

Julian led her to a narrow pa.s.sage among the crystals. The pa.s.sage made a gradual descent and ended at a plain wooden door. So plain, so ordinary in the midst of all the sparkling beauty, and behind it, a plain oak desk in a room cluttered with the kind 45 of paper detritus one might find in a mundane corporate office.

The man behind the desk, though, was far from ordinary.

He looked up as they came in, folded his hands on the desk and eyed Julian with a kind of resigned acceptance.

"Julian," he said. His voice made Lorelei's spine pulse.

Shatter gla.s.s, Lorelei thought. Move mountains.

"Master," said Julian, without a hint of sarcasm, but also without a hint of obedience. They stood looking at each other for a time, then Julian said, "You put out a Call for me. Why?"

The Senior gave a dismissive wave of his hand. His skin was so pale as to be nearly translucent. His eyes spoke of an age Lorelei could only begin to comprehend.

"The Call has been lifted," he said.

Julian lifted an eyebrow. "Why?"

"Because it's too late."

"Too late for what?"

"Too late to stop it."

Julian only stood for a moment. His face remained utterly

still, and Lorelei could extract nothing from his expression.

Finally, he spoke again. "But it's not yet finished."

"No. No, it is not." He shook his head slightly then. It seemed Lorelei could see his bones through the skin of his face. A strange weight lay in his eyes, something like amazement. It was beyond Lorelei's understanding that a creature of his limitless age could find something to amaze him.

"I have walked through the great forests following the ancient ox," he said finally, "and when I found it, I fed on its blood. I saw the Sphinx built and lapped blood from a Mayan altar. I drank blood on the fields of Normandy and saw a man walk on the moon. But never, never have I seen a vampire become what you have become."

"What have I become?"

"You will know, when it's finished."

"And how do I finish it?"

"You must take my blood."

Julian blinked. Lorelei felt almost as if she were no longer

in the room. Certainly the others took no notice of her. She watched as Julian took a single step forward, then stopped, 46 shaking his head.

"You cannot mean just to-let me."

"I can. I can do nothing else."

And, Julian realized, neither could he. The compulsion was greater than anything he'd ever experienced-greater than a need for s.e.x, greater than a need for human blood. Every cell of the Old One's blood sang to him, every cell of his own blood sang back.

He went. Nothing could have stopped him, not willpower, not his cigarettes, not even, he thought, a stake through his heart. He looked into the Old One's eyes and saw an age beyond imagining.

"When were you Made?" he asked, with breathless unbelief at what he saw.

"I was the first," said the Old One, and closed his eyes.

Tears p.r.i.c.ked Julian's eyes. He bent forward, kissed the Senior's forehead, then bent to drink.

The Old One stiffened against him as his fangs sank in, until the blood filled his mouth in a hot pulse.

It didn't end there. As the blood rushed into his mouth, the Senior's mind reached out for his, filled it. Julian stiffened, interpreting it as an attack, then realized it was something else.

Something that had never happened before. He took more than blood from the other vampire-the first vampire. He took everything.

He saw a memory of a night sky, a sky so old the stars sat in different places. He saw the deep green of infinite forest, as far as even vampiric eyes could see. Heard the thunderous footsteps of the aurochs, the ancient ox. Tasted its hot blood as if on his own tongue.

There was more. Images from a time so ancient Julian couldn't understand it even as the memories flooded him. Images from yesterday, when the Old One had downloaded his e-mail.

Then the pictures faded. The pulse of blood slowed, finally stopped. Julian swallowed, the last of the hot blood going down his throat. Then he slipped his fangs free, and the Old One crumpled at his feet.

And the pain began. 47 Needles in his blood, fire, ice-he couldn't explain it, couldn't escape it. All his blood aflame, from the big veins in his throat and chest to the capillaries in his eyeb.a.l.l.s. He felt as if he were being turned inside out.

Perhaps he was. Everything inside him was changing. The power of the Old One's blood burned away everything he had ever been, leaving behind ... what?

He couldn't think or feel past the pain to discover the answer. Not yet. He could only sink to the floor, and quietly die. 48

SIX.

Lorelei panicked. Under the circ.u.mstances, it seemed the most sensible thing to do. Trapped in the bowels of the earth, no idea how to get back where she came from, surrounded by vampires-and Julian, her only hope of knowledge or rescue, had apparently just died.

So she sat frozen in panic, looking at the two vampire bodies tangled on the floor next to her. The Senior's body seemed strangely smaller in death, whiter, and then she realized it was actually shrinking, the skin shrinking as flesh disappeared under it, until the skin enclosed the bones like plastic wrap, and then disappeared, leaving behind a skeleton which changed from brown to bleached white in a handful of seconds.

Next to the bones, Julian lay still.

Lorelei covered her mouth with her hands and breathed, long, slow breaths meant to ease the frantic pounding of her heart and tame the crazed fear fighting at the back of her throat.

"What's happened here?"

The fear came back and grabbed her as the vampire entered the room. As vampires went, he looked fairly harmless-tall and slim, wearing a suit that was too big for him and carrying a briefcase. A vampire accountant, she thought, as she searched around her for a weapon. The only thing close at hand was the pile of bones. She grabbed a femur and brandished it. The bone felt light and brittle in her hands. If she hit the vampire with it, it would either shatter into uselessness or into something with a sharp edge.

The accountant vampire stared at her, his face paling.

"Where's the Senior?"

"This is the Senior!" Lorelei stabbed at him with the big leg bone. "Don't come any closer."

The accountant dropped his briefcase. "The Senior's dead?"

"Yes." Lorelei relaxed her posture a little. This guy looked about as befuddled as she was. 49 "What happened?"

"I'm not sure. Julian-"

The vampire paled further, which Lorelei hadn't thought possible. "Julian? There was a Call for him-"

"Yes, there was." She looked at Julian's body, limp on the floor among the white, white bones. "I think he might be dead, too."

The vampire's face gentled at her uncertain tone. "I'm William," he said. "Put down the bone and let's check."