"Vampire?" She laughed, but the woman on the other end of the phone wasn't laughing, so her own died in her throat. "You are joking right?"

"No. I know quite a few of them. They exist. And they're nothing like what most people think they are. They tend to be driven to protect people like you."

"People like me?"

"It's got to do with your blood, Mary. Dunst told me you have the belladonna antigen. That's probably why he referred you to us in the first place."

She went cold inside, remembering how often Michael had mentioned that the antigen connected him to her. But surely this was complete and utter fantasy.

Vampires? "Okay, sure. Whatever you say. You just send me that photo. I think I can handle this myself from here."

"Fine. If you change your mind-"

"I won't." She hung up the phone. Vampires. Good grief, the woman was insane. And yet, even though she knew there were no such things, she thought it a pretty sick coincidence that she'd never seen Michael during the day. And his odd reaction to her meal this morning. As if he'd had to force himself to eat it. An the way he could read her mind. And how quickly and silently he managed to move.

And the things he'd said about the antigen creating a bond between them...

Sighing, Mary forced the ridiculous notion from her mind and walked back through the house, peering outside, seeing no one. But it was dimming. It would be dark soon. He'd said he should be back by dark.

Just another coincidence?

h.e.l.l. She would just have to be quick.

She went to his room, took the computer out of its case, booted it up right there on his bed. Seconds ticked by while she waited for it to go through the motions. Then she clicked on the wireless Internet connection b.u.t.ton, and the thing logged on immediately. As fast as her fingers could move, she typed in her online server an brought up her private e-mail account. Then she waited, drumming her fingers, staring at the mailbox icon, waiting, waiting... there! The little flag popped up. She quickly accessed the e-mail, clicked on the paperclip icon and watched as, line by line, a photograph revealed itself on the screen. Hair, the top of a forehead, eyebrows, and finally eyes and the bridge of a nose...

"Oh, my G.o.d..." Line by line, his cheeks, his mouth, his chin. All of Michael's face stared at her from beneath a date policeman's hat. It was a photo ID, with his name and the date underneath. Michael Gray, born 5 February, 1899.

"This can't be..."

"Mary? Hey, Mary, are you here?" he called.

Mary stiffened and lifted her chin. And then his bedroom door opened, and he stood there, staring at her an at the computer. "Mary what's going on?"

Shaking her head slowly from side to side, she said, "I don't know. But I think it's time you told me. Don't you?"

"I don't under-"

He stopped speaking as she turned the computer to face him, so he could see his own face filling the screen.

He didn't know what to say, what to do. If she could only have controlled her curiosity for one more day. But G.o.d, they couldn't deal with all of this-not tonight of all nights. Tonight was the full moon. If she ran from him now...

"I can ex-"

"How?"

He pursed his lips, shook his head. "All right. Look, I really didn't want to get into this so soon. h.e.l.l I didn't want to get into it at all. I don't want to scare you away from me, Mary. I'm not evil. I'm only trying to protect you. You have to believe that."

She got up off the bed, backing up a few steps. He felt as if he were reliving his worst nightmare. "So is that you in the photo?"

He hesitated. "Mary, I'll tell you every thing but first-tell me where you put the gun I gave you."

She frowned, "Michael, what the h.e.l.l does that have to do-"

"Please. Deep down, you trust me. You know me. Just answer the question."

She licked her lips. He knew she was afraid of him, yes, but she trusted him, too.

"It's in the guest room, next to my bed."

"You swear?" He broke his promise, probe her mind to be sure she was telling the truth.

"Yes. Now you answer my question. I that you in the picture?"

"Yes."

"Then you're more than a hundred years old?"

He nodded.

"How can that me, Michael? You don't look a day over thirty." "I shouldn't look a day over twenty-nine. That's how old I was when I was shot."

"By a member of the Capone gang?"

He closed his eyes. "There were two gangs doing the shooting. I got in between them."

He watched her face carefully. There was no sign of panic. No hint of hysteria he'd seen in Sally's face that night. So far.

"Michael, I just got off the phone with some detective agency that told me you might be a... a... G.o.d, I can't even say it."

"Say it," he told her.

She held his eyes with hers. "She said you might be a vampire. Is that what you are, Michael?"

He chose his words with extreme care. "Mary, I'll tell you exactly what I am. I'm the man you see in front of you, the one who's been with you for days now, protecting you from a killer. I'm the an you know inside and out. Nothing about me is different from what you already know. But there are some things about me that you don't know yet.

Things that are unique. The don't make me a freak or a monster or a demon. I'm still me."

She nodded slowly. "Go on."

She wasn't losing it, not yet. "I don't age. If I go out in sunlight, I'll burst into flames. And in order to keep from going stark raving mad or dying of slow starvation, I have to feed on blood. But I don't kill. I never kill. I have never taken a human life.

Never."

She stared at him, then at the door behind him.

"I didn't want to tell you this, Mary. I didn't want to see the fear in your eyes the way I'm seeing it now. I'm not evil. I'm not a monster."

"No, of course not," she said. But in her min she was thinking she had to get away from him. That she couldn't think straight around him, that this was just too much to understand all at once. Humor him, she thought. Just keep him calm and get the h.e.l.l out of here. He heard it all.

"I'm trying to protect you. That's all I'm trying to do."

"And I'm... so grateful" She was only a few feet from the door. He was still by the bed. She was going to lunge fast to get past him.

He lowered his head, sighed, and let her see her chance while he wasn't looking at her. She ran for the door, but he moved, too, a burst of speed so fast that she collided with his chest.

"What? How did you...?" He put his hands on her shoulders, steadying her and also preventing her from backing away. Her mind was reeling, telling her there was no way he could be there.

He hadn't moved.

"Everything I magnified in my kind, Mary. Speed and agility, physical strength and stamina, and all the senses.

She shook her head firmly. "No. I don't believe it. I won't believe it."

"What's the alternative, Mary? That I'm insane? Some kind of deluded madman? Have I done anything up to now to make you question my sanity?"

"Please, let me go. Just let me go, Michael."

Sighing, his heart breaking, he closed his eyes. "I can't let you go. It's the full moon. He's out there."

Great, she thought, so now she had to choose between taking her chances with maniac or facing a killer. Unless...

"Don't. Don't even think it. You know I'm not a murderer."

"How? How could I possibly know that, Michael?" She was shivering now. The fear in her eyes, the hurt an confusion he felt beaming from them, was so real. And so was the caring. She felt so much for him-he could see it clearly in her eyes, in her mind. She didn't know why or how, but he cared about him. Deeply. Even now, after what he had confessed.

"I know," he whispered. "I know, Mary It's the same for me."

She lowered her head. "Stop invading my mind!"

"Shhhh." His hand cupped her cheek, turned her face up to his, and kissed her.

His mouth covered hers, moving, caressing with his lips.

Heat pooled in his groin when her arms slid around his neck. He wrapped his around her waist, pulling her tight against his body, and his tongue parted her lips and explored her mouth. She tasted so good. His hips moved against her, and hers moved in reply. He burned for her, and though it made no sense to her, she wasn't even bothering to deny that she burned for him as well. She wanted him, and she didn't care what he was. His heart soared with that knowledge.

His hands cupped her b.u.t.tocks, holding her even closer. Then he slid one hand up her back, beneath the blouse she wore, skimming her back. No bra strap blocked its path-she wasn't wearing one.

He pushed her legs with his own walking her backward until she hit the bed. He lowered her onto it, breaking the kiss while his hands pushed her blouse up over her head and flung it aside. The laptop slipped off the other side, hitting the floor, and he didn't even look up. His attention was on her breast He bent to nurse at one and used his fingers to attend to the other. She lay there, writhing in response this sucking, the gentle nips and pinches that he made steadily less playful, steadily more forceful. She was moving her head now, from side to side on the mattress. Her body was hot, on fire.

He caught her hands in his, then lifted his head away, pressing her hands to her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, guiding her fingers to her own nipples, and pressing tighter and tighter until she whimpered. Then he slid lower, his mouth working it's way over her waist and belly, this tongue dipping into her navel. He unfastened her jeans and tugged the off. Then he pulled off her panties, as well; his hands parted her thighs, and he kissed her there.

"Michael," she whispered.

"Shhh. Let me make you scream." He pressed her wide open with his thumbs and kissed her again. And then his tongue slider her, teasingly, easily, before finally driving inside. He ravaged her with his mouth, tongue, teeth, driving her to the edge of ecstasy-an then he rose up over her again, naked, though she had no memory of him undressing, and he lowered himself atop her while his hands guided her knees apart.

He slid into her, and a shudder moved through her from head to toe.

She locked her legs around his hips, arms around his shoulders. Her hands ran over his back, and he shivered at her touch. She was beautiful, and wonderful, and she was his. A fierce sense of possession overwhelmed him as he drove her higher. Her nails sank into his flesh as if se would never let him get up. She wanted him, all of him, something more than this physical joining. She told him so with her mind, with her body.

It was a primal need, one that was foreign to her. She could no more identify it than prevent the flood of her climax from washing over her. He could identify it though. He knew what she wanted. It was the same primal instinctive urge that made her arch beneath him, tip her chin straight up and press his head to her throat. And he answered, parting his mouth over the skin there, biting down.

The stab of pain was brief, the ecstasy that followed blinding both of them as he tasted her life and her essence, taking it into him, making them one.

When her mind returned from the stratosphere and her body finally stopped shuddering with aftershocks, Mary found herself lying naked in Michael's bed, held in his arms, her head pillowed by his shoulder and chest, while one of his hands rubbed lazy circles over her back. Gradually she realized he was speaking to her, his voice soft and somewhat coa.r.s.e.

"I'll never hurt you No one else will, either, I promise you that. I'll die before I'll let anyone harm you. Know that, Mary. You have to know that."

She blinked slowly out of her state of bliss and careful stock. She was in bed with Michael. He had just confessed to being a vampire, a theory that both the investigation agency and the local cop had apparently found to be perfectly believable.

He could move so fast that her eyes couldn't follow the progress. He could read her mind. And she thought he might have bitten her neck.

Frowning, she lift a hand to touch her neck. She felt two tender spots in her skin.

Was it possible, she wondered, that she had just had s.e.x with a vampire? Did she even care? She loved this man. He was still talking, rubbing her and whispering a.s.surances of his devotion. "I knew the blood, the antigen, connected us, but it's more than that. I swear it's more than that. I've never felt this drawn to anyone. Not ever. Belladonna antigen or not."

She blinked and lifted her head. "Michael, explain to me how this... this antigen connects me to you."

He met her eyes, his own seeming disappointed. And no wonder. She hadn't exactly responded to his pillow talk in kind. And he must be honoring her request that he stop reading her thoughts again, or he would have known what she was thinking. It was odd, but she was getting to the point where she could sense him when he was probing around inside her mind; it was almost visceral. But she didn't feel it then.

"Every vampire was once a mortal with the belladonna antigen," he told her.

She frowned. "So a person without the antigen...?"

"Can never become a vampire. Those with it have the choice. I was given that choice as I lay dying in a hospital bed, riddled with bullets, all those years ago. I chose life."

'And... how does one become a vampire?"

He stroked her hair away from her face. "Another vampire has to transform you.

He would first drain the blood, and then-"

"Drain the blood," she repeated, going cold all over.

"It isn't as frightening as it sounds."

"Perhaps not, but it was exactly the way the other women, all of whom shared the antigen, had been killed. By being drained of their blood. G.o.d, she felt as if she were being torn in half. How could she be so in love with him and yet so afraid of him? His power made him dangerous. But not to her. G.o.d, he could never be a danger to her.

"You shouldn't think about that, Mary. It's not something you need to even consider. Not now. You're strong, healthy. You will be for a long time yet."

"I hope you're right about that."

"I intend to make sure of it. It's the first night of the full moon," he told her. "And I plan to hold you close in my arms, safe and protected, until sunrise."

There was nothing she could do-and nothing she wanted to do more than spend the night in his arms. Her questions could wait.