"Which was when?"

Amus.e.m.e.nt quivered around his mouth. "I came as a surgeon to the Ninth Legion Hispania in 136 and stayed." She felt her mouth drop. His smile and rea.s.suring hand on her shoulder were no doubt to ease her shock. "Don't be afraid. My skills have advanced considerably since then. Trust me," he said, "I wouldn't attempt heart surgery, but I can repair cuts. It was one of the first procedures I learned."Trust him? Heck, why not? She half-expected to hear the Twilight Zone theme. Minutes later, she sat propped on pillows while Justin Corvus donned surgical gloves and emptied his bag of instruments that looked very twenty-first century.

"You're still worried about Kit," he said as he checked her blood pressure and pulse.

"Yes." She looked up at the dark eyes. "Last night I thought I'd lose him."

"So did Tom. We both owe you a debt. One we will not soon forget. Few mortals have your courage."

"I'm not sure about the courage bit. I was terrified."

"That, I believe, is how one defines courage-persisting in the face of fear." Gently, he eased away the sheet she still clutched and looked at her wound. "You cut deep, but we can fix that." She s.h.i.+vered as he swabbed the wound with cold solution. "The scratch on top will heal, but this one I must st.i.tch." She felt the sting of the hypodermic and spreading numbness.

"Why haven't I bled more?" It really didn't make sense, just a wide, red gash.

"We heal where we feed," he replied, "just as our own injuries heal fast. Kit's scar from the knife has almost vanished by now, but we cannot heal our own mortal injuries. Hence, Kit's eye or Tom's hands. I brought Kit back from death, but restoring his sight was another matter. Kit made Tom, but couldn't repair the ravages of the rack."

"You made Christopher into a vampire?" He was st.i.tching now, she saw the movement of his hands and felt the tug on her flesh, but this conversation could distract her from amputation.

"I prefer the term revenant. Popular fiction and Hollywood have sensationalized 'vampire.'"

She winced as a thread pulled the tender edge of her flesh. "Let me get one thing straight. Kit, Christopher, is the Christopher Marlowe, who died in the tavern at Deptford."

She expected his answering nod. She didn't expect it to knock her for a loop. Suspecting was one thing. Actually having someone confirm it was another.

"You're still suffering shock. You probably have a hundred questions. If I can clear up your confusion, ask. I cannot tell you about Kit or Tom. Their histories are theirs alone to share. But about myself, or our kind in general..." St.i.tching finished, he applied a thick gauze pad with strips of adhesive. "Have those st.i.tches out in a couple of weeks and all will be well. The scar will fade in a year or so."

"So I just knock on the door of my friendly neighborhood physician and say, 'A seventeen hundred year-old doctor put these in, please take them out'?"

He chuckled. "You're right, that won't work. They wouldn't have the right form for the National Health. I'll do it. Now, I'll go find some blood for you."

Dixie pulled her tee s.h.i.+rt back on as the door closed behind him, wondering where he "found" blood. He should know. It was his bread and b.u.t.ter after all. She grimaced at that thought. Justin returned just minutes later with two bags of blood. "Tom keeps a supply of blood?"

"Of course." Justin smiled. "Don't you keep spare food on hand for emergencies?"

As she digested that comment, Justin hooked the bag on the top of the bra.s.s bedstead and then fiddled with a valve in the tubing. "Any more questions?"

"Yeah, lots. Mirrors. Hollywood's right about the reflection bit." She remembered the time she hadn't seen Christopher in the hall mirror.

"Partly. Our bodies don't reflect but if we look in one long enough, we see our life reflected back." He smiled and inclined his head. "Imagine how you'd feel having all your mistakes thrown at you each time you looked in a mirror. Multiply that by the length of our existence. The experience is one we tend to avoid."

She understood. What if her years with her ex-fiance were hurled back at her every time? "That makes sense, but I'm confused about the day-night issue. I've seen Christopher out in broad daylight but Tom said it was sunlight that nearly killed him. What gives?"

He unhooked and replaced the now-empty bag. "Right on both counts. We can go out in the day, but direct sunlight can be weakening. If we feed regularly, we can survive without a problem. In fact," he paused to readjust the valve and start the second bag of blood, "Hollywood's creation of the 'fatal daylight' myth has been a great gift to us. Almost everyone believes it, including many of our enemies. If the world were more literate, they'd never be so deceived. Bram Stoker knew the truth, at least in that area. But all that hocus pocus about crucifixes and churches and sacred hosts-nonsense!"

"But why did the dawn light burn Christopher? He was burning. You don't mistake that smell for anything else."

"He was naked. Clothing affords us protection. And they knew his weakest time. It was the day of his revenance, when he returns close to death. It happens each year."

"Wouldn't it have made sense to go off somewhere safe for a couple of days?"

"Yes."

He didn't say any more. He didn't need to. "He came back to see me."

"Yes. But of his own free will. Kit does what he wants. I noticed that trait several hundred years ago."

"That doesn't alter the fact that he nearly died because he came back to me."

"And that he survived because you were near and possessed the courage to act in the face of the unknown." He picked up the last bag. "Life happens and the end comes to us all, even revenants and vampires. This wasn't Kit's time."

"You sound like my Gran. She always believed things were meant to happen and that they always worked out."

"Wasn't she right? You inherited the house, which you never antic.i.p.ated, came over to see it, which no one else expected, and let Kit have the books he wanted, which was more than we ever dreamed."

"Why are they so important?"

"Ancient lore we'd rather our enemies didn't master." He stopped to ease the needle out of her arm, placed a cotton swab over the bead of blood in the crook of her arm and bent her elbow. "All set," he said with a satisfied smile. "You need to rest. I suggest you sleep and give Tom a chance to get ready for a mortal visitor."

She thought she couldn't sleep, alone, injured, in a strange house full of vampires. She was wrong.

She woke to late afternoon sun, a thermos on a tray beside the bed, and a pile of shopping bags on the floor. She reached out for the white card propped against the thermos. "Dear Dixie," she read. "While Kit rests, accept my hospitality. Here's coffee, and Kit thought you might need clean clothes. There's a bathroom at the end of the hall. Help yourself. Call if you need anything. I'll be downstairs in my study. When you're ready, I'll take you out to eat, Tom Kyd."

She showered fast. The clothes fit pretty well, but she'd never have bought designer jeans or a silk blouse. She toweled her hair dry and decided she'd better go down and face the vampires.She hadn't imagined the curving staircase last night. It was big enough to drive a compact car down. And the front hall wasn't exactly small either, with the wide marble floor and antique side tables. This was some house.

She found Tom in his study, frowning at his computer monitor and Justin sitting in a wing chair looking out on the garden where her car was still parked.

They both stood up as she opened the door. "Feeling all right?" Tom asked.

"I'm still a little light-headed, but other than that..."

He nodded, a hint of a smile behind his eyes. "It's been a few hours-for both of us. I'm not used to being in debt to a mortal.

It's unnerving."

"You're unnerved! What about me? I feel I've slipped into the Twilight Zone. You at least knew about ordinary mortals."

The smile spread to his mouth. "Dixie, the fact we're having this conversation proves you're no 'ordinary' mortal."

She crossed the room and sat down, then realized she was alone, with two bloodsucking vampires between her and the door and not a single living creature knew where she was.

Her heart hammered so loud, she barely heard Justin's quiet voice. "Don't be so alarmed. You'll come to no harm. For all his suspicions, Tom owes you as big a debt as I do."

"Can you read my mind?" What chance did she have now?

"Not your mind, your face," Tom said. "Your thoughts are written all over it."

"Yeah, well, I used to be good at keeping a straight face when confronted with the outrageous. Must be losing my touch."

"No, just coming to grips with a new angle on reality."

"My biggest reality, right now, is hunger."

"I thought it might be. You've had shock and blood loss. We'll take you down the road for a steak."

She shook her head at Tom's offer. "Something else, please. I'm vegetarian."

No one commented on the strangeness of two vampires taking a vegetarian out for a late lunch. They shared a bottle of red wine, while Dixie ate a mushroom omelet, a large salad, and cheese and biscuits in an elegant, very expensive, coffee shop just doors down from Tom's house.

"Tell me as much as you can about how you found Kit and his injuries-if it's not too much to ask," Justin said as he refilled her gla.s.s.

She told him. He asked about the walled garden. She described it in detail, including the stone phalli. He wanted to know exact details of Christopher's wound. That, she had no trouble describing; the image had seared itself into her brain. "I couldn't believe how he healed once the knife was out."

"I'd give anything to see that knife," Justin murmured.

"But you can." She opened the pocket book she'd retrieved from her car, rummaged thought the mess, and pulled out the knife wrapped in a sandwich bag. "That's all that's left. Christopher broke the handle trying to pull it out.""How did you get it out?" Tom asked as he pa.s.sed it to Justin.

"Pliers and prayer."

Justin held the dark blade with two fingers. "As I thought, a Druid knife. I wonder how long they've had it."

"Who are 'they'?" Dixie asked. She didn't get an answer. "What's a Druid knife?" she tried again.

"The originals were made by the Druids for sacrifice and to gather sacred mistletoe. Others have been made by the ancient methods, and are imbued with the same powers." Justin placed it on the table between them. "I believe this is an original."

"A Druid knife?" What had she heard about Druids? Not much.

He nodded. "It's slaughtered quite a few victims, I shouldn't doubt, and we know of one failure." He slipped it back in the bag.

"I'll take care of it, and make sure it won't find another victim, I promise you."

"Dixie," Tom said, "I owe an apology for my lousy welcome last night. You saved my oldest friend. Thank you."

"He's my friend, too," she replied, "even if you do have the advantage of years."

"About four hundred, give or take a few."

"Yes, I've wanted to ask about that." She paused, wondering if there was some vampire etiquette about these things.

"You're Tom, short for Thomas Kyd, Christopher's contemporary, right?"

"Right. Kit died fifteen months before me. Our deaths were linked-both victims of Tudor politics-but we'd been friends, even shared lodgings, and he changed me. We stayed friends ever after."

She turned to Justin. "And you turned Christopher into a vampire?"

"I transformed him after he was killed, just as Kit transformed Tom when he died."

"And you, how did you get to be a vampire?"

"A Druid priestess transformed me, after a Brigantine arrow got me through the throat. Nowadays, I wouldn't die from such an injury. Back then, I drowned in my own blood and Gwyltha found me. She'd never before transformed a Roman." He paused as he thought back over the centuries. "I was the only non-Druid revenant for many years."

"The Druids started it?" This wasn't the version of popular fiction.

He shook his head. "There are colonies much older than the Druids. Some date back to ancient Babylon." And she'd always thought it started in Transylvania.

She looked around the coffee shop; a couple leaned close in one corner, a group of women laughed and gossiped at a round table, a trio of men in pin-stripe suits talked closely and shuffled papers back and forth. Dixie would bet her house and bank balance they'd all collapse and croak at the thought of the conversation she'd just had. Heck, she barely believed it herself.

The sun was setting. They looked out on the long summer twilight that would last until late in the evening. They'd sat here all afternoon.

"Kit will be waiting," Tom said.

Dixie clenched her fists. She wanted more than anything to see him and the thought scared the daylights out of her.Before, he'd just been a man who intrigued and attracted her. Now what? She was about to find out. The twenty yards to Tom's front door, with its twin bay trees, stretched like as many miles.

"Dixie," Justin said as he walked beside her, "few mortals know what you know." She'd figured that much out for herself. "And many, many fewer have done what you have done. In all of history, only a handful have shown your courage and faith. Within our colony-you are the first. That will never be forgotten."

"I'm not going to forget it in a hurry either." Why so flippant? Was it the thought of seeing Christopher again, of feeling his arms around her? Her b.r.e.a.s.t.s tingled at the thought. Her whole body tingled, come to that. Because he was close. And alive. She shook her head. Would she ever get the vocabulary right?

"Kit's waiting for you." Tom stopped at the steps leading up to his front door.

Justin stood beside him. "Go on in. He's expecting you."

And she had no idea what to expect. She turned the polished bra.s.s k.n.o.b. The heavy door swung open on well-oiled hinges and she stepped inside, into the wide, square hall with its marble-tiled floor and the wide, sweeping staircase.

He stood in the doorway to her right.

"Christopher." She almost choked on his name. Her heart beat like a tom-tom under the still-tender st.i.tches.

He stood there, like a living dream, just out of arm's reach. And smiled. "h.e.l.lo, Dixie," he said. Warm ripples washed her like gentle waves on a summer beach. She wanted to answer, to say something, but the words jammed in her throat and caused her eyes to lose focus and her hand to shake.

"You look..." She struggled for the word, but her mind wouldn't cooperate. "You look a whole lot better than when I found you in the backyard," she said, then wanted to kick herself as he winced.

"Must have been quite a shock, given you didn't believe in me."

"It was. I've learned quite a bit the last twenty-four hours."

"I'm sorry, Dixie." It sounded like an apology for every discord between the s.e.xes since Adam blamed Eve for the apple.

"For anything in particular, or life in general?"

"For the whole f.u.c.king mess."

The profanity hurt like a pistol-whipping. Catching her breath, she glanced at the warm, smooth face beside her. She'd seen every change possible in the last couple of days. Or thought she had. "I don't care for your choice of adjective." Okay, she sounded like a reproving school marm with an eighth-grader, but after all, the author of Dr. Faustus could manage better than your average thirteen-year-old.

An eye wide with remorse met hers. "That's what it was."

This time the blow came like a kick to the gut. "I see." She didn't.

Christopher rested a hand on her shoulder. Her confused body didn't know whether to flinch or lean into him, so she stared at him instead. His skin had lost its pallor and glowed with the warm bloom of life. The open neck of his black linen s.h.i.+rt showed a vee of stray hairs. A pulse throbbed at the base of his neck. With an emotion between awe and horror, she realized her blood flowed in his veins."You begin to understand," he said.