The last time I'd kissed that face it had been ashen, dirt-smeared, streaked with blood and my tears. The last time I'd held that dear body in my arms, life and warmth had seeped away.

The last time I'd seen her, she was dead.

Great gulps of cool autumn air revived me a bit. The dizziness subsided, and common sense got a foothold. I'd been mistaken, addled by smoke and old grief and going far too long without the pleasures of the flesh. Maybe the name, as well, far too close to the one I remembered. That painted, seductive, brazen wh.o.r.e looked nothing like Jessabel. Not my Jess. My Jess, who was gone forever. I knew that.

I was only too well acquainted with death. I knew it when I saw it, and all the savage ways war could rip the soul out of the body. War, and its aftermath. Jess and I had been together since Vicksburg, when I'd found her huddling in a farmer's root cellar, gray uniform in such tatters that it scarcely hid her private parts. She'd been running away not just from capture but from something else she could never bring herself to speak of. I'd scrounged her a blue uniform small enough to fit, and watched over her for the last two years of the War, only to lose her to a looter's bullet before we could start west to make a real life for ourselves.

"Cap'n?" Old Bill poked his head out. "You okay?"

"I'll be right fine in a minute or two. Town crowds take some getting used to when a fellow's been up in the mountains so long."

"I s'pose that's so," Bill said doubtfully.

I fished out a coin from my pocket and sent it spinning. He forgot anything else in the catching of it. "You go on and order that drink," I said, "and if you've downed it before I get to the bar, I'll just be obliged to buy you another one to go with mine."

Bill knew well enough that I'd be good for three or four drinks anyway, but he headed right back inside to get an early start. The old fellow was my habitual bridge to human society on my twice yearly expeditions out of the mountains. In the spring I'd be bringing in the fruits of my trap lines to the fur traders, and in the autumn I'd stock up on whatever winter needs my gun wouldn't supply.

Either way, my horse and mule would get put up at the livery stable where Bill worked, and Bill would fill me in on whatever versions of world and local news were being bandied about. It gave me a chance to get accustomed to another human voice without having to exercise my own too much all at once. He'd always taken me at face value, too, never questioning the shabby Union captain's uniform I'd ridden in with three years ago, and neither had anybody else.

The Union part was right enough, and I'd worn a uniform throughout the war, as had a fair number of other females I'd encountered or heard tell of besides Jess, but the clothes I'd worn at the last had come from an officer who would never need them again. Leather and fur and two new flannel shirts a year suited me better now.

Bill's big news this time had been the new girl at the Hard Ride Saloon. The girl who-I got a firm grip on my wandering mind. She wasn't Jess. And she wasn't for me. The tawdry regulars at the Hard Ride were good enough old girls, but I'd never yet trusted one of them with my personal-eccentricities, and I wasn't about to start now with a flashy stranger who'd look more at home in New Orleans or San Francisco.

As I pushed through the saloon door I did, however, wish fleetingly that I'd bought my semiannual new shirt already, and gone to the trouble of visiting the local bathhouse out behind the barber shop.

At the bar I ordered a whiskey, gestured for Bill's gla.s.s to be refilled, and only then turned, leaned back, and viewed the room as a whole. Or tried to, but somehow the scarlet woman in emerald green drew the eye, as if all the light shone particularly on her, or even from her. It wasn't just me, either. Seemed like every man in the house was watching and panting after her, and those card players whose chairs faced the wrong way were continually hitching themselves around to steal a look. If I could have looked away myself I'd have considered playing some poker just to take advantage of the general befuddlement and inattention to serious business.

Bill wiped his sleeve across his mouth, ready to take a short pause from knocking back his liquor. "See? Ain't she a corker, just like I said? I s'pose she'll move on soon's she's emptied the pockets 'round here and wore out a few more big spenders."

"A few more?" The man with her was perspiring, but hardly looked worn out. More like pumped up fit to burst, which was entirely understandable. Her dress was so fancy and fine a fellow might be afraid to touch it, but the way her body moved roused a powerful urge to rip her clothing right off. I was in as bad a case as any, but in my own way, with damp heat throbbing between my thighs and a maddening pressure building in my bound b.r.e.a.s.t.s.

"Yes indeed, she's had more'n one stumblin' around like a winded horse after a night with her. Old Dunlap at the bank was so bad his heart near stopped, and he ain't even been able to speak a word since. But he'd been sickly for quite a while, and should have known better, the old sot."

Maybe she felt our attention on her, maybe it was just by chance, but suddenly, as the piano player paused to mop his brow and the dance music stopped, her eyes looked right straight into mine. Great gray eyes with long lashes needing no artifice to darken them. Eyes that knew me.

The light in them flickered. Her practiced smile froze. This time I was stunned instead of dizzy, and before I could move, she tugged her partner toward the staircase. In his eagerness he came near to carrying her up to the gallery above, while she clung to him and hid her face in his shoulder.

Rage, l.u.s.t, and an eerie horror filled me, each so strong it didn't seem possible one heart and mind could hold any of them. I surged forward, staring upward. My breath caught when she looked down at me for a mere instant, and in that heartbeat I saw my Jess as I'd so often seen her-pale, hungry, brave in the face of danger, hair cropped like a boy's, lovely gray eyes aglow with love-and then there was only a glimpse of chestnut curls and emerald silk. Then she was gone.

"Cap'n!" Bill was clinging to my belt. I was halfway up the stairs, in such a daze I didn't recall getting there. Other, stronger hands tugged at me, the saloon owners' hired bully boys. I'd have taken them on one at a time, being as tall as the average man and about as hefty, but I had just enough sense left not to tackle a crowd, or be tackled by one.

"Hold your horses, chum," one of them said amiably enough. "Go sleep it off. Maybe you'll get lucky tomorrow, if you've got the cash. Her Highness don't take but one beau a night."

I subsided, and let myself be pushed out the door. Bill still hung close by, so I waved him off and said I needed time to clear my head, and would move along to my bed in the boarding house soon.

"I was sure enough right, wasn't I just?" he said in parting. "That fancy filly is really something! Something else!"

Oh G.o.d, yes, I thought. Something else, But what?

I had to know. And whatever the explanation, or whatever-whatever she'd become, I had to see Jess again.

In the narrow alley behind the saloon I moved along stealthily, listening, trying to make out which upper room held Jess and her customer. A forced giggle through the first window was clearly from one of the other girls. On the far end, though, sounds so urgent and guttural they made my innards clench struck me like a brutal blow. They were hard at it. Jess's soft, high moans that I remembered so well could be heard in between the man's deep grunts of extremity. When those finally tapered off I could still hear Jess, her cries oddly muted now, as if her mouth were pressed to him.

I was in such a state of heat that I could have rubbed myself off right there, but my need to get to Jess was even greater. The alley was so narrow here that the low shed in back was scarcely more than an arm's reach from the window, so I hoisted myself onto its roof and looked across.

The light of an oil lamp showed Jess's bowed head as she knelt beside the bed, and just a glimpse of the now-quiet man. By the tremor of her naked back and shoulders she seemed to be sobbing, whether in grief or pleasure, but at that moment I didn't care which. I just hungered to feel her touch on me, her mouth crushing down hard where my pounding need was so intense it burned, her fingers squeezing into flesh demanding to be unbound, her rounded b.u.t.tocks filling my hands.

Then she raised her head, and I saw her wipe a trickle of blood from the corner of her mouth. The brute had hit her! She saw me at just the same time, sprang up, and threw open the window. "Oh G.o.d, Lou...help me!"

I was through and into the room so fast I had no time to think about it. The man on the bed didn't stir. What help did she need, whoever-whatever-she was now?

"Lou!" Jess's eyes had a strange, glazed look, and she scrabbled at the lacings of the tight corset she still wore. "Lou, please!"

I got right at the garment, tearing and peeling, looking for injuries, but her body beneath was unmarked by anything beyond the normal lines and creases such fashionable instruments of torture impart. Before I could halfway finish Jess kept interfering, grasping at my hands, trying to press them to her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, her belly, and the hot sweet cleft below.

"Touch me, d.a.m.n it! f.u.c.k me!" Her voice was rough with urgency. "He was so...such hot blood...so full..."

I tried to stop her talk with a kiss, but her head jerked sideways, so I dropped my head to her b.r.e.a.s.t.s and sucked fiercely at one extended nipple, then the other. That did the trick, and I managed to finish stripping her, hard though it was with her demanding thrusts and whimpers and the swelling of her flesh against my tongue.

When I was finally free to get at her skin, she writhed and panted and seemed to demand everything at once, pulling my hands here and there and here again, grabbing at her own tender bits when I clutched at her elsewhere, until I tore off my shirt, yanked up the bindings of my b.r.e.a.s.t.s, and held her so tightly against me she could scarcely move.

"Hold still so's I can get at you!" I was in a frenzy of l.u.s.t myself by then, with her wriggles against my own nipples coming near to undoing me, but I pushed her back against the wall, got my fingers between us and right into the wet heat of her center, and gave her what she needed with the sure, hard strokes that had always driven her to glory. She got there right away, riding the peak hard and long, gasping and crying out until she had no breath left, but still clenching me inside her fit to bruise. I began to fear she'd faint from it.

She slumped finally enough for me to reclaim my hand. Then she rested her head against my breast, which of course kept my flesh perked right up. I figured she was too wrung out to give me a turn yet, and wasn't sure how I could bear it. But after a moment she twisted out of my grip, dragged me toward the bed with a strength she'd never shown before, and heaved at the sheets until the man lying there tumbled to the floor on the other side. He still didn't stir. I didn't look close for fear of what I wasn't prepared to see, not while Jess was pulling at my belt and pushing me onto the mattress.

I got my turn, right enough, but in s.n.a.t.c.hes between Jess's fits of renewed desire. She rubbed her body all over mine, took a goodly expanse of breast into her mouth, tweaked my imploring c.l.i.t between her fingers, then got distracted by the need to grind herself against my hip or belly or rump until she exploded again. And again. And again. I was streaked all over with her juices. She was insatiable, beyond thought or pleading. I was in such a fury of l.u.s.t myself that it didn't take much to set me off, and when she rode my thigh with her knee pressed tight into my crotch, or when I could hold her right over me so her writhings. .h.i.t in just the necessary spot, I went off like firecrackers too, more times than I'd ever done before.

Finally Jess slowed enough that I could hold her face steady down where I needed it most, and once her tongue got a taste of my flow, she set to working me in steady strokes that got me riding a long, rolling wave of pleasure that ended only when my breath and voice gave out.

She hitched herself up beside me at last and clung tight, her face hidden between my neck and shoulder. "Lou," she murmured, "I don't want to hurt you. Don't ever let me hurt you."

I stroked her long tangled curls, new to me even though the texture and scent of her hair had been imprinted in my heart long ago. "I've never minded any hurt from you before."

"Things are different now. So different..." Her tears were hot against my throat.

"I know." Just as I knew that Jess had been dead, and was now alive. And that the man on the floor was dead, permanently. Back in Connecticut, when they talked of vampires, nothing like Jess came to mind, but there must be some ancient truth behind such stories. "You'd better tell me about it later. You need to get away from here before they find him on the floor. I'll be right along, but it's best they don't connect us. Too many here have a general notion of where I hole up in the winter."

So I lowered Jess from the window, and she disappeared into the shadows, wrapped in a dingy blanket. Twelve hours later I was on my way, mule and horse loaded with sacks of cornmeal and bacon and ammunition and all such winter supplies. Three miles down the trail I paused to water my critters where a tangle of brush rimmed a small creek, and when we resumed our travel, Jess was perched in front of me. My old Jess, in boy's clothes stolen from some laundry yard and chestnut hair chopped short and ragged-yet not the old Jess.

"Back in town they're using that word," I told her, not quite wanting to say it myself. "The doctor says the fellow's blood was drained so low he couldn't live."

"Vampire, that's the word. Might as well call it that. The old woman that raised me did, said I had the taint, though there was no way to tell how it might turn out. That's all I know. Never knew any family. Never felt any difference, nor special powers, nor...nor needs, not until I was dead-and then I wasn't dead."

I held my arm tighter around her middle. "How does it work? Does it pa.s.s on to...to whoever?" For a moment I wondered whether Jess's blood would taste different now than when I'd kissed the streaks on her face as she'd died.

"Not that I've noticed yet. Not from just once, anyway. That fellow last night, well, I went too far. I didn't mean to. But I was distracted on account of seeing you, and wild to get filled up before you got to me so I wouldn't need to, well, hurt you."

I pondered that for a while. "How often do you...well, how often do you need it?"

"Depends on a lot of things. I can get by with animals, but it's not the same. Even with folks it's not always the same. After that old banker, I felt near as bad as he did, but that fellow last night, so pumped up with lechery, well, that was really something."

"Sure was." I savored the recollection. "Anything else I should know?"

"Plenty I should know myself but don't. I'm working my way west, hoping maybe in San Francisco there's some like me I can learn from."

"Time enough for that when winter's past. The mountain pa.s.ses are already getting snow. We'll manage fine in my cabin."

Jess didn't object, just settled more comfortably against me. We'd manage with the critters I shot for food. If it came to it, I knew where a she-bear denned for her winter's sleep, and if her blood made Jess sleepy too in the dead of winter, that might be just as well. Any time my own blood rose, I was pretty sure I could get Jess to indulge enough to get her going. The thought of her teeth sinking into my neck, or my breast, or my belly, got me shifting in the saddle already.

She wouldn't go on to San Francisco alone, either. If it suited her to be Jessabel there, in fine silks and corsets, well, I could handle that, and even put on fine gent's togs to match. Didn't matter who or what she was to anybody else. Our bond held. She'd always be my Jess.

Although I did wonder just how long "always" might turn out to be.

Strange Bedfellows Moondancer Drake Akasha settled her children down on the soft pink sheet that hid the ugly flaws of the old mattress. She covered them with a matching comforter and was once again thankful the linens were one of the few things they'd been able to salvage from their old life. She was able to provide them so little comfort, but at least they had a warm bed to sleep in. A battery-powered lantern cast dancing shadows around the small bedroom, giving the peeling wallpaper a sinister appearance. Peach blossoms on a tan background had long ago faded to a dingy blur beside tattered lace curtains. This was not a happy place for her little family, but it was all they had.

"Mama, I'm hungry," her youngest, Lili, said, the five-year-old's chin resting atop the comforter. Her face was drawn, her b.u.t.ter-cream skin looking even paler than usual in the harsh light.

"Soon, poppet." Akasha patted her daughter's cheek. She knew the truth as she read the signs of it in her children's faces. The human food could only nourish them for so long. They would need blood soon, or would waste away before her eyes. Three years older, Wei did his best to stay strong for his little sister, but the helpless look in her son's eyes told Akasha he knew the danger of their situation as well as she.

She kissed her children's foreheads and dimmed the electric lantern. She had to find them blood tonight, but how? Since they had left her children's father's house, she'd had no contact with other Sacrosanct. She didn't dare. Maxwell was far too high up in the vampire power structure for her to risk exposing them. They were on their own. If her children were to survive, she had to find another way.

Should she kill someone? Akasha wondered. Surely there were those who deserved death as much as her family deserved life? No. Even if she could bring herself to take a human's life, she had little strength for fighting. Much like her children, she was slowly wasting away, proof of Maxwell's promise that they would never survive without him.

Akasha closed the bedroom door and walked into what had once been a family's living room, but was now where she slept. Another lantern glowed on a scratched-up coffee table she had rescued from the curb a few weeks ago. The furniture in the one-bedroom apartment had either been left behind by the last tenants or scavenged by her. The building had long since been abandoned by the rental company who owned it and the dark secrets hidden within the walls seemed to whisper throughout the chilly apartment.

Choosing one of the central apartments had been a case of necessity. The lack of windows meant poor ventilation, but also protected them from the effects of the sun. Without regular feedings of blood to protect them from the UV, the sun, while not fatal to her kind, could be uncomfortable to bear even in small doses. Now as she stared at the threadbare brown couch and stained floor rug she found herself wishing for even a small window to allow natural light to breathe life into the dismal place.

Akasha pulled her coat from the hook by the door and wrapped it around herself. One way or another, she'd find blood tonight. Carrying with her the guilt of leaving her children alone on the apartment, Akasha locked the door and made her way down the hall and out the back door. Icy wind hit her face and she pulled the coat tighter around her. Once she had fed, the cold would cease to affect her, but for now it p.r.i.c.ked her face and hands like thousands of tiny needles.

The snow crunched under her feet as she made her way down Wells Street. The wind swirled the loose snow like a painter's brush across an expanse of canvas, the white powder making everything else around it look even more dingy and forlorn. The city was like a dying creature; she could feel its slow death in everyone and everything trapped within its borders. Only the most desperate humans would be walking these streets after the witching hour. The harsh weather would make her job tonight more difficult.

As if they could smell death walking amongst them, humans huddled together in back alleys and in stairwells. For hours she searched. Akasha didn't dare try to take on more than one of them at a time in her weakened state, but if she didn't find prey soon, she would have to turn back. She couldn't bear the looks on her children's faces if she failed them again.

Akasha turned down a street she'd not explored before, and several blocks ahead she saw a white building with blue gla.s.s. More than five stories of magnificence glittered silver from the moon above, and her pace quickened. The answers lay here; somehow she knew it with every part of her being. Akasha blew into her cupped fingers and broke into a run. This was it. This had to be it. White letters under what looked like a yellow flower blurred in the distance and cleared as she drew close enough to read them.

Blood Center Exhausted from the run and full of excitement she bent over in front of the sign and fought to catch her breath. Worry crept in as she wondered how to get into the building to retrieve the prize she sought. A place like this would have security, and with other vampires in the city, she expected formidable security at that.

No. She wouldn't give up now. Before she'd met Maxwell she'd worked doing home security for some of the corporations in Chicago and Milwaukee. In fact, much to her misfortune, that was how she and Maxwell first met. Surely there was something from that time of her life she could draw upon to get her though the Center's systems without attracting too much attention?

She made her way around the building, watchful for any cameras or visible sensors. There was a camera above the delivery door in back, and a light that flickered manically. Her night vision was c.r.a.p until she fed, so there was no hope of taking out the light to fool whoever was watching the monitors. Best she could hope for was a lazy guard, or sheer luck.

To her surprise the lock had already been broken, and when she touched the metal door, it swung open with no resistance. The light flickered on again, and she noticed the cord to the camera was cut, sparking every so often from the severed connection. Someone had gotten here before her; recently, by the looks of it. But she could barely take on a human, much less one of her own kind, should it come to a fight.

Akasha's thoughts went back to her children and the image of their faces strengthened her resolve. She pushed open the door and slipped inside, silently closing the door behind her. The hall was empty, but the scent of copper and sweat permeated the air. She let her hunger lead her on, down the silent halls and past the darkened offices. The smell of blood grew stronger and Akasha continued down a side hall toward the scent. A door was partially ajar, enough to reveal light coming from inside, but nothing else.

She crept closer and peered though the hand-width of a crack. Inside she could see a person on the floor, dressed in black from a crumpled hat down to a pair of thick-soled boots. Blood covered the white tile floor all around, seeping from under the body. Akasha swallowed a gasp. A few feet away, back to the door, was what could have been a human, except for the abundance of silver fur that covered every inch of skin.

The figure turned, and the claw that tipped its finger glittered in the fluorescent light. Yellow eyes sparkled with malice or hunger-Akasha wasn't sure she wanted to know which-and a low snarl revealed sharp teeth in a long, threatening muzzle.

This was Clan, a shifter. Of all the enemies of her people, none was more fierce or more feared. Having one of the Clan here meant only one thing. She'd never live to return to her children.

The Wolfen woman sniffed the air. "More of you, I see. Good. Save me the trouble of hunting you down." The words came out in slurred growls, but their meaning was clear enough.

"I'm not with that one." Akasha pointed to the body on the floor. "I only came here for food. I'm not looking for trouble."

"You found trouble anyway." Her lips curled upward in a twisted smile. "Your kind is all alike. Parasites. You don't care that there are humans dying, in need of the blood this place collects. The people didn't give of their life's blood to feed creatures like you."

"It's not just for me." Akasha wanted to run, but just beyond the shifter she saw the silvery double doors. The blood she needed, her family's last chance, lay just beyond those doors, she was sure of it. "My children, they're starving. I don't need a lot, just enough to feed us for a few weeks until we find a new place."

The shifter spat on the floor. "Leave it to your kind to infect innocent children. Let them die. They're better off that way."

"How dare you!" The rage burst through her weakened resources before she could stop the words. "I carried my children in my womb just as your mother carried you in hers. We are no different, your people or mine, in the love for our children. You know nothing of my people!"

For a moment the Clan woman seemed caught off guard as confusion softened her steely gaze. Then the cold look returned. "You lie. You have no children. You just want me to let you have the blood. Like h.e.l.l."

"I don't lie." Akasha reined in her anger. She'd done it, touched something past the hate and beast mind. Could she do it again? "If I don't return with the blood tonight, my children will die."

Uncertainty danced in those yellow eyes, this time for a moment longer than before. "Prove it."

"What?" It was Akasha's turn to be confused.

"Prove these children of your exist. Take me to them."

"You must be mad." Akasha shook her head. "Take someone who wants my people all dead to visit my blood-starved children? What mother would do something like that?"

"A mother who wants the blood she planned to steal." The woman pointed to the double doors and slowly the silver fur on her outstretched arm gave way to hazelnut skin. She wore a black uniform with a silver shield on the arm. It seemed Akasha had found the Center's security after all. "I will gather some for you now, even take it to your home, but before you see a drop of it you will show me these children you claim to have."

"I can't," Misery choked Akasha's words. She couldn't risk her children's safety, but her children would never survive without the blood that lay just a few feet away.

"I won't hurt them." The tone was soft, gentle, no longer a harsh growl. Where a beast had once been, a woman now stood, her skin a warm golden brown. Her tightly curled hair held the same silvery sheen as the fur, but her face showed only hints of age at the corners of her brown eyes. "I give you my word."

Her word? Spiteful laughter tingled at the tip of Akasha's tongue, before memories soothed her anger. Before Maxwell's mother died, before everything went horribly wrong, she'd once told Akasha stories about a time when the Clan and the Sacrosanct walked their path together. Madam Annette had respected the Clan for their honor as warriors and loyalty to kin. Even now, as Akasha meet those wild eyes, she hoped n.o.bility and trustworthiness was what she saw in them.

"I'll take you," Akasha said. "It's not far."

"You have a car?"

Akasha shook her head. "I walked here."

The Clan woman nodded. "I'll follow you on my bike. Just wait here. I'll get my end of the bargain now." She grabbed a large cooler from cabinet and made her way to the freezer. Rows and rows of crimson packages paled with condensation lay beyond the doors, small labels marking each precious one. The woman picked a few from each section and loaded them into the cooler.

The door closed with a click and the woman pointed to the outer door. "You lead."

Akasha glanced down at the dead vampire and shuddered. Was she being a trusting fool as she had been with Maxwell? Would she and her children end up like that? Either way their choices seemed few. Dead was dead, whether at an enemy's hand or slowly from starvation. "What about the body?"

"My pack will clean up the mess when I go. No sense in them seeing you here. My pack leader is far less personable than I. My partner will cover for me while we take care of our deal."

How comforting, Akasha thought. She led the shifter back out the delivery door. The woman motioned toward a black Roadster parked in the back lot Akasha hadn't noticed when coming in. Akasha was seriously off her game to have missed a beauty of a ride like that. Once the cooler was strapped safely to the cargo platform of the bike, she motioned to Akasha to go on ahead.