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Embrace The Twilight
Maggie Shayne


Mills & Boon Silhouette
Her beauty is spellbinding. Her hunger is insatiable. Her power is immortal.A creature of the night, Sarafina lives only for pleasure, but love is an emotion she has deemed forbidden. Experience has taught her that love leads only to betrayal and pain, and she wants no more of pain. She cares for no one, tolerating only the presence of those she can control utterly. With her powers, she is convinced she can break anyone.Willem Stone cannot be broken. He is a challenge Sarafina cannot resist–a man as boldly alive as she is, a man with a will of iron, yet a mere mortal. And the only thing stronger than the clash of their wills is the power of their desire.But when vampire hunters take Amber Lily, the only child ever born to a vampire, Sarafina and Willem must put their struggle aside and combine their strengths in a rescue attempt that could cost them their very lives. And in the process, they find the most powerful force of all: love.









Embrace the Twilight

Maggie Shayne





www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)


To Christine Norris, just because.




Contents


Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23




1


T he gorgio dropped three pieces of silver into the woman’s palm. It was a beautiful palm, a beautiful hand, Will noticed as she closed it into a fist. Dark and slender, but strong, not fragile looking, as slender hands tended to be. She wore rings on every finger, and gold and silver bangles on her wrists, which made tinkling music every time she moved.

“Thank you,” she told the pale-skinned man. “When the predictions come true, tell your friends. And be sure they ask for Sarafina when they come.”

He backed away, nodding, thanking her profusely, but never turning his back on her all the way out. As soon as his feet touched the ground outside her wagon-tent, he crossed himself and ran away.

The gorgios might deny it, Sarafina thought, but they were every bit as superstitious as the Gypsies. Will thought it was odd that he could hear what she was thinking as well as what she said aloud. It was almost as if he had retreated into her mind to escape the pain, instead of his own.

But he was distracted from the odd notion by her smile. She smiled slowly, and it transformed her face from dark and sullen and exotic to something of sheer, glowing beauty. He loved her. Everything about her, from her smooth olive-bronze skin to the masses of raven hair curling wildly over her back and shoulders. He loved her lips, how full they were, how ripe. He loved her eyes, gleaming onyx gemstones, set very wide beneath heavy brows most women would pluck down to nothing.

She tucked the coins into the heavy drawstring pouch that dangled from one of the colorful sashes at her waist. “Ten already this week,” she whispered, as she leaned over the table to drop a black silk scarf over the crystal globe that held court in its center. The “table” was an upturned wooden crate covered in more silk scarves, as was the chair. The chair on the other side of the table, the one for the customers, was also a crate, but an undressed one. She wasn’t about to have one of them sitting on her silk.

Andre. She was thinking of Andre now.

It gave Will a bitter pang to realize it, to feel the little leap of her heart when she thought of the man, but he stayed with her all the same, like a shadow hidden within her own. She left the tent, her strong, bare feet padding down the fold-up steps of the wagon, then pressing onto the cool brown earth as she crossed the camp. Will loved tagging along when she went outside, because the camp was such a fascinating sight; concentric circles of painted wagons and tents, and odd combinations of the two. Bells and prisms hung from most of them. At the center was a communal fire, though many smaller ones burned here and there. The center was where people met. There was often music, dancing. The women in their brightly colored skirts, with their countless scarves trailing them like comet tails as they whirled. The men with their tight-fitting trousers, and red and gold vests. The musicians with their violins and tambourines and pipes.

They were a beautiful, vibrant people, these Gypsies. He didn’t know where they were. He was uncertain when they were. Not that it mattered, since they were mere figments of his imagination.

Too vivid, too detailed, to be real.

Many greeted Sarafina as she passed. The younger ones bowed respectfully, while the elders looked upon her as an equal. She was spectacular, walking with her head high and her hips swaying, proud of who she was.

She was a gifted seer, and she used that gift to bring wealth to the tribe. That earned her the honor and respect of the group, just as it did her far less worthy sister. But Will worried about the woman. Lately, she’d been feeling poorly, and her gifts of prophecy refused to tell her why.

The fire in the center of the camp jumped and danced, yellow-orange flames spreading a pool of light in the midst of the pitch-black ocean of night. The wood smoke smelled good, warm and tangy and familiar. Many of the people had gathered around the fire that night, listening as the old ones told tales. Stories of adventures and the misdeeds of their youth brought gasps and then laughter from those gathered around to hear.

Sarafina loved these people. They were her family, and family was all that mattered to her. And they loved her in return. Except, of course, for her sister. Katerina was her own blood, but she had hated her sister from the moment Sarafina had drawn her first breath. Sarafina liked to pretend the feeling was mutual.

It wasn’t. Her sister’s hatred ate at her like a cancer.

Katerina’s vardo stood on the opposite side of the camp from Sarafina’s, as was always the case wherever the tribe made camp. As Sarafina approached it, leaving the light of the fire far behind, a dark form emerged from the wagon, turned and hurried away into the shadows. A man, Will thought, but he was gone before giving either of them more than a brief glance.

Sarafina stepped up and reached for the door flap, and the bells attached to it tinkled as she drew it open and stepped inside.

Her sister looked up at her with an expectant smile that turned to a grimace the moment she saw who it was. They were so different, the two of them. Katerina’s black hair was long and perfectly straight. Her eyes were small, close set and round. They looked like cold pebbles. Shark’s eyes.

“Did you think your lover had returned, Katerina?” Sarafina asked with an edge in her voice. “So sorry to disappoint you.”

“You’ve done nothing but disappoint me from the day our mother died giving birth to you, little sister. Why begin apologizing for it now?”

The words stung. Will could feel Sarafina’s pain as acutely as she herself felt it. But her heart had toughened and formed calluses over the years, thanks to her sister’s constant attacks. It didn’t hurt as much as it would have once.

Smiling, Fina lifted her coin pouch in her palm, bouncing it slightly so the coins inside jangled. “Ten gorgios have come to see me this week. Ten, Katerina. Twice as many as have sought you out for divination.”

Her sister shrugged. “Your wagon is nearer the road than mine.”

“They ask for me by name,” Sarafina countered. “They come to me because I am the most skilled seer in this camp, and because word of my abilities has spread throughout the town. I’ll have still more of them crossing my palm with silver next week. And I predict you’ll have even fewer.”

“Bah! By the week after that, when not one of your false predictions has come to pass, they’ll see that your only talent lies in deception, and they’ll begin seeking my counsel instead.” Katerina tossed her hair. “We both know the truth. Not only am I the more gifted diviner, I am the rightful Shuvani of this tribe, Sarafina.”

Will cringed inwardly when he heard that, knowing there was not much that could make Sarafina angrier. No one got away with calling her gift into question, much less questioning her status as one of the tribe’s two wise women. Most tribes had only one. There was no question that this tribe would have had only one, as well, had Sarafina been firstborn.

“Thanks to your false predictions, the whites will likely brand all Gypsies liars and cheats,” Katerina went on. “And we’ll be forced to move on, because of you, yet again.”

“My predictions are not lies! I am a far better seer than you, and you know it.”

“Not so great a seer, I think. Or you would know the identity of the man who just left my vardo. ”

The words were a blow that knocked the very breath out of Sarafina’s chest. She looked around her sister’s tented wagon, even as Will whispered to her to be calm, to resist rising to her sister’s bait. But he knew she couldn’t hear him. She never could.

The sleeping pallet was untidy, the blankets upon it rumpled and askew. The table in the corner, not a crate like Sarafina’s, but a real table that had belonged to their mother, held no crystal, no cards, but a blazing oil lamp, two tin cups and a wine jug lying, uncorked, on its side.

Katerina’s soft laughter brought her sister’s head around fast.

“He’s far too good for you, you know. But he knows now that a real woman desires him.”

“Are you saying it was Andre I saw creeping away from here as I approached?”

Will thought that if Katerina valued her life, she would deny it.

“Of course it was Andre. He’s the handsomest, the strongest, the wealthiest man in the camp. I couldn’t very well let you have him.”

“ Bi lacho bitch!” Fina shrieked the words even as she lunged forward. She brought her hand across her sister’s face, nails slashing her cheek.

Katerina didn’t even pause to give note to the pain. She lurched forward, eyes blazing, arms flailing. The two collided, tumbled to the floor and rolled in a tangle of skirts and scarves, ring bedecked hands and bangled arms. They hit the table, and it tipped over. The oil lamp shattered, and the oil spread in a pool of blue flame. Panic rose in Will’s chest as they pummeled and bit and clawed each other, both of them shrieking.

Will tried to shout a warning. He focused everything in him on Sarafina and on shouting one word. Fire!

Sarafina shoved her sister off her in one mighty thrust, looking around as if she’d heard something. Will realized, though, that a crowd had gathered outside the tent, probably drawn by the commotion of the fight. They were shouting at her, too. He had no way of knowing which voice she had heard. It didn’t matter-not now. He saw her face change as she realized the entire wagon was ablaze.

“Look what you’ve done!” Katerina screamed. “We’ll burn alive because of you!”

Sarafina looked for a way out, but the fire was licking at the sides of the tent all around them. Then, suddenly, someone plunged in through the flames. A form, swathed in blankets. He dropped his makeshift cloak. It was Andre, his dark eyes blazing.

“Wrap yourselves in blankets,” he ordered. “Quickly!”

Both women hastened to obey, as Andre grabbed the water vessel from near Katerina’s bed and doused them with it. Then he retrieved his own blanket from the floor. “Run, right through here,” he said, pointing. “You must run as fast as you can. If you hesitate, you will die.” He gathered Katerina in his left arm, Sarafina in his right. Will braced himself, all but holding his breath. “Now!” Andre shouted.

Sarafina closed her eyes and plunged into the wall of fire. There was searing heat on her face and on her feet, but only briefly. An instant of torture, and then she was falling to the cool earth.

She landed hard. Wrestling free of the dampened blanket, she sat up, the fire blazing behind her. Will was nearly limp with relief that she was all right.

Most of the tribe surrounded her, looking down at her and her sister, who had landed close beside her, in stark disapproval as the flames lit their soot-streaked faces. Will knew that Sarafina’s dignity was deeply wounded, as was, perhaps, her standing with the tribe.

“It was all her!” Katerina shouted, scrambling to her feet. “She accused me of trying to steal her man and attacked me. By the Gods, all I have is gone!” she cried, waving a helpless arm at the leaping flames.

People gasped, muttered, shook their heads in pity as Katerina’s tent and her every possession burned to cinders before their eyes.

“She lies,” Sarafina said. “It was she who began this. I only finished it.”

Andre bent to help her to her feet, pausing a moment to study her face, then pulling her close to him. His arms went around her, holding her intimately, tightly. Will writhed with jealousy.

“Oh, Sarafina, tell me you don’t believe that I could be tempted to another. It’s you I love. You I’ll take as wife. No one else.”

Sarafina stared at him, and she suddenly understood that her sister had lied to her. Katerina was only trying to plant seeds of doubt that would grow to destroy the love she and Andre shared, she told herself. Someone had crept away from Katerina’s vardo tonight, but it hadn’t been Andre.

Will shook his head slowly, whispering in his mind, in her mind, “Oh, Sarafina, don’t be such a fool.”

Sarafina glared at her sister in triumph, but then she went still at the look Katerina returned. It was cold, steely and deadly.

Before she could begin to understand what that look might mean, there was a horrifying scream that rent the night from somewhere beyond the camp. Everyone went stiff and still for one brief moment, as if the sound had turned them all to stone.

“No. For the love of Devel, not again,” someone whispered. Will thought it was Gervaise, the reigning chieftain of the tribe. He didn’t know what Gervaise meant and wondered if he was about to find out.

But before he could learn anything further, he was shocked out of the fantasy by the sensation of his lungs slowly filling with ice water.



A hand clasped him by his hair and jerked his head out of the tub of frigid water. Will dragged in a desperate, hungry breath, before that hand shoved his head into the tub again, holding him under.

His hands were bound together behind his back, his legs bound at the ankles. His body screamed with pain, pain he had managed to escape only moments before. But all that dulled beside the stabbing need in his lungs as they spasmed in search of air. Small red explosions danced behind his tightly closed eyes. He was going to pass out, and then he would drown.

The hand jerked him out of the water again, and even as Will sucked in greedy, noisy breaths, slammed him down into a small, ladder-back chair.

Water ran from his hair and face, soaking his ragged, filthy shirt.

A bearded man wearing a spotless white headdress lifted Will’s chin and stared down at him, then spoke to one of the guards, using one of the tribal dialects in which Will was fluent, though he had managed to keep that fact from them…thus far.

“He has returned to his body. You may resume the torture now.”

“Why should we waste our time? He will only leave again when the pain becomes too much for him. How does he do it? Where does he go?”

The first man shrugged, crossing the floor of the cave to where a fire had been burning earlier. It was now a bed of glowing coals. They’d placed long iron rods in the embers, and it was one of these the man pulled out, using a piece of fabric as a makeshift pot holder. The hotter end was neon-orange and reminded Will of the beer sign hanging in his favorite bar back home.

“Now, Colonel Stone,” the man said, speaking heavily accented English. “You will tell me what I wish to know.”

“I’ve told you already,” he said softly, though it hurt like hell to talk, because of his split, swollen lips and the dryness of his throat. “There are no American spies in your training camps.”

There were, actually. There were thirteen, to be exact, and Will knew who they were, what names they were using and what camps they had infiltrated. They would have received word of his capture by now. They would remember their training, and they would know exactly what to do, where to go, when to meet there for extraction. It would take them another forty-eight hours to get out of harm’s way, he thought. Judging the passage of time was tricky, given the circumstances.

He had to hold out until the men were safely out of the country.

“If there are no spies, then how do the Americans always seem to know our plans?”

Will didn’t shrug. The movement would have hurt too much. “Technology?”

The man laid the cherry-red end of the iron flat across Will’s chest. The pain was beyond bearing, and he tipped his head back and grated his teeth against it, while the smell of his own burning flesh choked him.

Even when the rod was lifted away, the pain remained. Burning, scorching pain deep inside him. He closed his eyes, tried to find that place inside his mind where he’d been hiding before. That place where the pain couldn’t reach him. He saw the woman, standing far in the distant reaches of his subconscious. Sarafina, the dark, exotic fantasy woman who lived out her tales in his mind so vividly that she swept him away from the torture, the pain.

He’d stumbled upon her quite by accident, when they had beaten him nearly unconscious. He’d been hovering on the edge of oblivion when he’d seen her in his mind’s eye. Just her eyes, glowing black eyes. He found himself focusing on those eyes, getting caught in them, sinking slowly into their black-water depths, into darkness. He’d felt himself sinking deeper, and as he did, the pain vanished. Once it fell away behind him, he emerged on the other side, in some other place and time, as a silent, invisible observer of the woman’s life.

Ever since that first time, he’d found he could use the pain to find that place again. The trick was to just give himself over to the agony, not to fight it, but to embrace it. And then he would close his eyes and search for hers. All he had to do was find her eyes, stare into them, and he would sink again into her world, where the pain couldn’t reach him.

She was pure fantasy, as was her story. He knew that. But she was also his salvation. And the salvation of those thirteen Americans who would be tortured to death unless he kept their names secret.

So he closed his eyes as they placed the hot brands on his skin. He relaxed his jaw and tried not to fight the pain. He let the pain drive him closer to her, closer, until she turned and faced him. Her eyes opened wide as he fixed his upon them and rushed willingly into their cool black depths. Then he was completely immersed, having left his body far, far behind. He swam, every stroke taking him farther. And he wondered if one of these times his captors would do him the favor of simply killing him, so that he could remain in that other place. But would it remain, opening, welcoming him inside? His own custom-imagined heaven? Or would it vanish as his brain cells slowly died?

At this point, he wasn’t certain he cared.




2


F or only a moment, Sarafina felt an alien presence in her mind. As if someone else, someone unseen, were watching her. Watching over her.

Many times she had felt this unknown presence. Many times. She sensed him-and yes, she knew he was male, though how she knew, she could not have said. He felt male. He was protective of her. He filled her with warmth and a sensation of security. As if there were one all-powerful spirit in the entire world, and its only job was to take care of her. Love her. Watch over her.

She thought of him as her guardian. Her guide. And each time he came, she thought she came a bit closer to being able to see him, speak to him, touch him. She’d heard him this time-very briefly, but clearly.

She tried to focus on her beloved spirit, but he seemed to withdraw. Fina sighed in stark disappointment before shaking away the feeling, and hurrying to join the others, who were already racing into the woods, toward the sound of the horrible screams. Like her, most of them knew already what they would find.

She was the fastest runner, despite her ill health of late. More than that, she knew exactly where to go. How she knew, she could not have said. Some dark instinct led her, and she didn’t question it. She was a gifted diviner and a Shuvani. Knowing things she oughtn’t know was a part of that. So she quickly caught up to the tribe, then broke off from them, veering through the woods at an angle that led her unerringly to the spot.

She came upon the two of them moments before anyone else. Melina, an old woman, a cousin of Sarafina’s dead mother, crouched on the ground, her body bent over that of her teenage daughter, Belinda. A torch lay on the ground beside them, its flame struggling to survive. Sarafina picked it up to better see the old woman rocking and weeping, and the young one lying so utterly still. By the light of the torch, Belinda’s slender arms and her face were as white as snow, and her eyes were open wide but already bore the unmistakable glaze of death.

Placing a hand on Melina’s shuddering back, Sarafina said, “Come, rise up away from her. She is gone from this world now.”

Sobbing, the woman straightened her back, lifted her head and wailed in anguish as tears streamed over her weathered face. “My Belinda is dead, killed by a demon!”

“Come.” The others were arriving now, drawn by her cries, many of them bearing torches of their own. Sarafina helped the old woman to her feet, hugged her close and looked over her quivering shoulder, down at Belinda. She had been more than a cousin. She had been a friend. Lifting her torch higher, Sarafina let her gaze skim the girl’s pale throat, until she saw what she had known she would see. Two small wounds, scarlet ribbons of blood trailing from each of them.

Something deep inside her stirred, as if waking from a long slumber. She couldn’t take her eyes from the wounds, and involuntarily, she licked her lips.

“It’s happened again,” a man said. It was Andre, standing near her. Katerina was right beside him, watching her sister with narrow eyes. Had she noticed Sarafina’s odd reaction to the scent of fresh blood?

She forced herself not to look at the body again, nor at the two wounds in its throat. But the scent of the kill made her nostrils flare and her stomach clench into a hungry knot. Sickening. She detested her body for reacting this way yet again.

And just like the other times, she could sense the creature that had done this. It was near, she realized suddenly, and she shot her glance toward the edges of the gathered group, where small children with huge, frightened eyes clung to their mothers’ skirts.

“Get the children away from here,” she whispered, pointing at the little ones.

The most respected man in the tribe, the Chieftain, Gervaise, looked at her, crooking a dark brow. “Sarafina?”

“It’s here,” she told him, her voice dropping to a bare whisper. “It is still here, I tell you. Gervaise, get the children away.”

There was no hesitation. Gervaise gave a nod, and nearly everyone obeyed, turning to hurry back toward camp, all of them gathering the children close as they went. Several of the young men remained, including Andre. Katerina stayed, as well.

“Set guards around the camp,” Gervaise said to the young men who stood awaiting his word. “Put others to work building the coffin. Two of you, go fetch weapons and come back here. This spot shall be guarded until dawn.” The men rushed off to obey.

“How did you know?” Katerina whispered.

Sarafina trembled at the tone of her sister’s voice. She had noticed. She’d noticed Sarafina being the first to arrive, and she’d noticed her reaction to the sight of the demon’s kill-neither one for the first time. “How did you not know?” Sarafina asked her. “You’re supposed to be a seer, like me.”

“Unlike you, I have no bond to demons.”

“Do not accuse me, sister. You know nothing of this.”

“It’s the same as the other times,” Andre said, rising slowly from Belinda’s body. He’d examined the wounds, all without touching the corpse. Then he glanced at the weeping old mother. “I am so very sorry, Melina.”

“The demon has found us again. We must bury her quickly and move on,” someone said.

“What good will it do?” Katerina asked. “It will only pursue us, find us again, just as it has ever since our tribe was cursed by the birth of my dear little sister.”

Melina gasped, and Gervaise frowned deeply. Andre put his hand on Katerina’s shoulder. “This is not the time-”

“You all must know it’s true! The first time this demon took one of our people was the summer Sarafina was born. I’ve studied on this, consulted the spirits. Every sign, every omen, tells me she is somehow bound to the creature that stalks us. She’s the reason it plagues us so.”

“That’s madness!” Sarafina shouted. She looked at the faces around her, the speculation in them as they studied her.

“You knew it was near,” Katerina said. “You always seem to know.”

“I am a seer.”

“It attacks only by night. You, more and more, are becoming a creature of the night yourself. Up until all hours, sleeping long into the day.” Her gaze swept the others. “You’ve all seen it.”

Melina nodded her head in agreement. “It’s true.”

“I sleep when I’m sleepy,” Sarafina said softly. “That does not mean I am in league with this creature.”

Katerina looked around her, perhaps saw the doubt of her accusations in some of those faces, and shrugged. “If it isn’t you the demon follows so persistently, then I say we should put it to the test.”

Frowning, Sarafina searched her sister’s face, her eyes, for some clue what she was up to. “Test?”

“Leave us. Leave the tribe. Stay behind this time while the rest of us move on. If the demon follows again, even without you among us, that will be proof of your innocence.”

Andre stepped forward, putting a protective arm around Sarafina’s shoulders. “I won’t permit it, Katerina.”

“Nor will I,” said Gervaise. He studied Sarafina’s face, leaning heavily on his staff, his back bowed and his once jet hair long since gone to silver. “We are all frightened and aggrieved at the loss of Belinda. But turning against one another is not the answer. We must not let this evil divide us.”

Now everyone present was nodding, including the two young men who had returned from the camp with rifles. Everyone except for Katerina.

Gervaise fixed his stern gaze on the two sisters. “You two will prepare Belinda for burial.”

Katerina paled visibly. Sarafina felt her own blood run cold at the prospect and blurted, “Surely you can hire a pair of gorgios- ”

“You two will do it.”

“With respect, Gervaise,” Katerina said, “my home and all my possessions have burned in a fire caused by my sister’s carelessness. I must see to it that I have shelter tonight.”

Gervaise crooked a brow and rubbed his chin in thought. He truly was the wisest man in the village, but he was unused to having his commands questioned. “You, Katerina, will share your sister’s shelter and her possessions. It is high time the two of you learned the meaning of family.” Then he glanced at Belinda, and his voice softened to a mere whisper. “Do neither of you understand the role you play? Your mother is dead, and, since last summer, your grandmother, too. You are the seers. And you are the Shuvani. ”

Melina shook her head. “I said from the start, they are too young to be the tribe’s wise women.”

“They are all we have.” Gervaise patted her gently before refocusing on the two sisters. “Now do your duty to Belinda. She lies dead while you fuss and fight. Do not shame us.” He glanced at them. “Belinda is trapped between the worlds. You know what must be done?”

“I know,” Sarafina said softly. She glanced at her sister. “Gather sticks,” she said. “We’ll need a small fire.”



Gervaise set the young men a few paces away on either side, close enough to guard the women while they worked over the body, but far enough away to give them the privacy that was necessary for the rite. Katerina had taken Melina back to camp, to set her to work gathering the clothes with which Belinda would be buried. While she was gone, Sarafina arranged twigs and sticks carefully on the ground beside her cousin, but not too close.

Katerina returned, three bundles of dried herbs in her hands. She handed her sister a bit of each. “Are we ready to begin?” she asked.

Sarafina nodded, and lowered her torch to the pile of twigs and sticks. It caught on the first try, a very good omen. The flames spread rapidly. Fina jammed the torch into a notch in a nearby tree.

“First the thyme,” she said, and they each tossed a handful of the herb into the fire.

“Next the sage,” Katerina whispered. “And last the rosemary.”

They cast the remaining herbs into the fire in the correct order, then began to walk backward and countersunwise around it as fragrant drafts of smoke billowed to the heavens. “Belinda Rosemerta Prastika,” they whispered together. They walked round the fire, round the body, and increased their pace, chanting the name of their cousin over and over, a little louder each time. Seven times around the fire they went, and Sarafina felt the power they raised growing stronger all the while. At the end of the seventh time around, they stopped, each at the same instant, faced the body and lifted their hands.

Sarafina felt the energy-and, she hoped, her cousin’s spirit with it-shoot forth from the circle they had trod, straight into the heavens.

Letting their bodies relax, they stood still and silent, each in her own thoughts.

Sarafina closed her eyes and sighing, lowered herself to the ground.

“The ritual is the job of the Shuvani, ” Katerina said. “One of honor. And we have done it well. Preparing the body is not.”

Handling a dead body was a despised task among the tribe. When their own grandmother had passed, she had been bathed and dressed in her finest clothes even while she lay dying. No Gypsy wanted to touch the dead.

“Perhaps Gervaise wishes to teach us the lesson of humility,” Sarafina suggested. “Quiet, now. Melina returns.”

Melina carried a bundle of clothing, a pail of water scented with herbs and oils, and a soft cloth. She glanced at the small fire that had been left to burn itself out but said nothing. She had lived a long time and had no doubt seen the fire before. She knew better than to ask its meaning. The death rites were secret, known only to the Shuvani, passed from grandmother to granddaughter. Sarafina and her sister had learned them from their grandmother, as they had so many other things.

Melina knelt, watching in silence, waiting for the two of them to do the job they had been given. Sarafina thought in that moment, that even her hardhearted sister felt moved.

So they knelt, and they gently undressed the shell that had been Belinda. They washed the young woman carefully, even though every touch made chills race up Sarafina’s spine. Belinda was not yet cold, but cool to the touch. She tried to keep the cloth between her palm and Belinda’s flesh, but sometimes it slipped.

When the washing was finished, the two women unrolled and unfolded the red fabric Melina had brought; then they laid it out beside Belinda. Sarafina rolled the dead woman up onto one side, because she knew that while touching the corpse chilled her to her very marrow, her sister simply could not bring herself to do it. So she rolled poor Belinda, and Katerina tucked the cloth beneath her as far as she could manage. Then Fina lowered the body gently onto the cloth and rolled it up onto its other side, so Katerina could pull the fabric through.

They did a good job of it, Sarafina thought. The body rested almost perfectly centered on the open bolt of scarlet cloth.

Sarafina laid a small bit of fabric, cut in the shape of a perfect circle, upon Belinda’s chest. Then, she took one side of the cloth, and her sister took the other, and they wrapped Belinda in it as carefully as they would have wrapped a baby, leaving only her head and her bare feet uncovered.

“I intended to use that bolt of cloth to make a dress for her,” Melina whispered. “Now it becomes her shroud.” She unfolded the clothing she had brought, turning the blouse and skirt inside out before refolding them carefully and stacking them beside her daughter’s body.

The little fire had died to smoking remains by the time they had finished. Katerina leaned over the water pail to scrub her hands.

“There should be more light,” Melina whispered. “We mustn’t let her lie in the dark this way.”

“My work here is done,” Katerina said, straightening and wiping her hands on her skirts. “I’m returning to camp. I’ll send someone back with lanterns.”

Melina only nodded, not even watching her go. When the sounds of her footsteps died away, she glanced at Sarafina. “You may as well go, too. I’ll watch over her until morning.”

“I’m staying with you,” Sarafina replied. “I won’t leave you alone.”

Melina lifted her head, met Fina’s eyes, and for a moment seemed to be searching them. Almost as if she were not entirely comfortable staying alone with her. It was dark in the hardwood forest. Oaks and elms towered around them, and the ground was thick with ferns and weeds. Only that single torch spilled a circle of pale light around the two of them, and it was burning low. The night was silent, eerily so.

Then Melina glanced past her, at a sound from one of the young men who stood guard, and she seemed to relax a bit. Sarafina sat down on the ground beside the slender body wrapped in red cloth and wondered why anyone, even a demon, would want to murder her cousin so cruelly.

I didn’t kill her, I set her free, and deep down you know it’s true.

Sarafina’s head rose with a snap at the clear sound of a man’s voice. A man she knew full well was not her beloved spirit. “Who is that?”

Melina paused in her rocking. “What are you talking about?”

“That voice. Didn’t you hear it?” She got to her feet, brushing the twigs from her skirts and staring at the woods around her, every sense on full alert, her very skin prickling and aware. There was laughter then, deep, ringing laughter. “There,” she whispered. “Don’t you hear that?”

“I hear nothing, Sarafina,” the old woman said. She got up, as well, backing a few steps away from the younger girl. “Perhaps…you should go back to camp.”

“No. It’s out here. I can’t leave you alone.”

That’s right. I’m here. But you know deep down it’s not the old woman I want. It’s you, Sarafina. It’s always been you. Leave this band of traitors and come to me.

“No!” she cried, pressing her hands to her ears. “Leave me alone! Leave me alone!” She turned to run away, but collided instantly with a hard chest and looked up and into Andre’s concerned eyes. Sobbing, she clung to him, burying her face against his chest.

But she stiffened when she heard the voice of her sister. “What is going on?”

Blinking, Sarafina lifted her head from Andre and looked around until she spotted her sister standing a few feet away, aglow in light. She sniffed and hoped none of the tears remained on her cheeks. “I thought you were staying in camp.”

“I decided to help Andre bring the lanterns.” She glanced down at the glowing lanterns she carried, one in each hand.

Pulling away from Andre, Sarafina saw that he, too, carried lanterns. She understood then why his arms hadn’t come around her hard and fast as they usually did.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

“Nothing. Nothing, I-I’m afraid, that’s all.”

“Take her back to camp, Andre,” Melina said. “Take her and go. Katerina will sit vigil with me until sunrise.”

“But I can stay. I’m fine,” Sarafina said.

The old woman only shook her head, even as Andre set his lanterns down on the ground and put an arm around Sarafina, gently leading her away.

Sarafina knew perfectly well that old Melina was going to tell her sister everything that had happened. It would only be more ammunition for Katerina to use against her. She wouldn’t be happy until she was the sole Shuvani of the tribe. She knew Sarafina, though younger, was better, stronger, more talented-and she couldn’t stand it.

Andre helped her back to her vardo, and she climbed inside, tired to her very bones. It would be dawn soon. And yet she couldn’t go to sleep, not just yet.

“Would you like me to stay with you, watch over you while you sleep?” he asked.

Sarafina shook her head. “No. I want…I want to be alone.” She didn’t, not really. She wanted to feel the reassuring presence of her guide, her angel. She wanted to hear his voice again-clearly enough so she could listen while he explained all this to her. What was happening to her? To her life? To her tribe? And why?

“Something frightened you out there tonight, Fina. Won’t you tell me what it was?”

Again she shook her head. “Everyone is afraid of…whatever sort of creature killed poor Belinda. And the others before her. Why should I be different?”

“I don’t know. It seemed like…more than just fear.”

“Now you sound like my sister. I suppose you suspect me of being in league with demons, as well?”

“Of course not.” He stroked her hair lovingly. “Get some sleep, Fina. You don’t look well.”

“I will. Good night, Andre.”

He leaned close, kissed her mouth briefly, then turned and left her alone. Sarafina didn’t go to bed. She closed her tent flap carefully and went to the small table in the center of her home. Her hands trembled as she unwound the silk from around the crystal ball. When it was uncovered, she sat down before it, in the darkness, and gazed into its depths. She let her mind go still, let her vision slip out of focus, let her eyelids grow heavy. She had never tried to summon her spirit this way before. But suddenly she was moved to try. “Come to me, my beloved. Come to me, for I need your wisdom now. Tell me, what is my destiny?” she asked. “If it is true I am linked to some demon, how may I break the curse?”

The crystal clouded and then the cloud vanished, and instead she saw a person take shape before her. A man. He was darkly handsome, though not a Rom. His hair was wet, dripping, and his shirt was torn open to reveal a ghastly scar on his chest.

As she stared at this vision, wondering at it, he lifted his head and looked right into her eyes. He looked at her-through her. And she knew him. “I have seen you before,” she whispered. “Who are you?” But even as she asked, she knew the answer. This man was her guide, her spirit, the voice who spoke to her, the presence who walked with her. But why was he wet, and so battered? Was he the ghost of some martyr who had died for his cause?

He only kept staring, clinging to her eyes as if by sheer will. There were men around him, men in foreign robes and headdresses, and they were hurting him. Branding his flesh with hot irons.

Sarafina’s heart twisted in her chest, her palms pressing to either side of the crystal as if she could make the torture stop, but the man never flinched. His eyes held hers through the glass.

Then the crystal clouded over again, and he was gone.

Fina sat back, breathless and sick to her stomach. He was not the demon who hunted among her tribe. She knew that without much thought at all. He was her spirit. Her spirit had a face now. But why was he so tormented? He hadn’t, during those moments when they had held each other’s eyes in the crystal, seemed like a spirit at all. He had seemed like an ordinary man. Though not from this place, nor perhaps, her mind whispered to her, from this time.




3


“W hy do we keep him alive? If there were any spies among us, they fled when the Americans declared victory and pulled their troops out of our lands. It is impossible to know who they were, when we have so many men missing, so many dead and left behind in the desert.”

The conversation was spoken in yet another dialect, one Will knew, though not as well as some. He was able to make out the words. That the U.S. had pulled out did not surprise him. This had never been meant to be a sustained operation, like the one in Afghanistan. This leg of Operation Enduring Freedom was a simple, short, potent lesson with clear parameters. Infiltrate terrorist cells, then, guided by spies on the inside, launch strikes on their training camps and then get the hell out. It had worked. The cells had been decimated, the survivors scattered, the leadership cut off. This band who’d captured him had unfortunately spotted him as he made his way to the extraction point. He had been within sight of the chopper when he’d realized they were on his tail, and he’d had no choice but to take cover and open fire, holding them off long enough for the chopper full of American soldiers to get clear.

“I say we put a bullet between his eyes and leave him for the vultures.”

Fine, he thought. Just do it and get it the hell over with. How long had he been here, now? Weeks? Longer? It was impossible to be sure. The goddamn broken foot and ribs ached so badly he couldn’t sleep, and whatever freaking bug he’d picked up had him so weak he spent most of his time lying in the corner, shivering-at least when he wasn’t hunched over in the opposite corner throwing up.

He had expected U.S. forces to come after him. Apparently he was presumed dead or they would have by now. Of course he was presumed dead. He hadn’t talked. None of the men who had infiltrated the other terrorist cells in the area had been identified. They’d had time to get out. The U.S. would assume he had died a hell of a lot more readily than they would assume he’d withstood weeks of torture without uttering a single name.

The voice of the man who wore the silk turban and diamond pinky ring, apparent right-hand man to the leader of this small pack of jackals, came next. “We will shoot him when Ahkmed says we shoot him. Here.” There was a rattle, as if of paper. “Have him hold this and take his photograph.”

“You intend to ransom him?” one of the underlings asked.

“They took our men to their Bay of Guantanamo as prisoners. Perhaps we can use the colonel to get some of them back.”

“Over my dead fucking body,” he muttered. He would have shouted it, but his throat was so raw that muttering was the best he could manage.

The lock of his kennel scraped open, and two men whose faces had become familiar stepped inside. He stayed where he was, huddled in the corner of a metal box that had once been part of a cargo truck. It was his own room within the caves where they were hiding out, though not deeply enough to benefit from the one plus of cave life: a constant temperature. This place was oven hot by day, freezing cold by night. His furniture included a large tin can he used for a toilet and a pitcher of stagnant water he supposed they expected him to drink. Most days it was tough to tell which smelled worse, though when you got thirsty enough the smell of the water didn’t make a hell of a lot of difference.

When the light spilled in from the open door, it blinded him, and he covered his eyes with his hands.

“Come out, pig. We are to photograph you.”

He lifted his head, squinting at them and made his way forward. Every step on the broken foot was sheer agony, but he had learned cruelly what happened when he hesitated or disobeyed.

They pulled him out when he got close enough so they could grip his arms. He was struggling to see. The caves were lit by floodlights, powered by a generator he could hear running somewhere in the distance. Probably near the entrance.

They slung him into a chair. One held a rifle on him, while the other shoved a newspaper into his hands. He glanced down at it. Jesus, it was in English.

“You hold this up so the date is showing while we take a photo.”

He lifted his gaze to meet the speaker’s dark brown eyes. “This says the Americans have left the country. Are you trying to give them a reason to come back and kill you all?”

“You should shut up and do as you are told, Colonel Stone. We will trade you for our prisoners. This is your only hope of leaving here alive.”

He shook his head slowly and decided to use this to his advantage. His wounds were infected. He needed to clean them. “They won’t even recognize me like this,” he said, running a hand over his unshaven face. “And if they do, they’ll be so angry at what you’ve done to me that they’ll just renew the bombing.”

The two men blinked and stared at each other. “He could be right. Do you think we should clean him up first?” one asked in his native tongue.

“I…let us ask Ahkmed.”

The two of them turned and left him there, alone, in that section of the caves. Granted, there were no weapons in sight, and he couldn’t try to escape, since there was only one way out of this section, and they had taken it. But still…

He got to up onto his one good foot and hopped over to the table, where a pitcher of water and a partially eaten loaf of bread were sitting, ignored. Picking up the pitcher, he sniffed it, found the water cleaner than any he’d had in days and drank deeply. He shoved a large piece of the bread into his mouth, chewed, then washed it down with more of the water.

And then he noticed the knife. It was blunt edged, not meant to cut anything. But he took it all the same, along with the rest of the bread, and he hopped across the room to his box, tossing both deep into the shadows inside.

He got back to his chair just as the men returned. One of them carried a large basin of water. The other had a stack of clothes in his hands, a razor and a bar of soap on top.

“Ahkmed says you are to wash up and shave. Then put on these clothes.”

The basin was set in front of him. “Make good use of the water, Colonel. You’ll get no more.”

He nodded, glad they’d taken the bait. Without getting up, he peeled off his torn, bloody shirt. He took the bar of soap, which was the ugly brown-yellow hue of homemade stuff, hard as a rock and, he thought, probably strong enough to burn out his eyes. There was a washrag, too, and he made use of it. God, it felt good to wash some of the filth away.

The men stood back, guns at the ready, watching him. He cleaned the burns and cuts on his chest and arms, even though the soap felt like battery acid when it touched them. Lye soap, it had to be. Jesus.

“It is your face that needs cleaning, Stone. Get on with it.”

Nodding, he cleansed all wounds he could reach on his back, fearing he’d missed more than he’d hit, and finally rinsed the cloth in the water and washed his face. Next, he leaned over the water basin, dipping his entire head into it and then scrubbing the soap over his wet hair, dipping it again to rinse. Finally he lifted the razor to his face, but paused when he glimpsed his reflection in the basin of water. The beard was coming in nicely. It would be excellent camouflage if he ever got out of here.

He set the razor down again. “I would like to keep the beard, if I may.”

They looked at each other, then at him. “You are an American. You’re not worthy to wear a beard. Take it off.”

Sighing, he didn’t see the value in arguing the point. He shaved the beard with the dull razor, scraping his face raw in the process.

“Now put on the clothes,” one of the men ordered.

He braced his hands on the table to push himself up onto his feet, though he kept his weight on the good one. Then he balanced there as he managed to get his pants undone and off. The shorts went, too. He didn’t have a single qualm about baring himself, because it meant being relatively clean for the first time in a month. He snatched up the soapy washrag and washed his lower body before they had time to object.

The water was filthy by now, and littered with whiskers floating in the soapscum. It was still valuable to him.

“The clothes, Colonel Stone!”

“Yeah, yeah.” He managed to pick up the basin of dirty water and set it on the floor near his chair, as if he were moving it to make room for the clothes.

One of the men set the stack of clothes in the now-empty spot, in between splashes of water. Will cringed when he realized the clothes placed before him were the uniform of an American soldier. Regular Army, by the looks. Not green, but desert camo.

He pulled on the pants. No shorts had been provided. “Where did you get this?”

“Shut up and put it on.”

Will shut up and put it on. But first he sat down in the chair, bent to quickly roll up the pant leg and lowered his wounded foot into the basin of water. There was enough of the lye soap floating in it to disinfect the open sores, and the water was ice-cold, so it couldn’t hurt the swelling. As he sat, surreptitiously soaking his foot under the table, he pulled on the tank-style undershirt and the long-sleeved sand-colored outer shirt. He buttoned it up slowly, stalling for time, looking at the chest for any sign of the uniform’s origins. All the patches and insignia had been torn away, leaving darker spots where they had been.

“I guess I’m ready.” He pushed his hand through his wet hair, finger-combing it.

The two nodded, brought the newspaper to him.

He held it in his hands obediently as they took his photo with a Polaroid One-Step camera that seemed completely out of place here.

Then they examined the resulting photo while it developed, finally nodding in approval. One left the room, presumably to show the photo to Ahkmed, The Brainless One, while the other stayed to watch him. So far neither had noticed his aching foot, soaking in the water under the table, or, if they had, they didn’t care.

Will’s left foot throbbed constantly. It was an interesting mix of colors-purple, black and blue. A little green here and there around the edges of the purple. It was swollen to twice its size and shaped rather oddly.

One of their methods of questioning him had been to place the foot in a vise and tighten it each time they repeated the question.

It hadn’t worked. He didn’t take much credit for courage in the face of torture. Frankly, part of his motivation in keeping silent had been knowing he would be shot in the head the minute he gave them the information they wanted so badly. Part of it had been the knowledge that other men, some good friends of his among them, would die if he talked. But the rest had come from anger. They’d pissed him off. He would be damned before he helped their cause.

“Ahkmed says the photo is good,” said the one who had left, as he came back into the room. “Come, back to your cell now.”

Nodding, he took his feet out of the basin, rising on one leg, turning to begin the hobble back.

One of the men muttered to the other in their own language, “By the wings of Allah, the foot has worsened.”

“Let it rot and fall off. He’s an American.”

The first looked more worried, though. Will deliberately stumbled, and the man with the microscopic trace of decency came beside him to help him to the metal box. Leaning close, Will whispered, “I will tell my people who was kind to me and who was cruel when they make the trade, so that when they come back here again, they’ll know who to kill and who to spare.”

The man glanced behind them nervously, but his comrade hadn’t heard. He had remained several yards away. As he helped Will into the box that was his cell, the younger one said, “Take this.” He handed Will the white sash that had been wrapped around his waist. “Use it to bandage your foot.”

“Thank you.”

The man nodded, quickly closing the metal door. Will braced his back against the door as the man pulled the chain as tight as he could and snapped the padlock through it. He waited until his captor had walked away to let off the pressure, then he turned and saw that the chain was lax. He could push the door open a couple of inches.

And that, he thought, was all he needed.



That night, the illness that had been growing steadily worse seemed to hit its peak. He fought it as the fever heated his blood and his body shook with chills. He had to wait them out, stay awake until they all slept, hours from now.

But in the end, the fever took control. He fell into a fitful, painful sleep, and he was there again; in the forest near that Gypsy village, following the bright flashes of a woman’s colored skirts as she ran through the dark woods.

It took him a moment to get oriented. But he finally realized where he was, what he was doing. It was a shock that his foot didn’t throb when he stepped on it, until he remembered that this place wasn’t real. He wasn’t certain why he was following the woman through the forest, but he knew it was important. Somewhere deep inside, he ached to see her again.

The beauty finally stood still in a small copse of trees, looking around her, as if searching for someone. As if she knew he was coming.

But when he drew nearer, Will realized it was not Sarafina he’d been following but her sister, Katerina.

She had a stench about her that shocked him, but only until he saw the necklace of garlic cloves she wore. That explained the smell. He wasn’t sure how to explain the fact that she wore it. What the hell was she doing in the forest, in the dead of night like this? Meeting Andre, he would bet, although the garlic was a baffling touch.

Then he remembered his last, pain-induced visit. There had been a murder. He’d been in and out, but he’d witnessed some of what had happened. He supposed his imagination was about to add a touch of Universal Monster Classics to the mix.

“Come out, show yourself!” she called suddenly. “I know you’re near. I have something you want!”

He was startled at first, wondering if she were speaking to him.

“Come, I haven’t much time. I’m supposed to be sitting vigil at the side of your latest victim.”

So Sarafina’s sister had not remained at the grave of Belinda as she had said she would. She had begged off with some excuse and instead had wandered into the forest. In search of Belinda’s murderer?

Fingering a pouch at her side, she wandered a few more steps. “Creature! Vampire! Come, make yourself known. You’ve nothing to fear from me.”

Will sensed something, some dark presence, behind her. He tried to shout a warning, but of course the woman couldn’t hear him. A man emerged from the shadows-or at least, he looked like a man, a very large man who was exceedingly pale and moved without making a sound. He crept quietly up behind Katerina, leaned close and whispered in her ear, “ I’ve nothing to fear from you? Do you want to be my next meal, Gypsy girl?”

She jumped at the first words he spoke, whirling to face him, one hand pressing to her chest.

“By the Gods, you reek of garlic,” the vampire said, grimacing in a way that provided the merest glimpse of his elongated incisors. Then the grimace turned into a smile. “You’re amusing to me. Garlic is indeed a powerful root. It can clear a room of negative energy, purify a human body, and banish demons and malicious spirits. That you expect it to keep you safe from me means that you equate me with those things. Poisons, impurity, demons. Is that what you think I am?”

She held up her little pouch, backing away a few steps. “Keep your distance, vampire!” she shouted, shaking the pouch at him like a weapon.

The vampire sniffed the air, then shook his head. “Wolf’s bane? Well, that might work, were you dealing with a lycanthrope. But you are not.”

“I called you here to talk. Only to talk.”

“Then you are a fool. I don’t talk to mortals, I feed on them. I am going to drain you dry in a moment, and there is not one thing you can do to prevent it.”

Will saw the fear in her face, in her eyes, and he knew the man-the vampire, if that were what he was-saw it, too. He seemed pleased by it. But Katerina tried to hide it, lifted her chin and forced herself to speak. “I can give you Sarafina,” she said.

“No!” Will shouted the word but who would hear?

The vampire went very still, frowning at her. She had his full attention now. “She is my sister,” she said. “And I know she is the reason you follow our band and prey on us.”

The vampire rolled his eyes, smiling. “You know nothing, mortal. I take only those who need killing. And I follow only to protect.”

“To protect her?” she asked. “Nonsense, you want to kill her, as you did Belinda.”

He said nothing, but he licked his lips, and his gaze returned to her throat.

“The others are beginning to question Sarafina’s link to you now,” Katerina said, speaking quickly, one hand pressing to her throat, as if it were a protective collar. “They’ve seen her behavior. She isn’t well. Something…weakens her.”

“It is always the way,” the vampire whispered.

Will frowned. What on earth was that supposed to mean?

“What are you talking about?” Katerina asked, echoing Will’s own thoughts.

“Nothing. Tell me, why would you hand your own sister over to a creature you believe would kill her?”

She shrugged. “That’s none of your concern.”

“I watch your tribe, Katerina,” he said. And she gasped, surprised, perhaps, that he knew her name. “I know about you and the man-Andre. And I know your burning jealousy. It blackens your soul and clings to you like a foul stench, more powerful, even, than the garlic you thought would repel me.”

She jerked backward as if he had struck her a blow, but she caught herself quickly. “Do you want her or not?”

“I want her,” he said. “But I want her alive and unharmed.”

She nodded. “There is a cave, that way, with a tiny stream at the far back. Do you know it?”

God, not another cave, Will thought. He’d had his fill of them.

The vampire nodded. “I know it.”

“She will be there waiting for you tomorrow night. Midnight.” Katerina started to turn away.

The vampire stopped her, a massive, pale hand clasping her arm.

She went stiff. “If you kill me, you won’t have her. Your chance will be gone.”

“I’ll have her either way,” he said. “On my terms, and in my time. So tell me now, how will you do it?”

She blinked in fear. “Nothing harmful, I promise you. Only a sleeping powder. I’ll put it into her evening meal tomorrow. By midnight its effects will begin to wear off. She will be awake and alert for you to use as you wish.”

He released her quickly and wiped his hand on his trousers. “You are a poor excuse for a sister, Katerina. I will likely kill you after this is done, despite the fact that I imagine your blood will taste bitter as bile.”

“I shall not be an easy target, vampire,” she told him.

“No doubt your garlic and wolf’s bane will be a challenge for me. Go on. Go back to your pathetic band before I decide to do mortal man a favor by killing you now.”

Something, some urgent sense, told Will he had to withdraw from this place in the depths of his mind. But he didn’t want to obey. He had to see this through. He found himself following Katerina as she hurried back through the forest. Eventually she slowed her pace, and he soon saw why.

The old woman sat there still, her head bowed low, as she rocked slightly beside the still, waxen body of her daughter.

The words of the vampire floated through Will’s mind again. “I take only those who need killing.”

What had the young Belinda done that made her “need killing,” according to that creature’s twisted logic?

Katerina stepped quietly out of the trees and settled herself on the ground. The other woman gave no sign of even noticing that she had been gone.

Will drew his focus away from them. Where was Sarafina? He had to find her, to warn her-somehow.

He looked around him but couldn’t tell which way to go. Finally he simply put her image in his mind, thought of her face, her eyes, the sound of her laughter, which had kept him alive for weeks now. Through torture, starvation, the very darkest nights of his soul, she had been there. He had always been able to find her. Surely he could find her now.

He thought of her, saw clearly her face, her eyes…and suddenly he was there. Instantly, magically, he was standing inside her wagon tent, looking down at her as she slept.

Beautiful. He wanted so badly to touch her. Trembling, he reached out his hand to stroke her hair, but his hand wasn’t solid. Or maybe she was the one who was made of something unreal. But whatever the reason, his hand moved through her. He couldn’t touch her. He tried to speak to her, both aloud and with his mind, but neither method stirred any reaction in the sleeping woman.

God, he was tired. More tired than he could remember ever being. And cold, shivering with cold. He knew he should go, that something urgent was awaiting him back in the real world. But he couldn’t bring himself to leave her, not when she was in danger this way. He had to stay with her. He had to warn her that her sister was going to drug her food and hand her over to that monster in the forest.

Gently, Will lay down beside her on the sleeping pallet. It didn’t move in response to his weight. The blanket didn’t move. He lay so close to her that parts of his body melded with parts of hers, but he couldn’t feel her. He moved closer, until his body occupied the same space hers did. He was inside her and around her at once.

In her mind, dreams spun. She dreamed of staring into her crystal ball and seeing…him.

She was staring into his eyes and he into hers.

“I’m here,” he whispered to her, putting all the force he could behind the words. “Don’t trust your sister. Don’t trust her. She’ll betray you. Listen to me. Hear me, Sarafina.”

Sighing, the beautiful woman let his image fade and sank more deeply into sleep. But as soon as she fell into slumber, she saw him again. Inside her mind, inside her dreams.

He was lying beside her in her humble bed of straw-stuffed cloth. She met his eyes there, and she smiled. “I knew you would come.”

“I’ve been with you here the whole time.” He whispered the words, never imagining she would hear, but she did.

“I know,” she said. “I felt you with me.”

“You mustn’t trust your sister,” he told her. “She’s plotting against you.”

She shook her head slowly. “She is jealous and cruel. But she is my sister. She wouldn’t do me any harm.”

“I think she would.”

The pain that trembled through her was almost unbearable-he felt it. But she pushed it away and said instead, “Kiss me, spirit.”

So he did. He kissed her, and her dream blossomed and grew. His voice no longer mattered. His warnings were forgotten as he let himself surrender to the dream-her dream or his, he was no longer certain. It no longer mattered.

He touched her freely, intimately. He explored her body, every scent and taste and sound she made was so real-and the answering sensations in him were real, too. Physical and visceral, and yet tender and deep. He made love to her there in her vardo, and she clung to him and told him he was her secret love-the only one she knew for certain would never leave her.

And then, holding him in her warm embrace, she sank into sleep. Almost against his will, he sank into her, and he slept, too.




4


W hen he woke, the first thought in Will’s mind was that Sarafina was no longer asleep in her bed. She was gone. He was alone.

But then reality set in. He wasn’t in the mystical world his mind had created as an escape for him. No, he was in real time. There was pain here, throbbing, burning pain, and bone-chilling cold. He was locked inside a metal box, in a dark cave, in the middle of hostile terrain.

Part of his mind, the fevered part that had confused his dream with something real, wanted to return to the fantasyland of the Gypsies. But most of him was aware that he couldn’t do that, not now. He didn’t know where the hell his mind was getting the stories it wove for him. They seemed so real it was difficult to believe they were not. But they couldn’t be.

He was soaked in sweat. He understood what that suggested. The fever he’d been fighting must have peaked while he’d been sleeping. Normally he didn’t dream about Sarafina and her band of Gypsies. He escaped to that realm only under torture.

Hell, his fever, combined with the pain in his foot, must have felt like torture of a sort to have instigated a dream so vivid. And it had added its own new twists, hadn’t it? Now he was seeing vampires and making love to a figment of his imagination.

He moved slowly, carefully, testing his body, stretching his arms, his back, working out the kinks. Then he went still as he remembered what he’d been doing when he’d fallen asleep: waiting for his captors to fall asleep first. Because once they had, he had to make an attempt to get the hell out of here.

It might very well be his only chance. He knew damned well the terrorists’ newest ploy wasn’t going to work. The U.S. government would be happy to learn he was alive when they got that photo, but that didn’t mean they would be foolish enough to release a pile of terrorists in exchange for the life of one soldier. Especially one like him, with no family, no ties. Hell, the general public back in the good ol’ U.S. of A. would probably never even know about his existence. That was part of the reason he had been chosen for this mission, and he’d known that going in. He had nothing to lose.

He crept to the door, pushed it open as far as it would go, listened with every cell in his body and squinted into the darkness.

The room appeared to be empty, though it was so damned dark it was impossible to be sure. It was dead silent. The entire cave seemed soundless tonight.

He located the bread knife he’d stolen earlier by crawling around his box on all fours until his fingers touched it in the darkness and closed around it. Returning to the chained door, he forced his hand out through the narrow opening. The chain that held the door was looped through a short iron bar on the outside of the door. Two bolts held that bar in place, and they had grooved heads, like screws. Will managed to insert the blunt tip of the knife into the groove, and he twisted it, while holding the nut on the inside with his fingers. It didn’t turn easily. When it finally did, the nut turned with it, so he held it more tightly. So tightly that when he finally did get the bolt to turn, the nut scraped the skin off his fingers. It was old, rusty, but he worked on it until he freed it up. In about twenty minutes it was loose enough to remove.

His fingers throbbed, his throat burned, and he was so dizzy he could barely stand, but he’d gone too far to stop now. He set to work on the second bolt.

An hour later, the chain was free. He pocketed his scrap of bread and his lifesaving bread knife, and pushed the door open, cringing at the slight creak of its hinges. He looked around but saw only darkness, broken up by darker shapes, none of them human. Carefully he climbed out of his prison, then closed the door. Taking the bolts from his pockets, he held the bar in place and thrust the bolts back through the holes. By all appearances, his prison was unchanged. Until they tried to open the door to bring him out again-something they might not do for a span of days if they were true to form-they wouldn’t know he had escaped.

He’d wrapped his injured foot thickly in the white makeshift bandage, so it was at least cushioned. He had no choice but to put weight on it as he made his way slowly, silently, across the uneven stone floor. He knew approximately where the opening was that led to other parts of the cave. There was only one, so it wasn’t a matter of making a choice. He found it, went through it, but had no clue where to go from there. He couldn’t see a damn thing. He only knew he wasn’t far from the entrance-if he’d been deep in the earth the temperature would have held to a moderate level, never varying much higher or lower. And that hadn’t been the case.

He was still for a long moment, wishing silently for a clue-and then he heard something: a whispering, moaning sound. The wind? Yes, it was the wind! God, please, he thought, guide me out of this hell. Slowly he moved toward the sound. Every once in a while he would meet a stone wall. Each time that happened, he had to feel his way along the wall, inching sideways until it fell away, and he could again make forward progress.

Finally he saw light, flickering in the distance, illuminating a ragged opening in the cave. He rushed toward it, despite the screaming pain every step ignited in his foot, hope surging in his chest for the first time since he’d escaped the box. But when he reached that opening, he stopped dead, even stopped breathing.

The light came from a small fire in the center of a large room. Around the sides of the room, a dozen or more men lay sleeping, breathing deeply, some of them snoring every once in a while. And just beyond them there was another break, through which he could see stars twinkling in the night sky.

Freedom.

He could smell it, taste it in the air. God, he was so close. Will swallowed hard. Everything in him screamed at him to run for that door, for freedom, but he knew better. He had to think, to use his fever-fogged brain to get himself out of here alive. Licking his parched lips, he looked around at the men on the floor. Most wore robes, others were covered in blankets. But here and there he saw men wearing uniforms. American uniforms. He guessed they had probably taken them from the handful of U.S. troops they’d managed to take out by ambush during the height of the conflict.

Crouching low, Will unwrapped the white cloth from his foot, trying not to make a sound as he did. Then he wrapped it around his head instead, turban-style. He wished to God they hadn’t made him shave. To conceal his beardless chin, he let one end of the turban hang down, then drew it up, just under his chin and tucked it in on the other side.

Finally he moved forward. His foot exploded in agony with each step-even more now, without its protective wrap, than before. But he kept going, gritting his teeth and not making a sound. He moved among the sleeping soldiers, made it past the fire, reached the opening.

One of the soldiers muttered in his sleep and rolled over, and Will went so still he thought his muscles would pull away from his bones.

He waited, waited for a shout, a challenge, the back of his neck tingling in anticipation. But nothing came.

Finally, his heart still pounding, he moved forward again. He stepped through the opening. The fresh night air hit his face, and he sucked it in gratefully as he continued limping, laterally now, away from the cave. Finally he had to pause, to try to get his bearings.

He was high on a mountain, and he had no idea which way would lead him to freedom. There were no roads out here, no landmarks. Certainly no lights shining from below to guide the way.

He was thirty yards from the cave, on a stone ledge that dropped off steeply, when a man’s voice reached him from behind, speaking in one of the tribal dialects. “Where are you going in the middle of the night? Is something wrong?”

He froze. He didn’t turn. He swallowed his fear, told himself not to blow it, not now, not when he was this close. He replied in the man’s own tongue. “Did you not hear the gunfire?” he asked. “It was coming from this way.” He pointed ahead of him, toward the edge, and downward.

“Gunfire?”

“Yes, I’m sure of it. Maybe the Americans have come back.”

The other man sucked in a breath of alarm. Then he said, “But it cannot be the Americans. The border is east of here, not west. And they could only come from that way.” He sighed. “I should wake Ahkmed.”

“Wait,” Will said. “I see something. Down there. Look!”

The man came hurrying closer and ran right past Will to stand in front of him, peering off into the distance, down over the steep precipice into utter darkness. “Where? I don’t see anything.”

In one smooth, silent motion Will stepped forward, clapped a hand to the man’s mouth, put the other to the back of his head and jerked it roughly, fiercely, to the side. The man’s neck snapped with a sickening crack, and his body went limp. Lowering him to the ground, Will bent over him, gripped his shoulders, and dragged him into the cover of some nearby boulders.

As quickly as he could, Will stripped the body of everything on it, which included a rifle, some ammo, a large curving blade with a sheath and the robes of the man’s tribe. Will put the robes on over the clothes he wore. He intended to use the man’s shoes, as well, American-issue Army boots, but they were far too small. His injured foot wouldn’t have fit into any shoe, even had it been a few sizes too large, anyway. He did take the socks, putting them both on his good foot. Then he rewrapped his injured one in swaths of the dead man’s turban before peering out from the sheltering rocks, sitting very still, looking and listening.

No sounds reached him from the cave. He dragged the body to the edge and tossed it over the side. It fell in near silence, except for the dull, distant thud when it hit bottom. Then Will began making his way down the mountain, heading in the direction he surmised, from the other man’s comments, was east.

When he reached the bottom, he just walked. He used the rifle as a staff, and walked despite the pain of his foot and the raging fever. He wondered if it would be better to make use of the large blade, leave the foot behind before it killed him. But he was afraid to stop long enough to do it and worried that he would never get going again if he did.

So he walked. The sun rose, and with its first touch, it burned away the night’s cold. He welcomed its warmth for a short time; then he cursed it, as it blazed relentlessly down on him. The mountain was far behind him. He’d made his way from it, down into the desert, and the farther he walked, the hotter it became. He was dehydrated already from lack of water, illness and fever. The way the sun blasted him now, he thought he would soon be reduced to a man-shaped pile of dust. But the sun did serve one useful purpose. It allowed him to gauge his direction.

At least it did until it was directly overhead and he was frying like bacon in a pan. He tried to keep moving, keep on course, just plodding, putting one foot in front of the other. He had no idea how long he managed to keep going, or how much distance he had covered, when he finally fell facedown in the sand.

He lay there, clinging to consciousness with everything in him, knowing that if he passed out there, he would die there. The vultures would pick his bones clean. He tried to get up, and, failing that, he tried to crawl.

And then he passed out.



When he opened his eyes, he was lying beside Sarafina, watching as she stirred slowly awake. She looked pale, Will thought. Her face tight, there were dark rings beneath her beautiful eyes.

She sat up, looking around her, frowning at the beam of sunlight that slanted through an open spot in the tent flap. She got up and went to it, pushed it open and peered at the sky. “Already so late. The day is nearly done, and I’ve slept it away yet again.”

Sighing, lowering her head and the flap at the same time, she turned, reaching for the dress she’d left hanging from a nail in the wall, then thinking better of it, and taking, instead, the green velvet robe and pulling it on over the white nightgown she wore. She thought of the nightgown as a shift. It was more like an elaborate slip, with lots of lace and embroidery.

She smoothed her untamable curls with her hands, glancing back at the bed just once and smiling gently as she remembered her dream of the night before. “My beloved spirit,” she whispered. “I wonder if he’ll come to me again tonight.”

“I’m here. I’m here right now,” Will told her, but she didn’t hear him. She only turned again, parted the tent flap, stepping outside this time, down the folding steps of her wagon, until her bare feet touched the ground. Will floated along, as if attached to her somehow. She was looking around the camp, noting the smoldering, charred remains of yet another wagon-tent and frowning as Andre came up to her. Will bristled. He hated the man.

“Fina, we’ve been so worried. Are you better now?”

She frowned at him. “Better?”

“We could only assume you were ill. Why else would you sleep the entire day?”

She shrugged. “I was up very late tending to Belinda. I was only tired. I’m not ill.”

She would have walked on, but he caught her chin, lifting her face to his as if he would kiss her, but instead he only studied her closely. “You do not look well, Sarafina. I think you are ill and only denying it.”

“I wouldn’t lie to you, Andre.” She moved closer, as if to press her mouth to his, but he turned away quickly.

Will saw the flash of pain in Sarafina’s eyes, even as Andre said, “Just in case, love. I wouldn’t wish to share this illness with you.”

“I told you, I’m not ill!” She stepped quickly, moving past him, toward the fire that burned and danced in the middle of the encampment. “What of Belinda?” she asked the man who caught up and fell into step beside her.

“We buried her this morning, with most of her possessions. We burned the rest with her wagon. I wanted to wake you, but Gervaise commanded we let you rest. He, too, believes you to be ill.”

“I keep telling you, I’m fine. What of Melina? How is she this evening?”

Andre shook his head slowly. “She’s in mourning. We did manage to get her to eat some dinner, but very little. Speaking of which…” He picked up his pace, hurrying ahead of her to the fire and fetching a cloth-covered bowl that rested on a rock beside the flames. Bringing it back to Sarafina, he motioned her to take a seat on a nearby log, and when she did, he set the very warm bowl in her lap. “You should eat. You haven’t had a thing since last evening’s meal, and you look pale and faint.”

She smiled up at him. Her eyes were warm with gratitude, and when she smiled like that, really meaning it, she was the most beautiful creature Will had ever seen. It took too little to make her beam like the sun. Just the slightest consideration from this unworthy man she thought she loved and she became luminous.

She looked at the stew, and her stomach rumbled in hunger as she removed the cloth and picked up the spoon. “Oh, Andre, it was so thoughtful of you to save this for me. Thank you.” She took a bite, then another.

“It wasn’t me, though it ought to have been.”

“No?” She ate more. Her appetite seemed ravenous.

“Hmm, perhaps I should keep my counsel and let you give the credit to me.” He smiled at her, stroked her hair as she scooped bite after bite into her mouth. “Actually it was your sister who saved the stew for you.”

Sarafina stopped with the spoon halfway to her mouth. Will felt his heart jump in his chest. “My sister?”

“Gervaise has commanded she make peace with you,” Andre said. “I think she wishes to try.”

Sarafina stared down into the bowl. Only a small bit of gravy and a potato wedge remained. She dropped the spoon she was holding. “My sister means me harm,” she said softly.

Andre frowned at her. “Nonsense.”

“No, it’s true. I was told-I was warned not to trust her.”

“Warned? By whom?”

“I don’t know…a spirit. He…it came to me last night, and it told me not to trust her. That she would betray me.” She blinked her eyes slowly.

Oh, God, the stew, Will thought.

“She put something into the food, Andre. I feel…so…”

She got to her feet, pressing a hand to her head, stumbling. Andre was beside her immediately, holding her shoulders to support her. Frightened, she lifted her head, looking around the camp. “Where is everyone? Why is the camp so empty?”

“They went to hunt the vampire,” Andre explained. “I stayed behind to take care of you.”

“You alone?” she whispered, collapsing against him, but still staring up, trustingly, into his eyes.

“No. I-and your sister.” He smiled gently at her, stroked her hair away from her face. “Foolish Sarafina. It’s Katerina I love. It’s always been her. Now she’ll have all that belonged to you, including your status in the tribe. She alone will be Shuvani. The most respected woman in the clan. And as her husband, I will be chief when Gervaise is gone.”

“You…love Katerina?”

“I was going to marry you only to ensure my status. Everyone knows you’re more gifted than she. Wealthier, more talented.”

“But-”

“We’ll comfort one another in our grief for a time. It will seem only natural when we come together.”

“But, Andre, I love you.”

“Go to sleep, Sarafina. May you never wake again.”

Will’s rage against the man rose up inside him, but it was an impotent force. He couldn’t direct it. He couldn’t harm the man, though he howled and cursed him, even swung his fists at him. There was nothing- nothing -he could do to save Sarafina.

She slumped backward, and Andre scooped her up into his arms. Then Katerina came forward from the lengthening shadows, smiling. She picked up an unlit torch, and ignited it from the central fire. “This way,” she said. “Bring her.”

Will followed. God, he had to stop this somehow. But how? What could he do? Sarafina had seen him, heard his warnings. Even taken them to heart, though she’d tried to deny it. He knew that now. But she hadn’t known about Andre’s betrayal. If only he could have warned her about that. And now he was helpless, able to do nothing more than watch as Andre carried her deeper into the forest and, finally, through the mouth of a small cave.

Will did not want to go inside that cave. Everything in him rebelled against the notion. He vaguely remembered having only just escaped a cave, a larger one, but a cave all the same.

Still, he bucked up and followed them in. Deeper and deeper they went, until he heard a trickle of water and saw the flicker of Katerina’s torchlight in the distance. As they rounded a curve, he saw an underground stream, meandering through the depths of this underworld.

“There, on that boulder,” Katerina said. “Lay her there.”

Andre did so.

Katerina thrust the torch into a chink in the wall, then leaned over her sister, tugging the green velvet robe off her, nearly tumbling Sarafina’s limp body to the floor in the process. “This was our mother’s robe. How the little whelp ever got her hands on it is beyond me.” She took the robe away, dropping it to the floor, only to bend over Sarafina again. This time chains rang in the silence, echoing from the stone walls. They seemed to be embedded in the very granite, and Katerina affixed their manacled ends around her sister’s wrists, then stepped aside to let Andre insert the bolts that would hold them closed. Fina’s arms were held apart. She would be unable to reach one wrist with the other hand to free it.

Scooping up the green robe like a prize, Katerina gave one last look at her sister, drugged and helpless. “Burn in hell with your demon friend,” she whispered. Then she spat on her and ran from the cave, with her lapdog, Andre, right behind her.

Will stood over the beautiful Sarafina, tears burning in his eyes. He tried to free her, but his hands moved through the chains. He tried to rouse her, to speak to her, but she was unmovable. He tried everything he knew to help her, and he failed.

Sometime later-Will had no idea how long, and he wondered if he had again drifted with her into sleep-she opened her eyes. She blinked in the torch-lit darkness and tried to take stock. Her back was arched over the boulder, her head lower than her chest. She was chilled to the marrow, but she lifted her head and tried to see in the darkness. Will experienced every thought, every feeling, that she did. She heard the trickle of water that echoed endlessly. She tried to sit up, and only then did she feel the tug and hear the clatter of the chains at her wrists.

Fear jolted her fully awake, and she tugged at the chains but only succeeded in hurting her wrists.

“I’m sorry,” Will told her. “I’m here. I’m with you. I won’t leave you, but I’m afraid I can’t help you. I’m so sorry.”

She went very still, as if listening. “My spirit? My beloved spirit, are you here?”

“I’m here!” he shouted.

“You have to help me. Spirit, help me!”

He felt tears burning in his eyes as he whispered, “I can’t. I’m sorry, I can’t.”

Suddenly she realized there was a dark presence standing over her. A shadow had emerged from the very darkness, keeping well away from the light painted by the torch a few yards away.

She gasped as a hand, cold and hard, came to her face, fingertips tracing the line of her jaw even as she turned her head aside.

“Your sister has betrayed you, Sarafina. But I never will,” a voice said.

Will knew that voice. The vampire.

“Who are you? What do you want of me?”

“I mean you no harm. In fact, I come to save you.”

Liar, Will thought.

“Then loose these chains from my wrists and help me find my way back to my family.”

“Not just yet. First, there are things you must know. I will free you when you’ve heard them all.”

“Free me now, and I’ll stay and listen.”

“You’ll bolt.”

She almost began to cry. Will could feel the tears brimming in her eyes, the fear bubbling in her chest. But he could also feel the supreme control she exercised over those things. She thought she could fool the beast, pretend not to fear it and gain some kind of an advantage. “At least grant me some light,” she said, forcing her voice not to tremble, “so that I can see you.”

The vampire grunted, then moved around her, until he stood in the pool of light. She looked at him, and so did Will.

He was big, oversize really. Heavy, but not fat. His build reminded Will of that of a professional wrestler. He was exceedingly pale, but with eyes and hair as dark as those of a Rom. He looked back at Sarafina, and she realized at last that she wore very little. Only her white shift.

“Tell me these secrets of yours and then let me go,” she commanded, but her voice was shaking in spite of her efforts not to let it. His size alone was enough to terrify anyone.

The vampire nodded. “First I will tell you what you already know. You grow weaker all the time. You have spells of dizziness. Sometimes you faint. You sleep more and more, especially by day. And you are often cold, no matter how warm the sun may be or how many blankets you wrap around you.”

She blinked in surprise. “How do you know these things?” she asked. “How can you know them?”

“Because it is always the way with The Chosen.”

“The Chosen?”

“That is what we call those few, rare mortals who share some inexplicable bond with us. Only they can become as we are. We always know them, watch over them, protect them if we can. That is why I’ve followed your band. To protect you, because you are one of The Chosen.”

She blinked very slowly. “What are you, exactly?”

“My name is Bartrone,” he said. “I am a vampire.”

She moved reflexively, and Will knew she would have made some protective magical sign if she could have moved her arms. But all she managed was a spasmlike tug on the chains.

“Please, do not be afraid. You’re dying, Sarafina. Your mortal life is slipping away. The symptoms you’ve been feeling are proof enough of that. The Chosen always die young. You can let it go on and die alone, or you can let me share my gift with you and become what I am. Become…my friend and companion.”

No, Will thought. Never!

“No. No, you’re a demon, a killer. You murder the innocent. I’ll never be like you!”

“Hardly innocent,” Bartrone said softly. “Your precious Belinda had grown tired of caring for her aging mother. She was poisoning her.”

Sarafina went very still there in the darkness. “P-poisoning?”

“Had you not noticed the old woman’s health beginning to fail?”

“Yes, but…”

“I’ve only removed the dregs from your band, Sarafina. Those who dearly needed killing, though I should have seen your sister for what she was and taken her long ago. I’m sorry I allowed her to betray you this way.”

“What way?”

He lowered his head. “Please-do not pretend you don’t know. You know about her and Andre. You must know.”

She looked away from him, tears pooling in her eyes as her mind replayed her final conversation with the man she’d thought she would wed. Will ached for her.

“He planned to marry you only because you were the wealthier of the two, and because he knew your gifts far surpassed those of your sister. Yet by night, he and Katerina slip into the forest, where they copulate on the ground or standing up against the trees, or on hands and knees, like animals. I’ve watched them. I’ve seen it all.”

“You lie,” she whispered, though she could barely speak. Will knew she believed every word the monster said.

“It doesn’t matter. You can’t go back there.”

“I can. I must. Let me go.” Again she jerked and tugged at the chains.

The vampire leaned over her, stared into her eyes as he lowered his body atop hers and clasped her wrists with his hands. “You can’t go back. My life has become unbearably lonely. You’ll only die, Sarafina, unless you accept the gift. And I’m afraid I have no inclination to give you a choice in the matter.”

Releasing her hands, he cupped her face, turned her head to one side and moved her hair out of the way. Will attacked him, but his blows were like air. Holding her that way, the vampire pressed his mouth to Sarafina’s throat, and bit down hard, without mercy. His fangs stabbed deep into her neck-Will felt the pain she felt-and then the creature suckled her there, drinking her very lifeblood as she slowly faded into him.

She felt as if she were hovering outside her body. Looking down at the monster feeding so hungrily at her throat. Then she shifted her gaze to Will’s, and he realized she could see him. She was panting, her chest rising and falling, and his was, too, as the two of them gazed down at the vampire feeding from the woman. It was erotic and exquisite and arousing. It shouldn’t have been. It should have been horrifying, but somehow, it wasn’t.

Then the creature lifted his head away, staring down at her still, pale face.

Has he killed me, then? Sarafina directed the question to Will, looking right at him as she spoke. Are you the spirit who has come for me, to take me to the other side?

I’m not a spirit, he told her. I’m real. I’m a man, and I love you.

She looked down at her body from the place where she hovered. Her eyes were wide and vacant. Her skin was whiter than it had ever been. I will never love anyone again. Anyway, it doesn’t matter now. I think I am dead

The vampire drew a dagger from a sheath at his side and pressed the very tip of the blade to his own throat. Sarafina watched, amazed at the action, and mesmerized when he drew it away and ruby-red welled up in the puncture wound.

The vampire bent again, cradling her lifeless head, pressing her mouth to his neck.

Suddenly Sarafina was sucked back into her body in one rapid flash that ended with the impact of a fist to the heart. She tasted the first droplet on her tongue, and every nerve ending came to quivering, hungering life. Will felt it. He felt it all. She closed her lips around the wound and sucked the blood from it, feeling stronger with every swallow.

Finally the vampire held Sarafina’s forehead with his palm and jerked himself away from her hungry mouth.

“Now,” he whispered, breathless, panting, his eyes ablaze, “you rest, here with me. Later, you can visit your clan and see them with clear eyes for the first time.”

She looked at the cave around her. “It looks different. I can see every color dancing in the flames of the torch! And I can hear it. The flames have a song all their own.”

“Everything is different now,” Bartrone said. “You are immortal. You need never die.”

“You sound different, too, and you look-by Devel, my senses are heightened to a thousand times what they were before. It’s almost unbearable.”

“You’ll grow used to it in time. You’ll have plenty of time. But now you must rest. And when you wake, you will be stronger, and I will explain things to you. You’re like me, now, Sarafina. You’re a vampire.”

“I’m…a vampire….”

“Now sleep,” he whispered. “Sleep.”

She slept.




5


W ill opened his eyes, and the white sun was gleaming down into them, blinding him, so he closed them again. He tried to sit up.

“Easy, easy now, pal. Don’t move too much all at once.”

The voice was young, and male, and…and American?

He tried opening his eyes again, just a little. As his vision cleared, he realized the blazing white light overhead was coming from a fluorescent bulb, not the desert sun. And the sand underneath him was a mattress, covered with white sheets that smelled of disinfectant. And the robes he wore were only a hospital gown and bedcovers.

The young man was standing beside the bed. He had dirty-blond hair twisted into dreadlocks, and an eyebrow ring. But he wore the scrubs of a hospital staffer, and the tag pinned to his chest read Danny Miller, R.N.

Will tried to talk but only rasped, so he cleared his throat and tried again. “Where am I?”

“Dude, look around. You’re in a hospital.” The kid pushed a button that raised Will’s upper body, then he picked up a plastic cup with a straw through the top and held the straw to Will’s lips.

Will drank. The ice water felt good going down his parched throat. He noted the IV bags dangling from a pole beside the bed, noticed the tubes leading to his wrists, glanced down at his foot, but it was covered by blankets. Hell, how bad was it? He couldn’t feel much in any of his limbs just yet.

“What hospital?” he asked at length, trying to move the foot but feeling no response.

“Bethesda.”

Will closed his eyes, so intensely relieved it was almost painful. He was home. He was in the States.

“The doctor will be in any second now. Look, I’m supposed to let some other guys know when you wake up. You up to talking to some people after the doc gives you the okay?”

“Depends on who it is. Although I’m afraid I can guess.”

“Military. Lots of hardware on their chests.”

Will nodded. They’d want to debrief him. It was S.O.P. “Yeah, whatever. First, though, I’d like to know about my foot.”

The kid reached down to pull the covers away, revealing the well-bandaged foot. “You’ve still got it. That’s good news, right?”

“That depends. Do I get to keep it?”

“Looks like. The doc will be able to tell you more.”

“The doc” did tell him more. He told him the foot would never be one hundred percent, that he was going to have to bear up to some intense physical therapy, and that he would have a limp for the rest of his life. He would walk, but never run. He would need to use a cane.

He did not accept that prognosis.

He spent the next month in the hospital. The PT was painful, but it was a far cry from the other tortures he’d endured. During that time he was debriefed by the military and declared an American hero by the press. He received a huge cash settlement for the damage done to his foot, and that was in addition to his pension. He was showered in accolades, awarded the medal of honor and a purple heart, and retired with honors, all before he ever got out of the hospital.

He didn’t want to retire. He didn’t want the damn money or the medals or the press. But with the foot the way it was, he didn’t have much choice in the matter. So he took the cards he was dealt, and he endured the PT, and he got his ass out of the wheelchair and walked through the hospital corridors at night with the help of a cane, because he couldn’t fucking sleep anyway.

Especially that last night-his final night in the hospital. He’d been there a month, and they would be sending him home the next morning. “Home” was a word that meant nothing to Will. He’d been a soldier for so long, he didn’t have a home. He had nowhere to go. Nothing to do, really. Money? He had plenty of that, the one thing that had never mattered to him.

He felt as if his life had been gutted. And when he tallied the things he had lost, there was one, foolish, ridiculous item that always topped the list. He’d lost his fantasy. That Gypsy camp in some faraway time and place where he used to escape the pain, and the beautiful woman who had inhabited it. He often found himself wondering about her, just as if she were real. “What ever became of Sarafina?” he would ask himself, before his common sense would kick in to remind him that she was a figment of his imagination, a tool created by his mind to enable him to cope with the torture and imprisonment.

He’d tried like hell to conjure her image to mind during the physical therapy sessions, but apparently they hadn’t been painful enough to invoke her. He couldn’t find that place in his mind anymore, the one where he used to retreat to be with her. And though he knew she wasn’t real, he worried about her, what had happened to her, how she had adjusted to the change.

Hell, when he thought about it, maybe there was a reason his mind had conjured the beautiful Gypsy girl and her tragic tale for him. Maybe he’d known, somehow, deep down, how drastically his own life was about to change, and maybe he’d created her so it wouldn’t seem quite as bad in comparison. Sure, he’d lost a lot. Full use of the foot, his career in Special Forces, his entire life’s work. But she’d lost more. She’d lost her lover, her family, her tribe-and then her humanity when she’d been transformed into something else. He wondered how she had dealt with that, if becoming a dark creature had changed who she was inside. Had she become evil just because it was expected of her, or was the change purely physical, like the change in him was?

He thought of these things as he limped along the quiet hospital corridors at 3:00 a.m. There were only a handful of nurses on duty at that hour, and they tended to cluster in the break room around the TV, sipping coffee and chatting. At the prescribed intervals they would emerge to check on patients and administer meds. One nurse would emerge every half hour or so to prowl the wing, ensuring that all the patients were all right, and of course they came out if the phone rang, or a patient buzzed, or a monitor sounded an alarm.

He liked the nights. They were the only time he could be alone to walk unassisted and unhindered. The nurses knew how painful it was for him to step on the foot, even now that it was healing. So they tended to cheer for him with every inch he gained, as if he were a toddler taking his first steps. He hated it, though he knew they were only trying to encourage him. He far preferred privacy during torture, he decided.

The walking cane was hospital issue: stainless steel, with a rubber-coated crook at the top and a tripod with brown rubber tips at the bottom. He would definitely find something better when he got out of here.

That last night, he was traversing an empty stretch of hallway, where no one was at work. The hospital lab was in this section, but it was all but abandoned at this hour. A few people came and went, but none from his wing and none who questioned him. It was his favorite place for night walking.

Wearing an expression that said he knew exactly what he was doing was all it took to keep everyone off his back. No patients roomed in this section, so nurses weren’t milling around. His own wouldn’t be in to check on him for an hour yet, and if they did happen to peek through the door in the meantime, they would see the blanket-covered shape of a man lying sound asleep with his back to them. Because that was what Will wanted them to see.

God, his skills were going to be utterly wasted in retirement.

There was a sound, a rattling sound, that did not belong. It brought Will’s head up slowly and set his juices flowing. It had not been a loud noise or an alarming one-just an out of place one. And it came from behind the door on his left, from a room that was completely dark beyond the mesh-lined safety glass.

That told him two things very clearly. Someone was in there, and they were not supposed to be.

It was too much to resist. Will glanced up and down the hallway, saw no one, and quietly put his hand on the doorknob, then turned it. It was unlocked and gave easily. Pushing the door open, he slipped inside, noting how much more effort it took now to move soundlessly. He used to be able to slide through shadows like a panther. Now his gait was uneven and slow, and he had the damn cane to deal with, keeping one hand constantly unavailable.

The front section of the room was empty, but he sensed someone in the rear. He really had no reason to go any farther. Common sense told him to notify security and back off. But he didn’t. He hadn’t seen any action in so long that he was aching to know just how good he could be in this state. How effective. Could he handle something as mundane as an employee stealing a little medication for recreational use?

That wasn’t what he found, though.

What he found was a man who seemed about to leap out the open window. His back was toward Will. He wore a black cotton shirt and dark blue jeans, and one foot was already up on the sill, hands braced on both sides, a sack slung over his shoulder by a long strap.

“Don’t jump,” Will said quickly. “There’s no need. I’m not security, I’m a patient.”

The man stilled, then slowly set his foot down on the floor again and turned to face Will.

Will studied him, frowning as a creeping familiarity rinsed through his mind. The man’s skin was pale, but not in an unhealthy way. It was luminescent, like a pearl. His eyes, too, held a strange glow, an undeniable power. It was invisible, but palpable. There was something else about him, too. Something that marked him as “different” to Will’s trained mind, but he couldn’t for the life of him define how. Just that this man was not like others.

And then it hit him. It was the same sort of perception he’d had of Bartrone, the vampire in the fantasy.

The man’s eyes widened just a little as he studied Will in return. But he quickly schooled his features. Will could see him trying to hide the startled expression, though he didn’t know what had startled the man.

“You look familiar to me. Where have I seen you before?” the man asked.

Will shrugged, then glanced at the bag hanging at the man’s side. “So what are you stealing? Drugs?”

“I have no use for drugs. What happened to your foot?”

“It was injured. How come you’re using the window instead of the door?”

“I…opened it for the fresh air. Why are you wandering around the hospital in the dead of night?”

“Couldn’t sleep.”

The man’s mouth pulled a little at one side, as if he were fighting a smile. “You’re very good at answering questions without saying a thing.”

“So are you. So what’s in the bag?”

The man only shook his head and glanced toward the window once more. Will looked around the room now that his eyes were adjusting to the darkness. He saw the refrigerator, the label on the front, the Red Cross logo. “This is where they store the blood.” He said it very softly, but the man heard him.

He nodded. “That it is.” He got up on the windowsill again, then he paused, turning back. “ Time Magazine ,” he said.

“What?”

“That’s where I’ve seen you before. You were on the cover of last week’s Time Magazine . I read the article, too.”

“That’s really nice, but it doesn’t explain why you’re stealing blood from a hospital at 3:00 a.m., pal.”

“Oh, let it go already. You guessed what I was the moment you looked at me, though how you knew, I cannot say. Who is this ’Bartrone’ you thought I resembled?”

“A figment of my imagination.” Will stopped there, lifted his gaze. “I never said that out loud.”

“Of course you didn’t. I’m a vampire. I read your mind.”

“Oh yeah? Prove it. What am I thinking right now?”

The other man stared at him, frowned hard. “I don’t know. You’re blocking.”

“I’m blocking?” Will repeated.

“Perhaps subconsciously, but yes. You have a very strong will, don’t you?”

Will shrugged. “If you can’t read me now, how could you before?”

“How would I know? You’re the one who let your guard down, let your thoughts slip out.” He shrugged. “Perhaps you were startled.”

Will rolled his eyes and moved closer, using the cane to help him bear the weight, though every step shot bolts of pain through his body. When he got close enough he reached out, tugged the side of the bag open and glanced inside. Plastic bags filled with blood.

“You really are stealing blood.”

The other man nodded. “It’s better than the alternative.”

“You mean killing for it?”

“I meant starvation. I would no more kill an innocent than you would.”

Will shook his head. “This isn’t real. There are no such things as vampires.”

“Then how did you know what I was the moment you looked at me?”

Lowering his head, Will said, “I don’t know.”

There was a pause. “The article said you withstood weeks of torture and never broke. It said your silence saved the lives of countless American soldiers.”

Will shrugged.

“It said you walked twenty miles through the desert when you escaped.” He glanced down at the foot. “As painful as that is even now, I can’t imagine how you managed that.”

Will shrugged again, shook his head. “Yeah, okay, you really read the article. What do you want, an autograph?”

The vampire smiled. “I have to go.” He turned again to the window.

“No, wait. I need to talk to you. I have questions-”

“Questions I cannot answer, my friend. Even for an exceptional mortal like you. I’m sorry.” He turned to face out the window again, then quickly ducked back inside and to the left of the glass. “Hell, I’ve been seen. There’s a crowd below, looking up here and pointing.”

Will glanced toward the door at the sound of running feet. “Someone’s coming. Tell me, vampire, are you a man of your word?”

“I am.”

“Then give it. I cover your ass now, you answer my questions later. Agreed?”

The doorknob turned, and the vampire glanced that way, then out the window again. “Questions about what?”

“A vampiress named Sarafina.”

“Why?”

Will swallowed hard. “I need to know if she’s real. That’s all. Do you agree or not?”

“All right,” the vampire said quickly. “I agree.”

The door was opening as Will glanced around the room and spotted a folding screen. “Over there, behind the screen,” he whispered.

The vampire moved so quickly he was but a blur of darkness. If Will had had any doubts-and he had-they were gone now. Nothing human could move with such a burst of speed. Nothing he knew about, anyway. “I never got your name,” Will whispered.

“Jameson Bryant,” the vampire hissed back.

“Willem Stone,” Will replied.

“Good to meet you.” There was a touch of irony in the vampire’s tone.

“Same here-I think.”

Three orderlies burst into the room, flicked on the light and paused to stare at Will, as he stood near the open window. He lowered his head, painted a look of anguish on his face.

“Listen, don’t jump,” one of them said. “It’s no answer. You know that.”

“Jesus, it’s that Stone guy,” another muttered. “Mr. Stone, you’re a hero-”

“It’s Colonel Stone,” he muttered. “Or it was.”

“It still is, man. Colonel Stone, U.S. Army Special Forces, and a fucking national icon. God, if you go out like this, then they win, don’t you see that?”

“Yeah, that’s right,” said the other guy. “Man, don’t tell us you survived all that crap just to give up now.”

“Colonel Stone, sir, I just got out of the Army. I was over there. Let me tell you something, you did us proud. You cash out now, it’s gonna crush all those soldiers who see you as a hero.”

Will turned slowly, looking at them, even while swinging one leg over the windowsill. “Just stay where you are, okay? I have to think.”

The men stopped their forward progress. “Come on, come on back in here. You can think in here as good as anywhere else.”

The door opened again, and a woman stepped in. She was mid-fifties, fit, kept her hair colored, but the smokers’-wrinkles in her face gave her age away. “Mr. Stone, I’m Amelia Ashby. I’m a psychiatrist here.”

A psychiatrist was just what he needed, he thought, considering he’d just been conversing with a vampire. Shit. He almost laughed, but that would have blown the suicidal depression skit right out of the water.

“Tell me what you’re feeling. Please, I only want to help you.”

He pursed his lips, sighed, wondered if this was going to end up lengthening his stay, when he’d so been looking forward to getting the hell out of here tomorrow. He drew his leg inside, stood on the floor, closed the window, and grabbed his cane. “I’m not going to jump, all right? I was just…out walking the halls.”

“Good. Very good. And you came in here because…?”

“My leg got to aching. I was looking for a place to sit down for a while.”

“I see,” she said slowly, coming closer now.

To stop her from reaching the point where she might catch a glimpse of Jameson-the-blood-thief, Will met her halfway. “Look, I’m ready to go back to my room now, all right?”

“That’s fine. Do you mind if I walk with you?” She took his good arm, walked with him back toward the door.

“Sure. Whatever.”

One of the orderlies opened the door. Another slapped him on the shoulder as he passed. “You hang in there, man. We need more like you, Colonel Stone.”

The former soldier sent him a snappy salute.

They all followed Will and the shrink into the hallway, and then the orderlies dispersed, one of them pausing to relock the door before taking off.

Dr. Ashby walked slowly. “You’re in a lot of pain, aren’t you?”

“The leg? Ah, it’s not so bad.”

“Bad enough that it had you considering suicide.”

“What, you think I’d kill myself over a little pain? I can handle pain, Dr. Ashby.”

She nodded, smiled a little self-deprecatingly. “I guess I should have known that, considering. Physical pain certainly wouldn’t drive a man like you to such an extreme decision.”

“It wasn’t a decision. More like a passing thought.”

“So you didn’t really plan to jump from that window tonight?”

“No. I opened it. I even stood there a while, contemplating the notion. But I never would have jumped.”

“Because you realized that you have too much to live for?” she asked.

“Because I realized it’s not a high enough window to ensure a quick end. I may have a high tolerance for pain, Dr. Ashby, but I’m not a masochist. If I’d been seriously thinking of jumping, I’d have taken the elevator on up to the top floor-better yet, the roof.”

She blinked at him. “I’m not sure if I should find that reassuring or troubling.”

“Reassuring,” he promised. “I swear.”




6


S omehow’he wasn’t sure how’Will convinced them to let him leave the hospital on schedule. Though he was now expected to follow up by keeping an appointment Dr. Ashby had set up for him with a New York therapist. Therapy he didn’t need. Didn’t even believe in it. You were either sane or you weren’t.

He was. If his little red caboose were capable of chugging around the bend, it would have been long gone by now. He was perfectly sane.

Except, of course, for the visions. But hell, under torture, the mind did what it had to in order to survive. If that meant creating a fantasyland with beautiful Gypsies and dangerous vampires, then fine. Those little flights to La-La Land were not signs of instability. Hell, they were probably the only things that had kept his crackers from crumbling.

Of course, that didn’t explain the vampire who’d shown up in the hospital lab last night. Nor the fact that Will had…kind of liked the guy.

Making snap judgments about people was not unusual for him. He’d been trained for years to size a person up in a glance, so that wasn’t an issue. The issue was that he’d believed the guy to be a vampire. A real one. At least until he’d gotten up the next morning to examine the theory in the full light of day and realized how ridiculous it was. Maybe it was easier to believe in fantasies when you were creeping around a shadowy lab in the dead of night. Besides, he’d been through the mill, and they’d been keeping him pretty drugged-up to boot. Far more than he liked.

That must have been it. He’d probably imagined the entire thing. Hell, it was a wonder he wasn’t suffering far worse side effects after his weeks of torture, mangled foot and near-death in the desert. His brain had been baked, his body dehydrated, his senses deprived. Top all that off with a little morphine and you had a hallucination just waiting to happen.

The nurse pushed his wheelchair up to the double doors, which parted automatically. He took his first breath of fresh air in weeks, even if it was tinged with exhaust fumes. It was spring. God, how he loved the spring.

There was a taxi waiting at the curb. He glanced up at the smiling nurse. “I can take it from here, hon.”

“I don’t doubt it.”

He got upright, his weight on the good foot. The nurse pulled the chair out from behind him, then handed him his cane and the plastic bag filled with his belongings. The few that were here, anyway. He didn’t own much, or hadn’t until he’d come home. Uncle Sam had secured an apartment for him in the city of his choice, which was New York. They’d furnished it and told him there would be a car waiting in the parking garage when he arrived. His worldly possessions, most of which fit easily into a large Army-issue duffel bag, had already been sent on ahead of him.

He muttered his destination to the driver as he got into the back seat, then settled in for the ride to the airport.

It was a short, easy flight. The landing, though, was a bit of a surprise. When he limped off the plane, keeping to one side so the other passengers could rush past him in their hurry to the gate, he had no idea what was awaiting him in LaGuardia’s main terminal. In fact, when he first glimpsed the press, the cameras, the people waving their tiny flags and holding up their signs, he wondered what celebrity had been on that airplane with him.

Then a reporter said, “Welcome to New York, Colonel Stone! How does it feel to be back home?”

The microphone hovered in front of his face, and he thought about laughing out loud. This wasn’t home. Home was a camouflage-colored tent or sometimes a hole in the ground. It was men in fatigues carrying automatic rifles, and bad food and warm water, and anti-nerve-gas injections. It wasn’t this.

But aloud, he only said, “Great. It feels great. I’m glad to be back.”

“Colonel, how is your leg?” another one shouted, shouldering her way to the front of the pack.

“Foot, not leg,” he corrected. “It’s as good as can be expected, I suppose.”

“What’s your reaction to the news that earlier today a daisy-cutter was dropped on the caves where you were held?”

“I hadn’t heard.” He wondered if any of the men who’d held him were stupid enough to have remained in the same place this long and doubted it. “They get anybody?”

“A pile of them. They’re still sorting through the remains.”

He swallowed his reaction to that and wondered who’d been killed for the sake of avenging the latest American hero. He stopped answering questions, shouldered his way through the mob, not without effort, but they didn’t give up until he got into a cab outside the airport.

It was only as the cab pulled away that he saw her.

She was getting into a long black limousine. She wore dark glasses and real fur, and her hair was wild and loose. Her pale, pale skin, like alabaster, was almost luminous in the dusky light of sundown. Her legs were endless, her nails as red as her lips.




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