hands crossed at the wrist protectively in front of him. Then, abruptly,
he dropped them to his sides, embarrassed. It was only Sasha. He
hadn’t seen her since she’d stormed out of Dr. Greene’s office the
previous night. Strangely, he’d missed her. He shifted, looking everywhere
but directly at her.
She frowned. “Are you all right?”
“Fine.” He gestured weakly toward the silver chamber. “He’s . . . I
don’t know. How do you tell? He doesn’t have any skin yet.”
Sasha walked up and looked in one of the small round windows.
“Wow. He looks a hell of a lot further along than he did yesterday.”
Rafael nodded. “I wonder what he’ll say, first thing when he wakes
up?”
“No telling. It won’t be English, though.”
He hadn’t thought of that. But of course, the guy had been dead
for four thousand years. What languages would he know? Some ancient
Egyptian or Babylonian tongue? Would there be anybody here
who could talk to him?
“Where were you born?” he asked her suddenly, not sure why he
wanted to know.
“Belarus, I think they call it now,” she said. She touched his elbow,
hesitant. It was as if she barely knew him. Certainly she wasn’t
acting as if they’d been cavorting naked not that long ago. “I’m sorry.”
“For what?”
“For shutting you out. I shouldn’t have.”
He shrugged. “Why not? We barely know each other.”
“Maybe that’s part of the problem.” She backed toward the door.
“Come with me. Please?”
“Are you going to hit me in the head with anything?”
She smiled. “Only if you don’t come.”
“What the hell, it’s not like I have anything better to do.”
She took him again to the quiet cave. He could tell she had something
on her mind. He hadn’t known her that long, but it had been long
enough to know her silence wasn’t typical. She liked to talk, to rib him
and play verbal games. There was none of that now.
Instead, leaning against the cave wall, she said quietly, not quite
looking at him, “If you go through with this, you won’t see me again.”
“I don’t understand. Why?”
Her lip curled disdainfully, but there were tears in her eyes. “I
don’t consort with mortals.”
“I’ll still be the same person.”
“No, you won’t. You’ll be human.” She blinked and looked away
from him. “You’ll be out in the sun, eating whatever the hell it is they
eat these days. And you’ll die.”
“Not right away. At least, that’s not the plan.”
“It’s never the plan. But it doesn’t really matter, does it? You will
grow old and you will die.” Her voice had gone thin-edged and bitter,
with a trace of an accent Rafael didn’t recognize and had never heard
her use before. “I will not. Ever.”
There were, of course, any number of ways a vampire could die,
but this didn’t seem like the time to point that out. On the other hand,
he’d learned a few things in the short time he’d been in the Underground
that did seem worth noting. “There are several human/vampire
couples around here. Dr. Greene and Lilith, for instance. They seem to
be doing okay.”
“That is their decision.” Her accent thickened, as did her voice.
“It will never be mine.”
It seemed, then, that there was little he could do. She’d obviously
made up her mind. He turned away and started to leave the small
chamber, then suddenly remembered.
This wasn’t Brigitte. He could question her. Challenge her, even.
He turned around. “You would give up that easily?”
Her chin lifted. “Don’t question me. I’ve been around a lot longer
than you have.”
“Don’t pull that shit with me. You’re scared.”
She sniffed. “Of what?”
“Of hurting. If I’m mortal, eventually I’ll die—I understand that—
whether I get hit by a bus, or come down with the Ebola virus, or die in
my sleep when I’m a hundred and twelve. And you’ll still be exactly
what you are now.”
“I’ve been through it before. I don’t want to go through it again.
So, yes, maybe I am afraid. But for good reason.”
She was right, in a way. She had been around a lot longer than he
had. He couldn’t conceive what it would be like to watch someone he
loved age and die in front of him, while he remained unchanged. He
hadn’t been a vampire long enough to have experienced that. Maybe
he hadn’t been a vampire long enough to fully appreciate the consequences
of his decision.
That didn’t change one fact, though—the single fact that he could
be sure of and that he didn’t need a century of vampiric life to understand.
“That’s too bad,” he said, moving toward the door. “Because I
think we could have had something. Something really good.”
A tear had escaped and rolled down her face. “Yes. And we still
could, if you just don’t do this.”
“I’m sorry, Sasha. I have to. Maybe there’s no way you can understand,
but I have to.”
He couldn’t look at her anymore, couldn’t bear to see the pain on
her face. He turned his back on her and left her there.
* * *
“Based on the X-rays, I’d say you’re an excellent candidate.” Dr.
Greene pointed at the X-rays he’d hung on the viewing light set into the
wall. “Based on the development of your femurs, you would have grown
a few more inches if you’d been left to your own devices.”
Rafael looked at the pictures of his leg bones. “Huh,” was all he
could think of to say. It was strange to have this, too, added to the list of
injustices committed against him. Brigitte had abducted him, Turned
him against his will, made him her sex slave, and on top of all that,
she’d stunted his growth.
The doctor continued. “I’ll want to monitor you throughout the
process to be sure there are no problems and also to record exactly
what happens during your transformation. Information we can gain
from you will be vital in administering and regulating the treatment
when we use it on the Children.”
“So . . .” Rafael hesitated. “This procedure hasn’t been tested at
all?”
“Only under laboratory conditions. There’s really no other way.
It’s not possible to, say, turn a lab rat into a vamp-rat and then change
it back.”
“So I’m the vamp-rat.”
Dr. Greene unclipped the X-rays from the lighted screen. “I’m
afraid so.”
“What are the chances this procedure will kill me?”
“Based on my trials, extremely low.”
“And if your trials are wrong?”
The doctor shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t know. I’ll be honest
with you, though—this isn’t risk-free. It’s one of the reasons I wanted
to try it with an older subject first.”
Rafael nodded. “I get it.” He looked at the X-rays, now dark and
unreadable in the doctor’s hands. “Do I have to decide right now?”
“No. Thin
k about it a little longer if you have to.”
Rafael stood. “Has Sasha talked to you at all?”
“No. She had no desire to participate. She wouldn’t even come in
for the X-rays.” He paused, studying Rafael’s face. “Does that have
something to do with your own hesitation?”
“A little.” He shrugged. “You know how it can be.”
The doctor gave him a wry grin. “Yeah, I do.”
“I just need to talk to her, is all.” Rafael wasn’t sure why he felt
such a need to justify himself.
“Take your time.”
Still, he felt odd about leaving, as if he owed the doctor more of an
explanation.
But he didn’t. He didn’t owe anybody anything—except Sasha
for dragging him out of Ialdaboth’s hellhole. And even her . . . well, he
owed her his life, but not eternity. No, he had to decide what he wanted,
not what might be good for the Children or Dr. Greene or anybody
else.
He left the doctor’s office and went to Sasha’s room, knocked on
her closed door.
She opened it, looked at him, and let him in.
“Sasha,” he began, but she cut him off with her mouth on his,
kissing him hard and deep while her hands pulled open his jeans.
There was no fighting her. Well, he could have—she wasn’t
Brigitte—but he had no desire to. She dragged him toward the bed and
pulled him down onto it, dragging his jeans half off him. Before he quite
knew what was happening, she was on top of him and sliding him
inside her, her sex clenching hard on his shaft. He could do little but
respond.
She took him to the edge and then stopped. When one move would
have meant his climax, she held utterly still. Somehow she knew the
moment when he had moved back from the inevitable, for that was the
moment when she slid off him. She took his hand in hers and pressed it
into her own heat.
Her arousal stoked his, as he slid his fingers into her. She was
slick with desire. He wanted inside her again, but she wouldn’t let him.
Instead she held herself over him while he worked her to the peak and
over it, until she came tumbling down with tears in her eyes, her body
shivering with aftershocks.
“Now?” he whispered. She nodded. He rolled her over, under
him, and buried himself in her again.
He knew, suddenly, as he thrust his way to release, that this was
the last time. He didn’t know why she’d pulled him in here, but he did
know, in a moment of sudden, unexpected clarity, what he would tell
Dr. Greene.
Thoughts dissipated as he plunged inside one last time. His brain
emptied as his body did, as he filled her.
Drained, satiated, he sagged over her. She looked into his eyes.
“Don’t do it,” she said. “Don’t take this away from us.”
He’d suspected as much. It had been a bribe of sorts, a practical
demonstration of what she would so stubbornly insist on taking from
him if he followed this path. The path he’d finally realized was the one
single thing he most wanted right now in what passed for his existence.
More than love, more than sex, more even than her, he wanted
life. If she couldn’t accept that, then there had never been anything
more between them than this—this sweat and heat and raw satiation
of flesh.
His arousal faded, and he rolled away from her, groping for his
jeans, which were somewhere on the floor.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “But I have to do it.”
He pulled his jeans on, found his shirt and shoes, and left. He
didn’t even look back to see if she was crying. Because if she was, he
couldn’t bear it.
Four
He left her, left the corridors where she slept, left the Underground
altogether. He would stay in Manhattan, since Julian had said it
was relatively safe. The danger didn’t really matter to him now—he
needed to make one last excursion as a vampire. Just to be sure.
Outside on the street he cloaked himself as Brigitte had taught
him, disguising his presence from the mortals around him. He’d never
been very good at it. Other vampires could slide noiselessly through
crowds, unseen, unsensed. Where he passed, he left behind whispers
of, “What was that?” “Did you see something?” “I thought I heard
something.”
He was a terrible, lousy, awful vampire. How could Sasha begrudge
him the chance to reclaim the life that had been taken from
him?
Maybe she was afraid of more than his death. Maybe she was
afraid that she herself would kill him. But he didn’t think so. She’d had
human lovers before, she’d said. So she knew something about balancing
that kind of relationship. She was just afraid to watch him grow old
and die. No more than that.
He had to forgive her. If he truly loved her—and he was almost
certain he did—he had to accept her fear as part of her and let her go.
He forced his thoughts away from Sasha and focused on other
things. He wanted to use the time to make up his mind. He wanted to
experience exactly what it meant to be a vampire during these hours,
to be certain he could give it up. The power—or the potential for it—
the heightened senses, the things about it that were beautiful.
There were colors in the darkness he’d never seen as a mortal.
Deep, glowing indigoes. Reds so dark they approached black. Gorgeous,
a particular shade of red that surrounded mortals in the dark, outlining
them and pulsing with their heartbeats. He stood in the best vampiric
silence he could muster and simply watched this for a time, imprinting
the sight on his memory.
This, he decided after a time, was the only thing he would miss.
The colors. But there were other colors, colors of sun and daylight, that
were as beautiful and intense as these could ever be.
Just before dawn began to creep in, he realized he was hungry.
He wondered why he hadn’t noticed earlier when it was clawing so
insistently in his stomach.
Blood. He needed blood. He’d had a couple of plasma drinks
before he’d left the Underground, but that stuff didn’t stick with him
very well. He needed fresh, hot blood, to flow, copious and coppery,
down his throat, to fill his dead veins.
He sat very still, watching the mortals. They would provide more
than enough. A bit from the man, a bit from the woman, not enough to
distress either of them. In spite of his training by the Dark Children, he
had enough control for that. He didn’t have to kill to feed.
He should try it, one last time, just to be sure. Maybe it really
wasn’t that bad. Maybe it was a reasonable trade for immortality. For
power. For the colors.
But no. He didn’t need to explore that possibility. He already knew
where it led.
Time to go back. He could take a shortcut through Vivian’s house
and pick up more plasma on the way.
He woke that evening starving for blood. He’d taken a couple of
extra plasma bottles yesterd
ay, and they were ready for him, on the
table next to his bed. He drank them quickly, then dressed and got out
of bed.
He knocked once on Dr. Greene’s door, waited, then knocked
again. The doctor’s bleariness when he opened the door confirmed
Rafael’s belated realization that he should have quit after the first attempt.
“When can we start?” he said.
The doctor smiled sleepily. “Give me a few minutes.”
As he was closing the door, Rafael glimpsed, in the room beyond,
the slim figure of a woman with long, near-white hair. She wore only a
pink, filmy nightgown. Lilith. The human doctor’s vampire lover. For a
split second, a twinge of pain, a thought of Sasha, weakened his resolve.
The remaining taste of the plasma in his mouth strengthened it.
Dr. Greene reappeared a few minutes later, dressed and with his
glasses in place.
“Sorry about the timing,” Rafael said.
“You ought to be,” Dr. Greene replied.
The response surprised Rafael, but when he lifted his eyebrows,
Dr. Green said, “It’s okay. I’m kidding. Vampire girlfriends aren’t much
for cuddling first thing when they wake up, anyway. They really, really
need to eat first.”
Rafael felt too awkward to laugh, but managed a vague chuckle.
There was that twinge again.
Dr. Greene cocked an eyebrow at him. “You okay?”
“Yeah, I’m fine. Let’s get this over with.”
Stretched out on a hospital bed in a room a few doors down from
Dr. Greene’s bedroom, Rafael finally began to feel calm. Strange, because
logically this was when he figured he should start getting nervous.
“I’ve been experimenting with some different delivery systems,”
the doctor was saying as he took an IV bag out of the small refrigerator.
“In the past, I’ve trusted the ‘natural’ approach—fangs and suc-
tion—but my interviews with the Children made me pursue alternate
methods.”
“Why?”
“Too much ‘drama and trauma.’” The doctor grinned. “They’re
kids. I wanted something a little less . . . scary.”
“They’re vampires,” Rafael reminded him. “Some of them have
been vampires for hundreds of years. I hardly think an exchange of
blood is going to traumatize them.”
“Yes, they are vampires. But they’re also children. I did some