This was Nicholas Carrington's third year, and the first time he'd brought a guest. A mortal guest. He was beginning to think it had been a mistake.

He'd been seeing Dina Winters for a few weeks now. She appealed to him. It was possible he'd even begun to care for her. But here, in the middle of the Halloween bash, with real vampires, wannabe vampires and pseudo-vampires everywhere, all he could see, hear, or think about was her blood.

Three years ago he'd come to this party a mortal and left something else entirely. Vivian had brought him, Vivian had changed him. At the time it had seemed the right thing to do, and he still wasn't sure he'd make a different decision, faced with the same situation. Perhaps he could offer Dina the option.

But if he did, it would mean telling her what he was. He wasn't sure she was ready for that. He knew he wasn't.

"Nicky, where's the bathroom? I'm supposed to meet Lor in five minutes."

"We're getting there."

"How can it take so long? I swear this is the weirdest house I've ever seen."

"Yes, it is. Here."

He stopped at a door. Perhaps it hadn't been there before, perhaps it had. He wasn't sure himself. It took vampires far older than he to understand the mechanics of this place. Vivian even got lost from time to time, or so she said, and it was her house.

Dina opened the unlocked door and went in, pulling Nicholas after her. He resisted. "No, I'll wait here."

The smile she tilted at him spoke of s.e.x. "Come with me."

He swallowed. Desire for her blood combined with the desire for her body until he wasn't sure he had a single brain 63 cell left firing. "You said your friend's meeting you in five minutes."

She licked her lower lip. "Five minutes can be an eternity if you play it right." Pulling his hand, she drew him into the small, tiled room after her. He was too startled to protest. Up until now, she'd been almost standoffish about s.e.x. Certainly nothing like this. Vivian's incense did weird things to mortals.

She closed the door. Before he could protest, she was half- climbing his body, her mouth questing after his, her hands grasping his shoulders, her knee crooked over the curve of his b.u.t.tock. His vision went red, and he bent to kiss her. Her mouth tasted wet and salty, and he could feel her blood moving through her lips, her tongue.

"Nicky," she sighed.

He shoved her away. She looked up into his eyes, her expression startled, then staring, fear rising.

"Nicky, no!"

He barely heard the words. It had gone too far. He never should have brought her here, certainly never should have let her drag him into this small room. But it was too late now.

He bent her back while she screamed words he didn't hear.

His teeth tore into her throat, and she died. 64 NOW.

ONE.

Nicholas woke with a start. Memories fell into place slowly-Julian, the kind of voice compulsion only a vampire of advanced age could accomplish.

Dina.

He smelled blood. Not quite fresh-perhaps an hour old.

He rolled over and saw her. He'd killed Dina just before her friend Lorelei had barged in, just before Julian had stopped him in the middle of his b.l.o.o.d.y feed.

He looked at her, at her shoulder-length blonde hair, clotted with blood. The b.l.o.o.d.y wound in her throat still oozed. Blood had congealed in her clothes, down the front of her blouse. It had run down her arm and her cupped, outflung hand was full of it. It was hard to think of her as Dina anymore. She was just a corpse, another in a series of corpses he'd left behind. But most of the others had deserved it.

Nicholas took a long, deep breath, inhaling the odor of her blood, the odor of her death...

She wasn't dead.

"Very sloppy, Nicholas." The woman's voice came from the doorway at his back, her tone harsh and clipped. "Very sloppy. But I've come to expect that from you."

He rolled his head to look at Vivian. He felt dizzy, sick.

"She was dead," he said firmly. "I felt it happen."

"You were wrong. Now finish it before she wakes up."

"I can't." He said it bluntly, waited for her challenge. Surely she knew what she'd created, three years ago today.

Vivian arched a dark eyebrow. "Then I will."

"No!" He sat up too fast and grabbed at the floor, the wall, as the world spun around him. Julian had put a strong compulsion on him-the aftereffects would linger.

"No?" she repeated, her tone tinged with angry disbelief. 65 "What do you presume, Nicholas." She spat his name, and her fangs-white and sharp-peeked between her lips. He closed his eyes. d.a.m.n Julian-he could hardly move.

"It happens," he said, his voice thick as blood in his throat.

"Every once in a while."

He opened his eyes and sat up to see Vivian staring at him.

"What happens?"

"They don't die."

Silence pounded through the room. Vivian stared at him while he blinked stupidly, trying to clear the last of the compulsion from his head. Then a sound, soft and strange in the blood- soaked room.

Dina. Breathing.

Vivian stared at her, a strange bemus.e.m.e.nt on her face.

"Get your head together and pick her up," she said. "Come with me."

Nicholas watched while Vivian tended Dina's strangely alive body, washed the blood from her, removed her b.l.o.o.d.y clothes.

The thick, blonde hair, clogged with blood, proved to be a wig.

Beneath it her own hair, also blonde, was cropped short. Her panties and bra were strangely pristine, untouched by the red that fouled her shirt. Vivian left those alone. Nicholas was glad.

He didn't think he could bear to see her naked, not now, not after what he'd done to her.

Why had he been so stupid as to bring her here? He'd put himself into a situation ready for disaster. Why? Because he liked her. Because he'd wanted to be near her. He'd thought he could control himself-he'd spent the last three years learning the aggressive methods only Vivian's children could master.

But the need for blood had come on him so suddenly, so intensely, there'd been nothing he could do about it.

No, not just the need for blood. The need for her blood.

"Have you seen anything like this before?" he finally asked, as Vivian b.u.t.toned a long white nightgown and covered Dina with a sheet. Dina had barely stirred throughout the proceedings, but her breath came soft and even, filling the room with its small sound. 66 Vivian adjusted the sheet, as if tucking a child into bed.

"Tell me what happens."

He shook his head slowly. "They don't die. Not right away.

Something gets into the blood, what little is left, and it reproduces for a while. Then it stops."

"How long?"

"A week, sometimes two."

"And then they die."

He nodded. "Eventually." His voice sounded dead even to his own ears. "I tried to finish the first one when I realized what had happened. It was-" He shuddered, closed his eyes, unwilling to remember. "The pain was horrible. I think I might have died for a time. No one ever told me it could happen that way."

Vivian smoothed a hand over Dina's short blonde hair. "No one knew."

Too numb to be surprised, Nicholas looked at Dina's quiet face. She would awaken soon, he knew, and begin the strange journey toward the death to which he'd condemned her.

He didn't think he could bear it.

Dina drifted awake, the world returning to her in a numb haze. She was in a bed under white sheets. Hospital, she thought automatically. She'd spent enough time in them lately. But there were no IVs, no nurse call b.u.t.tons, only a bed with white sheets and a rose-colored coverlet, a cozy room with rosebuds twining up the wallpaper.

She tried to sit up, but dizziness took over, sending her back to the mattress. She ached everywhere. She'd grown used to discomfort and pain lately, but this was different, as if every cell in her body had been affected. Like the flu, but deeper, more pervasive. And her neck hurt, just below her jaw.

What had happened? She couldn't remember anything after coming to the Halloween party with- "Nick."

"Dina."

The voice surprised her. She'd had no sense of anyone else in the room, but she turned her head and there he was, on 67 a chair by the door, slumped forward, elbows on his knees, fingers laced loosely together. Dark brown hair tumbled onto his forehead above wide-set, almost feminine green eyes. His nose was blunt, a bit too short for his face. He looked tired.

"Where am I?"

Suddenly she realized she was in a nightgown. Someone had changed her clothes. Her heart galloped hard and high in her chest for a moment. What if someone had seen- Then she felt the elastic band of her bra. It was still there, everything still in place. Her panties were still on her as well. The wig was gone. He would wonder why she'd worn it, since as far as he knew her hair had always been shoulder-length. She had no idea what she might tell him.

"How do you feel?" Nicholas asked. He stood and approached the bed, a guardedness appearing in his eyes.

"Awful," she said. "What happened? I don't remember anything after we came in the front door. Are we still in your friend's house? Where the party was?"

He looked away, and when he looked back his face had changed. Eased a little. He smiled. "Yes. You weren't feeling well last night, so Vivian offered to put us up for the night."

"Why don't I remember anything?"

"I don't know." His fingers traced her face gently, from temple to chin. "Can I do anything to help?"

"I could use something to eat." It had to have been hours since she'd last eaten, but she didn't really feel hungry.

He nodded. "I'll get you something." He stepped a little away from the bed. "Sleep," he said, and his voice sounded odd. Furry. "Sleep until nightfall comes again."

He stepped through the door, leaving her alone. She could try to sleep, she supposed, though it seemed she'd already slept for quite a while. Still, as the door closed silently behind him, her eyes drifted shut. 68

TWO.

With only an hour of full night remaining, Nicholas concentrated on the office work Vivian had left for him. He'd done some of it while he'd been back and forth checking on Dina, but it was far from done. What he'd finished had been slipshod, done with great lack of concentration. He was certain he'd misfiled a good many of the papers he'd need to compile her fourth quarter report. And today there was e-mail to sort, as well.

Tonight more than most other nights he resented being Vivian's lackey. It could have been worse, he knew-some vampires used their "children" for more than just office work.

But typing and filing and accounting were so beneath him. Some nights he wished she would ask him for s.e.xual favors. G.o.d knew he was better at s.e.x than accounting. He'd been a musician, not a CPA.

He skimmed through the long list of e-mails, deleting the trash and filing the rest. Vivian's e-mail seemed to get more eclectic and more far-flung every day. Today there'd been messages from Sri Lanka, the Bahamas, and a few countries he'd never heard of. He hadn't even known there were vampires in the Bahamas. Considering the place's reputation for sun, it seemed ironic.

"Almost done with that, I hope." Vivian's silent approach hadn't surprised him. He'd felt her coming as she reached the door. He belonged to her, after all. She had made him.

"Not really," he said, not bothering to disguise his irritation.

"I've been distracted."

"That's not my fault, and it's no excuse for not finishing my work." She said it mildly as she sat in an office chair next to him and peered over his shoulder at the computer terminal.

"Your stupid mistakes don't excuse you from your duties."

"She's not a mistake, she's a human being," he snapped, then quickly gathered himself.

Vivian eyed him with an archly raised eyebrow. "You should 69 have thought about that last night, before you killed her. Or didn't kill her, as the case may be." She paused. He refused to look at her, but felt her regard. "How is she?"

"All right at the moment. I put a sleep compulsion on her."

"Which only works on a human being." He refused to rise to her bait. Ignoring her, he concentrated furiously on his work.