He caught her as she reached the base of the outcrop. His hands tightened around her waist as her momentum flung her against his chest. "I win." His lips tickled her ear, his hands slid up to her b.r.e.a.s.t.s and she stepped back, not ready to concede.

"Catch me first!" Thrilled with her newfound speed, she raced around the mound. Glancing over her shoulder at Christopher, just paces behind, she raced on, rounding the curve of the rock, and slammed into him.

This time he held her against him like a vise. "You lose!"

She didn't think so! Not with his thighs taut against hers, her ribs clenched between his arms and her b.r.e.a.s.t.s flattened against the muscled wall of his chest.

His kiss wasn't just a kiss. It was a branding. A stamp of owners.h.i.+p. A mark of possession. If she still breathed, she'd probably be fainting. But she was now vampire and could mark as surely as he did. She'd saved him from the sunrise and now she claimed him.

"Well, fledgling, how does the vampire life suit?"

"Fine, so far. What next?"He pointed up at the dark outcrop, "We're going up."

A sheer climb? In the dark? He had to be kidding. "Just like that?"

"It's easy."

It was. He showed her how to curl her fingers and use her nails for purchase. He had her molding her body to the uneven rock face. They climbed side by side, Christopher showing her handholds and adjusting her feet until she mastered the knack of moving up the rock face. It was as easy as jumping the wall. Easier, because now she didn't doubt her own strength.

"Like it?" His gesture took in the wide moors on all sides. "I love this spot. Few breathers ever come here, not even in daylight."

Standing beside him, she realized the power of her night vision and the range of her sight. "What's that?" She nodded to the cl.u.s.ter of lights to the southwest.

"York."

"And that's Whitby?" She turned to the east.

"Yes, Whitby, Scarborough, Bridlington, and the distant one is Hull."

The towns clung to the coastline like a string of diamonds, and had to be fifty, sixty miles away. This vampire life was something else, like the view from Boggles' Roost. "Are there really hobbits?"

"I've never seen one, but who are we to doubt the existence of reclusive little people who shun humans and choose to hide in holes in the ground?"

He had a point. "I can't quite separate the fiction from the reality."

"Let's talk about it." He settled his back against a ledge and patted the smooth rock beside him. "What's the matter? Must be more than hobbits." They held hands, but only for a moment. She wanted his touch but needed s.p.a.ce to think. "What's bothering you?"

"Not knowing everything."

"Have patience. I don't know everything. I doubt even Justin does. Why not start with specifics."

She stared up at the canopy of stars overhead. A plane droned and flashed red lights towards the south, and her man sat beside her, ready to share vampiric mysteries. "I know about mirrors. I noticed that the day you came to the door to see my books."

"Mirrors, plate gla.s.s, and cameras. You need to avoid them all. No reflection, no images."

"What if you need a pa.s.sport photo?"

"Used to be a problem but Tom worked out a way with digital cameras. He's great with things like that."

"This sunlight/daylight confuses me. You go out. I can't. I can't even stay awake during the day."

"You will. Give it six months, you'll have no trouble. In three or four weeks, you can go out some. Daylight won't hurt you.

Direct sunlight will. Our strength and power increase with age. I can take ten, fifteen minutes of direct sunlight, Justin several hours if we're dressed. Naked, it's another matter.""No more sunbathing. I used to be quite a sun wors.h.i.+per once."

"You'll learn to love clouds. That's why most of us live in the north. Whatever fiction claims, very few of us live in the Deep South or around the Mediterranean and forget Africa or Australia."

"You mean I couldn't go home?" She hadn't even considered it before.

"To South Carolina? It would be hard. You'd have to be almost nocturnal during the summer months for several years."

What was "several years" when they had eternity? "I guess I'll just stay here. For now, we've still got Orchard House."

"No, we don't."

"Why not?"

"Dixie, think! What will happen to me or you, if I appear in Bringham or anywhere for that matter? Why was I hiding in Whitby Abbey?"

"Oh!" Sebastian, Vernon, and the whole coil had faded to the back of her mind. Now they burst to the front like a rocket in the night sky. "They'll arrest you." If the police found him, she'd lose him forever.

"They won't find me or take me. Even if they did, I could transmogrify and escape, but adding jail breaking to everything else would complicate things. Better go to ground. We've done this before. We have to. Perpetual youth attracts attention, so every thirty years or so, we take on new ident.i.ties. We have a network set up. I was planning to sleep for several years while Justin got things ready."

"And I messed things up."

"I wouldn't say that. We've just changed our plans. Meanwhile I stay hidden. We're safe here."

"But you drove. They'll know your registration."

He wrapped his arm around her shoulders, pulling her closer. "New number plates. We have a system."

"How?" She doubted you bought number plates by the dozen, even in a country inhabited by immortals, myths and legends.

"Later." His fingertip traced her lips. "That will keep until tomorrow. Right now, I going to love you until you scream to the stars." He unb.u.t.toned his black linen s.h.i.+rt.

She screamed three times. Christopher blessed the remoteness of the moors and thanked heaven for his good fortune, as she lay weak and drowsy in his arms. They had hours until dawn. He'd let her rest, then teach her how to climb headfirst down the roost. She was still so helpless, more than she'd ever admit. Still half-believing the myths around her, the twisted truths of popular fiction, the superst.i.tions of unknowing peasants, and a few urban legends thrown in for good measure. But she was his, at least for now, and he'd use every hour to teach Dixie to survive. She had so much to learn before she faced the world of breathers.

Two nights later, he took her into York. After climbing Boggles' Roost twice and running farther and harder each time, she had speed enough to make it to York and back.

"It doesn't seem like only four nights ago that I came on a wild-goose chase to find you."

They'd stopped to rest on the city walls, above the night traffic and the sounds of horns and engines and the petrol fumes. "If you hadn't, you'd still be alive."She paused, considering her reply. He waited, half-dreading her answer. Were vampire s.e.x and immortality enough to replace what she'd lost? "I don't feel any less alive. More, in fact."

"But you could be safe at home instead of prowling at night with a murder suspect."

"Considering it was my big mouth that got you on the suspect list, I can't complain."

They sat in silence, far above the night hum of traffic. In a tree across the village green, an owl hooted. Dixie nestled against him, her hair brus.h.i.+ng his chin and her arm across his waist. "That night I crashed into you in the lane, I heard an owl then-a pair of them. I'd never heard a live one before."

"I terrified you that time."

He sensed her thinking in the silence. "Scared me, yes. I didn't expect anyone there. You made me mad when you grabbed me among the shrubs, but I never thought you'd hurt me."

"What if I'd grabbed you and said, 'I'm a vampire!'?"

"I'd a.s.sume you had a few too many pints at the Barley Mow."

She made him smile-h.e.l.l, she made him laugh and feel in ways he'd long forgotten. Justin was right. Women like her came once every few centuries. "Did I ever scare you? I never meant to."

"I wasn't too sure of you that first time, but figured anyone who chased off James was a potential friend." She paused. "Was that mind control? Like Justin did with Inspector Jones? That would be handy."

And dangerous, but she didn't need to know that yet. "You'll learn it in time. It takes practice. And yes, I did suggest he leave.

He isn't a very nice person."

"I figured that out on my own. In fact, that village is full of odd people and I've got to include blood relatives in that."

"I'm a blood relative now."

She cuddled even closer, her shoulders quivering. "Gives new meaning to the term kissing cousins." She looked up, her eyes bright in the night, her face glowing up at him. "Christopher, I do love you."

He could die happy after that. Or better still, live forever. He had eternity. Did they? How could he doubt her? She'd rescued him, raced across England for him. h.e.l.l, she'd even defied Justin for him. She held back nothing. Offered everything. "I love you too, Dixie."

He let the night silence wrap around them while he fought the temptation to exercise his mind control. He could force her to stay. No, he couldn't. Hers wasn't a will to bend. She'd come freely and she'd stay no other way.

"I still think Sebastian is owed his comeuppance."

She looked ready to deliver it there and then. "He'll get it. Be patient. Someone stronger than you will do it."

She pulled away, frowning like an angry lioness. "Really?" She packed a power of fury in that one word. Fury that could blow up on her.

"Don't get ideas, fledgling." Her eyes told him she had plenty already.

"Why not? He pushed me off a cliff. I owe him for that.""He'll have scars for life to remind him." He explained the part of the incident she'd missed. "Listen, Dixie. Mindless revenge won't help anything."

"There's more to it than that." In a few clipped sentences, she told him about the secret rooms, her aunts' files and the journals.

"They were undoubtedly old witches of some sort or another but they didn't deserve to be scared to death. I'm certain Sebastian did it, and knowing him, he did it to get their files. They just hid them too well. For what he's done, to you, Stanley, Vernon and everyone, he deserves to fry."

"We abolished the death penalty before you were born."

"There's got to be something we can do."

"You're thinking like a mortal. We outlive revenge."

"I'd just like to go to the police."

"And tell them what? I'm a vampire and he tried to kill me? That he scared your great-aunts to death? That he killed you but now you're a vampire? If you could get that Mrs. Thirlwood to testify and prove he was in Whitby that day, and that he pushed you off the edge, then what? Can you explain why you're walking around with a smashed pelvis? We survive by being inconspicuous. And, Dixie, I want to survive. With you."

He'd gotten through to her. Barely. "I just hate the thought that he gets away with all this."

"My love, a disadvantage of immortality is that we witness much more injustice, see more wrongs, and face more trouble than mortals."

They made it back an hour or so before dawn. She ran in silence beside him. Was she tired? Angry? He'd give his right hand to know, but she'd shuttered her mind. Maybe he'd taught her too well... but what choice did he have? She had to learn to survive in a hostile world, to manage without him, if he had any hope of keeping her forever.

"A little notice would have been nice," Dixie complained a couple of days later.

"I agree, but Justin only told me an hour ago. Heaven help us, Dixie, is it so unreasonable to meet a few friends?"

No, not when friends were mortal. But vampires en ma.s.se, that she wasn't so sure of. She looked Christopher square in the eye. "How many?"

"Half a dozen or so, plus Tom and Justin. Look, it's no big deal. They're just dropping by for an hour or so."

Okay for him to say. He didn't have twenty-odd years of Southern upbringing behind him. "Shouldn't we do something?"

"Something?" He shook his head. "Dixie, these are vampires. They have no use for hors d'oeuvres or peanuts."

She'd figured that much out. Her concern was more along the lines of serving the plastic bags of blood she'd noticed in the refrigerator. How did you serve blood bags? On a doily or a plate? It hardly mattered. The kitchen had neither.

"Just a gla.s.s of port to drink your health." He was amused. All right for him.

"Don't get your knickers in a twist, love. Just think of it as friends dropping by for drinks."

She hadn't realized he meant that literally.There were a half-dozen stars out in the sky. Dixie just finished counting them when the first guest arrived. He soared from the south, landed on the drive in front of the house and walked towards her. "You must be Dixie," he said, holding out his hand.

His hand felt cold. She was used to that by now. She smiled, looking into eyes that warmed and chilled at the same time. "Yes, I'm Dixie LePage."

"And this is Vlad Tepes." Christopher had been upstairs a minute ago. Now he stood beside her, a firm hand on her shoulder.

"How do you do?" Who next? Where did reality begin and end?

His dark eyes glanced at Christopher and then smiled at her. "What slander has Christopher spread about me?"

"Not a word. Should he have? You do have instant name recognition."

Vlad still held her hand. Christopher stepped close enough to press his hip against the curve of her waist. "She's mine, Vlad."

Vlad backed a half-pace and raised his hands, palms up. "You misjudge me. For all my crimes, supposed and otherwise, I respect your ways."

"Why do you say 'your ways'? You're vampire, too, right?" Three months ago, his ashen face and hard, deep eyes would have flickered her nerves. Not now. Vampires don't scare when you've seen one naked.

"Oh, yes." He had a thin voice and thinner lips. "I'm vampire but not of the same colony as you. Justin Corvus and I are old acquaintances."

"How old?"

"Seven hundred years. I met him about fifty years after my transformation."

She didn't turn a hair. Her perception of normal certainly was changing. "So, you and Justin will be the senior vampires here."