The last few draughts left him giddy and woozy but her heart stilled under his hand. She was drained of life and blood.

Justin smiled. "And now..." and handed him a small scalpel.

The curved blade shone wicked in the dull light. Hesitating no longer, Christopher slid his arm under her neck and raised her head. Grasping the scalpel, he slashed his chest. Blood gushed, soaking her neck and staining the sheet. He swore under his breath, but bent down and pulled her closer until a steady stream of lifeblood flowed between her open lips.

Her lips moved, just a quiver at first. Little enough to be imagined. Then again, and this time she gulped, her throat undulating in gentle waves, swallowing the eternity he offered. Her mouth opened and her lips rooted and sought his sustenance until they fixed on his skin and suckled. Like an infant's reflex, her lips moved, drawing on survival. A wordless cry of thanks rushed through his bloated veins. He had succeeded. He felt the blood flowing into her. She was his. His to love. His to teach. His to share eternity.

Slowly his body returned to normal. Still she sucked, but slower, less frantically, and she opened her lids. Myriad emotions flicked across those green eyes-astonishment, confusion, surprise, and shock. "Christopher?" Her white brow wrinkled.

"Where? The cliff. What happened? Sebastian?""Hush, love, you're safe. You fell off the cliff."

"I did not! He pushed me." She sat up, bewildered eyes trying to make sense of the gloom and the antiseptic room. "Where am I?" She caught sight of Justin and Tom, and grabbed the sheets to cover herself. "Will someone please tell me what's going on?"

"May I explain?" Justin offered.

Dixie gave him her librarian glare. "I wish you would."

"You fell-or were pushed-off the cliff. The rescue copter recovered you and brought you here. We followed." He paused, as if giving her time to brace herself for the new reality. "You died about thirty, thirty-five minutes ago."

Christopher watched the contusion on her face and remembered, as if it were yesterday, his feeling when he woke in the room behind Eleanor Bull's kitchen. Added to that, he'd just turned a lifelong vegetarian into a blood drinker. Would she hate him now?

She looked at all three of them with calculated calm. "Let me get this straight..."

The door rattled. Three pairs of eyes joined Tom's in watching the door. It held. "Must be locked," a voice said. "Does Sister have the key?"

"That's the room where the American girl died. Maybe the police locked it. We'll check." In the night silence, the words came clear, then efficient heels clicked down the hallway until they faded into the night.

"If I'm dead," Dixie asked the room at large, "then how am..." Her eyes popped as she answered her own question. "Tell me what happened. Please tell me what happened." Her voice rose in panic.

"Dixie," Justin said in the quiet, clear voice that had stilled the Druids and the legions, "I don't want you going into shock. You died about thirty-five minutes ago from injuries incurred in your fall. Kit revived you. We came to help him."

Her shoulders tensed under the rough cotton of the hospital sheet. Her jaw clenched as her eyes widened and scanned the room again, resting longer on Christopher than the others. She turned back to Justin, eyebrows raised like croquet hoops. "By 'revived' I a.s.sume you don't mean CPR." Justin nodded. "You mean I'm-like the three of you."

Christopher remembered his own shock at waking up dead. There was no easy way to grasp the transformation. "You're a fledgling vampiress," he said, "under the protection of the three of us."

She turned, green eyes clouded with confusion, but a spark still remained. "You people haven't gone politically correct then."

She sagged back against the slatted bed head. "I think going into shock might be a good idea." She didn't even glance Christopher's way. Justin got every bit of her attention.

"Our ways are old. In time, you will understand how old. Christopher made the first choice for you. The next ones lie in your hands, but first we have to get you out of here."

"What do I do? Transmogrify and soar off with you into the wide blue yonder?"

Justin shook his head. "That you have to learn. Much later. Now we have..."

The door rattled again. It almost budged. Tom's attention had wandered to the scene by the bed. "I didn't authorize its locking,"

a sharp voice insisted. "Check with Bradbury, maybe he locked it. We have to get it open. She's got to go down to the mortuary."

"Not on your sweet life," Dixie snapped at the sealed door. She turned back to Justin. "How do I get out of here if I can't fly like the rest of you?"

"With us, but we need to come in by the front door first."

"This is your idea of a joke, right? I just get wheeled down to the morgue or whatever you call it here, and freeze my b.u.t.t off until you knock on the front door?"

Christopher put his arm round her shoulders. She didn't pull back. Good. "Listen to Justin. He has it all planned out."

"I'm relieved to hear it." She was too worn to argue as she rested against his shoulder and looked at Justin. "Shoot," she said.

"You have the job of convincing the authorities you are alive. You'll enjoy that, I imagine. They'll need to set your hip and arm.

It's important they get set properly. They'll mend in thirty-six hours or less. That's why I'm getting you away. Your resurrection will be enough shock for this establishment for one century. Instant healing will garner too much attention. You take care of things here. I'll be back in the morning."

"How come I don't feel it if my hip's broken? Shouldn't I be in pain?"

"With the immense feeding Christopher gave you, no. They'll give you painkillers and anesthetics, but it won't make much difference. Just play along."

"What about heart rates and pulse? If I'm breathing but have no pulse, won't that raise suspicions?"

"Your heart will continue to pump the new blood for about twenty-four hours. By then we'll have you away. You won't be here long enough for them to discover the truth."

"And if they did, they wouldn't believe it anyway, right?" She looked down at her hands, turning them palms up and flexing her long fingers. "I'm not sure I do."

Christopher gathered the shaking fingers into his grasp. "Dixie, hold on until morning. You'll manage. Justin will be here. Then we have forever."

A white tooth bit into her lip. "That will take some getting used to."

"I'll be there."

"Yes." She swallowed. A nervous pink tongue traced her full lips. "I believe you. But what about the daylight, and food, and drinking, and all that?"

"Don't worry. The worst will be a blinding headache. They'll think that's post-operative shock. Small quant.i.ties of food or liquid you can take. It's several hours before the transformation is complete. I hate to leave you, my love, but we couldn't come up with a better way. Not in this century. A hundred years ago we could have carried you off and they'd blame body s.n.a.t.c.hers.

We couldn't get away with it nowadays."

She smiled. She'd play her part. He just wished he could stay to enjoy it. He pulled her close. Lip to lip. Breast to breast.

Tongue to tongue and gave her a fleeting taste of the pa.s.sion they'd soon share.

She blinked, shook her head and gulped in the night air, her eyes large as a rajah's emeralds. "Am I just weak from shock or was that a vampire kiss?"

"Weak you'll never be again," he promised. "Next time will be even better. We won't have an interested audience."

"Yeah, right," she whispered. "We need to talk.""We have eternity."

"Come, come," Justin interrupted. "The sooner we leave, the sooner Dixie can set the hospital on its ear." He moved to the window. Tom followed. Christopher gave her one last look.

"Bye," she said, with a jaunty wave. "See you later."

The night air doused like a cold shower, but nothing could chill the sweet warmth in his heart.

Dixie sat up, bracing herself on her arms and took stock of her new self. Her throat felt dryer than cotton fields in August. Her arms and legs were covered with cuts and bruises, but she felt no pain at all. Justin was right about her heart. It still pumped- in fact, it threatened to pound through her ribs. Men! Just mosey in there, unsettle every given in life as she knew it, then flit out on the breeze, a.s.suring her she'd "handle" things. She wanted to kick the lot of them, but she had a broken hip, a fractured arm, had just been declared dead, and looked as if she'd taken a bath in blood.

The only thing she felt certain of was no one, but no one, was laying her out on a marble slab. Not while she lived and breathed, and that would last-how long? Twenty-four hours. She'd better get busy. If Justin let her down... He wouldn't. Nor would Tom or Christopher.

She flicked on the night-light over the bed and reached for the buzzer to summon the nurse. Walking with a broken pelvis might be too much, even for a fledgling vampiress. After counting to twenty, she pressed the buzzer again. This time she held it down.

After all, they might not expect to answer calls from a corpse.

The door opened. A girl in a crisp, gray dress blinked in surprise. And stared.

"I need help," Dixie said.

The blinking eyes widened, the young face paled to ashen and with a faint gasp, she dropped to the polished floor. Just what she needed, nurses fainting on her. She was supposed to be the patient. Giving up on the buzzer, Dixie yelled. That got attention.

Two nurses filled the doorway. "Betsy!" they gasped. Looking up from their crumpled companion on the floor, they gaped at Dixie perched on the hospital bed. Faced with their neat uniforms, she felt disheveled. This pair didn't faint but speech seemed a bit much for them, and the way they clutched the door frame suggested weak knees.

"I think that young woman needs some help," Dixie told them, fighting to keep her voice steady. "And I'm feeling pretty rough myself."

They exchanged startled glances, like a pair of horrified parlor maids who'd just discovered a corpse-which, in a way, they had. "I'll c-c-call Sister," the one on the right stuttered, then disappeared like the wind down the corridor.

Sister wore a crisp blue dress, the stiffest white ap.r.o.n Dixie had ever seen, and a confident bossiness that completely failed to conceal her shock at a resurrection occurring on her s.h.i.+ft. But she did possess the authority to shake her subordinates into action. Even crumpled Betsy got herself to her feet with a bit of help, but she looked ready to do a repeat performance any minute.

"I'm sorry to cause all this disturbance, but I'd like to know where I am. I remember falling off the cliff, and then I woke up, aching all over, with a sheet over my head. What's going on? I need a shower and I'm dying to pee." Justin had been right.

Bodily functions did continue.

Sister rose to the occasion. "Fetch a bedpan, Anna," she said and the nurse on the left scuttled away. "Lights, Mary." The room was flooded with harsh, fluorescent light. A thermometer in the mouth and cool, efficient fingers on her wrist reminded Dixie she was alone and injured, at least temporarily, in a foreign hospital. A pulse didn't seem enough to convince Sister to contradict a doctor's declaration of death. "You're in shock. I think you'd better rest until we can get a doctor up here.""I think I'm bearing up better than she is." Dixie looked across at Betsy sitting limp and shaking in a metal chair. "And I'm dying to wash my hair." It was stiff with blood and as she ran her hand through it, fragments of chalk and weed came off in her fingers.

"You'll have to wait until the doctor gets here, but we'll do what we can."

"What we can" entailed a perch on a bedpan, a quick sponge bath and an ironed cotton gown with the expected rear ventilation.

Betsy recovered enough to get Dixie a brush and comb. "You gave me a turn," she said. "They said you were dead."

"I was," Dixie replied. "I just came back to life."

"That's not funny," Betsy replied. "You've got Sister all upset. She's in a right mood. She isn't used to having Americans on the ward." And Betsy marched off to fetch bed socks.

"Don't mind her. She doesn't mean it," Anna said as Betsy's footsteps faded down the corridor. "She only started two weeks ago and she's scared stiff of Sister, and finding you gave her a nasty turn."

Three doctors arrived, and after extensive prodding and poking and long frowns at a chart on a clipboard, decided Dixie was alive after all.

She came down from the operating room as the orderlies pa.s.sed around trays smelling of bacon and clattering vast pots of dark tea. She found herself the next best thing to a celebrity. Too weary to care much about the sensation she caused, Dixie dozed until Justin arrived.

"I feel I've been rescued."

"Almost," Justin replied. "I practically perjured myself. As it is, they think you're a difficult, rich American who wants the luxury of a private hospital."

"I can live with that. Another day of bacon sandwiches and eager nurses trying to spoon chicken noodle soup in me, and I would have become an obnoxious American. In spades."

"The ambulance arrives at six. The police want to talk to you before you leave." He paused. "What are you telling them?"

"The truth! That Sebastian pushed me off that cliff."

"Is that impartial truth, or vindictiveness?"

"Vindictiveness?" Her own shriek resounded in her ears. "He pushed me off the cliff to my death. I don't doubt he was behind the car bomb, which means he tried to kill me and took poor Stanley out instead. Reading their journal, I believe he hastened my great-aunts' ends. Given all that, I'd put money on his involvement in the attempt to kill Christopher, which means he killed Vernon in the bargain. And you talk about vindictiveness."

Eyes that had seen everything met hers. His hand steadied her shoulder. "Listen to me," he said in a soft, insistent voice. "Think about it... Justice lasts longer than revenge. You accuse Caughleigh and his nephew, and let's say, for the sake of argument, the authorities believe you. It's only a matter of time before he produces an alibi."

A cold lump settled inside her. "So, I'm supposed to just let him get away with it?"

"Oh, no. No one ever gets clean away. Justice always waits.""I'd like something swifter than the mills of G.o.d."

"Remember, you have eternity. He doesn't. Let the police think you fell. The cliff paths are dangerous. Erosion has been a concern for years. You've caused enough turmoil in the hospital. Don't start an attempted-murder investigation. You'll be on the front page of the News of the World if you do."

"So, he gets away with murder?"

"No, he won't..." A Machiavellian smile twisted one side of Justin's mouth. "Say as little as you can. They know you're in shock and won't probe. And then I'll get you out of here before anyone needs to check your blood pressure again."

Much to her chagrin, she was wheeled out on a gurney, like a trussed turkey on a butcher's slab. The ambulance didn't help. It looked like a cross between a small school bus and a paddy wagon. Tom waited, dressed in orderly's clothes, and looking every inch the eager medic. They hoisted her up into the behemoth and reconnected all the bags and tubes. The back doors slammed. The engine started and they were off.

"Will you unhook all these contraptions now?" she asked Justin at her elbow.

"Wait until we leave the car park. Someone may come running after us with a last prescription." They didn't, and five minutes later Justin disconnected her wiring and propped her up on pillows. "Don't move too much," he cautioned, "you're halfway healed. Be patient. By tomorrow night, I'll have the cast off."

She couldn't wait. If nothing else, she'd found one advantage to being a vampiress. She sensed there were a whole lot more.

"Christopher?" She sensed him near. She smelled him.

Up front, driving this tank.

You're here! she thought, a slow thrill tingling her heart.

Thought I'd leave you to this lot, my love? We're one now. Wait until later and I'll...

"Hey, watch it you two!" Tom interrupted. "You'll shock us single guys."

"Shock you! After that wench Molly from Fleet? I remember if you don't! Better behave yourself, Kyd. One stray look at my woman and I'll..."

Heat flooded her cheeks. "You know what I'm thinking?" Cold horror stung her. What sort of life would this be, with every thought and feeling broadcast to others?

Don't fret, Justin said, his voice soothing like aloe after a burn. You're linked to us by the blood bond. Right now you cannot hide your thoughts. You'll learn.

I'll teach you. Christopher again. Thoughts didn't have separate voices; they all sounded the same in her mind but she knew the source of each one. She knew each one's smell. She could hear the gas in the tank under the ambulance. Taste the blankets covering her and feel the tires skimming the gravel as they turned off the main road. A thousand sensations bombarded her- smells, tastes, and sounds she'd never known. Shuddering racked her worn body.

"Dixie! Focus!" Christopher called aloud, but her mind whirled, tugged by the myriad sensations. Justin's strong hands grasped her shoulders. His will strengthened her. Slowly she surfaced from the whirlpool of feelings and gasped for air as if rescued from drowning.